BAN GARLIC

[Coreece 189]

6 hours ago, kallend said:

We know there are people who struggle with mental illness in every country on Earth, just as there are men prone to violence against their wives,  men who get fired from their jobs,  and immature men who can't tell fantasy video games from reality. We know that what makes the USA different is absurdly easy access to guns. 

From your article:

In order to solve the mass shooting crisis in the US, Combs said the public needs to better understand the nature of the problem.

"There isn't one problem, there isn't one thing that's going to fix this, but I wish we could have honest conversation with each other about all the facets that go into this," he said.

[billvon 2,380]

3 hours ago, Coreece said:

From your article:

In order to solve the mass shooting crisis in the US, Combs said the public needs to better understand the nature of the problem.

"There isn't one problem, there isn't one thing that's going to fix this, but I wish we could have honest conversation with each other about all the facets that go into this," he said.

That's an excellent point.  Which is why it's so frustrating to see some very promising solutions (not just gun control) stymied by "well, you can't do anything about it - other than add more guns.  Because freedom."

[ibx 2]

13 hours ago, mbohu said:

Yes, I understand that you may read it that way, because at first it sounds somewhat anti-capitalist (since he is looking at the system from the outside and is pointing out the big problems it is facing) and we are so stuck in our thinking that we immediately assume he must therefore then be for the anthithesis of this system (i.e. "planned economy", communism, etc.)
But this is not at all what it is about. If anything--in regards to valuation--the article points towards expanding the valuation into ALL areas and one of the problems he looks at is, that valuation currently only includes "extractable" simple (or complicated) value and leaves intrinsic (complex) value off the balance sheet:

"An economic system that only recognizes extractable and accumulatable wealth. Where nature (the commons) doesn’t have a balance sheet. So unlike interactions with other economic actors that also have balance sheets, interactions with nature don’t have to be equitable, don’t require consent, and don’t require the ledger to balance. "

 

It' trivial to criticize any system form the outside while ignoring why this system is in place and secondly what makes it successful in the first place. 

The solutions he provides are simply incompatible with market dynamics, like the valuation example. Doing this would require a massive infringement on the valuation model the economy which would be impossible to achieve w/o a " Top down planned market economy". Take a very simple example:

Indonesia clears the rain forest for palm oil plantations. This is of course bad for nature, but good for the local and global economy. How would go about quantifying the damage done to the rain forest? And would this "number" have to be equal for all rain forests? And how would you go about explaining to the Indonesian people that have to remain poor because the rain forest has some intrinsic value decided by, well who would decide that? 

His ideas are utopian und completely unrealistic, don't seem thought out in any considerable way, which also explains his web design from 1995. 

 

 

 

 

[mbohu 77]

On 9/3/2019 at 12:54 AM, ibx said:

The solutions he provides are simply incompatible with market dynamics, like the valuation example. Doing this would require a massive infringement on the valuation model the economy

I know, we should probably take this to a separate thread--but I guess in this part of the forum there really aren't any rules about this, so:  

There is this myth that somehow "market dynamics" (meaning the CURRENT system of international markets, including financial systems, fiat currency, international trade laws, etc) are a natural system that does not require huge interventions and a massive system of laws and rules in order to function the way it does. And then everything else (=different rules) is seen as unnatural and artificial--but this is a huge mischaracterization. Here is an example, from the industry I was in myself, and where I owned and ran a company with international reach:

If "market dynamics" were really working on their own, the entire software industry would be completely non-existent. The current economical system is built entirely on the idea of scarcity, and for anything to have any value in it, it MUST be scarce. If it is not scarce, it must be artificially made to behave as if it was. Software is infinitely reproducible with minimal cost, and can therefore be only made "valuable" in the current system, by artificially curbing this feature (which otherwise should be an absolute boon to us.)

This is only one example where the current system already requires a tremendous top-down intervention to make it work. (=laws that make something that easily could be had almost for free by everyone, artificially scarce, so it can have value in the current system.) So it would be easy to argue, if you do have ANY such intervention, at least it should be the kind of intervention that has outcomes that are positive for the whole, and not ones that are counter-productive (If our "team"--i.e. humanity--were competing against another outside team and instituted rules that artificially limited our team's access to freely abundant resources, the other team would surely laugh it's head off, and would out-compete us in no time.)

On 9/3/2019 at 12:54 AM, ibx said:

It' trivial to criticize any system form the outside while ignoring why this system is in place and secondly what makes it successful in the first place.

