Statism

“State-directed” is a vague term since it could mean:

1. Total statist capture where downstream markets aren’t formed, killing long-term sustainability for short-term growth

2. Balanced directive of private sectors within a state-mandated direction

Your average statist (leftists & other anti free-market folks) would use Tony Annet’s rhetoric which borrows from these misconceptions:

1. There’s no clean line in what “state-directed” is; any successful statist project gets falsely attributed to the “strengths” of total statism. The continuum fallacy is committed as a result; the spectrum of free-market aspects is overlooked since it can’t be pinpointed (for them).

2. The “Tangibility Effect”; a psychological phenomenon where concrete things have a stronger influence than abstract things. Statists suffer from this effect & it reflects in their imageries of industrialism (Soviet/Chinese factories, etc etc); the visuals of state-directed policies manifested quick.

The idea that nth-order markets can only emerge from freer markets & are thus needed seems too abstract for them. It’s an idea even a lot of “economists” aren’t aware of, if not explicitly.

You can’t call statist-capture of sectors a “success” if there aren’t nth-order downstreams to feed into the main market.

It’s like murdering the organisms in a garden & wondering why the plants can’t grow beyond a certain length.

Statism can make you fall for the Tangibility Effect. You don’t need to understand systems beyond the retarded “state-directed” rhetoric if you’re a statist; you just need to appeal to human’s biases toward concrete things rather than abstract thought. You just show them industrial aesthetics & they’ll regurgitate that stupid rhetoric for free.