I mean, I feel like you are weirdly close to my view. Incentives matter.
I’m not sure why you think that markets are inherently bad, though, or what incentive structure you think would be a better alternative.
Personally, my view is that markets are a naturally occurring phenomenon in any sufficiently large and complex human society, and if we try to design a society without them, we will simply create bad outcomes, like the rise of a wealthy and powerful criminal class.
My view is that, absent a better (and importantly, proven) structure, the best structure we have yet developed integrates markets into society in a pro-social manner. We allow legal markets, but create rules and guardrails to align incentives, so that the individual’s work benefits both themselves and society as a whole.
An analogy I like is that of a river. A completely unregulated river will ebb and flow, often help water your crops, and sometimes overflow its banks and flood your home. If you try to completely remove the river, it will not disappear - it will simply build up and overflow, causing greater floods, and depriving everyone of water. If you create a huge dam and completely control water flow, then the water will flow very consistently and you can avoid floods, but you will disrupt local water ecology, lose a lot of water to evaporation, and risk an enourmous calamity if the damn ever fails. A large dam might be the correct solution some of the time, but typically the best solution is to let the river flow mostly freely, while building small dams for water reservoirs and power generation and levees near population centers to protect against flooding. It is not just necessary but beneficial to let the river flow, but we must also protect society from its excesses.
So, too, with markets. They are going to happen, and they provide a lot of benefits to a lot of people. But the people and the government must be protected from its excesses. We can allow people to build and own a taco truck or a cement factory or a software product and make money on it, but we can create protections, incentives, and regulations so they don’t sell us toxic food, exploit workers, or buy elections and control politicians.
I was using “markets” interchangeably with “capital”. I do agree with what you, I don’t think you can escape markets as a social phenomenon, and at the same time they (and the capitalists they work through) cannot be allowed to decide our political future. Our current setup is tantamount to ductaping the lever down on a lawnmower, and declaring that the “wisdom of the engine” knows what needs trimming.
I mean, I feel like you are weirdly close to my view. Incentives matter.
I’m not sure why you think that markets are inherently bad, though, or what incentive structure you think would be a better alternative.
Personally, my view is that markets are a naturally occurring phenomenon in any sufficiently large and complex human society, and if we try to design a society without them, we will simply create bad outcomes, like the rise of a wealthy and powerful criminal class.
My view is that, absent a better (and importantly, proven) structure, the best structure we have yet developed integrates markets into society in a pro-social manner. We allow legal markets, but create rules and guardrails to align incentives, so that the individual’s work benefits both themselves and society as a whole.
An analogy I like is that of a river. A completely unregulated river will ebb and flow, often help water your crops, and sometimes overflow its banks and flood your home. If you try to completely remove the river, it will not disappear - it will simply build up and overflow, causing greater floods, and depriving everyone of water. If you create a huge dam and completely control water flow, then the water will flow very consistently and you can avoid floods, but you will disrupt local water ecology, lose a lot of water to evaporation, and risk an enourmous calamity if the damn ever fails. A large dam might be the correct solution some of the time, but typically the best solution is to let the river flow mostly freely, while building small dams for water reservoirs and power generation and levees near population centers to protect against flooding. It is not just necessary but beneficial to let the river flow, but we must also protect society from its excesses.
So, too, with markets. They are going to happen, and they provide a lot of benefits to a lot of people. But the people and the government must be protected from its excesses. We can allow people to build and own a taco truck or a cement factory or a software product and make money on it, but we can create protections, incentives, and regulations so they don’t sell us toxic food, exploit workers, or buy elections and control politicians.
I was using “markets” interchangeably with “capital”. I do agree with what you, I don’t think you can escape markets as a social phenomenon, and at the same time they (and the capitalists they work through) cannot be allowed to decide our political future. Our current setup is tantamount to ductaping the lever down on a lawnmower, and declaring that the “wisdom of the engine” knows what needs trimming.