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As opposed to having the government do what? Have a great COVID response? Have a coherent industrial policy? Have great fiscal management? Have financial integr

As opposed to having the government do what? Have a great COVID response? Have a coherent industrial policy? Have great fiscal management? Have financial integrity? Grant monopolies to service provides (ahem Comcast) instead of building proper infrastructure? Not building sufficient electrical infrastructure? Enticing poor young people to make terrible money decisions relative to school and then saddling them with non-dischargable loans? Spending money to fight endless wars? In the middle of a pandemic pass a bill that sends millions overseas while Americans can't pay their medical, food or housing bills? I will take the capitalist over these government clowns any day of the week. Moderna created a vaccine in less than a day. Even with a year to think about it, my state and county still can't decide where the mass vaccination site should be located. Our government has coasted for too long and is incompetent. When the world decides to quit paying the dollar tax imposed via Fed printing, it will be a rude awaking for all Americans.

cromwellian 6y ago
> Moderna created a vaccine in less than a day. Moderna benefited immensely from decades of publicly funded research as does most of Pharma, as well as direct aid from Emory University, NIAID, etc Look, if you believe the market works as the best mechanism for allocating goods and services, then you've also got to believe it won't work properly if prices are distorted, otherwise Garbage In, Garbage Out. If a firm is able to pass off costs onto others, it is a hidden subsidy, a form of market distortion. For example, if I just throw all of my trash and waste into the local lake and hope no one notices, I don't pay the costs for my waste, ergo, my prices and my profits do not reflect the true marginal cost. "But but but...tort! You can sue if injured by dumping!" Get real, this is a libertarian fantasy and not at all how diffuse stochastic waste works. The same people who tell me that what makes a poison, poison, is the dosage, not the molecule. Well, if you dump an insignificant fraction of pollutant, by itself, it is not harmful, but if 1000 firms dump the same amount, then it can be harmful. Who do you sue? Property rights only work if you can draw a border around something. There are no property rights to the atmosphere or oceans and hence civil lawsuits can't really be a solution to tracking down and punishing individual violators after they've done the damage, the government must force firms to PRICE IN the costs of pollution, either via an upfront regulation, or an upfront tax. The same is true for negative social externalities. If a firm, or a new technology, is having a large scale negative effect on society, making people less unhappy, more depressed, more prone to crime or violence, more impoverished, it becomes a cost that is passed off on everyone else. Who pays the costs? We all do. We pay it at the hospital. We pay for it to the tune of $44,000/yr to house prison inmates. We pay for it in more police and criminal justice, more fear, more suicides. If your company movies into a small town, puts all of the local shops out of business, and then refuses to raise wages or benefits, what ends up happening is, the other citizens end up paying for the healthcare, retirement, or other benefits that the Walmart, et al, aren't paying. Acting like we don't live in an interconnected system where negative costs get transferred, or that every deal is win-win-win, is a fantasy. If you don't pay for your neighbor's kids nutrition, early education, or healthcare, you'll pay for police to lock up their kids when they try to rob you. I'd much rather live in a society where I am "forced" to pay for educated, civilized, happy people to be around, then to live inside of a Fortress, "forced" paying for a bunch of private prisons in a police state, just so I can view the misery of the world from my tower windows. So if you really believe capitalism is the best system for allocating resources, you should be in favor of correcting market distortions where firms can cost-shift their damages onto others, especially when it comes to diffuse-in-time-and-space mechanisms where there is no easily visible negative feedback mechanism to correct the firm's behavior.
- throwaway9870 6y ago
  I love good government and am not afraid of big government one bit. However, I HATE incompetent government that coasts on the work of others and whenever a problem comes up points fingers at everyone but themselves. Add to my list above supplying safe drinking water and having an effective hurricane evacuation plan (I am looking at you New Orleans).
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  Great post! Thanks for taking the time to write it. It's a shame its so far down the page! I do believe in capitalism, and I _am_ in favor of strongly policing the system so that it's fair for everybody. Some call it "big government" a bit off topic, but it really bugs me when people talk about government like its some big external hostile force. It's our collective power, we should take ownership of it. If its not working that's our problem.
  - MrMan 6y ago
    Part of libertarian marketing is that if you don’t enjoy the system or see opportunities in destroying it, that is ok. Bitcoin fits into a larger fantasy narrative which is that instead of working together inside the actually closed system in which we all exist, you can endlessly fragment the social space and opt out into smaller and smaller volitional communities. The idea seems intuitive until you start to hit limits, or when collective action is needed in the form of governance. Or when your crypto nationalism runs into the same problems we have been dealing with since the dark ages ended.
- MrMan 6y ago
  This is my view which is why I am vehemently anti libertarian and pro social democrat.
  - curioushacking 6y ago
    Agreed. It was a great post. I tend to think of my self as a "liberal-tarian." With the tenet being to set a goal for a standard of living and social / environment targets that benefits as many as possible, but anything beyond that get out of the way. In this way I am for socialized health care, significantly stricter regulations or punitive measures regarding the environment. However for most other issues I would rather have a competitive market. In the end I think some form of UBI may help us get there most efficiently. Ensure the environmental and health sustainability and give people a minimum amount of money to ensure they can reasonably sustain themselves, then let the market consider the rest.

