自由市场提供最好的反馈Free Markets Provide the Best Feedback
Naval： 马克·安德森对此总结得很妙：“观点坚定，但保持开放。”
作为社会整体，如果你追求真理，你就应该持有坚定的观点，但同时抱持得很松。你要去尝试这些观点，看看它们是否管用，如果不管用，就修正错误。
但现实中我们得到的，要么是“观点坚定、立场也坚定”——这是不容异见的少数派；要么是“观点软弱、立场也软弱”——这是一种妥协的模式：没有人真正承担责任，没有人获得功劳，没有人能按自己想要的方式去尝试，而每个人事后都可以拿“真正的共产主义还没被尝试过”来搪塞。尽管在那种情况下，真正的共产主义其实已经被尝试过了，只是结果不怎么样罢了。
顺便岔开一句，我常听到的一种批评是：“我们需要走向一个后资本主义的世界。资本主义行不通了。”好，那你的替代方案是什么？通常人们在这里就开始支支吾吾，因为可供选择的并不多。
当你想弄清楚如何分配功劳、分配资源、奖励人们的工作时，你有两个选择：来自自由市场和现实的反馈——其最佳模型就是金钱；或者来自人的反馈——共产主义最终走的就是这条路，即由一群人来决定你做得最好。
那么，谁来断定你做得最好呢？总得有人负责这件事，而不出意外的是，最终总是那个最强横的恶棍来定。
我不认为每个共产主义国家都沦为独裁是偶然的。共产主义似乎从来没有真正由分布广泛的多数民众来治理。它最后总是落到一小撮掌权的人手里。
这不过是人性使然：如果由我来决定金子归谁，那它就会流向我的朋友、家人和我喜欢的人。而最终发生的事，无一例外都是如此。
要么你需要一个客观函数来切割分配——金钱就是已知的客观函数——要么一切就都变成主观的。而如果它是主观的，那凭什么说是你来分而不是我来分？我们只会根据谁的体力更强、谁的枪更多来做决定。
Brett： 我们在自由市场这边想说的是，我们已经把强制从这个决策过程中抽离了出去。没有人被强迫购买某项服务，或被强迫达成某项协议。
武力唯一会被用到的时候，就是政府介入的时候。上层的人会说：“这是最好的决定，你必须同意；否则，就会有戴徽章、持枪的人找上门来。”
说到自由市场，我们想说的全部就是：个人可以在不受胁迫的情况下自己做决定。现在，我可能是错的，但为什么不让他们去尝试、去犯错呢？这是取得进步的唯一途径。
纠正错误的唯一方法，就是真的去尝试别的东西。
Naval: Marc Andreessen summarizes this nicely as “strong opinions, loosely held.”
As a society, if you’re truth-seeking, you want to have strong opinions but very loosely held. You want to try them, see if they work, and then error-correct if they don’t.
But instead what we get is either strong opinions strongly held—which is the intolerant minority—or we get weak opinions loosely held—which is this compromised model where no one really takes the blame, no one gets credit, no one gets to try the way that they want to, and everybody can then fall back on, “Real communism hasn’t been tried.” Although, in that case, real communism has been tried; it just hasn’t worked out well.
As a digression, one of the common critiques I hear people say is, “We need to move to a post-capitalist world. Capitalism isn’t working.” OK, what is your alternative? Usually this is where people start fumbling because there aren’t a lot of choices.
When you’re trying to figure out how to divvy up credit, divvy up resources and reward people for their work, you have two choices: feedback from free markets and reality—and the best model for that is money—or feedback from people, which is where communism ends up, which is a group of people who decide that you did the best work.
Now, who decides you did the best work? Someone has to be in charge of doing that, and invariably that ends up being the biggest thug.
I don’t think that it’s an accident that every communist country degenerates into a dictatorship. Communism never seems to actually be run by a distributed majority of the people. It always ends up being run by a bunch of people who are taking charge.
It’s just human nature that if I get to decide who gets the gold, it’s going to go to my friends, family and the people that I like. And that’s invariably what ends up happening.
Either you need an objective function to carve it up—and money is the known objective function—or it becomes all subjective. And if it’s subjective, then who’s to say you’re carving it up instead of me? We’re just going to decide based on who has more physical force, who has more guns.
Brett: What we say on the side of free markets is that we’ve extracted coercion out of that decision-making process. No one is forced into purchasing a service or undertaking an agreement.
The only time that force is applied is when the government gets involved. The people at the top then say, “This is the best decision and you will have to agree with it; otherwise, there’s going to be a man with a badge and a gun turning up at your door.”
All that we’re saying when it comes to the free market is that the individual gets to decide without being coerced. Now, I could be wrong, but why shouldn’t they try and make mistakes? It’s the only way to make progress.
The only way to error-correct is to actually try something else.