I think my previous comment made clear that this doesn't seem to be the case here. I would see his attempt at thinking about complete structural change of the system, as similar to what we did in the software industry: When we had a current version of a software program (let's say version 2.1), we would have a team that focused on minor updates to the software, to fix urgent minor bugs and maybe extend its functionality a little within the context of the current system. They would be working on the next 2.x release version and would be able to do these updates in relatively quick timeframes.
However, at some point, when limitations that were systemic to the current version became apparent, we would have a second team work in parallel to the first team, to envision a completely new version (3.x) which would eventually replace the old major version and may be built from the ground up without the limitations of 2.x. 
This is what I think he is doing here. It does not mean, minor updates to the current system don't have to continue, and it does not mean version 2.x wasn't a great step and wasn't better than whatever came before. (i.e. version 1.x)

On 9/3/2019 at 12:54 AM, ibx said:

which would be impossible to achieve w/o a " Top down planned market economy"

Here I disagree that it would be impossible. I do agree, however, that a " Top down planned market economy" is not what we want by a long shot. We already know that this is a dead-end approach that could not even compete with our current system. (It really just was a slightly modified version of the current system anyway)

From what I understand, Daniel is instead looking at systems that simply could naturally out-compete the current system*), while at the same time obsoleting (the destructive kind of) competition within the system, as well as fragility, open loops that lead to exponential growth which leads to collapse, and some other features. Does such a system exist? We probably don't know for sure yet, but there are pointers in a direction that we may look into (which he discusses in other places) and the articles I linked to mainly describe some "design constraints" that such a system would have to have.
 

)* footnote: If you look at history, it was always the case that a new system was implemented or outlived an old system, because it simply out-competed it. Modern economics and democracy did not win over feudalism and monarchies, because they were forced upon us via a top-down approach, but simply because they were so much more powerful and effective that they simply outcompeted their predecessors. I think it is naive to think that the current iteration of our economic system is the last one and will not eventually be replaced by something significantly different. What may be unique right now is, that in spite of its incredible power (to lift millions out of poverty, for one thing), there are some design-problems that are now becoming apparent that put the current system on a path to likely total collapse at some point. This is something that sooner or later will have to be addressed. I, for one, am glad that some people are applying their minds to that issue.

[yoink 321]

3 hours ago, mbohu said:

. The current economical system is built entirely on the idea of scarcity, and for anything to have any value in it, it MUST be scarce. If it is not scarce, it must be artificially made to behave as if it was. Software is infinitely reproducible with minimal cost, and can therefore be only made "valuable" in the current system, by artificially curbing this feature (which otherwise should be an absolute boon to us.)

This is such an oversimplification. You're completely neglecting the differentiation of material vs sunk costs vs proprietary intellectual property.

You're not paying for the physical representation of software because it's digital in the same way you'd pay for a commodity like grain. It has no form (unless you're talking about hard media), but you DO still need to pay for the costs to develop it - The tens of thousands of man hours that has gone into developing and testing. And THEN you're paying for the convenience of it existing at all.

I'm not sure what company you ran where you could zero out the cost of software due to its digital nature, unless you were pirating everything or using freeware exclusively, and even then you have indirect costs associated with maintaining those systems.

 

To basically say 'software can be infinitely reproduced with no cost and as such should be infinitely cheap unless an external force is applied' (which is what I think you're saying) is to completely neglect how software is developed, maintained and delivered. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to say?

 

 

Edited September 7, 2019 by yoink

[mbohu 77]

3 hours ago, yoink said:

To basically say 'software can be infinitely reproduced with no cost and as such should be infinitely cheap unless an external force is applied' (which is what I think you're saying) is to completely neglect how software is developed, maintained and delivered. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to say?

Well, yes, I think you are misunderstanding the context a bit. I was comparing 2 cases where an external force (law) is required to make the cost/value calculation work within the current system, and I am saying that in one case we have no problem to apply this outer corrective force, but in the other this is seen as a thing that must never be done and would be antithetical to "market forces".
 

Case 1: Software, or any kind of intellectual property; Like you said, in order to pay for the value (of development, etc) you have to make the copying illegal and set up penalties for it. So you are applying laws on top of "market forces" to make this work.

Case 2: Externalized costs; or let's call it nature's balance sheet. When you extract public water to bottle it or burn down an old growth forest or dragnet fish out an entire area of an ocean, you would--in order to account for the tremendous value that you destroy for nature (or the commons, or future generations, or the ecosystem that we depend on for our survival)--normally have to pay for that in appropriate relation for the tremendous value you obliterate. However, this can only be achieved via an external force (laws) that make you pay for this value as "nature" or "future generations" do not get to keep a balance sheet. This intervention was however seen as "against market forces", by ibx. 

