Money is the worst proxy for optimising returns for the society. Lemme know if you have anything better.
Greed and selfish pursuit leads to wealth creation
Greed and selfish pursuit leads to wealth creation
I think there are some pretty obvious things. Improvement of the environment, health, safety, educational attainment, military prowess and so on.
As Michael Sandel put it, since the 80s we've moved from a market economy to a market society. Markets aren't used as tools any more to further social ends, they've become ends in themselves. We don't measure success in human flourishing, we measure it in dollars.
Ironically this has made much long-term wealth creation impossible. Many companies in Silicon Valley were sustained by the government pursuing strategic goals, in particular the military.
Industrial ecosystems don't spring out of the ground because of selfishness and greed, they're created by institutions.
barrin92 meet Charles koch.
I'd rather fix the thing where elected officials don't seem to do that job rather than just throwing up my hands and saying the market knows best... seems like a pretty extreme position to just say that money and pricing is the only tool in the toolbox.
okay. how can you measure social welfare?
> seems like a pretty extreme position to just say that money and pricing is the only tool in the toolbox.
I never said that. You said it. You countered it.
Yeah, but for the people doing the actual work or not?
Free markets have done far more for society than any other system that's been tried.
It's easy to tally up the greatness of the free market when you redefinento boundaries of society to exclude the huge negative costs imposed on slaves and laborers.
Markets are amoral. That's why we shouldn't rely on them to solve social problems.
Slavery doesn't remotely qualify.
What slaves? That was a century ago.