In her Blockchain Chicken Farm, a set of "Stories of Tech in China's Countryside," Xiaowei Wang recounts what they (Wang prefers the "non-gendered" form of address) has seen after exploring and examining how various parts of rural China are faring in the "Internet" age.  Some, they report, have capitalized on the opportunity this "age" presents, and are doing very well financially.  Others continue to be left out of the cultural and economic mainstream.

     I share this not because I wish to evaluate the state of rural China, but rather to consider an observation which Wang makes midway through their text.  “Yet the irony is, freedom will always slip away when grasped too firmly.”  As laissez-faire capitalism, a system which is, in truth, rather Darwinian, continues to capture minds and hearts around the word, we must always ask:  at what price?

     Unfettered and untamed, the laissez-faire marketplace, as a senior partner at the investment firm Goldman Sachs noted recently, makes profit the sole criterion of success.  Profit is the only thing worth pursuing.

     Morality is not the point.

     Is this really what freedom should be?