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our actual economy (which is called capitalism) is a zombie version of a free market
Even that is fucking amazing though and big entitled babies whine all day about living in the most prosperous society in human history.
Just because there's room for improvement via government intervention...
What I always want to emphasize is that there's a ceiling to how much room for improvement there is. If you can't operate that government program for less than the deadweight loss, then there is no room for improvement via government intervention.
I mean, we were talking about it here: #1599758
not many people are feeling the progress in the last 20 years
sure, the new technology is impressive, but I'm not convinced we're better off
Slightly different things:
- Being unappreciative of the miracle that is a modern economy, can only result from a total lack of comprehension about what the counterfactual would be like.
- Not feeling like recent changes are improving your life personally, can obviously be completely reasonable.
...and in that wedge, human progress type peeps lose themselves. When someone says the second one, they hear the first
don't disagree with any of that, indeed.
It feels very underwhelming a take, but if it's anyone who can convince me otherwise, it's Mr. Caplan
I harp on this all the time in my econ classes.
"Just because there's room for improvement via government intervention, doesn't mean government intervention actually will improve things."
When teaching monopolies and the case for regulation, I always list "do nothing" as one of the regulatory possibilities, explaining that a poorly designed policy, or a corrupt government could be worse than the deadweight loss from monopoly.
That being said, I have a few critiques:
This sounds extremely squishy. How do you even measure what "sounds good" or "sounds bad"? Is it entirely in the minds' eye of the author?
I think the bad PR has more to do with our actual economy (which is called capitalism) is a zombie version of a free market, in which the government has almost free rein to print money and regulate the hell out of anything.