SomeoneSomewhere1984 t1_jdochvk wrote on March 25, 2023 at 10:34 PM

Reply to comment by Zealousideal_Ad3783 in Who do you think will be the winners and losers of the coming AI revolution? by tshirtguy2000

>I don't understand why you keep asking me about the "real world". I know what the real world is like. I know that the healthcare system is insane, inflation is running rampant, people are being forced to work multiple jobs, etc. But all this bad stuff is happening because of government intervention into the free market.

If you knew about the real world by living in it, you'd see how your theory about the government being the problem is wrong. You would see corporations cutting every corner they can legally get away with because they want to make more money and how others are harmed by that is irrelevant.

If you worked in the real world, you'd know that before the government changed the rules mine owners valued the life of a donkey over a human worker, because they could just find another person to pay without losing much, but they'd have to buy a new donkey.

If you had lived in the real world, you'd be aware just how often regular people rely on government intervention to force others to play fair, or to help them during a crisis that isn't of their own making.

>the big picture is that free-market capitalism creates an abundance of high-quality goods/services at a low price.

Why do you believe that? Not even Adam Smith believed that. He thought government regulation was necessary to prevent monopolies. There is no evidence for this whatsoever.

Based on how people abuse our current system, I think it's more likely most of us would effectively be slaves in a company town if capitalism was completely unregulated.

> Today it wouldn't make sense to go to some dark alley to buy alcohol, because you wouldn't be sure of its purity. So you go to a business that you trust, and you know that the product is pure. That's what would happen with drugs if the government stopped getting involved.

I can go to any legal business to buy alcohol, because they're regulated by the government. There are rules about the purity of alcohol they can sell. Somebody checks they aren't selling alcohol contaminated with methanol, so I don't have to. That somebody is the government.

The government makes sure the food I buy from a grocery store is safe to eat, and isn't contaminated with toxins or pathogens. They regulate restaurants to make sure they uphold food safety standards.

Regulations are written in blood. Most of the regulations you might think are dumb, or common sense, exist because somebody thought they could make a few extra bucks cutting corners, and killed or maimed people doing it.

There are certainly some regulations that are too strict, or unreasonable, but the vast majority of regulations are things closer to making sure there isn't menthol in drinking alcohol, or rat poison in food, than they are like setting the drink age to 21. You just don't think about those regulations because people aren't questioning them.

You think housing will get cheaper if all regulation is removed, and I agree we need to remove a lot of stupid zoning laws. However, I like being able to buy a house, or move into a building, without being a construction engineer, and know the house is safe and won't collapse on me.

Zealousideal_Ad3783 t1_jdp2gdn wrote on March 26, 2023 at 1:50 AM

My response will be short because I don't have enough time to continue writing a bunch of paragraphs.

If you think that only the government can make sure that food is safe, or that buildings are up to code, you just haven't thought about this enough. Of course the private sector can handle those things. Just because the government is currently doing something, that doesn't mean that only the government can do it. I bet if the restaurant industry was controlled by the government, and I was advocating for the government to abolish the Department of Restaurants, you'd think we would never have restaurants again because we need the government for that.

I'll let you have the last word because I don't want to continue this back-and-forth indefinitely.

SomeoneSomewhere1984 t1_jdqhp02 wrote on March 26, 2023 at 11:57 AM

Have you ever worked in the private sector? Because they can't handle those things. The belief they can is based on the false idea that people are basically good, honest, and put the public interest above their own greed. That's not how things actually work though.

The incentives are all wrong for the private sector to even attempt to handle those things. They prioritize short term gains and don't consider the long term costs. Government is required to ensure companies don't risk public safety for short term gain, when the incentives set by capitalism encourage them to do so.

Yes, I support the health department inspecting restaurants, if the private sector tried to do that the restaurant owners would pay them to pass even when they should fail. The government can do that effectively because they aren't trying to make money, so they don't have a motive to pass a restaurant that should fail.

There are many things society needs to function where the incentive for profit encourages people to the opposite of what needs to be done. That's where government comes in. In a property functioning capitalist system the government tries to align the interest of the private sector with the public good.

Profit motive and public good aren't aligned by magic as you seem to think. The government is required to keep those things aligned by setting the rules for the private sector and creating incentives to do the right thing. Where that isn't enough to align profit motive and public good, the government runs things themselves, as they run courts, the military, programs to care for the sick and elderly who can't care for themselves.