Reading this, something dawned on me. The economic far right and the economic far left share a similar trait: Neglect of result. The Austrians and their right-wing libertarian inheritors take “money” and “inflation” as the key to criticizing liberal capitalism, whereas the writer of this piece, coming from a kinda-somewhat Marxist view, uses “social/economic discount rates” (or some such thing) as it relates to explaining the exploitation of capitalists.

For both these sorts of efforts, I always have one thing to ask: what have been the results of the combination of liberal democracy and regulated capitalism? The answer, of course, is the greatest improvement of living standards and lifespans in history.

Granted, this hasn’t been spread across the world evenly and many downsides that need fixing have arisen. But the unequivocal results have been an outstanding improvement for the vast majority of humans. Lifespans in most of the world vastly exceed their historical lengths.

The problem with criticizing anything by theory is you contribute little to nothing to substantive objectives.

If results don’t matter, why bother? Unless there is course credit.