In 2019, by contrast, no amount of political resolve will reverse the fact that Western democracies account for little more than a third of the world economy. It would be naive to expect North America and Western Europe to reign supreme again anytime soon. Hopes for the U.S. to grow its way out of the current predicament are no more than fantasies.
In actual fact, the robotic automation does not eliminate jobs but repetitive rules-based tasks that require neither creativity nor humanity. Released from mindless office tasks, we will all be freed to create value through our human values and human ingenuity. We can all become entrepreneurs.
The impractical answer is to campaign to limit government intervention in business matters. No more tax loopholes, no more industry regulation that favors large incumbent corporations over innovative new entrants, no more legislation that favors cartels and anti-competitive behavior. Good luck with that.
Government markets itself as the solution to the people’s problems. But the people see it as the problem – the biggest problem they face. This is a colossal marketing failure – akin to a brand-owning company like Kraft Heinz destroying the value of its brands, or a football team losing all of its games.
All told, it’s a pretty strange time for conservatives suddenly to decide they like government, and the worst imaginable time for the Left to celebrate the state as never before. Based on the attitudes of the public alone, we ought to be seeing the opposite from both sides.
An expert at “Game-calling” attributes it all to empathy. “It’s them knowing that you genuinely care for what’s happening to them on the mound.”
But what transit advocates forget to mention is that, no matter how hard officials try to modernize the system, a government-run service will always have a major disadvantage when it comes to the market. And that’s because companies and entrepreneurs respond to real needs, providing a service where there’s a demand.
That’s the way human society, successful ones, have always been organized. If you reap the benefits, you have to take the risks. And we’ve disaggregated risk from benefits all up and down our society, the banking sector, most famously, but also in our political sector and our tech sector.
Today, socialism means projects of unusual government ambition, built on our globally shared capitalist technological and commercial base. The A380 was exactly such a project. Underwritten by massive European government subsidies, the plane was an engineering sensation. Now it’s kaput. What technological and commercial realities would its sponsors have had to overrule to assure its success?
The logic of central planning undermines the institutions and the spirit of liberty. By concentrating power and decision-making in the hands of those in government, socialist central planning first weakens and then eliminates autonomous centers of choice and association.
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