> All of the achievements of humanity comes from collaborative effort
I absolutely agree. So the next question is, which way of organizing collaborative efforts of humans has worked better (not perfectly, just better), if we look at human history? Free markets, or governments? When I look at human history, I see free markets doing better--not because free markets are great, but because governments suck even worse.
> The best way we currently have to avoid this is to have a democratic, all inclusive government that decides what rules we should set and follow.
Sorry, but this is a myth. There is no such thing as "a democratic, all inclusive government". Government is not magic. It's some human beings being given permission to exercise arbitrary power over other human beings. Human beings cannot be trusted with that kind of power. Various ways have been tried to limit the power of governments, such as the US Constitution, Bill of Rights, etc. The invariable result is that the people in power simply find ways around the limitations. The only way to stop human beings from abusing power is to stop giving them the permission to exercise it in the first place.
I understand that, realistically, no such thing will happen any time soon. But accepting at least some government regulation because we can't avoid it because the world is imperfect and we're not going to convince everyone to implement and learn to live with full-on libertarianism tomorrow, is way, way different from thinking of government regulation as the go-to tool of first resort for solving any problem. It's not. It's the worst tool for solving problems.
> Total individuality
This is also a myth. Nobody can totally support themselves with just their individual efforts. Well, perhaps there are a few edge cases living totally off the grid in a forest somewhere, but they're not going to be posting here and they're not going to be impinging on other people's lives anyway so we can ignore them.
The people who abuse power do not do it by "total individuality". They do it by co-opting, through corrupt institutions, huge numbers of other people to further their abuses. Those institutions did not get the power they have, which the people then abuse, through a free market. They got it through governments (in many cases the institutions are governments, or governmental institutions). In an actual free market, the kinds of abuses of power we routinely see in government-run societies could not exist, because the institutions and the implied permission of power that comes with them would not exist. People who want to do something collectively in a free market have to convince other people to help them by trading things of actual value. That's how a free market works: if you don't have something worth trading, people simply ignore you. You don't have the option of saying, hey, I'm in a position of power, you have to do what I say. And so people are forced to stop exercising their "total individuality" and actually cooperate with others.
I absolutely agree. So the next question is, which way of organizing collaborative efforts of humans has worked better (not perfectly, just better), if we look at human history? Free markets, or governments? When I look at human history, I see free markets doing better--not because free markets are great, but because governments suck even worse.
> The best way we currently have to avoid this is to have a democratic, all inclusive government that decides what rules we should set and follow.
Sorry, but this is a myth. There is no such thing as "a democratic, all inclusive government". Government is not magic. It's some human beings being given permission to exercise arbitrary power over other human beings. Human beings cannot be trusted with that kind of power. Various ways have been tried to limit the power of governments, such as the US Constitution, Bill of Rights, etc. The invariable result is that the people in power simply find ways around the limitations. The only way to stop human beings from abusing power is to stop giving them the permission to exercise it in the first place.
I understand that, realistically, no such thing will happen any time soon. But accepting at least some government regulation because we can't avoid it because the world is imperfect and we're not going to convince everyone to implement and learn to live with full-on libertarianism tomorrow, is way, way different from thinking of government regulation as the go-to tool of first resort for solving any problem. It's not. It's the worst tool for solving problems.
> Total individuality
This is also a myth. Nobody can totally support themselves with just their individual efforts. Well, perhaps there are a few edge cases living totally off the grid in a forest somewhere, but they're not going to be posting here and they're not going to be impinging on other people's lives anyway so we can ignore them.
The people who abuse power do not do it by "total individuality". They do it by co-opting, through corrupt institutions, huge numbers of other people to further their abuses. Those institutions did not get the power they have, which the people then abuse, through a free market. They got it through governments (in many cases the institutions are governments, or governmental institutions). In an actual free market, the kinds of abuses of power we routinely see in government-run societies could not exist, because the institutions and the implied permission of power that comes with them would not exist. People who want to do something collectively in a free market have to convince other people to help them by trading things of actual value. That's how a free market works: if you don't have something worth trading, people simply ignore you. You don't have the option of saying, hey, I'm in a position of power, you have to do what I say. And so people are forced to stop exercising their "total individuality" and actually cooperate with others.