Personally, I am interested in systems that have internal mechanisms for both cases and for mechanisms that take the best outcome for the individuals (companies, etc) involved in the transactions, but also the best outcome for the whole into account. I believe that this is possible, and is possible without compromising either.
However, in the current system, if an external mechanism is appropriate for case 1, then it should be considered just as appropriate for case 2.

I hope that clears that up a bit.

[kallend 1,621]

In how many other western nations is it thought necessary to design schools to thwart active shooters?

https://www.mlive.com/news/2019/09/48m-michigan-high-school-designed-to-thwart-active-shooters.html?fbclid=IwAR3bQvF3uqdzvKJ9nRkGTSJOkr-PCfs0MkLhF9dlFAQ4c5NzUfF93xfYtQ8

[gowlerk 1,903]

15 minutes ago, kallend said:

In how many other western nations is it thought necessary to design schools to thwart active shooters?

https://www.mlive.com/news/2019/09/48m-michigan-high-school-designed-to-thwart-active-shooters.html?fbclid=IwAR3bQvF3uqdzvKJ9nRkGTSJOkr-PCfs0MkLhF9dlFAQ4c5NzUfF93xfYtQ8

n=0 professor?

[ibx 2]

On 9/6/2019 at 10:31 PM, mbohu said:

I know, we should probably take this to a separate thread--but I guess in this part of the forum there really aren't any rules about this, so:  

There is this myth that somehow "market dynamics" (meaning the CURRENT system of international markets, including financial systems, fiat currency, international trade laws, etc) are a natural system that does not require huge interventions and a massive system of laws and rules in order to function the way it does. And then everything else (=different rules) is seen as unnatural and artificial--but this is a huge mischaracterization. Here is an example, from the industry I was in myself, and where I owned and ran a company with international reach:

This is of course vastly simplified like Yoink already said. And a big factor of why your Ideas are naive at best. You simply fail to understand why the market today works as it does. No software industry would exist if one could not recoup the cost of development. Also I think you simply fail to understand that the initial price is set by the producer any producer must also have the right to determin the price because he knows best what the investment was, intervening  in this would be, you guessed it, a planned market economy. The artificial scarcity is super important to make anything digital profitable and thus sustainable. Today this accounts for pretty much any form of information. 

On 9/6/2019 at 10:31 PM, mbohu said:

This is only one example where the current system already requires a tremendous top-down intervention to make it work. (=laws that make something that easily could be had almost for free by everyone, artificially scarce, so it can have value in the current system.) So it would be easy to argue, if you do have ANY such intervention, at least it should be the kind of intervention that has outcomes that are positive for the whole, and not ones that are counter-productive

(If our "team"--i.e. humanity--were competing against another outside team and instituted rules that artificially limited our team's access to freely abundant resources, the other team would surely laugh it's head off, and would out-compete us in no time.)

Yeah... Only we don't have outside teams. We are not competing with aliens but one another. This again reads like some communist fantasy where the proletariat unites. Where do you think the incentive comes from to out compete somebody? and would people still even be motivated to create great things without reward that you want to take from them since, they must now freely share their products. You see where this is a major reason for the failure of planned economies? This idea alone should prove to you what you are talking about here. 

Like communists you are completely ignoring human nature and so are bound to fail. 

 

On 9/6/2019 at 10:31 PM, mbohu said:

I think my previous comment made clear that this doesn't seem to be the case here. I would see his attempt at thinking about complete structural change of the system, as similar to what we did in the software industry: When we had a current version of a software program (let's say version 2.1), we would have a team that focused on minor updates to the software, to fix urgent minor bugs and maybe extend its functionality a little within the context of the current system. They would be working on the next 2.x release version and would be able to do these updates in relatively quick timeframes.
However, at some point, when limitations that were systemic to the current version became apparent, we would have a second team work in parallel to the first team, to envision a completely new version (3.x) which would eventually replace the old major version and may be built from the ground up without the limitations of 2.x. 
This is what I think he is doing here. It does not mean, minor updates to the current system don't have to continue, and it does not mean version 2.x wasn't a great step and wasn't better than whatever came before. (i.e. version 1.x)

So you think you can design a working Economy like a software product? You gonna revise the system in sprints? What specs are you gonna base your economies success on? This does sound suspiciously like a planned economy, don't you think?  

