Merlin, you’re suggesting that expoosure to stronger bacteria drives innovation/prevents future catastrophe?
I think this is very clear from the historical record that evolutive pressures, as long as they are not overwhelming but steadily increasing, are among the most precious treasures of any human group. To have gained the upper hand in a ‘fight’ with evolved bacteria is among those things that just cannto be replicated by other groups.
Now, I say it would be very interesting to study how a free market can, if indeed it can, help to adjust such pressures to their optimal level. This would be an example of two spontaneous orders (evolution and a market society) influencing each-other, perhaps even optimizing each-other. Fascinating stuff if you ask me.
Evolution vs. Free markets certainly is exciting as both are very complex models that select for some fitness and seek to progress to less unstable states (less likely to die before passing on offspring).
Each side has its advantages:
Evolution:
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Trillions of organisms going at it constantly
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Random mutations might beat any good guess
Free market:
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Directed progress (improve in this specific way)
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Human intelligence may be able to make large leaps to exit local optima
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Shorter time frames for macro adaptation (while bacteria can change quickly, the dodo bird can’t. Because it would take at least several generations for it to change, it died due to sharp shocks).
The fight humans have left to fight (besides themselves, I suppose, but that can likely be solved) is against microorganisms. I see this as a fight that we will win within the next 150 years. Since there have not been any organisms that exist below the molecular level, we will probably have conquered our potential predators.
Edit: If we could improve the lot of humans themselves economically, it would likely lead to large strides for science as stability allows for the luxury of looking at tiny things.
I hope we don’t succeed 100% in that (nor do I think we can). We could easily put an end, or greatly impoverish, our own physical development. But again, who knows such things.
The only way the notion of “market failure” makes sense to me is in the sense of just being another way to express the notion that human beings - either individually or collectively - are neither omniscient nor omnipotent. If that’s what you’re getting at here, I’ll agree with you. But then I’ll ask, “So what?” Otherwise, if you’re saying that the government would’ve handled things “better”, I’ll ask you to please explain yourself.
I am unconvinced that government wouldn’t have pushed products that appeal to our germ awareness.
After all, it still peddles its terrible nutrition pyramid.
It could actually be argued that this is a positive externality, in the long term (as any notion of ‘market failure’ requires the arbitrary adoption of lower time-preferences than market participants - since consumer action can never be a ‘failure’ if looked at in terms of their own individual preferences - so why not adopt an extremely low time preference for analysis?) Because, modern medicine, capitalism etc alters the biological selection process so that it no longer selects for healthy genes, by allowing more unhealthy people to survive and pass down their genes than would have been possible in times past. This ultimately ‘weakens’ the gene pool. However, if a disease that is immune to antibiotics and modern medicine comes along, it would kill the people with weaker immune systems, leaving only those with ‘stronger’ immune systems to have offspring and propagate their genes, and thereby ensuring the human race faced continual selection pressures for healthy genes and immune systems 