The United States is not a free-market or true “capitalist” society but rather a crony capitalist/welfare-state society. That is, many big businesses don’t compete to please the consumer but instead for coercive government privilege.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Now, give the government more power so it can “protect” you. This is the latest message from the big-tech executives who run major AI-related firms. Many of them now insist that the government should step in to plan and regulate the industry to save us all from the AI “threat.”   

“In politics, the great nonsequitur of our time is that (1) things are not right, and that (2) the government should make them right.” — Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice

What are the implications for economics of recognizing entrepreneurship? They are vast. Modern/mainstream economics is, to a great extent, the outcome of expunging the entrepreneur and forcing an entrepreneurless, mechanistic view onto the economy. This facilitates the use of mathematical analysis and quantitative predictions, but these will always be wrong to the extent that there is entrepreneurship. In a sense, mainstream economics is the science of a planned or plannable economy. And the basic models even assume that there is perfect information.

After September 11th, Rudy Giuliani was America’s mayor. He even won Time Magazine’s Person of the Year for his leadership in the wake of the attacks. Today, he may be Mujahadeen-e-Khalq’s (MEK) Mayor.