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If you accept evolution, you must oppose over-regulation of the economy
- smhinsey 17y agoDoes anyone actually advocate over-regulation?
- tokenadult 17y agoI listen to Robert Reich radio commentaries, and he seems to advocate over-regulation.
- mkeblx 17y agoI advocate over-regulation. It's not very hard: figure out the exact set of regulation you want, x, and then advocate x&y, where y is not the null set. Since the likelihood of x&y is logically less that of x alone you stand a better chance of getting x implemented.
- TriinT 17y agoThe problem with regulation is that for every set of rules there's a corresponding nonempty set of loopholes that can be exploited. Finance is now so complex that coming up with rules that can't be gamed is not as trivial as one might think...
- pj 17y agoYou can accept evolution -- and then conquer it. If the premise of this article is true, then we would oppose medicine. We would oppose plastic surgery. We would oppose debt. We would oppose the police. We would oppose marriage and commitment to one individual. All those things are contrary to evolution, yet, they are social institutions that have evolved to protect and further our species. If you accept evolution, then you accept that it is the species that is important -- not an individual organism. We are fighting for the very existence of intelligence in the universe. We are fighting to preserve the most unique thing we know that exists -- life itself. This word "over-regulation" and these arguments about government intervention are all bogus. It is because the government backed off what many called "over-regulation" that we are in the very mess we are in! If you accept evolution then you must also accept that some individuals within a population are going to attempt to ensure their survival over the survival of our species. Some individuals do not understand that they exist in a fabric composed of threads between every living organism. They believe their individual success is of the prime importance -- but this is not what evolution teaches. Darwin's theories of evolution are made in a world devoid of free will. We can choose how to proceed as a group. We can come together as a planet and make our planet better for all. We do not need to compete with each other to the deteriment of our opponent. We need to compete toward common goals: Survival for all, good health, longevity, eternal intelligence in the universe.
- TriinT 17y ago"If you accept evolution, then you accept that it is the species that is important -- not an individual organism. We are fighting for the very existence of intelligence in the universe. We are fighting to preserve the most unique thing we know that exists -- life itself." That sounds terribly naive to me. According to the gene-centric view of evolution, that is completely wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolution I like to watch documentaries about simians because they're the animals closest to humans. They live in society, share tasks, and generally do a lot of things humans do. Some male simians even pay for sex! It happens that the alpha male gets to impregnate most females of the group, and most males are left with nothing. These males obviously don't like being reproductive losers and rebel against the status quo. They will try to kill the alpha male and fight among themselves to see who the new alpha male will be. They will kill the former alpha male's babies so that they can impregnate the females and let these take care of their offspring, not someone else's offspring. They don't care a fig about the species, they care about fulfilling their biological role, which is to procreate with the best females of the pack. Humans are not monkeys, but most of us aren't that different in terms of behavior. Given that there are limited resources such as food and fertile females, caring about the species makes little sense to most animals. Maybe it makes some sense to humans, but I personally think that's baloney. We have evolved beyong the basic primate level, but not as much as some people think.
- unbannable 17y agoMemo: Evolution is an explanation of fact and contains no moral (or religious, for that matter) position. Accepting evolution as an explanation of what happened does not require that one subscribe to so-called "Darwinist" social and economic ideologies. ^OP didn't get it.
- knowtheory 17y agoThis piece is so horribly fundamentally naive, that it's not worth even considering. You want to use the evolutionary example? Fine, look at livestock or plant husbandry. We breed and select for animals which serve our needs. Cows that have more meat, which produce more milk. Ones which are more docile. Plants that produce more yield, which are less susceptible to poisoning us, or making us sick as vectors for diseases. We control a great deal of evolution, because it makes us safer, and healthier. ============================ This is easily put another way. There is an Economic fitness landscape, just the same way that there is an Evolutionary fitness landscape. Just the way that we control the incentives, and conditions for how reproduction takes place in our livestock, we also control the incentives and conditions for economic growth and (re)production. We must ensure there are sane incentives for how corporations and individuals behave in the economy. We must observe and shape the landscape that we live in or we risk becoming victims of evolutionary, or economic pitfalls, both seen and unseen.