On 9/6/2019 at 10:31 PM, mbohu said:

Here I disagree that it would be impossible. I do agree, however, that a " Top down planned market economy" is not what we want by a long shot. We already know that this is a dead-end approach that could not even compete with our current system. (It really just was a slightly modified version of the current system anyway)

Then why do you think you can design an economy like a software product? Hubris at it's best. I suggest you read a little bit of history to understand how the current economy developed and why this a major reason for it's success and sustainability. 

On 9/6/2019 at 10:31 PM, mbohu said:

From what I understand, Daniel is instead looking at systems that simply could naturally out-compete the current system*), while at the same time obsoleting (the destructive kind of) competition within the system, as well as fragility, open loops that lead to exponential growth which leads to collapse, and some other features. Does such a system exist? We probably don't know for sure yet, but there are pointers in a direction that we may look into (which he discusses in other places) and the articles I linked to mainly describe some "design constraints" that such a system would have to have.

Naturally out compete a system, that more or less shits on the environment, shits on human capital and maximizes profits over anything else? 

Your're gonna have to change metrics by which you measure success, and as soon as you do that, any bloody system can out compete any other because the everybody is setting their own goal posts... 

 

On 9/6/2019 at 10:31 PM, mbohu said:

)* footnote: If you look at history, it was always the case that a new system was implemented or outlived an old system, because it simply out-competed it. Modern economics and democracy did not win over feudalism and monarchies, because they were forced upon us via a top-down approach, but simply because they were so much more powerful and effective that they simply outcompeted their predecessors. I think it is naive to think that the current iteration of our economic system is the last one and will not eventually be replaced by something significantly different. What may be unique right now is, that in spite of its incredible power (to lift millions out of poverty, for one thing), there are some design-problems that are now becoming apparent that put the current system on a path to likely total collapse at some point. This is something that sooner or later will have to be addressed. I, for one, am glad that some people are applying their minds to that issue.

It's too bad that the ideas offered here are completely void of reality and many of these ideas have been tried and failed spectacularly. 

 

 

[jakee 1,254]

3 hours ago, ibx said:

This is of course vastly simplified like Yoink already said. And a big factor of why your Ideas are naive at best. You simply fail to understand why the market today works as it does. No software industry would exist if one could not recoup the cost of development. Also I think you simply fail to understand that the initial price is set by the producer any producer must also have the right to determin the price because he knows best what the investment was, intervening  in this would be, you guessed it, a planned market economy. 

I don't think you understand what he's saying. There is absolutely no reason to assume that he doesn't understand why the software market works the way it does. He's simply saying it isn't a natural system that works purely as a result of its own inherent dynamics.

 

Software may not be the best example because of copy protection, but wht about the entire patent system? Once an idea exists, in a pure free market success would come to whoever can understand and implement it the best. In our market you have to pay to be able to do that. It's an external notion of fairness that has been artificially imposed upon the entire market system. Point is you can't dismiss any other idea simply because it restricts pure market freedom, because the pure free market is a myth.

[ibx 2]

15 minutes ago, jakee said:

I don't think you understand what he's saying. There is absolutely no reason to assume that he doesn't understand why the software market works the way it does. He's simply saying it isn't a natural system that works purely as a result of its own inherent dynamics.

We don't have a single natural system that works on pure market dynamics. That is exactly what I mean by the way our market developed, it started out very free and was continually adapted to emerging technologies and negative market forces. Anti trust for example is a necessary system to ensure the further existence of the free market. Mbohu seems to think you can develop a new market system from the ground up which is in some way superior to one that evolved over 350 years or so. That idea is especially insane when one wants to use the same metrics for success, in this case profit. 

15 minutes ago, jakee said:

 

Software may not be the best example because of copy protection, but wht about the entire patent system? Once an idea exists, in a pure free market success would come to whoever can understand and implement it the best. In our market you have to pay to be able to do that. It's an external notion of fairness that has been artificially imposed upon the entire market system. Point is you can't dismiss any other idea simply because it restricts pure market freedom, because the pure free market is a myth.

>Point is you can't dismiss any other idea simply because it restricts pure market freedom, because the pure free market is a myth. 

I don't think I am. I am however very skeptical of proposed systems that were developed and not evolved. 

See my Anti Trust example above. I am also for lots of redistribution which inherently limits the free market but is necessary for people to not die in the streets. 

When reading the examples of a new proposed market system, that contains for example the valuation of things that cannot be traded, I must call bullshit and also question the basic economic understanding of someone proposing those ideas. 

