Broadly speaking, competitiveness is the source of quality of life improvements, through its effect of expanding capital and thereby raising productivity.
If economic productivity is proportional to quality of life, why aren't most people doing everything they possibly can to maximize their productivity. E.g., working 20 hour days, foregoing children in order to produce more, trading vacation days for more work...
I'd argue it's because economic productivity is not the only input into well-being and quality of life.
Lack of recreation and reproduction harms economic productivity in the long run. Everything valuable or good in life can ultimately be measured as contributing to productivity.
That assumes is a goal in its own sake. I’m making an argument that productivity is a means to an end, not an end itself. It’s similar to the alignment problem of AI.
Put differently, do you think a lower quality of life is a worthwhile tradeoff if it raises productivity? What about the inverse?
Some laws, like those against theft and violence, increase competitiveness. The ideal state has such laws - that establish a free market based on voluntary interaction - and little else. And indeed, states that get closest to this ideal have the best economic growth rates and trends in QoL improvements.
If fact, if you want competitiveness you need to prevent a fully free market.
No matter how many times this is explained, people still continue to make this incredibly simple and enormously consequential mistake.
If we're taking the reductionist view that economic output is the only important measure of society, then people need to understand that means maximizing competition not maximizing a free market.
> And indeed, states that get closest to this ideal have the best economic growth rates and trends in QoL improvements.
Isn't this just a cleverly worded tautology? It's like saying healthy people tend to live longer and happier lives. But is it actionable information? Not really.
Again, I don't see the tautology in my statement, and I know I'm asking for elaboration in good faith, so there's no way I could see it from your perspective.
In what world does competition increase quality of life? Competition results in more misery and less free time as people spend their time and energy trying to out compete one another.
You are conflating lack of regulations with lawlessness. If literal anarchy was the alternative, then you'd have a point.
Anyways, the device in question would simply not have existed if there wasn't for competition. His comment is thus evidence of its content being false.
>>Plenty of nation that are not lawless but are effectively unregulated in the matters being discussed.
I think you have basic misunderstandings of economic concepts and the state of the world economy. Can you provide an example of poorly performing economies which "are not lawless but are effectively unregulated in the matters being discussed"?
You're moving the goalposts, while launching a torrent of insults without provocation.
You wrote:
>>>>How are the citizens in the least regulated doing on that front?
Now you're noting that some countries don't have specific workplace condition mandates. Not having said law doesn't mean they meet the ideals noted, of having laws establishing a free market, while lacking regulations that restrict voluntary exchange. To elaborate: in order to prove classical economists' and libertarians' claims about the free market being optimal are wrong, you'd have to show far more than these cherry-picked examples.
Your argument is sloppy, and when I request for more vigor, you lash out to create a flame war. This is not intellectual or scientific.
I'm absolutely justified in demanding you support your claims with evidence, and your belligerent responses are not justified, no matter how morally superior you believe yourself to be.
Now you're being disingenuous, framing an answer to your explicit query as anything other than that.
You said "Can you provide an example of poorly performing economies which "are not lawless but are effectively unregulated in the matters being discussed"?" And that's what I was replying to.
I provided an entire class of people who are harmed in such nations, of which too many exist.
Just because they don't share your preferences doesn't change the fact they meet the criteria you set forth.
