“Free” With Technology; Not Subsidy
AI art by Midjourney
We all strive for more. More for ourselves, more for our families, more for everyone.
This is natural, and good. But we need to understand where the “more” comes from.
We want more, for less. Ideally for free. People demand it constantly, with a million reasons and justifications.
“College should be free!”
“Internet is a basic human right!”
“No one should go hungry!”
“Why the fuck does healthcare cost so much?”
We will always want more. And it is easier to create more than stop people from wanting more. (God forbid the concept of forcibly preventing people from wanting or getting more.)
Wanting more for less isn’t bad. GETTING more for less can be great.
But “more” should come from technology, not subsidy.
When “more” comes from a government subsidy, it comes from others. It’s taken and redistributed. That’s not “more”; that’s just “OTHER.” An ongoing subsidy is a zero-sum solution. It’s not even a solution. It’s just a redistribution of a problem.
When “more” comes from new technology, it creates NEW value. A magical alchemy created “more” for us all. What was scarce is now abundant. Everyone gets “more” and no one gets less!
Before electricity, very few had enough candlelight to read or write into the night. One proposed solution might have been “subsidize candles! Give everyone the opportunity to access light.” Which sounds nice. But a MUCH better solution was to invent the lightbulb – with a new technology everyone gets “more” and no one gets less.
When we add technology, we get more for less.
When we add subsidies, we just get… different problems.
You can see some of the most subsidized industries are actually where costs have risen the most:
Most people think “yea, because we need to subsidize the expensive stuff” – but the smart ones see the reality: “what gets subsidized becomes expensive.”
Why?
Subsidies create misaligned incentives and risk of corruption.
Subsidies introduce principle-agent problems. They create a path for the naive or the predatory to create profit for themselves within an inefficient system.
One example is colleges raising prices because of government-subsidized student loans. The government is well-intentioned in trying to create more students. Colleges are well-intentioned in raising prices to offer more services.
But the combination of a third-party payer (government), hidden costs (obscure loans), and price-signaling value (colleges) has created an insane runaway effect. College is insanely expensive now, by historical standards.
To sum up: We CAUSED expensive education by trying to make it financially accessible via subsidies, rather than technology.
(I’m sure something similar is happening in the medical world, but I’m not smart enough to figure that out, let alone explain it.)
Another reason these things get more expensive is regulatory overhead. When the government subsidizes something, it also creates the costs of tax collection, measurement, decision, allocation, and tracking. (Or, it comes from money they printed, which cheapens the value of the money you already have, which is just a sneakier path than taxation. We’re just forcibly redistributing from our future, not our present.)
Technology Creates a new, more permanent, cost-less type of abundance.
We should always be seeking to use new technology to solve a constraint. An important new technology enables us to pull new value from the ether. To provide more for more people, with less.
From the first time we used a stick, a fire, a wheel, or a lever… we’ve been steadily improving our ability to survive and provide for ourselves with new ideas, tools, and techniques. Over time, those improvements have become incredible.
Cars were better than cheaper horses.
Railroads were better than cheaper wagons.
Electricity was better than cheaper candles.
Airplanes are better than cheaper railroads.
The Internet is better than cheaper stamps.
Computers are better than cheaper abacuses.
Wikipedia is better than cheaper encyclopedias.
Nuclear Fission is better than cheaper oil.
Autonomous cars & trucks are better than cheaper drivers.
AI Tutors will be better than cheaper schools.
Biotech will be better than cheaper chemotherapy.
Brain-machine interfaces will be better than cheaper computers.
Rocket transport could be better than cheaper planes.
Nuclear Fusion could be better than cheaper Fission.
Mature Nanotechnology could be better than cheaper factories.
Teleportation could be better than cheaper rockets.
Ok, now I’m just making shit up.
When we can’t imagine better, we demand what we have now, for less. In our constant clamor for “more” we forget about innovation. But when—in our infinite impatience—we add a subsidy, we actually delay the arrival of the new innovation… it’s a negative feedback loop.
Always, always, always focus on the improvements from technology. Search for them, support them, vote for them, build them, invest in them, buy them, gift them… and send this blog post to everyone who doesn’t get it.
To summarize:
The Right Kind of More comes from science, technology, and entrepreneurship…
Not subsidizing, rent-seeking, buck-passing, and increasing the power of a system that tends to increase costs, not decrease them.