If we flip the question around - what is it about the profit motive that makes it better? If workers can design and construct a better nuclear power plant why couldn't they do that - within the same budget constraints, etc. - unless there's some third party getting paid just for being rich.
Is greed really the most important thing to add to a human endeavour to make it successful?
Considering that markets when combined with stable institutions, property rights and the rule of law, have done more to reduce poverty, increase lifespans and health than any else in history, I think the onus of proof is on the other side.
If you consider migration a type of voting mechanism, then countries that feature markets tend to attract more votes.
I'm not sure what it is about the profit motive that makes it better, but empirically it seems to result in more successful outcomes for everyone in the countries where it is available when compared with countries where it isn't available.
If workers can construct a better nuclear power plant without anyone making a profit - they are welcome to try. If they did a good job, I would congratulate them. But when it comes to alternate economic systems, there seems to be a lot of talk and little action on the ground where the work gets done. Talk doesn't feed people or keep the lights on.
I think you are misjudging those people that have made large profits as being purely greedy. From what I've seen, they are driven, hardworking and focused on achieving their vision. For most, profits are just the means to the end they imagine.
Do you really imagine the world would be better off if Elon Musk's profits were confiscated and given to some government bureaucrat? Would a workers collective take a risk on inventing new technologies? History suggests not.
The funny thing is that most of the benefits from the hard work of entrepreneurs flows to everyone else, not the entrepreneurs themselves, through more plentiful food, health and technology.
Your "solution" is also well on its way to making the earth uninhabitable, and is also responsible for creating societies that have incredibly poor mental and emotional health.
Worse, the opportunity costs of future development lost because of short-sighted greed - the poor energy choices, the regular financial meltdowns, the fact that so much progress relies on military spending and research, the vast cost of industries like smoking and sugar that are only profitable because they destroy the health of their customers - hardly suggests this is the best of all possible worlds.
If economics came with built-in accounting for the cost of externalities, predictable human failure modes, network effects, and negative feedback for corporate sociopathy, we'd probably be on our way to the rest of the galaxy.
The Internet electric cars are a nice consolation prize, but they're not any more than that - certainly not when the effects of poverty and caste stratification still waste so much human talent and cause so many catastrophes that we're decades behind where we could be.
> Your "solution" is also well on its way to making the earth uninhabitable
It's not just my solution. It's the solution consistently voted for in many countries by the most educated general population in history.
If your point is so strong, why do you need to exaggerate? When will the earth be uninhabitable? Do you know a date?
>Responsible for creating societies that have incredibly poor mental and emotional health
Taking this interesting statement at face value, if you traveled back in time several hundred years and asked someone if they would trade: plentiful food, medicine that can heal infections, nearly eliminating infant mortality, rapid travel to distant destinations, nearly everybody enjoying the luxuries that only the exceptionally wealthy of their own time have access to in exchange for: poor mental and emotional health, what choice do you think they would make?
If we don't take it at face value, how do you even measure poor mental and emotional health? Do people with alternate economic systems have better mental and emotional health? I don't think the millions that died in mass starvation in Mao's China appreciated having superior emotional health.
> Worse, the opportunity costs of future development lost because of short-sighted greed - the poor energy choices, the regular financial meltdowns
What opportunities are we passing up? Our energy choices are largely driven by obtaining energy most efficiently, just like the rest of nature. The energy choice you are probably most critical of, coal, is largely responsible for lifting the worlds poorest people out of poverty. Is not wanting to be impoverished being greedy? Are you using a device that runs on electricty? Does it contain plastic?
As for financial meltdowns, economists have discovered recessions throughout history. They are a normal feature of all economies and they affect non-market driven systems too. I'm not sure how you think you would avoid recessions, but lots of people have tried with little success.
> the fact that so much progress relies on military spending and research
I wouldn't agree that a lot of progress relies on military spending. I think a lot of resources are wasted on military spending. However, there needs to be sufficient spending to deter other parties that might start to think they would be better off taking from others rather than creating for themselves.
> the vast cost of industries like smoking and sugar that are only profitable because they destroy the health of their customers
At the time these industries came into existence, there was no evidence they were harmful. All of the evidence is relatively recent. Are you saying in your alternate system you would have foreseen this and banned them before they were ever produced? Perhaps you are saying that as soon as there was evidence they were harmful you would have banned them. But, when trans fats were invented, health conscious scientists wanted to replace all of our fat intake with trans fats because they thought they were healthier. Would you have enforced this change too? What about when it was found they were mistaken about trans fats? Would you force everyone to change back? Maybe it's better to let people make up their own minds.
