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If gov’t backed companies out compete “free market” companies, why are we saddling ourselves with an inefficient economic model? Capitalism is nice for capitali

If gov’t backed companies out compete “free market” companies, why are we saddling ourselves with an inefficient economic model? Capitalism is nice for capitalists and all, but it’s not without its problems. Setting aside its tendency to generate dangerous levels of inequality (which is a real problem we are basically ignoring), capitalism is kind of dumb or a least limited in its ability to integrate and act on information in a timely manner (see boom-bust cycles). It seems to me that given the massive advances in information sensing, storage, and processing capabilities of the last six decades, we would be better off with more central planning. This of course still requires political work to ensure just and equitable distribution of goods and services as well as protection of livelihoods, but we should be doing more of these anyway.

s1artibartfast 2y ago
>If gov’t backed companies out compete “free market” companies, why are we saddling ourselves with an inefficient economic model? I think that is actually a fair question, but it all comes down to what you optimize for. I think that the most efficient economic model could be some form of slave command economy. That said, I think the bigger argument against central economic planning is that it further centralizes social and political power as well. This is prone to more drastic and oppressive failure modes. Last, you talk about the speed of information, but that cuts both ways. Distributed systems can take advantage of this as well. Capitalist economies have booms and busts, but I would take them any day over great famines.