This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
Traffic and Capitalism
Mar
10
2021
I’ve heard the response before for people complaining that they’re stuck in traffic: no, you’re not stuck in traffic – you are traffic.
My response to that response is something like this: But I’m not the slow traffic – it’s the slow guy in front that’s backing everyone up.
But I suppose the main point holds – people who are in traffic are also the traffic.
I was reminded about that the other day when I read some complaint about capitalism. The person was treating capitalism as if it were behaving badly, but that person was actually part of capitalism. If people don’t like what a company is doing, they don’t have to buy from that company. If people don’t like what capitalism is doing, they really have a problem with the general population.
And I don’t see that going away. Really any system put in place for any country or region will have problems because there are people involved. The problem is that people are naturally not good, and I think people who complain about the system are assuming that people are good and therefore the badness must come from the system.
With the way technology is progressing, someone might be tempted to setup a financial/governmental/societal system run by machines not people. But I don’t want that as the solution either – that setting is always the start of a dystopian novel or movie.
So what is the solution? I think there isn’t one that people can devise. Nothing is going to be perfect until God replaces this world.
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Jeremiah 17:9
This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 4:36 pm and has been carefully placed in the Ideas category.
March 11th, 2021 at 11:15 pm
Standard quotes here:
Capitalism: “The worst economic system, except for all the others.”
“Capitalism made your iPhone.”
To me, though, the greatest argument is the Trabant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No1-4GsQa-g
It’s not so much that it’s a horrible car. It’s that it was the same horrible car for 30+ year. Take any car sold by evil capitalists and see the changes – no, not merely changes…monumental improvements – from 1957 to 1989, and it astounds me anyone would try to avoid the system that allowed those. Safety, efficiency, luxury, etc. A car from 1989 is only remotely related to one from 1957.
I really wish the people who want to live in something other than a still generally free market economy would move and experience it. One comparison to make the point: I am owed money by the government for travel I performed. I filed a voucher in January. I have not received payment. I can’t walk into any office to talk to someone. I found a phone number, but the phone number directs me to email an email address which is no longer valid. After hours of effort, I eventually found someone who could help me. But then my voucher has to get sent off to some central office. They kicked it back to the local office to change something. And then it was sent back up. I have no recourse; I just have to wait. I can’t take my business elsewhere. This is not an anomaly. This is the latest of 19 years of stories like this.
On the same day I was told the voucher was rejected, there was a problem with a football we recently bought. It had a leak at one of the seams, apparently a manufacturing problem. I uploaded the receipt and warranty claim. An hour later someone had reviewed it. An hour after that we had a rebate number sufficient to buy a new football. That company will get my business again.
If we don’t rely on prices, I want to know who will be managing the vast complexity of a modern economy. These people?
https://reason.com/video/2020/08/03/what-should-have-happened-at-the-big-tech-antitrust-hearing/
When your country’s poor people have cell phones, cars, air conditioning, etc., you have to be careful about tearing that down and hoping for something better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=violABv826U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBf66wAMpVQ
March 12th, 2021 at 1:33 am
To comment more directly on the analogy…in a way, the badness of traffic and capitalism are both indications that something more important is working. We get mad at traffic because it’s making it slower to get somewhere. But the point is that we have a means of getting somewhere desirable that, in general, works. Because everyone is trying to use it. You can avoid traffic by living somewhere that nobody wants to live. Or somewhere that can’t afford roads and cars. You get traffic because there are lots of good things to battle with other people for.
People complain about the inequality in capitalism. But that’s because there are so many nice things we have available to us which help us distinguish differences of success. If we all are barely surviving, then yes, we’ll be equal.
We can let people pursue their selfish ends, which doesn’t sound pleasant, but has results that make us all better off. Or we can try to force the world to fit whatever someone’s idea of ideal is, which makes everyone worse off. Or as Friedman famously put it, “A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.”
What I find curious: why do people from controlled economies risk their lives to escape to countries with greater freedoms, but not the reverse? Why did Cubans drown trying to reach America, but Floridians not pack themselves into boats to sneak into Cuba? If you don’t like traffic, move to North Nevada. If you don’t like capitalism, move to North Korea.