 

[jakee 1,254]

5 minutes ago, ibx said:

>Point is you can't dismiss any other idea simply because it restricts pure market freedom, because the pure free market is a myth. 

I don't think I am.

I didn't say you were. I'm saying that's his point, it's logically coherent, and doesn't require any assumption on the part of the reader that he doesn't understand how software development works.

[ibx 2]

8 minutes ago, jakee said:

I didn't say you were. I'm saying that's his point, it's logically coherent, and doesn't require any assumption on the part of the reader that he doesn't understand how software development works.

Maybe... but then as you said, software development is a terrible analogy. But after reading mbohus comments again in case I missed something I still think he lacks a basic understanding of why things are as they are. Why else invoke sw development as an example when there are much more obvious ones like anti trust, or the existence of reserve banks. Redistribution already does what he wants without some utilitarian dictatorship meddling in the market. 

[billvon 2,380]

2 hours ago, ibx said:

I don't think I am. I am however very skeptical of proposed systems that were developed and not evolved. 

Evolution only preserves the thing itself (the organism, the economic system etc.)  Many government services, for example, evolve over time into structures capable of protecting themselves.  This is definitely not the same as evolving into a better service.

In addition, there are bottlenecks in evolution.  No large organism has ever evolved wheels, for example, because the jump from legs to wheels is too much of a jump to make incrementally.  You can't start with a leg and end up with a wheel.  If you want a wheel you have to develop it.

[mbohu 77]

3 hours ago, jakee said:

I don't think you understand what he's saying. There is absolutely no reason to assume that he doesn't understand why the software market works the way it does. He's simply saying it isn't a natural system that works purely as a result of its own inherent dynamics.

Thanks.  Yes. 

3 hours ago, ibx said:

Mbohu seems to think you can develop a new market system from the ground up which is in some way superior to one that evolved over 350 years or so.

If you look at the history of philosophy, you will notice that at the time when our current system started evolving, there were many thinkers who thought up pretty much every element of the system long before it was implemented. Not only that, they thought about the underlying psychology and some of the very ideas that our system is based upon: Most of the arguments you are using now have their roots in the thinking of these philosophers and they were completely new, crazy ideas, that the current establishment at the time dismissed with the same force as you are now dismissing newer ideas. Some aspects of our system may have evolved slightly different than they thought it up, but you can see pretty much every idea the system is based on, in the thoughts of these philosophers. 

 

1 hour ago, billvon said:

In addition, there are bottlenecks in evolution.  No large organism has ever evolved wheels, for example, because the jump from legs to wheels is too much of a jump to make incrementally.  You can't start with a leg and end up with a wheel.  If you want a wheel you have to develop it.

Yes, and I would say, in the case of the human race, our ability to think and create is part of the evolutionary force, so the very distinction of "naturally evolved" versus "created" becomes almost meaningless.

 

7 hours ago, ibx said:

Yeah... Only we don't have outside teams.

Hurricanes, global warming, poverty, hunger, disease, natural resource depletion, meteorites, people getting killed in mass shootings (to at least mention the original topic)...there are plenty of "outside teams" that we are playing and wanting to win against.

 

7 hours ago, ibx said:

Naturally out compete a system, that more or less shits on the environment, shits on human capital and maximizes profits over anything else? 

Your're gonna have to change metrics by which you measure success, and as soon as you do that, any bloody system can out compete any other because the everybody is setting their own goal posts... 

Except for your very last conclusion here, this is very much what I am saying. There are inherent problems with a system that not only maximizes profit over anything else, but that is also set up to reward this behavior and encodes it in law (corporations in the US are by law required to ONLY consider shareholder value in their decisions. They can actually be sued if they prioritize something else over it.)
So, if there is an inherent problem in the incentives of the system, one option is to then make laws that limit or try to balance this out--that is certainly necessary right now, but it is a half-measure and people will always find ways to work around it. It's also a bit incoherent from a logical point of view. When the European Union (as the US usually doesn't even try to balance these things out) sues Microsoft or Google over some anti-trust related issue it's a bit like saying: You should be as successful and profit-oriented as possible, except if you get too good at it. Then we have to reign you in. (I know that's not how they say it, but in essence it is something like that. Same with "insider trading". You should use all the information you have to out-gamble everyone else, but if you do it too well--by gaining access to information others don't have--then it's illegal)

I think it is worthwhile to think about what it would be like to have a system that is not based on rewarding short-term maximizing of personal profit. If the argument is that this is not possible and cannot be done because of "human nature", I would argue that first "human nature" is not independent of the systems in which it grows up, and second, that there have been many working systems before this one, that did not rely on "profit maximization" as their main driving force.