>If economics came with built-in accounting for the cost of externalities, predictable human failure modes, network effects, and negative feedback for corporate sociopathy, we'd probably be on our way to the rest of the galaxy.
If what you are saying is true, then surely an alternate economic model, like those attempted in Communist Russia and China would have smashed our poor little capitalist economies. Or some other model would have arisen throughout the ages. Or maybe you are saying our situation is hopeless and there is no economic model, either market driven or other, that can force people to behave the way you want them to? In which case we're all doomed and you don't have much to contribute.
> The Internet electric cars are a nice consolation prize, but they're not any more than that - certainly not when the effects of poverty and caste stratification
It's hard to believe that you can throw away all of the achievements of the industrial age so lightly. If you don't value a significant reduction in poverty, longer life expectancy, increased living standards, reduction in child mortality, vastly improved standards of literacy and education, elimination of many infectious diseases, improved environmental outcomes in developed countries vs developing/ex-communist countries... then what do you value?
I'm not saying we can't improve the systems we have. But I think we can be proud of what we've already achieved and feel confident that we will be able to do even better in the future. There isn't any reason to be defeatist or cynical.
> Considering that markets when combined with stable institutions, property rights and the rule of law, have done more to reduce poverty, increase lifespans and health than any else in history, I think the onus of proof is on the other side.
Actually, the markets created some of the most disease-ridden, sewage-infested hellholes with jobs that exploited child labor and threw away the sick and injured.
It was people who took up arms, got shot at, but persisted in wrenching some measure of control from the "capitalists" who managed to pass child labor laws, get medical insurance, and 40 hour work weeks.
Your fairy tale narrative is a pleasant fiction, but we have plenty of examples of unfettered capitalism in history--the vast majority of them were horrible.
>Actually, the markets created some of the most disease-ridden, sewage-infested hellholes
The two most polluted places in the world currently exist in China and Russia and stem from when they were run by Communist dictators ships without markets. So, an absence of markets doesn't seem to reduce pollution, it actually seems to increase it.
Market's aren't pefect, far from it, but alternate systems seem to do worse at providing for the things that you specifically care about.
> jobs that exploited child labor
In agrarian societies, children worked in the fields and still do. This has been since near the beginning of human civilization. It's only in advanced, developed countries with mature markets that there are barely any children working.
>threw away the sick and injured
What evidence do you have for this?
>It was people who took up arms, got shot at, but persisted in wrenching some measure of control from the "capitalists" who managed to pass child labor laws, get medical insurance, and 40 hour work weeks.
What are you talking about? Who got shot at in advanced developed economies to ensure these laws were passed? The laws were passed through the acts of various parliaments, not through revolution. These changes were made peacefully with in most cases broad agreement across the community. In countries that have experienced violent revolutions, like China and Russia, there are still many children working today, even though they've passed anti child labour laws.
You don't like the current system, obviously. But any alternate systems that have been tried appear to have done a poorer job on achieving the objectives that you desire. So what alternative do you propose and what evidence do you have that it will do a better job than our current systems?
>Your fairy tale narrative is a pleasant fiction, but we have plenty of examples of unfettered capitalism in history--the vast majority of them were horrible.
It's a shame you don't give any examples. I'm presuming you would be referring to the early industrial revolution. Supposing this is the case, you would be right - at the start of the industrial revolution the working conditions for many people (including children) were poor compared with the standards we enjoy today. Yet, despite this, people still flocked to the cities from the country side to work in factories. Why do you think this is? Do you think that people back then were stupid, or that they hated children? Or do you think they could see for themselves that compared with living on subsistence farms that they were better off? As I said earlier, it is common for children in to work on farms, so they weren't any worse off, and the extra income they provided their families made their whole family better off. It's easy to apply today's morality to people having to deal with conditions hundreds of years ago, it's harder to actually live under those conditions and make the best decisions for one's family.
Also, without going through the early industrial revolution, how do you think we all would have escaped living lives that were poor, nasty, brutish and short?
Is greed really the most important thing to add to a human endeavour to make it successful?