Capitalism leaves most human affairs to the market. The market is nothing but a big popularity contest. That is X. If 20 million people were willing to pay 20 dollars each to see gladiators kill each other in the arena, that is X on a colossal scale. Those gladiators are more valuable to society than a whole city worth of garbage collectors who are indispensable to keeping things running another day.
A society is legitimate insofar as its resources align with its most important business. When X becomes distorted that society loses the mandate of heaven.
New failcomment system also fails to publish my comments, it's not limited to yours. Keep trying, it will usually work, eventually. Blogger deliberately trying to kill itself, I expect. Captchas should be off. If it gives you one anyway, it's against my explicit instructions.
Capitalism leaves most human affairs to the market. The market is nothing but a big popularity contest.
ReplyDeleteThat is X.
If 20 million people were willing to pay 20 dollars each to see gladiators kill each other in the arena, that is X on a colossal scale.
Those gladiators are more valuable to society than a whole city worth of garbage collectors who are indispensable to keeping things running another day.
A society is legitimate insofar as its resources align with its most important business. When X becomes distorted that society loses the mandate of heaven.