Human knowledge can be (and historically, often has been) destroyed as well as accumulated. It’s a myth originating with the Whigs that history always moved in the direction of progress. As recent political events in the US have shown, that’s not true.
nationalization doesn’t work, and it has never worked
Except, for example, in every developed-world health care delivery system, all of which massively outperform the private-sector US system both on cost and on outcomes. Likewise, fire departments, interstate highway systems, public water supplies, armies, etc, etc.
So before calling someone a dunce, you might do well to learn more about the many things you don’t know.
Well I never said anything about progress, I said it’s cumulative. We never destroy more than we have accumulated. None of the knowledge we have today would exist without the knowledge of our earliest of ancestors when Homo sapiens was still thousands of years away. That being said, looking at the sheer amount of time we’ve been accumulating knowledge even if we had a thousand years of absolute barbarity and massive ignorance, the statement that knowledge tends towards progress would still be true. The present is a blip in the scale of human history.
To address your other point. Yes I’ll admit that I was too universalistic in my argument in the heat of the moment so to speak. But the big caveat is that it does not necessarily lead to, and most always doesn’t lead to better service for end user. It’s a trade off in most cases. But I’ll never argue in favor of privatized healthcare or education for example. The loss in efficiency is simply not enough to justify the real human cost of the alternative. But cutting edge technology that is not essential, such as space travel, computers etc, belong in the private market where the right incentives to make improvements exist.
Human knowledge can be (and historically, often has been) destroyed as well as accumulated. It’s a myth originating with the Whigs that history always moved in the direction of progress. As recent political events in the US have shown, that’s not true.
Except, for example, in every developed-world health care delivery system, all of which massively outperform the private-sector US system both on cost and on outcomes. Likewise, fire departments, interstate highway systems, public water supplies, armies, etc, etc.
So before calling someone a dunce, you might do well to learn more about the many things you don’t know.
Well I never said anything about progress, I said it’s cumulative. We never destroy more than we have accumulated. None of the knowledge we have today would exist without the knowledge of our earliest of ancestors when Homo sapiens was still thousands of years away. That being said, looking at the sheer amount of time we’ve been accumulating knowledge even if we had a thousand years of absolute barbarity and massive ignorance, the statement that knowledge tends towards progress would still be true. The present is a blip in the scale of human history.
To address your other point. Yes I’ll admit that I was too universalistic in my argument in the heat of the moment so to speak. But the big caveat is that it does not necessarily lead to, and most always doesn’t lead to better service for end user. It’s a trade off in most cases. But I’ll never argue in favor of privatized healthcare or education for example. The loss in efficiency is simply not enough to justify the real human cost of the alternative. But cutting edge technology that is not essential, such as space travel, computers etc, belong in the private market where the right incentives to make improvements exist.