- knowtheory 17y agoAn addendum: Regulation is a tool to change the landscape and the conditions in which businesses and individuals operate. You can regulate in a way that benefits certain types of business, i.e. breaking up a monopoly helps smaller businesses. Making the phone companies lease their lines to smaller competitors is a GOOD thing for competition and diversity. The notion that regulation only ever stifles the economy, in that sense, is simply incorrect. That is not to say that there aren't regulations that have a stifling/dampening effect, nor that there shouldn't be. Sometimes you do want to raise the bar across the board. We need banks to be sufficiently capitalized in order to be able to pay their customers back. That may be stifling for banks, but it's in OUR best interest.
- huangm 17y agoAll of this also assumes that government can do its job well. That breaking up a monopoly (and how do you define one, anyway?) is good is not obvious (economies of scale, etc). But even taking this as given, that sometimes monopolies are bad, it is far from clear whether allowing government to intervene will be better. You have to weigh the costs and benefits. Anti-trust law is extremely subjective. It's existence incentivizes companies to use it against each other to gain a competitive edge rather than real value-added approaches. Anti-trust law creates uncertainty that can deter innovation (should we develop this technology if we can't fully profit off of it?) Government institutions are like all other institutions - they want to survive. And to survive, they need to grow. Mission creep is inevitable. So even if you have identified a narrow area in which government intervention can help, it is not obvious that we should allow government to intervene.
- alex_c 17y agoI don't follow the argument. It seems to claim that because there ISN'T a God involved in evolution, there OUGHT NOT be a God figure involved in the economy. Regardless of how anyone feels about each individual statement, I fail to see the logic that connects them.
- ardit33 17y ago"If you accept evolution, you must oppose over-regulation of the economy " ... How about this: "If you accept evolution, you must oppose putting to jail murderers."
- cellis 17y agoCivilized society is perfectly fine with opposing jail for murderers, for several definitions of "murder".
- barry-cotter 17y agoIs does not imply ought.
- vitaminj 17y agoI don't think I've ever met anyone with a consistent perspective on everything (me included). People will accept contradictory premises, especially across different fields, all the time.
- huangm 17y agoWhile the argument presented in this article is obviously nonsense, it is definitely not obvious that regulation is desirable. Have any of you touting regulation to 'correctly align incentives' considered how much regulation has existed already? From the GSE's (Fannie and Freddie), the SEC, the mere existence of a central bank, to scores and scores of other existing government interventions in the economy, what we've seen in the past few decades cannot really be called free-market capitalism. The current crisis clearly indicates that something is broken. That we have too much regulation is as plausible an explanation as that we have too little. And yet, very few people seem to even acknowledge this fact.
- muddylemon 17y agoSo regulation interferes with the natural process of business evolving so they can consume more resources and grow larger and more powerful. It also protects the "weaker" (smaller businesses and actual people) by giving them unnatural advantages that allow them to survive and avoid being obliterated by the stronger "more fit" organizations. Vaccines interfere with the natural process of viruses evolving into more powerful organisms and giving their competition (us) an unnatural advantage that allow us to survive and avoid being obliterated by the stronger viruses.
- pohl 17y ago...may I breed dogs or plant hybrid tomatoes in my garden?
- albertsun 17y agoThat assumes the purpose of regulation is to limit competition between corporations and prevent them from failing. The true purpose of most regulation is to protect consumers and small time investors from the worst side effects of a competitive market.
- hydralisk 17y agoThe author is confusing accepting biological evolution as a fact with belief in natural selection as an all-powerful optimizing agent. As most biologists understand (since Gould & Lewontin's 1979 "Critique of the Adaptationist Program", anyway), evolution makes mistakes and leads to nonoptimal outcomes. There is every reason to believe that conscious human design can construct better systems than some sort of anarchical survival-of-the-fittest scheme. In fact, saying so is blisteringly obvious. Virtually every human accomplishment has required conscious design. Evolution by natural selection could never have designed a wheel -- but we did. It may be tempting to employ biological principles to everything, but it's a mistake.