Culture in general is an even broader way of capturing group wisdom widely and over time, as compared with markets.
I am aware of the limitations of Libertarian thought. Tends to overweight rationalism, individualism; doesn't tend to account as well for emergent or tail phenomena regarding groups of individuals, or individuals who shift their roles or contexts from minute to minute and year to year. Also tends to use the same mental models in contexts where they don't necessarily apply ("if you go to Midas/Hayek, expect to be prescribed a muffler/a market solution."). It may be true that markets are a terrible way to coordinate economic activity, except for all the others. Skin in the game is a great contribution, namely, as a way to keep folks most honest in public spheres.
This is the most interesting essay I've read in awhile. Some of that is because I am out of my normal domains of inquiry. I didn't know Salma Hayek <sic> had so much insight into the nature of specialization. My view has (since the 90s) been that information overload and career overspecialization, both inescapable parts of human social evolution, will result in profound woe in the future. A leader, now, is not a generalist. They are a showman. In the past, the USA did not elect showmen into the highest office. But then modernity - with all sorts of new ideas challenging the old ones, overwhelmed our fairly superstitious lot of people. Already they were having a hard time absorbing the lessons from the prior century of conflict, and feeling insecure about their ability to explain the world using the same old superstitious notion of morality that they did before. (re: religious guilt about the Holocaust and resulting pushback / blame-shifting, attempts to modernize during Vatican 2, pushback during Red Scare #2 / Civil Rights era & the resulting White fragility, ugly truths in Vietnam like the Pinkville Massacre, the Dirty War, Iran Contra scandal, Satanic Panic) . So a confident voice became a necessity for leadership- an actor. One problem with confidence-men is that we don't necessarily know their motivations.
I have to disagree about democracies failing because of an inability to predict the future. In the past Russia was a democracy after its socialist revolution in 1918 (if by democracy one means universal voting rights); and 2 years later the USA performed a sneak-attack, alongside Japan, the UK, and lots of other nations- supporting the White Armies. We failed, and "worse", our own socialist / feminist groups pushed for women's suffrage too- since they had seen it happen after the socialist uprising in Finland, then Russia, then Germany. The backlash was furious each time.
We failed to topple the Russian democracy. We didn't need to worry- they did it themselves later. But in general- the U.S. performed at least 81 overt and covert known interventions in foreign elections during the period 1946–2000. Installing our own puppet rules after deposing the existing democratically elected leadership in some cases. What could have those small countries have done if they had predicted we would make such an attempt? The sad thing is- the lesson that the Nazis taught the world is that might *DOES* make right, and that the idiots with the biggest militaries get march into a an area and just flat-out take its resources. Thus enabled the era of Pox Americana. Our big rivals (Russia) destroyed their own economy in the military overspending competition with us. (We had the help of bin Laden for that.) The USA may have recovered- since there was no superpower left to challenge us. Then bin Laden kicked our bee-hive, steering us towards the same fate. It worked. With a debt to GDP of 130%, it is just a matter of time before a divestment cascade will sink our economy. Civil war seems likely after that, and planetary destabilization as we sell most of our nukes to the highest bidders - for food, as upper 5% of rich people go find less retarded countries to live in. That is my prediction, anyway. I hope I'm wrong.
Culture in general is an even broader way of capturing group wisdom widely and over time, as compared with markets.
I am aware of the limitations of Libertarian thought. Tends to overweight rationalism, individualism; doesn't tend to account as well for emergent or tail phenomena regarding groups of individuals, or individuals who shift their roles or contexts from minute to minute and year to year. Also tends to use the same mental models in contexts where they don't necessarily apply ("if you go to Midas/Hayek, expect to be prescribed a muffler/a market solution."). It may be true that markets are a terrible way to coordinate economic activity, except for all the others. Skin in the game is a great contribution, namely, as a way to keep folks most honest in public spheres.
This is the most interesting essay I've read in awhile. Some of that is because I am out of my normal domains of inquiry. I didn't know Salma Hayek <sic> had so much insight into the nature of specialization. My view has (since the 90s) been that information overload and career overspecialization, both inescapable parts of human social evolution, will result in profound woe in the future. A leader, now, is not a generalist. They are a showman. In the past, the USA did not elect showmen into the highest office. But then modernity - with all sorts of new ideas challenging the old ones, overwhelmed our fairly superstitious lot of people. Already they were having a hard time absorbing the lessons from the prior century of conflict, and feeling insecure about their ability to explain the world using the same old superstitious notion of morality that they did before. (re: religious guilt about the Holocaust and resulting pushback / blame-shifting, attempts to modernize during Vatican 2, pushback during Red Scare #2 / Civil Rights era & the resulting White fragility, ugly truths in Vietnam like the Pinkville Massacre, the Dirty War, Iran Contra scandal, Satanic Panic) . So a confident voice became a necessity for leadership- an actor. One problem with confidence-men is that we don't necessarily know their motivations.
I have to disagree about democracies failing because of an inability to predict the future. In the past Russia was a democracy after its socialist revolution in 1918 (if by democracy one means universal voting rights); and 2 years later the USA performed a sneak-attack, alongside Japan, the UK, and lots of other nations- supporting the White Armies. We failed, and "worse", our own socialist / feminist groups pushed for women's suffrage too- since they had seen it happen after the socialist uprising in Finland, then Russia, then Germany. The backlash was furious each time.
We failed to topple the Russian democracy. We didn't need to worry- they did it themselves later. But in general- the U.S. performed at least 81 overt and covert known interventions in foreign elections during the period 1946–2000. Installing our own puppet rules after deposing the existing democratically elected leadership in some cases. What could have those small countries have done if they had predicted we would make such an attempt? The sad thing is- the lesson that the Nazis taught the world is that might *DOES* make right, and that the idiots with the biggest militaries get march into a an area and just flat-out take its resources. Thus enabled the era of Pox Americana. Our big rivals (Russia) destroyed their own economy in the military overspending competition with us. (We had the help of bin Laden for that.) The USA may have recovered- since there was no superpower left to challenge us. Then bin Laden kicked our bee-hive, steering us towards the same fate. It worked. With a debt to GDP of 130%, it is just a matter of time before a divestment cascade will sink our economy. Civil war seems likely after that, and planetary destabilization as we sell most of our nukes to the highest bidders - for food, as upper 5% of rich people go find less retarded countries to live in. That is my prediction, anyway. I hope I'm wrong.