Comment by WalterBright
11 hours ago
History shows us that the more free market an economy is, the more prosperous it is.
For example, the software industry. It's pretty much completely unregulated. Prices for software have gone to zero. Software engineers routinely become millionaires, and some billionaires.
Safe to say that money and prosperity can be linked, but are not equal.
Lack of regulation in tech causes real harm, like addiction, social issues and misinformation,not to mention issues with cyber bullying and suicide in teens.
Do some people make out like bandits with billions or millions of dollars, sure but I don't think that's a good barometer for progress or prosperity.
To paraphrase Doctor Who "Human progress isn't measured by industry, it's measured by the value you place on a life. An unimportant life. A life without privilege"
And by that measure we are still cavemen.
> Lack of regulation in tech causes real harm, like addiction, social issues and misinformation,not to mention issues with cyber bullying and suicide in teens.
None of those had effective regulation.
Regulation against fraud does work, but the job of government is to prevent crime, enforce contracts, and stop fraud, in a free market.
> And by that measure we are still cavemen.
Government is not going to fix that.
> Do some people make out like bandits with billions or millions of dollars, sure but I don't think that's a good barometer for progress or prosperity.
In the 1800s the US lifted scores of millions of people out of poverty into the middle class.
> History shows us that the more free market an economy is, the more prosperous it is.
Ad infinitum? No it doesn’t.
> Prices for software have gone to zero.
On earth?
> Software engineers routinely become millionaires, and some billionaires.
They don’t but if they did, this could mean the opposite of what you think it means.
Nobody has discovered a limit to prosperity under a free market.
I didn't pay a cent for any of the software on my Linux machine. Free Open Source software is everywhere.
In the 1990s, the Seattle Times wrote that there were 10,000 Microsoft millionaires in the Seattle area, excluding the value of their homes.
Charles Simonyi became a billionaire as a Microsoft employee.
There have been millions of software engineers since Microsoft founded.
The field may mint millionaires at a higher rate but it’s still not routine.