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> Yes. Including arbitrary licenses enforced by local governments Not sure how a corrupt government is part of your definition of a capitalist utopia. In my d
by grandalf 10y ago
> Yes. Including arbitrary licenses enforced by local governments
Not sure how a corrupt government is part of your definition of a capitalist utopia.
In my definition of a capitalist utopia, there exists the optimal amount of regulation to maximize long term welfare. This means no regulations that benefit the next 3 years at the expense of the future, and also none that benefit the next 20 at the expense of the longer-term future. Regulations that do exist are consistently enforced without corruption or bureaucratic waste.
In our actual (non-utopian) system, most regulations have the side-effect of benefitting one constituency or interest group over another, or one relevant time-horizon over another (most are profoundly short-sighted).
Also, in a capitalist utopia there would be administrative districts that would allow for various regulatory schemes to be tested and compared scientifically, so even if one local government did make the mistake of offering a state-sponsored monopoly, the mistake would quickly be realized and corrected.
- dragonwriter 10y agoOptimizing social welfare (regardless of time window) through regulation isn't capitalism at all.
- cmdrfred 10y agoIt's American capitalism. We just lost our way. "Servants, labourers and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconvenience to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged." - Adam Smith
- grandalf 10y agoExactly, just as democracy is a way to maximize the power of the average person, capitalism is a way to maximize her economic freedom.
- grandalf 10y agoAdmittedly since children cannot vote our government will always be biased toward the interests of adults and will operate on a time horizon that steals from the future to benefit the present. However in a utopian version, perhaps there would be some mechanism by which the longer-term interests of children could be represented democratically. I would also argue that in a capitalist utopia there would not be things that we typically call market failures, since institutions would emerge to solve the problems based on market incentives. Also, I'm not arguing that a capitalist utopia could exist, just that it is sometimes useful to offer contrast to the idea that big firms must somehow have an enlightened and altruistic vision in order to make investments like the one in the article. It could in fact just be the true north of the profit motive animating longer-term planning than we typically see (due to perverse incentives that focus most businesses on very short-term planning).
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- __jal 10y ago> most regulations have the side-effect of benefitting one constituency or interest group over another Well, yes. One of the functions of government is to adjudicate incompatible desires. This doesn't mean it always should, but something is going to play that role, and if it isn't a government, it is something that will be called a government once the shooting stops.