[dools]

I have never heard of it, but I just had a quick skim through and IMHO the bad parts are the parts that have anything to do with economics, because it exposes him as a totalitarian neofeudalist (although he might not think of himself that way ... most totalitarian neofeudalists don't, they just don't understand their own economics well enough to see where it leads).

[bkirkby]

how totalitarian? you have free markets (which the manifesto supports) or planned economies and planned economies are where totalitarianism works.

[defrost]

Is the US as it operates today a free market (how free?) or a weighted control economy where the larger players have a greater weight of control of media and the political landscape via owned outlets and subsidised senators?

Do small players in the US economy have equal access to the market, or are they overshadowed by near oligarchies?

Are you always so bicameral?

[bkirkby]

the "control" of a "weighted control economy" is usually enforced through government (including those politicians you reference). so when we bring in more government then it's less free market. how close we are getting to a free market depends on who is in power and calling for reduced government intervention/regulations for businesses.

as far as control of media, traditional media is becoming increasingly irrelevant and when free speech is allowed on social media the economy becomes more free.

and small players seem to disrupt all the time. openai being the most obvious recent example. twitch being another notable example before that.

i usually don't respond to distracting personal questions, but your use of bicameral confused me a little. did you mean to say binary?

[TaylorAlexander]

> the "control" of a "weighted control economy" is usually enforced through government

It is extremely common for large private firms to have weighted control in an economy. Sometimes their control is bolstered by government and sometimes it is hindered by it. But in a completely unregulated market it would be common for monopolies to pop up which could then control large sections of the economy. There simply is no simple linear relationship between "free markets" and government intervention.

> when free speech is allowed on social media the economy becomes more free

Sadly the loudest "free speech proponents" who run social media firms are actually just interested in allowing the speech they want. They will still do everything they can to limit the speech of those they disagree with.

[bkirkby]

i see control and influence as being two separate things. mainly, control is forced by the controller while influence is granted from the influenced.

[gryn]

> when we bring in more government then it's less free market.

Let's go to the extreme with your logic. If you completely remove the government you end up with the mafia textbook. The easier way to win at the game is taking out the competition with lethal force. Once that's done there's no one to compete with you, no "free market", congratulations you won.

Why compete in bringing value when you can just use your money to takeout the competition.

[specialist]

Rules make the market. A "free market" without rules is neither free nor a market.

[defrost]

Bicameral was used by Jaynes in the sense of distinct seperate chambers of the mind, rather than political chambers; I can't say I agreed with his thesis but I always enjoyed his argument and the apropriation of the word.

> i usually don't respond to distracting personal questions

These were specific questions to tease out why you're presenting free market OR planned economies as the only choices- it smacked of certain type of central north american libertarianism that uses Heinlein's early teen reader simplifications.

OpenAi being described as a small player is laughable, small players don't appear with one billion US pledged in backing and sheperded by core established technocrats.

BTW, the question was: "Is the US as it operates today a free market?"

Do you have a clear answer there?

[bkirkby]

i don't think anyone has a clear answer for "winning the argument" since definitions can be endlessly debated.

i think a more useful question is "what about the existing US economy is what makes it work/effective?" another useful question is "what about other economies make them less effective than the US economy?"

to answer the first question, the US economy works better when it's a freer market. magatte wade gives a convincing answer to the second question about africa when she points out it's generally very difficult to start a business in african countries.

i'm curious about what alternative you are interested in promoting and how. are you against free markets or do you have ideas on how to make markets more free?

[ImPostingOnHN]

> i think a more useful question is...

I don't: that is a different question which isn't as useful as the one actually asked. Like the person you responded to without answering, I, too, am interested in hearing your direct and clear answer to the question, "Is the US as it operates today a free market?"

Would you mind answering that question, please?

[corimaith]

How would your "ideal" market then look like? I'm not getting what it "means" for small players to have equal access to the market than large players, of course greater resources will lend itself to greater reach.

[llamaimperative]

The ideal free market is one where that exact effect doesn’t exist. Why would it be optimal for more wealth to naturally accrue more wealth? That is definitionally anti-competitive ergo suboptimal in the capitalist’s worldview.

Very good in the feudalist’s worldview though!

[TaylorAlexander]

> you have free markets ... or planned economies

Believe it or not, humanity's economic markets cannot be fully described by two simple categories.

[bkirkby]

indeed but sometimes abstractions are useful. i would argue that in this case the binary is useful because of the PP's use of the word "totalitarian" (as in "totalitarian neofeudalist").

i am arguing that the word was misapplied to the essay since the essay was promoting free markets and it's central planning that offers opportunity for totalitarian control.

[dools]

If one could have a "free market" in the sense that there were no state to begin with (which one can't) then you wind up with anarcho capitalism, in which a single entity wins because returns to capital accelerate. This single entity can then do whatever it likes.

In reality, you start with a state and then have increasing regulatory capture by large private entities who turn the state into a system that exists purely to enforce their property rights. As they do so they eliminate public purpose.

Whether you have planned totalitarianism or anarcho capitalist totalitarianism the result is the same. If you have 100% returns to either labour or capital, or you try to eliminate either public or private purpose, then you must have totalitarianism.

The Techno-Optimist Manifesto imagines that you can have no state AND no regulatory capture, it's garbage. There are only 2 things in the economy: labour and capital. You have public purpose and private purpose. You balance those things, you have social democracy and innovation. You let it slip to any extreme and you're gonna have a bad time.

[nyokodo]

> anarcho capitalism, in which a single entity wins because returns to capital accelerate. This single entity can then do whatever it likes.

You could have a natural monopoly form in anarcho-capitalism but unless they also grabbed a monopoly on the use of force and barred competition (basically became the state) then if they did abuse their monopoly position they would inevitably have competition arise even if it was required to route around whatever their monopoly was.

[dools]

> unless they also grabbed a monopoly on the use of force and barred competition (basically became the state)

That's absolutely inevitable.

That's why I call it feudalism. What you just described is like the middle ages with various independent scattered kingdoms, or like a collapsed state where rival warlords compete for control, with the occassional uprising.

[satvikpendem]

Well, that is any modern (or even pre-modern) nation-state too, vying for control over land and resources. Just because we don't have wars as much today over these things does not mean that they were not historically the norm. It's not feudalism, it's is the nature of humans to conquer and be conquered, regardless of whatever system they're in, political or economical.