The government plays both sides of every issue like this for a very important reason. 

Look at the environmental movement. They subsidize solar and they subsidize oil. This means both sides need the subsidy to compete, meaning they need the government. Any new player to the energy space must be better by the entire subsidy and then some, or beg for their own subsidy.

This creates the illusion to each player that they need the government to subsidize them to compete. If forces every player to kiss the ring if they want to stand a chance. It also forces then into a scenario where any anti government action is biting the hand that feeds.

At this point the web of subsidies is so complex, it is impossible for anyone to figure out if solar or oil truly has lower economic costs. That damages every economic calculation by every market participant in a very significant way. Arguably more than the constant adjustments to the money supply. Even with a fixed supply I would gave no idea which is best because of the subsidies.

This leads to a world where when we think we are choosing the best economic value we are really choosing the most favored by the government. 

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 Do you think this happens by design? I get the feeling that subsidies occur because they want to accelerate something temporarily, but then they just kind of get "built in" and never go away. It appears to be  central planning on its face, but is probably more like inheriting stupid bullshit from the past. If you've ever worked in a corporation, this sort of shit is rampant. "Why is this stupid thing like this?" "Because somebody built it 10 years ago and nobody bothered to ask about it for replace it" 🫠  

 Evolution shows that we don't need top down design to get complicated systems that work well together. 

In the same way, I think that every politician acting in their own shortsighted self interest can build an evil larger, more elaborate, and more effective than the sum of their individual corruption.