Logical Conclusion

A good idea rests easily at its logical conclusion.

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NOTE: Within this text, wherever gender is not key to the explanation, I am using the Elverson ey/em construction of the Spivak Pronouns.

I write about politics, economics and engineering, and I often combine all three into one essay. In particular, I write about how political actors should design economic systems in much the same way that an engineer would design any other complex system.

In Feedback And Side Effects, I explain how important it is to regulate essential elements of a complex system. Within a well designed system, the engineer establishes the ranges of values for the dynamic components. For example, the power delivered to an electric motor cannot exceed a certain value or the motor will be damaged, and so the circuitry must be designed to assure that the upper limit is never exceeded. A chicken egg incubator must be held to a temperature between 98° F and 101° F and so circuitry will be provided to activate the heater at 98° and turn it off at 101°. I am aware of no well-designed engineered system wherein one component may claim all resources of that system without limit. As a general rule, such a system is what we would call broken.

I recently read an interesting little screed published on the Liberty Fund Network website (which they…