That doesn't sound very open-minded. How many great arguments are you ignoring because they don't support larger, more intrusive governments?
The point is, you don't know.
I don't support larger, more intrusive governments. But I think his Twitter example is bad. Twitter has no externalities so it shouldn't need government approval which it actually didn't need. So there was no problem. The only permission needed was from investors who had to cough up the money.
Instead of railing against solar power maybe he should also rail against the massive subsidies the oil industry gets through decades long military intervention in the Middle East and elsewhere. He also doesn't touch more complex areas such as nuclear energy for example. Is it OK for everybody to do "Permissionless Innovation" on reactor designs and from time to time one of them blows up? I hope the author will move close to one of these innovation paradises.
"The only permission [Twitter] needed was from investors who had to cough up the money."
That was his point.
"Instead of railing against solar power..."
Irrelevant what-about-ism.
"Is it OK for everybody to do "Permissionless Innovation" on reactor designs ..."
I will tell you that you don't really understand what the author is saying. But you won't believe that. You will continue to believe the author must be stupid.
He's just pointing out that more innovation happens when people don't have to seek permission (from the government or from other companies) in order to innovate, and uses some examples to illustrate the point.
Twitter is just one valid example among many that have emerged in the internet era; the whole reason we've seen so much innovation in internet-related technologies in the past 20 years is that the innovation could be done without asking anyone's permission.
Concerns are now growing that with Google, Amazon, Facebook etc are becoming such powerful gatekeepers that the freedom to innovate is declining. You'd likely find he'd support government actions to reverse that trend.
There's no grand anti-government agenda in this or any other of Munger's work [1]. As an economist and political scientist, he repeatedly makes the sensible point that government should limit its activities to what helps society and avoid doing things that harm society. Obviously there's vast scope for debate about what that really means, which is why he writes articles like this one, to examine the issues in detail.
On this point:
Instead of railing against solar power maybe he should also rail against the massive subsidies the oil industry gets through decades long military intervention in the Middle East and elsewhere.
He's not railing, just commenting. And in his other work he's extremely critical of the US government's interventions in the Middle East. But this article isn't about that.
[1] He's highly critical of both the Republicans and the Democrats due to their corporate cronyism and militarism, but that's very different to being critical of government altogether.
I am actually quite sympathetic to libertarian thought but I never hear any concrete suggestions for dealing with complex issues like nuclear power safety, pollution (especially toxins where the effect is not that clear), public health, food safety and others.
For example: Innovation in self-driving cars would be much quicker if there was no regulation but how do you balance that against people not wanting to get run over by a car with buggy software? This would be an interesting discussion. Twitter is just a too easy example.
