More like a Techno-Capitalist Fantasy. This part had me laughing out loud:
> Markets prevent monopolies and cartels.
No, markets naturally culminate into monopolies and cartels. That's just human nature.
History has shown over and over again that monopolies and cartels are naturally occurring and that the only successful way to deal with them is to break them up via government intervention. Sure, some monopolies may eventually dissolve due to things like technical obsolescence but that's the type of thing that takes so long that entire generations can come and go, suffering the effects the entire time, before they break up.
This manifesto also doesn't seem to have a solution to "natural monopolies" like ISPs or utilities (water, sewer, electricity). It just pretends such things don't exist.
It also doesn't have anything at all to say about economic externalities (e.g. pollution/downstream impacts), policing of bad behavior, or "tragedy of the commons" sorts of problems.
If you had a technology-oriented country that sends all of its pollution to another country it could be the perfect world envisioned by this "Techno-Optimist Manifesto".
Yeah I'm equally annoyed by people who can see absolutely nothing of value in competitive capitalist markets and people who can see absolutely nothing of value in regulation of those markets by society. Both things are good, and both things are bad. The goal is to seek the best balance that maximizes the good parts of each while minimizing the bad parts of each.
Every monopoly that exists (and has ever existed) does so because of some combination of government granted monopoly rights. Mineral rights, patents, intellectual property, and all other regulatory barriers to entry.
There is no "natural" culmination into monopoly, monopoly is THE ANTITHETICAL END of the market. Where monopoly exists there is no longer a competitive market floating prices. The state itself in then in control of all production or in affiliation with a stagnant racket that controls all production. There is no market anymore, because the state (a monopoly of its own) has ceased to enforce a market. It is a choice for the state to make. The contrast between the choice between a market and monopoly is as stark as the contrast between South Korea vs North Korea, or Norway vs Venezuela.
> Markets prevent monopolies and cartels.
No, markets naturally culminate into monopolies and cartels. That's just human nature.
History has shown over and over again that monopolies and cartels are naturally occurring and that the only successful way to deal with them is to break them up via government intervention. Sure, some monopolies may eventually dissolve due to things like technical obsolescence but that's the type of thing that takes so long that entire generations can come and go, suffering the effects the entire time, before they break up.
This manifesto also doesn't seem to have a solution to "natural monopolies" like ISPs or utilities (water, sewer, electricity). It just pretends such things don't exist.
It also doesn't have anything at all to say about economic externalities (e.g. pollution/downstream impacts), policing of bad behavior, or "tragedy of the commons" sorts of problems.
If you had a technology-oriented country that sends all of its pollution to another country it could be the perfect world envisioned by this "Techno-Optimist Manifesto".