You should read Fukuyama’s article “End of History?”. People mock it for the title, but it essentially argues the same thing. Liberal democracy with capitalism is the best balance of economics and politics we have.
Then read Branko Milanovic ‘end of end of history’, for an interesting modern take on how china might disprove that.
I enjoyed the article and your passionate defense of capitalism as the best means to serve society.
But you didn't address the importance of regulatory boundaries on capitalism. If one company becomes a monopoly in a given market with politicians to reinforce that position -- with either explicit or implicit restrictions on competitors -- then the wonderful forces you describe can't happen.
Also, some societal needs -- like clean water -- require regulation of all companies so that the competitive forces that evolve yield good outcomes all around.
In short, if we have government enforcement of the basic game of capitalism to ensure against either competitive or societal resource abuse, then, yes, I think it becomes the force for good that you describe. Without that enforcement, however, you get abusive oligarchs and stifled competition.
I think my point 3 stands here: Finally, if we don’t understand how and why the fusion engine works, we’re going to see genuine challenges (e.g., externalities like pollution, inequality, addiction, etc.) and “solve” them in counterproductive ways that (1) don’t actually solve anything, and (2) take a baseball bat to our magical fusion engine. For example, what should we do about those sweater-wearing Chads rolling up youth sports leagues? If we think capitalism is not good, the answer is probably to add laws and regulations. Repeat that a million times and what happens?
No system is perfect. Capitalism can be a powerful engine, but it produces predictable problems. Government can help mitigate those, but it also introduces its own problems. The real challenge is designing systems that balance and correct both. For the nuclear energy and housing crisis examples, there are both governmental failures and market failures at play.
Heck yeah brother
You should read Fukuyama’s article “End of History?”. People mock it for the title, but it essentially argues the same thing. Liberal democracy with capitalism is the best balance of economics and politics we have.
Then read Branko Milanovic ‘end of end of history’, for an interesting modern take on how china might disprove that.
I enjoyed the article and your passionate defense of capitalism as the best means to serve society.
But you didn't address the importance of regulatory boundaries on capitalism. If one company becomes a monopoly in a given market with politicians to reinforce that position -- with either explicit or implicit restrictions on competitors -- then the wonderful forces you describe can't happen.
Also, some societal needs -- like clean water -- require regulation of all companies so that the competitive forces that evolve yield good outcomes all around.
In short, if we have government enforcement of the basic game of capitalism to ensure against either competitive or societal resource abuse, then, yes, I think it becomes the force for good that you describe. Without that enforcement, however, you get abusive oligarchs and stifled competition.
I think my point 3 stands here: Finally, if we don’t understand how and why the fusion engine works, we’re going to see genuine challenges (e.g., externalities like pollution, inequality, addiction, etc.) and “solve” them in counterproductive ways that (1) don’t actually solve anything, and (2) take a baseball bat to our magical fusion engine. For example, what should we do about those sweater-wearing Chads rolling up youth sports leagues? If we think capitalism is not good, the answer is probably to add laws and regulations. Repeat that a million times and what happens?
Nah. These critiques apply to all forms of governance in practice. Public choice theory exists.
Recall that the restrictions you propose are the reason we lack abundant clean nuclear power. They are way we have a housing crisis.
No system is perfect. Capitalism can be a powerful engine, but it produces predictable problems. Government can help mitigate those, but it also introduces its own problems. The real challenge is designing systems that balance and correct both. For the nuclear energy and housing crisis examples, there are both governmental failures and market failures at play.
Ostrom won a nobel for showing why the naive market failure view fails to match reality
Enjoying your abstractions of the PULL...does this also exist at the level of the individual? some sort of push behavior to life instead of pull.