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Limiting government power to a minimum and let the market do its magic? I'm pretty sure that's a really bad idea, just thinking of leaded gasoline, tobacco adve
by zwirbl 4y ago
Limiting government power to a minimum and let the market do its magic? I'm pretty sure that's a really bad idea, just thinking of leaded gasoline, tobacco advertising, chemical softeners in food packaging etc. one could get the impression that free market maximalism is an extreme that is as bad as communism, just like any extreme stance/opinion is.
In the end it is all about balancing interests of different groups with (hopefully) a bias towards the people, not toward capital
- coffeecat 4y agoThe free market should be thought of as an optimization algorithm. Ideally, the government's role should be to set up a constrained optimization problem, which attempts to align profitability with human well-being (e.g., "provide people with whatever material comforts they want to pay for, under the constraint of not poisoning them and not polluting the environment"). The market's role is to solve the constrained optimization problem, and if the incentives set up by the government are good, the optimal point of profitability should reasonably approximate an optimal point of human well-being. The error of so-called free market proponents, is that they want the government to set up an unconstrained optimization problem. The market will find some kind of optimum, but without intelligently designed constraints (i.e., regulations), there's no guarantee that optimal profitability should correspond to optimal human well-being.
- zwirbl 4y agoVery well put, I fully agree and might even borrow this explanation when talking to the subset of people who understand optimization algorithms/the analogy. Next up: Optimization Algorithm ELI5 for the rest