> The laissez-faire proposition is that if we just resist the temptation to futz with the computer (to "distort the market"), it will select the best person for

> The laissez-faire proposition is that if we just resist the temptation to futz with the computer (to "distort the market"), it will select the best person for each position: workers, consumers, and, of course, "capital allocators" who decide where the money goes and thus what gets made. I often like to bring up basic criminal laws as foundational "distortions" of the "free market." Consider murder/assassination: It's an externality, and the law creates a new "cost" to the actor that would otherwise not exist. That way, companies in a Q3 slump look at how to improve their product, rather than investing in sniper rifles and bombs to kill the competition. This means that the qualitative battle has already been decided in favor of "yes, the people must tweak the machine." Unless one wants cyberpunk-y corpo death-squads, the remaining debate becomes where the quantitative "stop making rules here" line is drawn, and how to justify those boundaries. > For the wealthy, this is the origin of the meritocracy to eugenics pipeline. If power and privilege are inherited – and they are, ever moreso every day – then either we live in an extremely unfair society in which the privileged and the powerful have rigged the game… or the invisible hand has created a subspecies of thoroughbred humans who were literally born to rule. This dovetails with a segment of the non-rich population that crave authoritarian certitude, that somebody vaguely identifiable is operating in the kingly driver's-seat.