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Comment by G3rn0ti | Hacker News Reader

> a government involved might lead to a fairer outcome

Fairer for the supporters of a government that is. Even in a modern democracy a government is really just supported by a small majority ruling over a large minority. That does not mean that democracy has failed but it heavily implies the government power needs to be limited to a minimum in order for a free society to thrive. _That's why_ the lesson learned and applied by "neoliberalism" has always been meddling with economic forces is a sure road to serfdom (to quote the young F.A. Hayek which Thatcher's politics was always inspired by). It's never been about suppressing the poor. To the contrary. (Even Hayek argued in favor of small social security net.)

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> Fairer for the supporters of a government that is

Can’t see the logic here. Government policies by definition affect everyone regardless of affiliation. Unless you’re implying corruption, which is orthogonal to this discussion.

A government is not a single-celled entity. Parlament, city and state legislatures, etc, are setup so that representation of all parts of society (even the non-supporters) can be achieved.

OK, so let's remove thing like corporations and private land ownership and IP, all government inventions that interfere with non-aggressive freedom.

Limiting government power to a minimum and let the market do its magic? I'm pretty sure that's a really bad idea, just thinking of leaded gasoline, tobacco advertising, chemical softeners in food packaging etc. one could get the impression that free market maximalism is an extreme that is as bad as communism, just like any extreme stance/opinion is. In the end it is all about balancing interests of different groups with (hopefully) a bias towards the people, not toward capital

The free market should be thought of as an optimization algorithm. Ideally, the government's role should be to set up a constrained optimization problem, which attempts to align profitability with human well-being (e.g., "provide people with whatever material comforts they want to pay for, under the constraint of not poisoning them and not polluting the environment"). The market's role is to solve the constrained optimization problem, and if the incentives set up by the government are good, the optimal point of profitability should reasonably approximate an optimal point of human well-being.

The error of so-called free market proponents, is that they want the government to set up an unconstrained optimization problem. The market will find some kind of optimum, but without intelligently designed constraints (i.e., regulations), there's no guarantee that optimal profitability should correspond to optimal human well-being.

Very well put, I fully agree and might even borrow this explanation when talking to the subset of people who understand optimization algorithms/the analogy.

Next up: Optimization Algorithm ELI5 for the rest

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