Is capitalism like eugenics?

Where the strong decide what is right and what is wrong?

 

No it’s not

 

In capitalism — the MARKET decides

If the market is DOMINATED by a few — fair enough. You could argue that “few” have the most votes

But it’s not those FEW that created this mechanism

It’s MARKET which gave them this power

And it’s MARKET which will take that power away from them (hopefully anyway, most the time anyway)

 

I like comparison to eugenics, because it’s so unequivocally regarded as evil

Why is it evil?

The idea is reasonable

The future generations of man will be smarter and fitter

 

The problem lies in deciding what is SMARTER AND FITTER

Who will decide?

And more importantly — who is wise enough to decide?

 

And the answer is — no one

The answer is — nature does a better job of that than anyone else EVER could

The process of nature, of natural selection — is that of extreme scale trial and error

It is basically a computation, a real world simulation

Each permutation carries on some information from the previous permutations

No single mind, or 100 brightest minds, can match that

 

…just like no single mind, or government, or economist — can match the self-correcting mechanisms of the free market

OR democracy, for that matter

 

We view eugenics as abhorrent, and for good reason

The hubris of believing we are somehow smart enough yet to outcompete the self-correcting systems

A snowflake can’t harm you

An avalanche will devour you

When we’re dealing with scale — we very quickly become puny and tiny

And we’re too puny and tiny and stupid to see that