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According to neoliberalism yes. The rest of us don't believe that markets are both the best and inevitable answer to every human endeavor. Some of us even belie
by 1_2__4 9y ago
According to neoliberalism yes. The rest of us don't believe that markets are both the best and inevitable answer to every human endeavor. Some of us even believe in weird stuff like human rights and self governance.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoThe real problem is those concerns are orthogonal. One should not think of the market as the best answer to every human endeavour - but it's also important to recognize just how powerful a force it is. Managing the market is hard - most of the time too hard for even most wealthy and powerful people.
- Applejinx 9y agoIndeed, it's looking like we've got some experimental evidence that markets are a poor way to deal with some kinds of things. Plus, they're hardly inevitable: they're created by humans along with whatever rules and mechanisms they operate by, and they're administered by humans. What self-organizing features markets have are confined to a subset of what they functionally mean: they scale because they semi-efficiently find optimal answers through working on populations rather than centralized control. What does 'optimal' mean? That's sometimes in open conflict with the very rules we want to see honored. It's a neat hack, but horribly inappropriate to some aspects of life. And we get in real trouble when we start redefining everything in life circularly, as 'what is produced by markets is optimal'. Human extinction is an optimal market solution to some things, including maximization of capital as an abstract measure.