Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is what you get when you build your whole system around the optimization of one variable -- profit -- and put essentially religious faith into the unproven idea that the Invisible Hand of the Market will make everything work. But this isn't what the whole US system is built around. That's (at least part of) the problem. As others have pointed out elsewhere in this discussion, many of the things Andreessen says…
> But this isn't what the whole US system is built around. That's (at least part of) the problem. As others have pointed out elsewhere in this discussion, many of the things Andreessen says he thinks we need to build are thinks that the free market would like to build, but can't because of legal and regulatory barriers. Really? Which thing? I haven't really been sold a narrative that "regulatory barriers" are in the…
You don't need to be "sold a narrative". You just need to go read the reams and reams of Federal and State regulations that any new manufacturing plant or high speed rail system (not to mention any other business) needs to satisfy.
> It's securing the initial and sustained capital to build the systems.
But in order for that capital to be used for a new venture, the people who have it need to see a reasonable prospect of a return. If you don't think regulatory barriers are the reason why people with lots of capital don't see a reasonable prospect of return in ventures that, on the face of it, would seem to have an obvious potential for good returns, what do you think is the reason?
> They do not make guarantees of efficiency.
More precisely, the conditions under which a free market is maximally efficient are very often not satisfied in the real world. But I did not claim that free markets were always maximally efficient. I said they are as efficient as possible; in other words, under whatever conditions you have, free markets are more efficient than any other alternatives. Under conditions where free markets are not maximally efficient, central planning is even worse.
> Folks have been duped into buying into a scheme where they think they need aristocracy to survive.
I think there is a sense in which this is true, but it's not the one you describe. The problem I see is that people think they need to be governed by experts--an intellectual "aristocracy", not a financial one. The manipulation of the financial system by the government printing money and skewing the incentives of financial institutions is certainly part of that, but not all of it.