the things that are an error, in Laissez Faire Capitalism or Ayn Randian Objectivism or so-called Free Markets or whatever the current buzz words are, . . . the mistake of it all is that it isn't really necessarily the "fittest"/best that survive.
Their justification for ending Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Public Education, Peace, is that the challenges of living in that world will eliminate those who are not good enough to make it and what you will have left are those who are SUPPOSED to survive because they are the "best". Even if you accept a possibility of that principle as a worthy goal, it doesn't actually work that way, because what is selected out of such systems isn't necessarily the creative potential referred to in the axiom "necessity is the mother of invention." What is selected out of "survival of the fittest" isn't NECESSARILY what you need in order to survive, because the limitation of all values in such system introduces biases that enslave/limit what can develop out of them, that is, limit potential for development in ways that cause all systems to LOSE value that could be not only useful but also NEEDED.
The struggle for the fundamentals of survival, without any value standard other than to survive, selects the most ruthless and that exclusion of all other value standards results in the loss of practically infinite Real Value potentials for productivity, potential Real Value that COULD affect the ability to survive. Potentials that could meet as yet unrecognized and practically new needs, for which there are no existing resources, are not conserved in systems that are based on survival values and nothing else. You don't always know what you're going to need to survive, so if you limit potential you can lose values that you may need.
Even if such systems do develop secondary and other levels of emergent values, those standards will always be limited by, depend for their very existence upon, the primary, most fundamental value in the basic system, survival in the face of no-holds barred, dog-eat-dog competition for survival.
And that limitation on secondary and other more extrapolated values and standards in the systems, once again, can result in the loss of still other values that don't appear to meet the criteria of the fundamental value, survival. And no one knows what real values are lost until it becomes apparent that there is a need that cannot be met. And that need can't be met, because no one knew what they didn't know, since everything that they did know was defined by the single most fundamental value in all systems, survival in an otherwise value-less system, survival in the face of no-holds barred competition for survival. Without other values to motivate knowledge, no one knows that they don't know until some third thing makes it apparent that they don't know, AFTER the fact.
It's a mono-culture; it does not work. Needs are assumed to be of one type, therefore value is of a single fundamental type and the whole thing breaks when challenged by anything that does not fit those predetermined types. What Republicans are proposing to do is to dispose of more value in the face of challenge. This limitation/exclusion of the development of knowledge and resources IS NOT CONSERVATIVE.
This is just one of the reasons that I am deeply happy to hear our President talk about investing in, protecting, and maintaining BASIC RESEARCH.
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