Safety in and acceptance by the tribe, goodness in the eyes of God (or an imagined god), social standing; these all were the basis of older systems, before "profit" became the primary driving force. They all were grounded in human nature. IMPORTANT: I am in no way suggesting that any of these were better or that we should go back to older systems, but it does allow us to think about what may be NEXT without having to be so limited by our current system that we believe it is the only one in tune with human nature and is the only naturally evolved system.

[ibx 2]

19 hours ago, mbohu said:

23 hours ago, jakee said:

I don't think you understand what he's saying. There is absolutely no reason to assume that he doesn't understand why the software market works the way it does. He's simply saying it isn't a natural system that works purely as a result of its own inherent dynamics.

Thanks.  Yes. 

Where he is wrong in the way, that the system was not designed. I will not use word evolved because billvon will take offense. But the system grew and was,is adapted to the current zeitgeist. It is impossible to design a system with the inherent complexity of the world. We don't even completely understand the current system. Otherwise making money at the stock exchange would be much easier. 

Quote

23 hours ago, ibx said:

Mbohu seems to think you can develop a new market system from the ground up which is in some way superior to one that evolved over 350 years or so.

If you look at the history of philosophy, you will notice that at the time when our current system started evolving, there were many thinkers who thought up pretty much every element of the system long before it was implemented.

I would really like a citation for that. Keynes and Smith described an already established system. If you are talking about social contract theory, that could lead a free market economy but does not directly describe it... 

I would honestly be interested in those philosophers you speak of. 

 

19 hours ago, mbohu said:

I think it is worthwhile to think about what it would be like to have a system that is not based on rewarding short-term maximizing of personal profit. If the argument is that this is not possible and cannot be done because of "human nature", I would argue that first "human nature" is not independent of the systems in which it grows up, and second, that there have been many working systems before this one, that did not rely on "profit maximization" as their main driving force.

And here I think you have summarized the fault in your thoughts. 

Nature, including human nature was always about maximizing profits to ultimately have a better chance to reproduce. Just change the word profit to resources. Profit/money is only an abstraction for resources and the access to them that we humans invented to make trade simpler and to make quantification of resources comparable. Most of what happens in nature is to maximize access to resources. Like a wolf protecting it's territory for example or a seed flying a large distance. The ultimate driving factor is of course sex->reproduction, that's why woman for a long time where treated as resources, this is sadly still true today for some cultures (ISIS sex slavery). The Taliban not allowing woman to go to school are the effects of that thinking. 

Looking through all of history almost every conflict was fought over resources or the access to them and this is true until today(more resources = more woman, more sex, more babies and better chance of them surviving). So I would argue that "profit maximization" is integral to human nature and there was never a successful system where this was not the case. I would challenge you to name a single successful society in all of history where resource access/profit maximization was not the priority. 

Capitalism gave humanity a more successful way for more people to access more resources. Wars are expensive, trade is simply more effective at resource distribution, that is why it is the dominant system today.

All attempts to change this system have failed since they ignore human nature. 

This is of course simplified, but it's the gist of why I think you are wrong. 

I also apologize for my tone on the last posts.... I hope we can continue this discussion. 

Edited September 10, 2019 by ibx

[jakee 1,254]

What is a successful society?

[mbohu 77]

8 hours ago, ibx said:

I would really like a citation for that. Keynes and Smith described an already established system.

I would argue that this is not entirely true. They took some elements of what they saw in the established system and emphasized them and developed them further (even turned things into "principles" and "truths" that were not obviously so, which you can see if you look at others who strongly disagreed with them at the time) and so they set directions for the system to evolve.

I have to admit, I am too lazy to look for quotes from philosophers who preceded them (mostly because the main work on the history of Philosophy I recently read is from Richard David Precht and he writes in German) but Keynes and Smith were preceded by other philosophers who developed some of the basis of their thinking: David Hume-John Locke-Robert Boyle-Isaac Newton (and others had very different ideas: Immanuel Kant for example) So, maybe we can say that as far as humans go there is always a feedback loop between development of thought (sometimes pure thought without much regard to its practicability) and action in the physical realm. So again, it is very worthwhile to THINK about alternatives, even if at the time you do not know how to IMPLEMENT them.

8 hours ago, ibx said:

Nature, including human nature was always about maximizing profits to ultimately have a better chance to reproduce. Just change the word profit to resources. Profit/money is only an abstraction for resources and the access to them that we humans invented to make trade simpler and to make quantification of resources comparable.

