Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I too consider myself a techno-optimist.

But how do you get from "technology solves problems" to:

> We believe free markets are the most effective way to organize a technological economy.

> The market naturally disciplines

> Markets prevent monopolies and cartels.



Some people are just working backwards. They saw how effective a centralized state actor that gave itself emergency powers was, and became cynical of centralized planning solutions as a result.

If 2007-2009 showed how Laissez faire rules doesn't work 2020-2022 showed how centralized planning expert rules doesn't work


> 2020-2022 showed how centralized planning expert rules doesn't work

What do you mean by this?


Likely referring to the massive amounts of free capital handed out by the federal government for specific types of businesses.


That is not central planning. It was largely just corruption.


The central planners got their way with covid lockdown rules. Medical privacy laws were waived because knowing someone's vaccination status was more important than their right to privacy. We saw rehab of various kinds shut down in March of 2020, be it alcoholics anonymous gamblers anonymous and so on because they were non essential, but the sale of marijuana and cigarettes in a lung based pandemic was essential so the addicts could have their fix but rehab was non-essential. We could also mention the failure of remote learning and how we will be able to detect this gap in our children's education for decades if not generations to come.

The cure was worse than the disease when it came to central plannings response


There was literally zero centralized planning of the economy during COVID. The US doesn’t even have that capacity any more.


Guidance given by Dr. Fauci was centralized planning Whether it was saying in March of 2020 “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.” Or when he said you need to wear a mask or when he said 1 mask works great so 2 masks will work better https://youtu.be/9nbKjgS0nPA In March of 2020 we were told we needed to be 6 feet apart to be safe https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/19/health/cdc-physical-distancin... in March of 2021 we were told we needed to be 3 feet apart. Need any more examples of flip flopping, or expert guidance that turned 180 degrees without justification?


None of this is central planning in any dictionary or even colloquial sense of the term. Maybe this will help:

https://www.britannica.com/money/topic/economic-system/Centr...




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: