Independent Institute Response To Phillip Hallam-Baker ("networkexternality")

[lizard]

Hm.

It's odd my two main hobbies -- arguing about libertarian politics and
RPGs -- overlap, but check this out:
http://www.rpgplanet.com/dnd3e/interview-rsd-0300.htm

(Do a search on 'network' to find the relevant section of the
interview.)

Apologies to Matt and the II, but from where I stand, the theory seems
pretty sound. People buy thing because other people buy them. People are
stupid. So it goes. Where Phill, the DOJ, and the rest of the
left-liberals screw up is going from this obvious conclusion to
"Therefore, government must point guns at people to make them make smart
buying decisions." All of leftist 'thought' hinges on the highly dubious
premise that you can MAKE people smarter, either by threatening to shoot
them (Stalinist/Hitlerist socialism) or simply tying them up so they
can't hurt themselves (modern 'liberal' socialism). Neither works.

Capitalism tends to produce superior goods and services over time, but
this isn't it's moral justification. If it was, I'd argue for a massive
AI project designed to produce a super-computer which could use
evolutionary algorithms to make optimized everything and control the
factories. The moral justification for capitalism is that it is based on
individuals making their own decisions about how to spend the products
of their own labor. If a lot of these decisions are illogical,
short-sighted, emotionally biased, or self-destructive -- well, that's
humanity. There isn't any New Socialist Man on the horizon, so we are
much better off letting stupid people spend their OWN money on stupid
things, rather than turning 'the means of production' over to these
morons.

Want to know what happens when 'the people control the means of
production'? Picture no art but painings of Elvis on velvet -- forever.

Is Microsoft on top because of stupid human buying patterns as opposed
to superior software? Yeah, probably. What should the government do
about this? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.