No wonder I meet so many French programmers in Silicon Valley.
They always seem to pine for France, but they still stay in California. Its also really weird how fond and romantically they look upon such regulations. You'd think that they would be furious at the thought of such regulations in America, but they are actually pretty sympathetic about them. Even though such regulations have tied up the job market in France so much that they have been driven to a new continent, they still have faith in the State to fix things with rules.
That is one of the reasons I think libertarians can never win in the long run. Even very smart engineers have boundless optimism for the capacity of human managers to micromanage complicated systems like entire national economies. They also have boundless faith that bad actors and inside players can be prevented from manipulating regulations for their own benefit.
I am a French dev and I plan to move to the Silicon Valley for various reasons but the driver licence is not one of them.
It is the first time I read such things about french driving exams and I can't remember having to answer inane questions like the car vs tank one.
Libertarians can't win for the simple reason that free markets tend towards oligopolies without a system to break them up and because "free markets" suspiciously never account for externalities.
Libertarians can't win for the simple reason they don't understand externalities and coordination problems, i.e. when everyone follows "free market" and what is good for them personally, the whole society fucks itself over very hard, because they can't escape tragedies of commons.
That's one of the reasons I think that those labels are idiotic and a form of secular religions - how about looking at how things actually work (and have worked out; we have plenty of past history to look at), instead of calling oneself a (e.g.) libertarian and saying "yay free market!" hoping that this particular idea is the silver bullet.
Libertarianism is a sliding scale. Many libertarians are ok with some government regulation and things like anti-monopoly laws. Others believe they aren't necessary and that most monopolies are created because government regulation rather than in spite of it.
I have never, heard any libertarian publication in the internet advocate for anti-monopoly laws. And the second position is fantasy, because every single economic theory (including those by Von Mises, Friedman and other "heroes" of libertarians) can describe the existence of natural monopolies quite well.
Doesn't take a genius to know that these extremist positions are the result of ignorance in the way money and power flow through society. Unfortunately, it's the sort of ignorance that reaches into the "not even wrong" territory.
There's no need to advocate for anti-monopoly laws because they already exist. They just don't spend time advocating against them.
Natural monopolies are a different issue (anti-trust laws can't affect a true natural monopoly because it's by definition impossible to break up.) Some libertarians dispute that they are an issue at all, more on that position here: https://mises.org/daily/5266/ Others believe the government should handle things like public utilities, just nothing else.
This is interesting, you're saying something along the lines of: If a rule can be written, there'll always be someone to write it, people to approve it, and libertarians will lose. I'd like that to Agile, which says you can't overregulate the software development process.
They always seem to pine for France, but they still stay in California. Its also really weird how fond and romantically they look upon such regulations. You'd think that they would be furious at the thought of such regulations in America, but they are actually pretty sympathetic about them. Even though such regulations have tied up the job market in France so much that they have been driven to a new continent, they still have faith in the State to fix things with rules.
That is one of the reasons I think libertarians can never win in the long run. Even very smart engineers have boundless optimism for the capacity of human managers to micromanage complicated systems like entire national economies. They also have boundless faith that bad actors and inside players can be prevented from manipulating regulations for their own benefit.