Balanced by what standard? Don't really need an answer, most of my posts are just to let other individuals know that at one time there were critical thinkers on HN. I've been downvoted so often for asking questions and answering questions (rather than rambling on through rhetorical platitudes and high-school level history lessons) that I actually take perverse pleasure in seeing how many downvotes I can get.
You're thinking investment markets, not philanthropic giving markets. Any think tank is competitively attempting to gain funds to stay afloat. Some do this by lobbying for grants, some by soliciting private donations. But there's a finite amount of capacity to fund think tanks regardless of the source of income.
Google can certainly find other think tanks they like better.
...and a police force with arrest powers, and corporate compliance offices that follow the letter of the law, and federal investigators that try and parse code...
And once you get big, you can't get any more revenue.
I thought it was clearly stated. It's just not one of those things that adds to the conversation, except perhaps by demonstrating the same principles of the direct action via the downvote. It's so rare I get something I both disagree with and which demonstrates immediately by its subject matter how to deal with it.
To my ear that's like saying evolution cannot sustain itself indefinitely. As long as there are generational selective pressures on imperfect replicators, evolution will continue.
Without a superstructure of omnipresent social domination to hinder or disrupt it, capitalism will be used where countable savings for investment and idea that promising accountable returns find themselves together.
Here's a thought to explain my defense of capitalism: capitalism doesn't cause corruption, but like anything else it is destroyed by corruption. Capitalism is used by the corrupt because it is so good at identifying that which the market values and in delivering it.
Not sure what the subject of that sentence was; it appears to be passive (and actorless) in the first part but the dependent clause (after "then") seems active voice.
What or whom is causing society to go out of its way...? Litigation?
I believe litigation in the United States is based on the idea that access to the courts to redress grievances (against private individuals or public institutions) is fundamental for a civil society. This goes as far as preventing habeas corpus from being suspended in Illinois during the American Civil War as the courts were still in operation, and the "justification" for holding people in Guantanamo. While I have heard the vague generalities of "overreach" and "unconstitutionality" levied against regulation by some opponents, the more nuanced economic argument is that regulation creates barriers to entry, slowness to adapt, and governmental bloat (i.e., bureaucracy which can only be reined in by more bureaucracy). The market solutions to regulation are more properly insurance (by producers) to cover claims and tort constraints. Snowflake society doesn't like calculating the economic (market) value of risk to life or limb, but the truth is that without reasonable tort the economic impact will still be born, but socialized by non-risk takers subsidizing expanding bureaucracies.
Portugal was more concerned with getting trade goods from the far east than trying to build up sub-Saharan Africa for most of it's history. It just so happened that when the Scramble for Africa started, Portugal already had toeholds all along the coast.