Any cursory study of recent history will tell you that people will readily accept poorer material conditions as long as amorphous ideas like pride, identity, etc. remain intact.
― F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/303269-the-curious-task-of-...
People like libertarianism as an abstract ideology but not as a practical one.
In a practical sense, it may require access to good information, across all domains, to be acted upon by rational agents capable of synthesizing all that information into a decision. That may work with a yeoman farmer society, but is incongruent with modernity. Creation of institutions like a government and regulatory bodies may be the natural reaction to facing the complexities of modern society. As an example, I don't have the sufficient knowledge or information to assess the air-worthiness of an airplane and even if I did, fear may bias my decision toward the irrational. Instead, public institutions like the FAA create a system of regulations to standardize that decision. Same with electrical codes, drug quality, and a bunch of other common risks.
People can’t get all the information they need to make good individual decisions in a complex environment. Even if they could, assuming people are rational may ironically be an extremely irrational assumption.
The issue is that groups (at any size, and worse when turned into hard-to-change institutions) have their own unique disadvantages even beyond the flaws & shortcomings of the individuals that make up the group.
And it's precisely that inaccessible, dispersed knowledge that's crucial to operating an economy. Complexity if anything overwhelms government. They're usually far too slow & old to even begin to effectively regulate complex aspects of society.
>inaccessible, dispersed knowledge
I think the distinction is I don’t consider this a good thing. Opaque information hinders an economy; I don’t know how you can claim the opposite. I’d also argue inaccessible information is often at odds with dispersion of knowledge. For example, written knowledge wasn't dispersed until it became more accessible through the moveable type printing press. Making information inaccessible is just a way of hoarding power; that's generally not good for an economy (with some notable exceptions).
If it's a relatively high percentage, it's not a modest position.
How do you know those are the things that actually matter (as opposed to the things they say they value)? Because those are the things they work to maximize.
>How do you know those are the things that actually matter (as opposed to the things they say they value)? Because those are the things they work to maximize.
The counterpoint from behavioral economics, is that homo ecnomicus is a myth and people aren't wholly rational actors. Implying there may be a gulf between what they actively maximize and what they think "actually matter."
But on average, people want to live in comfort and have their needs met. It's even worse because leaders very rarely struggle under the same hardships, and when they do it's a PR stunt.
It's like Brexit - people voted for it (just barely) but now are hating the consequences. The only option is increased trade and commerce, the UK government simply can't socialism / money print their way out of the mess. Only productive enterprise will save them, meaning a freer market, freer trade, lower taxes, etc. but this will take a decade:
- Conservative government falls
- Leftists take over
- Leftists destroy everything and make stuff worse for a few years
- People give up hope
- Thatcher-like figure emerges, cuts taxes, promotes business, free trade
- People get comfortable and start thinking socialism can work again
- Go back to the beginning