Net neutrality funder Soros says; traditional free market theory flawed -- how wrong he is...

The USA Today's business section cover story is on George Soros, who is notable here as probably the second biggest funder of net neutrality/information commons causes after Google.

The appropriately skeptical article, by David Lynch, has a second page-headline that sums up George Soros' government-first, economic point-of-view: "Traditional free market theory flawed."

George Soros is really the poster child for net-neutrality-ish thinking, which is that the few, the truly wise, like Mr. Soros, know what is truly best for everyone else -- and that the whole free market concept of accumulating all the actions of all market actors through supply and demand to determine prices or market equilibrium -- is all wrong and a waste of time -- according to Mr. Soros.

• Why include all this riff-raff -- like consumers and businesses -- be free to make constant decisions and adjustments, when the brilliant elite thinkers like Mr. Soros can cut through all the free-market mumbo jumbo and simply tell people what the right economic answers should be to any economic question?  

Just like the Google/Soros astroturf net neutrality army who think they can rename an issue and demagogue it into the mainstream popularity, Mr. Soros now has his very own theory of economics, which he calls "reflexivity" (think knee-jerk-ivity), that Mr. Soros proposes replace current free-market theory and thinking.

• Mr. Soros does not buy the Adam Smith line-of-thinking that markets are composed of rational actors who avail themselves of available information to maximize their individual welfare or profits.
  • Mr. Soros believes that his twenty-year-old "reflexivity theory" is right and that the last two centuries of free market thinking and economic experience -- just got it all wrong.
  • Mr. Soros believes markets are actually driven by passion, bias, and self-reinforcing errors.
    • It isn't uncommon for megalomaniacs to see the world through their own personal lens and bias and then conclude that if others can't see it all as they do, they are wrong or simple-minded.
    • The problem with Mr. Soros' "reflexivity theory" is it is an ego trip wrapped in a personal bias and billions of dollars -- that does not withstand intellectual rigor or "open" critical debate.
      • Reflexivity is simply the classic intellectual mistake that the observed exception -- must of course be the rule -- becuase of the brilliance of who observed it.
    • Mr. Soros has had twenty years, several books, and billions of dollars to hawk this new grand economic theory.
      • The market -- whether it is truly "rational" or "passionate" hasn't bought Mr. Soros' unified economic theory of reflexivity. 
    • Either Mr. Soros is another Einstein, and his insights are beyond all but a handful of minds in the world, or his thinking is simply badly-flawed megalomania that is driven by a personal political agenda  and that does not jive with the way the world really works. 
      • Put me squarely in the second camp. 
    • If Friedrich Hayek, who is widely viewed as one of the greatest free-market economic/political philosophers of the 20th century, reviewed Mr. Soros work, I believe he would eviserate Mr. Soros thinking for being what Mr. Soros thinks the world "should be" not what observation, testing or intellectual rigor would tell us about how the world operates in reality.

Mr. Soros is not the only sloppy thinker pushing quasi-socialist and elitist net neutrality and information commons thinking with billions of dollars in backing.

• Google's prize poodle, Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, was allowed to give a half hour lecture to the FCC in April on net neutrality.  
  • In that lecture, Professor Lessig shared similarly "grandiose theories" to Mr. Soros -- that could not withstand intellectual rigor or challenges on the merits.
  • Here are three blog posts that illuminate the serious flaws in the thinking of probably the main net neutrality theorist in the net neutrality/information commons movement.  
    • "Bringing sunlight to Professor Lessig's Orwellian doublespeak lecture to the FCC." 
    • "Hance Haney finds more Orwellian doublespeak in Lessig's FCC lecture on net neutrality."    
    • "PFF Sydnor brilliantly exposes Lessig's Quasi-socialist Utopianism advancing net neutrality."

Bottom line: Free markets work. And the Internet is the greatest free market success story of all time.

• If you were to listen to Mr. Soros or Professor Lessig, they would tell you free markets don't work. 
  • They argue for their own unified theory of economics and property rights -- neutral reflexivity, or reflexive neutrality -- either way supply and demand, and market participants are no longer needed -- the unified central planning theorists have it all figured out...