[FRIAM] Philosophy, Ethics, Academia (PEA)

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So, this PEA installment <http://peasoup.us/2021/03/the-effects-of-market-exchange-on-human-welfare/> says: "crony capitalism is a political-economic system in which firms leverage the powers and privileges of the state to gain unfair competitive advantages. Proponents and opponents of capitalism alike regard this system as morally objectionable."

And from a link I sent earlier re Blackrock's "lifting all boats" as a Capitalist mechanism (scroll down to the sub-heading "Insider trading law is weird") here:
https://newsletterhunt.com/emails/12216

How can there *ever* be any form of capitalism that's NOT "crony"? If there's a state, the state will be ... [cough] ... leveraged to gain asymmetric power. The temptation is to conceive of anarcho-capitalism. But a misspoken phrase in the PEA article highlights why anarcho-capitalism is oxymoronic:

"Their actions drive the price 'signal,' enabling prices to 'internalize' or 'embody' local information. When, say, there is a shortage of corn in Iowa, the price of corn might spike in North Carolina, signaling to local families, firms, and other prospective buyers to curtail corn consumption or switch to a substitute good. This price signal can embody a remarkably vast complex of information: a corn shortage in Iowa, a nation-wide hike in gasoline prices, a hit podcast in California claiming that corn is the new kale, an unexpected disruption in long haul trucking, and on and on."

It's unfortunate wording to suggest that price/money "internalizes" or "embodies" ... even WITH the scare quotes. It's a reduction to the medi[a|um] of exchange (Dave's claim there exist unmediated markets is simply false). Even *if* the market is/were completely transparent ... explainable, interpretable, open-sourced, etc. ... a single mom with 3 jobs in North Carolina won't be able to *understand* that the price of gas jumped because some yahoo demanded we pollute our gas with corn, even if she saw a headline as she trudged to work on the TV through the glass of the box store on a TV she couldn't afford anyway.

In other words, anarcho-capitalism will *grow* things that look like government, effectively *are* government ... making the concept self-contradictory. As always RationalWiki has a good entry: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Regardless of my criticism of this particular post, PEA and "public philosophy", in general, is fantastic.

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