You Can Control an Economy in the Same Way You Can "Control" a Brain with a Lobotomy
Harm is control
Ever seen a little kid at an arcade?1 They’ll stand in front of a game cabinet with no credits in it and move the controls, thinking they’re actually playing the game. It’s the illusion of control, and it’s an innate part of us to fool ourselves into thinking we’re in control.
At least that one is harmless, but we also understand how a video game works and why what the child is doing has no effect, and also understand how to actually control the video game. Where intelligent adults run into trouble is when what they’re trying to control is a complex system. Like the human brain.
For a long while, the way to handle problems with the brain was a lobotomy. Now, this did have an actual effect on the human brain — it wasn’t just the illusion of control. But it still wasn’t real control because it was poking holes in something so complex that none of the doctors understood it. In the end, it just did more damage than good.
Which brings us to another complex thing like the brain that people are always trying to control: the economy.
The economy is basically the world’s biggest supercomputer — but more complex than a supercomputer. It’s like a brain itself. The economy has billions of people, every day, deciding what to buy, what to sell, where to work, what something is worth to them. All of that creates information — incredibly detailed information about what people want and what things actually cost to provide. And each economic transaction is like a neuron reacting to this info.
And wow does this work. The billions fed unlike at any time in human history — the wealth and tech we all have. And it chugs away with no one at the top controlling it all.
Which a lot of people see as a problem.