Yes, but there are a number of points here:

1. This sounds a little bit like the idea based on "social darwinism" (correct me if I misinterpret you there) and the way I read that, this is really something that has been disproven pretty thoroughly by now. Even Darwin thought that competition was only one minor part of the evolutionary drive and gave much more importance to cooperation. It is easy to see that, if you just look at nature. Many of the most successful species are ones that display a tremendous amount of cooperation (alongside some competition) This actually is another sign to me how our system grew out of a specific philosophy of the time of Smith (and before) when there was a conflict between the ideas of the (mostly British) empiricists and the (mostly German) idealists. As far as economic systems are concerned, the Brits won out.

2. The main issue is not "profit" or resource maximization. The systemic issues I see are threefold:
a. The incentives in the system are skewed to rewarding individual profit without regard to profit for the whole. If you study a bit of game theory you will see that systems that are set up this way (simple example would be the prisoner's dilemma) will always result in solutions that are sub-optimal. The outcome this system can produce is always worse than the best possible outcome within the system--and even that best possible outcome is worse than the best possible outcome in a system that is set up to reward profit for individuals that also maximizes profit for the whole.--see EDIT BELOW!
(I know, the idea of social darwinism is that there is no "natural" system that can maximize profit for the individual and the whole. "win-win-win" scenarios are idealistic ideas of hippies that have no practical value. I disagree, and many system-thinkers do so as well.)
b. While money was originally designed as a medium of exchange representing real value (things, services, etc) it has been so decoupled from that value (financial sector, derivatives, derivatives of derivatives) that the smallest amount of interactions in the world are still representing any of that real value. If you want to make REAL money, you will not focus on activities that provide real value in the physical world. The incentives are to focus on activities that trade various abstract representations (currencies, stocks, derivatives, futures, even real estate but used only as an abstract symbol that does not maximize the utility of said real estate in the real world). 
c. With an abstract medium to measure value (money) you run into the problem that it only measures a certain KIND of value and leaves many other kinds of value (resources!) out. We looked at this before but: The tree that provides tremendous value for the forest, the animals around it, the humans that breathe the oxygen it produces, etc, etc. has NO money-value as long as it stands in the forest (as this cannot be measured easily) but has very specific value once it is cut down and turned into lumber. Now it has value for ONE person only, but that value can easily be quantified in Dollars. (What's important to me here is that the person who cuts down the tree is not a "bad" or "immoral" person. He is a person that acts in accordance to the incentives of the system. If he wasn't doing that he would be a looser in the system, which also means he would have less and less resources and power within the system, making his "morality" and "goodness" irrelevant--because it has no power to change anything.)

All this together provides certain incentives for action. People who listen to these incentives will be successful in the system. Those who don't will fail.
The problem is that many systems thinkers, when they project this out, come to the conclusion that a system with these parameters will eventually self-terminate. Cancer is an often used example: When a cell stops to be connected to other cells (in its function and purpose) and starts working only for its own reproduction and benefit it becomes a cancer cell. Initially it benefits and reproduces its genetic code exponentially, outcompeting all the other cells around it. So it "wins" temporarily. However, eventually it kills the entire organism that it depends upon for its survival and self-terminates. So in the end it looses.
One can argue that it is in the nature of the cell to only look out for its own benefit--but that isn't true for healthy cells. They look out for their own benefit, but in a way that also benefits the whole. And in the end this is the more successful strategy...and it is also the more natural one, I'd argue.

So these are arguments, why it would be useful to think about systems that are not self-terminating and yet have a relationship to our "nature" (keeping in mind that our "nature" is as much influenced by the system we grow up in, as it influences that system)

Now: You may be right that we have no idea how to IMPLEMENT such a system, if we ever came up with it, given that we already know that "planned economy" does not work. But to me that is no reason not to think about the implications of systems (and especially the implication of self-termination). Fortunately the people, whose thoughts around this I like, are very clear on the fact that implementation can never be a "planned/forced" process (for many reasons) and are also generally clear on the fact that such a system can actually not be "designed" in the sense that it can be written down as a set of unchanging rules that are THE BEST rules. They are clear that it will have to emerge naturally, but there will be some features that may have to be "artificially" implemented (the step from legs to wheels, because there is no natural intermediate step) and some features can only be striven towards (in the sense of steering into a direction) and others again, will have to surprisingly emerge on their own.

