Libertarians often take these mechanisms for granted and refuse to consider where they come from. For example, you have electricity and drinking water at home. When you go to the bathroom and rinse the water, the sewage goes to a huge sewage system. This system is created and maintained by the state. But in the libertarian way of thinking it is basic to take for granted that you just utilize the toilet and rinse the water and no one has to keep it. But of course someone has to.
There is really no such thing as a perfect free market. In addition to competition, there must always be a trust system. Some things can be successfully created competition on the free market, but there are some services and needs that cannot be maintained by market competition. Justice is one example.
Imagine a perfect free market. Suppose I conclude a business agreement with you and break this contract. So we go to court and ask the judge to make a decision. But what if I bribed the judge? Suddenly you can’t trust the free market. You would not tolerate a judge on the basis of a person who paid the most bribes. If justice were to be traded on a completely free market, justice would fall, and people would not trust each other. Confidence in honoring contracts and promises will disappear, and there would be no system to enforce them.
That is why every competition always requires a certain structure of trust. In my book I utilize an example of the World Cup. You have teams from various countries competing with each other, but for the competition to take place, there must be a consent to a common set of rules. If Japan had its own rules and Germany had a different set of rules, there would be no competition. In other words, even competition requires the foundation of joint trust and agreement. Otherwise, the order will collapse.
Photo: Shintaro Yoshimatsu
IN LinkYou will notice that mass media has enabled mass democracy – in other words, that information technology and development of democratic institutions are correlated. If so, in addition to the negative possibilities of populism and totalitarianism, what possibilities of positive changes in democracy are possible?
For example, on social media, false messages, disinformation and conspiracy theories are deliberately distributed to destroy trust among people. But algorithms are not necessarily the distribution of false messages and conspiracy theories. Many achieved it simply because they were designed for this.
The purpose of Facebook, YouTube and Tiktok’s Facebook algorithms is to maximize user involvement. The easiest way to do this was discovered after many attempts and mistakes, was to disseminate information that fueled anger, hatred and desire for people. This is because when people are bad, they are more likely to implement information and disseminate them in others, which results in increased commitment.
But what if we give the algorithm a different goal? For example, if you give him a goal, such as increasing trust among people or increasing truthfulness, the algorithm will never distribute false messages. On the contrary, it will facilitate build a better society, a better democratic society.