Presumption

Every day, I see fresh attacks on free markets and capitalism peppering my social media feeds. While many of these posts are “synthetic,” i.e. bots or paid agitators or the like, there remain many that are actual humans who actually believe the foolishness they heard and decided to parrot.

In parallel, I continue to watch the implosion of the Hollywood movie industry, and in particular the wholesale destruction of cash-cow intellectual property (superheroes are at the fore) by woke groupthink and cultural siloing. Both the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Extended Universe have been so tainted by epic flops that I see little chance of recovery, even if the Best-and-Brightest engage in a full retreat from their Mary Sue and Girl-Boss obsession and actually start making movies for the audience that generated those past billions in ticket sales.

There’s a common theme to both these phenomena: a fundamental misunderstanding of market forces. The misunderstanding is born of arrogance, of the idea that smart people can herd the unwashed masses in the direction they desire.