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It's not just government that fails and makes bad choices. So I'm not interested in questions that frame the distinction as being between private decision makin

It's not just government that fails and makes bad choices. So I'm not interested in questions that frame the distinction as being between private decision making and public decision making. We have agree that no human organization will always make the best decisions, so the question is how do we try to improve the chances? There was a lot of interest in this in the 1960s, but it fell away as neoliberalism triumphed, and with it the idea that some sort of multiplicity of private actors will always make the best possible choice that we could. I don't believe this, especially since "multiplicity" has frequently come down "a few, maybe 2 or 3". Yes, I love cooperatives, though they are hard to make sustainable and successful. Big projects requiring lots of resources should be hard to start, and should start only when we agree that devoting lots of resources to the problem is the right thing to do, via a democratic process. Problems that require very few resources do not need to meet such standards, and efforts to solve them can come and go as people feel like doing.

rockemsockem 3y ago
The number of private actors capable of acting in a space has not been that small since like the 50s, if ever. You're trying to equate this to corporate cases like Apple and Google in smartphone OSes, but this is far broader. This is the entire economy. I feel like you're thinking just about corporations, which is a different conversation IMO. You can even look at space exploration as an example since when we talk about rich people everyone thinks of Elon now. There are so many space companies started with private investment. SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, Virgin Orbit, Armadillo Aerospace, Rocket lab, Polaris, a planetary resources, and more that I've never heard of. That's way more than 2 or 3. I think humanity is at its best when it can organize into small groups working on big things that can be made available and/or useful to everyone else and that's just really hard to do without money. I don't want to spend my time allocating capital. Randomly assigning the job to as many of those interested in doing so as possible seems like the best solution, with augmentation from the government of course.

rockemsockem 3y ago

The number of private actors capable of acting in a space has not been that small since like the 50s, if ever. You're trying to equate this to corporate cases like Apple and Google in smartphone OSes, but this is far broader. This is the entire economy. I feel like you're thinking just about corporations, which is a different conversation IMO. You can even look at space exploration as an example since when we talk about rich people everyone thinks of Elon now. There are so many space companies started with private investment. SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, Virgin Orbit, Armadillo Aerospace, Rocket lab, Polaris, a planetary resources, and more that I've never heard of. That's way more than 2 or 3. I think humanity is at its best when it can organize into small groups working on big things that can be made available and/or useful to everyone else and that's just really hard to do without money. I don't want to spend my time allocating capital. Randomly assigning the job to as many of those interested in doing so as possible seems like the best solution, with augmentation from the government of course.