cromwellian 6y ago

> Moderna created a vaccine in less than a day. Moderna benefited immensely from decades of publicly funded research as does most of Pharma, as well as direct aid from Emory University, NIAID, etc Look, if you believe the market works as the best mechanism for allocating goods and services, then you've also got to believe it won't work properly if prices are distorted, otherwise Garbage In, Garbage Out. If a firm is able to pass off costs onto others, it is a hidden subsidy, a form of market distortion. For example, if I just throw all of my trash and waste into the local lake and hope no one notices, I don't pay the costs for my waste, ergo, my prices and my profits do not reflect the true marginal cost. "But but but...tort! You can sue if injured by dumping!" Get real, this is a libertarian fantasy and not at all how diffuse stochastic waste works. The same people who tell me that what makes a poison, poison, is the dosage, not the molecule. Well, if you dump an insignificant fraction of pollutant, by itself, it is not harmful, but if 1000 firms dump the same amount, then it can be harmful. Who do you sue? Property rights only work if you can draw a border around something. There are no property rights to the atmosphere or oceans and hence civil lawsuits can't really be a solution to tracking down and punishing individual violators after they've done the damage, the government must force firms to PRICE IN the costs of pollution, either via an upfront regulation, or an upfront tax. The same is true for negative social externalities. If a firm, or a new technology, is having a large scale negative effect on society, making people less unhappy, more depressed, more prone to crime or violence, more impoverished, it becomes a cost that is passed off on everyone else. Who pays the costs? We all do. We pay it at the hospital. We pay for it to the tune of $44,000/yr to house prison inmates. We pay for it in more police and criminal justice, more fear, more suicides. If your company movies into a small town, puts all of the local shops out of business, and then refuses to raise wages or benefits, what ends up happening is, the other citizens end up paying for the healthcare, retirement, or other benefits that the Walmart, et al, aren't paying. Acting like we don't live in an interconnected system where negative costs get transferred, or that every deal is win-win-win, is a fantasy. If you don't pay for your neighbor's kids nutrition, early education, or healthcare, you'll pay for police to lock up their kids when they try to rob you. I'd much rather live in a society where I am "forced" to pay for educated, civilized, happy people to be around, then to live inside of a Fortress, "forced" paying for a bunch of private prisons in a police state, just so I can view the misery of the world from my tower windows. So if you really believe capitalism is the best system for allocating resources, you should be in favor of correcting market distortions where firms can cost-shift their damages onto others, especially when it comes to diffuse-in-time-and-space mechanisms where there is no easily visible negative feedback mechanism to correct the firm's behavior.

throwaway9870 6y ago
I love good government and am not afraid of big government one bit. However, I HATE incompetent government that coasts on the work of others and whenever a problem comes up points fingers at everyone but themselves. Add to my list above supplying safe drinking water and having an effective hurricane evacuation plan (I am looking at you New Orleans).
jay_kyburz 6y ago
Great post! Thanks for taking the time to write it. It's a shame its so far down the page! I do believe in capitalism, and I _am_ in favor of strongly policing the system so that it's fair for everybody. Some call it "big government" a bit off topic, but it really bugs me when people talk about government like its some big external hostile force. It's our collective power, we should take ownership of it. If its not working that's our problem.
- MrMan 6y ago
  Part of libertarian marketing is that if you don’t enjoy the system or see opportunities in destroying it, that is ok. Bitcoin fits into a larger fantasy narrative which is that instead of working together inside the actually closed system in which we all exist, you can endlessly fragment the social space and opt out into smaller and smaller volitional communities. The idea seems intuitive until you start to hit limits, or when collective action is needed in the form of governance. Or when your crypto nationalism runs into the same problems we have been dealing with since the dark ages ended.
MrMan 6y ago
This is my view which is why I am vehemently anti libertarian and pro social democrat.
- curioushacking 6y ago
  Agreed. It was a great post. I tend to think of my self as a "liberal-tarian." With the tenet being to set a goal for a standard of living and social / environment targets that benefits as many as possible, but anything beyond that get out of the way. In this way I am for socialized health care, significantly stricter regulations or punitive measures regarding the environment. However for most other issues I would rather have a competitive market. In the end I think some form of UBI may help us get there most efficiently. Ensure the environmental and health sustainability and give people a minimum amount of money to ensure they can reasonably sustain themselves, then let the market consider the rest.