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There are areas of life where no such thing as the good old times exists.
The IT sector seems to be such a field.
If you do not put restrictions on human curiosity and creativity, the natural thing happens: continual change and progress.
Man is a natural innovator. Transforming the world is an anthropological constant, a fundamental need inextricably tied to the human condition.
Liberty is about ensuring conditions that allow man to act out this natural human need. Liberty is about making sure that government facilitates this human propensity rather than hindering it. Obstructing the drive to change our world is a way of dehumanising men.
See also Greed versus Self-Interest, where I argue
that man must and ought to strive for ever growing wealth. If this desire for more wealth is crudely equated with greed (which is silly) then greed is morally desirable - as one might argue for rhetorical effect, while correctly speaking greed is bad, of course, and self-interest good in the above sense. In fact, what is bad about greed is that it represents an overdoing, a transgression of the right measure of something, an excess beyond the harmless or wholesome, whereas an excess of self-interest does not make conceptual sense as defined above, since it would imply a violation of self-interest by self-interest.
The crux: the way in which human beings adapt to their environment is by having and satisfying desires/needs. The greater the variety, variability and degree of differentiation of a specie's ability to have and satisfy needs/desires, the greater its ability to fit successfully with the wider environment. So the ability to constantly renew, extend and grow this ability is key to survival and advancement.
Now, what is wealth? Wealth consists of things and practices that enable man to satisfy his desires/needs. Hence, if an open-ended development of desires is an anthropological sine qua non and the key to continuous successful adaptation to a changing and changed environment, then incessantly growing wealth is just as important.
See also The Courage to Think, and The Amazing Julian Simon (1/3).
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