And the reason for that passion, as Arthur slowly came to realize, was that the free-market ideal had become bound up with American ideals of individual rights and individual liberty: both are grounded in the notion that society works best when people are left alone to do what they want.
"Every democratic society has to solve a certain problem," says Arthur: "If you let people do their own thing, how do you assure the common good? In Germany, that problem is solved by people watching everybody else out the windows. People will come right up to you and say, 'Put a cap on that baby!'
In England, they have this notion of a body of wise people at the top looking after things. "Oh, yes we've had this Royal Commission, chaired by Lord So-and-So. We've taken all your interests into account, and there'll be a nuclear reactor in your backyard tomorrow."
But in the United States, the ideals maximum individual freedom - or, as Arthur puts it, "letting everybody be their own John Wayne and run around with guns." However much that ideal is compromised in practice, it still holds mythic power.
But increasing returns cut to the heart of that myth. If small chance events can lock you in to any of several possible outcomes, then the outcome that's actually selected may not be the best. And that means that maximum individual freedom - and the free market - might not produce that best of all possible worlds. So by advocating increasing returns, Arthur was innocently treading into a minefield.
- Excerpts from Complexity: Emerging Science At The Edge Of Order And Chaos by M. Mitchell Waldrop. That's the most powerful case against Libertarianism I have ever read and it's so true.
"Every democratic society has to solve a certain problem," says Arthur: "If you let people do their own thing, how do you assure the common good? In Germany, that problem is solved by people watching everybody else out the windows. People will come right up to you and say, 'Put a cap on that baby!'
In England, they have this notion of a body of wise people at the top looking after things. "Oh, yes we've had this Royal Commission, chaired by Lord So-and-So. We've taken all your interests into account, and there'll be a nuclear reactor in your backyard tomorrow."
But in the United States, the ideals maximum individual freedom - or, as Arthur puts it, "letting everybody be their own John Wayne and run around with guns." However much that ideal is compromised in practice, it still holds mythic power.
But increasing returns cut to the heart of that myth. If small chance events can lock you in to any of several possible outcomes, then the outcome that's actually selected may not be the best. And that means that maximum individual freedom - and the free market - might not produce that best of all possible worlds. So by advocating increasing returns, Arthur was innocently treading into a minefield.
- Excerpts from Complexity: Emerging Science At The Edge Of Order And Chaos by M. Mitchell Waldrop. That's the most powerful case against Libertarianism I have ever read and it's so true.
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