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>It's cool to go the moon but just like all things government is involved with, it could've been done a lot cheaper without involving bureaucrats.

This libertarian tilt is soo yesterday :)

Following the market and money signals alone leads to such amazing "innovations" as bitcoin and crypto -> people betting the next idiot will be left holding the bag and burning tons of energy and hardware while at it. Plus wasting a bunch of engineering hours on pointless endevours.

Or such amazing innovative endevours as Ad optimisation and network tracking.

Sorry but following money alone leads to some pretty pathological scenarios and results in a shitty society. I used to like libertarianism, the "don't touch me if I don't touch you" foundations and the logical framework is neat - but it just doesn't work out in reality - at least it doesn't lead to a world I'd like to live in.

[002445]

The surge of Bitcoin is a reaction to the endless money printing of the federal banks that has been started well over 10 years ago. This has put the interest rates to 0 or even -0% all over the world causing people to pull out their savings and putting it in anything that has a chance of beating the inflation rates.

It is not libertarian economics but keynesian economics that drive people to bitcoin and other bubbles.

Libertarian economics is not "soo yesterday", accepting bad policies from bureaucrats is.

Ps. if ads are the worst thing in your life then your life must be pretty good. Maybe install an ad blocker.

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Ads are not the problem - harvesting the most talented CS people to work on ads is - this is the kind of innovation your ideal system leads to. Personally I'd rather live in a society that values going to mars. Subjective I know, but I only have one life to live, I don't live in the general case :)

Bitcoin is an extreeme example of something that's built in to markets - you're trying to guess how much someone will be willing to pay for an asset and this leads to natural bubles - it stops being about determining the value of something and it starts being about playing the market. You can spin whatever rationalizations you want arround it - bitcoin is the most degenerate manifestation of this. If you find a market full of idiots willing to buy bullshit and pump it's valuation, if the idiocy is strong enough that it wont easily go away, you have a really good incentive to join in and prosthelytize to grow the bubble more, even if you don't beleive it - just the fact you beleive there will be more idiots buying in makes it rational for you to get in.

And if you skip out on trading on it you'll be punished with below avarage returns.

[002445]

And your solution to "the problem" of other people freely choosing where and what to work on is what? You choose?

Let's agree to disagree on politics. Just let me know if you're ever about to be chosen as Supreme Chairman of the Party so I know what country to avoid.

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It's better to realign the incentives to make sure you don't end up in pathological scenarios. The reason why tech companies find investing in this so lucrative is because these markets have so much winner-takes-all scenarios. You don't need to strawman it - governments are dealing with these kinds of secnarios, it's not ideal but better than doing nothing.