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Markets and the Journey to Neutrality

TalkNicholas Fett
researcheracademic
Markets and the Journey to Neutrality
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Nicholas Fett traces the history of market neutrality from 1889 Oklahoma land runs and Adam Smith's moral sentiments through Keynes, the Mont Pelerin Society, and into crypto, arguing that protocols designed to be neutral (Bitcoin's decentralization, Ethereum's 'crops' ethos) inevitably get captured by economic incentives like mining and block-builder centralization. He uses the 'tunnel' and 'one more lane' analogies to argue that building for neutral principles without a defined societal goal leads to outcomes divorced from original intentions, and that protocol designers must instead encode explicit purpose rather than chase an unattainable neutral equilibrium.

Topics

goodharts-law-and-metric-optimizationgovernancehistorical-political-economy-of-distribution-homesteadingmarket-neutrality-vs-purposeminingblock-builder-centralizationprotocol-captureprotocolsresearchsymposium-2026technology

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