Sunday School

[PopeBeanie]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

Investments are voluntarily made and are done with intention of showing a rate of return. Alas, the “investments” in rail and buses fit neither of these descriptions.

A free market system and libertarianism are idealisms, are they not? At the least, they’re human constructions. Am I wrong to assume that you think of your chosen idealisms as unflawed, and perfect? Or do you accept that there may be room for improvement?

I’ve mentioned this to you before, but I feel there’s no such thing as a humanly constructed idealism, except in the mind of diehard religionists feeling a need to worship a purportedly perfect deity. The flaws here are the declarations and insistence that perfection is possible. Working toward perfection is one thing, while always worshipping any human constructed idealism as inherently perfect is another.

Nobody says government is perfect. While it’s clear how profit motive, unchecked, empowers people to rise, some of whom gravitate toward zero-sum wins at the cost of zero-sum losers. Does this kind of some-win some-lose result of free market idealism never trouble you?

More importantly, how is it possible to facilitate collaboration across privately owned companies and industries, while making necessarily large, long term investments in research and development (e.g. in science and medicine) in the interest of citizens at large, when the primary motive of free market, zero-sum players is to prove quarterly profits on their balance sheets?

Again, I’m not saying that government can make it happen perfectly, but that free markets are, by nature, bound to quarterly profit incentives, not ten or twenty year investment risks.

[TheEncogitationer]

PopeBeanie,

A free market system and libertarianism are idealisms, are they not? At the least, they’re human constructions. Am I wrong to assume that you think of your chosen idealisms as unflawed, and perfect? Or do you accept that there may be room for improvement?

While I would never say that Free-Market Capitalism and Libertarianism offer Utopia (no worldview can honestly offer that,) I do hold that individuals can best solve the problems of life when they are free to direct their thoughts, efforts, and resources towards their own betterment and, by voluntary cooperation with other individuals, towards human flourishing in general.

Free-Market Capitalism/Libertarianism is the Ideal that upholds that freedom to solve problems. It has never been fully practiced in human history or even U.S. history, but it has made life richer in material, intellectual, and cultural wealth wherever and to the degree it has been tried. It is well worth carrying further.

I’ve mentioned this to you before, but I feel there’s no such thing as a humanly constructed idealism, except in the mind of diehard religionists feeling a need to worship a purportedly perfect deity. The flaws here are the declarations and insistence that perfection is possible. Working toward perfection is one thing, while always worshipping any human constructed idealism as inherently perfect is another.

As said above, Free-Market Capitalism/Libertarianism isn’t a Utopian Ideal and has never been fully tried. It’s just the best that humans can do with limited but expandable knowledge and limited but expandable time and in a Universe that’s limitless and still filled with unknowns, yet also finite in microcosm.

Think of this way: The Universe doesn’t require a Central Planner. So, something as relatively miniscule as a Nation or a Planet’s political economy doesn’t require a Central Planner either.

Nobody says government is perfect. While it’s clear how profit motive, unchecked, empowers people to rise, some of whom gravitate toward zero-sum wins at the cost of zero-sum losers. Does this kind of some-win some-lose result of free market idealism never trouble you?

As long as there is The Law of Causality, actions will have consequences, different actions will have different consequences, and different individuals doing different actions under different conditions will have different consequences or outcomes.

Equality of Outcome is a genuine Utopian ideal that is never possible. All attempts to have Equality of Outcome end in equal poverty and equal piles of skulls for a society, lorded over by those “More Equal Than Others.”

But, in a Free-Market Capitalist economy with all individuals possessing Equality of Rights to produce and exchange, no one is stuck with their outcome, outcomes are never fixed, and the game is not zero-sum.

Nowhere is that more clear than in the realm of computing and IT.

25 years ago, people thought Bill Gates was Billgate-us of Borg, destined to Assimilate all computer users forever with his Windows OS and Internet Explorer “monopoly.”

As time went on and others made computers into more powerful and smaller smartphones and smartpads, Steve Jobs’ Apple OS and the Android system came into prominence, then Google Chrome and Foxfire offered their own browsers, and DuckDuckGo offered more privacy-friendly competition to Google’s search engine.

Now we see that Bill Gates has moved on to other interests and Internet Explorer has gone to The Great Entropy Tape Drive In The Cloud:

RIP Internet Explorer: Microsoft permanently disables browser on most versions of Windows 10
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2023/02/15/internet-explorer-permanently-disabled-microsoft/11262790002/

And throughout it all, Linux fans have still been plugging away and sharing their own OS and software creations.

So you see, to the extent that a market is free, people only stay on top to the extent that they provide goods and services congruent with what others want to buy, and mass markets do not preclude the existence of niche markets.

With freedom, even wheelwrights, blacksmiths, and buggy-whip makers have a place in a modern economy. They just cater to far different markets than in the 19th Century. Wheelwrights make wagons for Hollywood movie props and museum historical reinactor groups. A blacksmith made the circular Iron rings that form the almost perfectly-shaped eggs for McDonald’s Egg McMuffin. And buggy whip makers cater to the BDSM fetish market (*Yikes!*)

When individuals are free in their thoughts, efforts, and the fruits of their labor, the game has no end and is never zero-sum.

More importantly, how is it possible to facilitate collaboration across privately owned companies and industries, while making necessarily large, long term investments in research and development (e.g. in science and medicine) in the interest of citizens at large, when the primary motive of free market, zero-sum players is to prove quarterly profits on their balance sheets?

Businesses depend upon goods and services that have working results to be profitable–both quarterly and for the long game, which is just a timeline of quarterly returns–and scientific Research and Development (R & D) are necessary to get working results.

All good businesses already have either R & D Departments or refer to trade publications to get the R & D they need. And with information spread worldwide via IT, R & D is immensely cheaper, easier, better, and always changing and updating.

While one could argue that the Internet was developed by the Government agency DARPA, it would be absurd to think it would never have developed without government. Information, knowledge, and wisdom are too precious as commodities for private individuals to lack a means of conveying them. The Internet would have come about eventually and Exo-Nets will come about by private means wherever we may go later.

Most likely without even intending it, Eddie Schwartz expressed in song how good things are possible, even without Utopian perfection or guarantees, if we just can “make our own brand of delight and take all the comfort we may”:

Eddie Schwartz–All Our Tomorrows
https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Eddie-Schwartz/All-Our-Tomorrows

[PopeBeanie]

That’s a lot to digest, and will take some time. I had to pause here:

TheEncogitationer wrote:

[…] All attempts to have Equality of Outcome end in equal poverty and equal piles of skulls for a society, lorded over by those “More Equal Than Others.”

Do you believe that our health care system is better than all of the more socialized, equalizing-oriented health care systems in Europe? Most Europeans would surely disagree. Even Canadians, for that matter.

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