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> Claiming that you've made an unsupported generalization, and then making one, is not a contradiction; it's hypocrisy. It's not just claiming I made an unsupported generalization and then making one, it's the the one you made was the same as the one you claimed I was making! Strictly speaking it's not a contradiction, I suppose, but if you did it unthinkingly then I think calling it a contradiction is fair. Though if you want to call yourself a hypocrite, don't let me stop you! (EDIT: Ah, you weren't contradicting yourself. You were agreeing with my "unsupported generalization"! Heh.) As for the ISS, it's not exactly comparable to the subject in this thread (airlines) in scale. The ISS is the only destination for the "airlines" that service it, and there's only two of those "airlines", and they both fly very rarely, and the passengers are 99% not tourists. Nor is there much of a business in sending tourists to space at this time. But if ever there is such a business, it will be because companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin make it so, not because the government "regulated" space travel before "like airlines". The comparison is not apt is just not apt. As to central planning reducing freedom, that is most certainly true, though if a government imposes central planning only for a very small part of the economy, then the reduction in freedom is not very great and maybe barely noticeable. At the limit central planning definitely eliminates a lot of individual freedom. We've seen this many times with Soviet communism, Cuban communism, Eastern European communism, Chinese communism, East Asian communism, etc. They don't just eliminate much individual freedom -- they kill a lot of people on purpose, and then even more via famines caused by their vaunted central planning. |
You said, "the point of a command economy is to reduce individuals freedom." I have provided numerous arguments that a command economy could serve another purpose -- survival in extremis, provision of public goods at a loss, and creation of a communal sense of obligation.
I made no argument about the specific context of this thread. I made no argument that it does not decrease individual freedom. It does, as does any situation where the principal decision maker and executive agent are not the same person. But that is not always the purpose. Your inability to understand your own words and their implications astounds me.