EDIT: The important thing to know about these game theory examples is that the preferred outcome of such games is not just sub-optimal for the WHOLE but is also sub-optimal for the INDIVIDUALS in the game, even though they each strive to maximize their own benefit. They each loose out, compared to what they could have gotten.

Edited September 10, 2019 by mbohu

[wmw999 2,116]

Wonderful, wonderful, post. Worth every second of reading it. 

Wendy P. 

[billvon 2,380]

8 hours ago, ibx said:

 Capitalism gave humanity a more successful way for more people to access more resources. Wars are expensive, trade is simply more effective at resource distribution, that is why it is the dominant system today.  All attempts to change this system have failed since they ignore human nature. 

I disagree.  Capitalism has changed dramatically over the years.  We now have societal organizations that attempt (and often succeed) to mitigate the anti-social effects capitalism has.  They have worked.  It stands to reason that in the future, other mitigations will work as well.

 

[ibx 2]

13 hours ago, mbohu said:

This sounds a little bit like the idea based on "social darwinism" (correct me if I misinterpret you there) and the way I read that, this is really something that has been disproven pretty thoroughly by now. Even Darwin thought that competition was only one minor part of the evolutionary drive and gave much more importance to cooperation.

you do misinterpret me. I am not talking about social Darwinism. I am trying to talk about why the world is how it is and why you are bound to fail with your ideas because they ignore history and why things are as they are. 

I think competition/cooperation needs more nuance. It's not one or the other but a combination of both. Technology moves quickest during times of war with is nothing but a fight over resources.  So competition is a major driver for (technological) progress. Yet people in competing groups work together and cooperate to make it happen and they do this because they are competing for resources. 

13 hours ago, mbohu said:

Many of the most successful species are ones that display a tremendous amount of cooperation (alongside some competition) This actually is another sign to me how our system grew out of a specific philosophy of the time of Smith (and before) when there was a conflict between the ideas of the (mostly British) empiricists and the (mostly German) idealists. As far as economic systems are concerned, the Brits won out.

I agree, species work together to further their own survival in a world with limited resources competing against other species for the same resources. You already mentioned Darwin, then you know the most successful species are the ones that have found a niche. I also don't know where in my text I said anything that makes you think I am against cooperation... What do you think trade is? 

13 hours ago, mbohu said:

The incentives in the system are skewed to rewarding individual profit without regard to profit for the whole. If you study a bit of game theory you will see that systems that are set up this way (simple example would be the prisoner's dilemma) will always result in solutions that are sub-optimal. The outcome this system can produce is always worse than the best possible outcome within the system--and even that best possible outcome is worse than the best possible outcome in a system that is set up to reward profit for individuals that also maximizes profit for the whole.--see EDIT BELOW!(I know, the idea of social darwinism is that there is no "natural" system that can maximize profit for the individual and the whole. "win-win-win" scenarios are idealistic ideas of hippies that have no practical value. I disagree, and many system-thinkers do so as well.)

I agree that the incentives are skewed, yet it's exactly these incentives that make capitalism so successful. There was a political system tried  where people where incentivised to work for whole. Where there were supposed to be no class differences and so on. Remember what happened to that? 

I do think there is a more or less optimal system. It's called social market democracy and it works really well in Europe. The debate is always around the amount of redistribution which has to be constantly adapted to changing circumstances. 

14 hours ago, mbohu said:

While money was originally designed as a medium of exchange representing real value (things, services, etc) it has been so decoupled from that value (financial sector, derivatives, derivatives of derivatives) that the smallest amount of interactions in the world are still representing any of that real value. If you want to make REAL money, you will not focus on activities that provide real value in the physical world. The incentives are to focus on activities that trade various abstract representations (currencies, stocks, derivatives, futures, even real estate but used only as an abstract symbol that does not maximize the utility of said real estate in the real world). 

I agree with that. 

 

14 hours ago, mbohu said:

With an abstract medium to measure value (money) you run into the problem that it only measures a certain KIND of value and leaves many other kinds of value (resources!) out. We looked at this before but: The tree that provides tremendous value for the forest, the animals around it, the humans that breathe the oxygen it produces, etc, etc. has NO money-value as long as it stands in the forest (as this cannot be measured easily) but has very specific value once it is cut down and turned into lumber. Now it has value for ONE person only, but that value can easily be quantified in Dollars. (What's important to me here is that the person who cuts down the tree is not a "bad" or "immoral" person. He is a person that acts in accordance to the incentives of the system. If he wasn't doing that he would be a looser in the system, which also means he would have less and less resources and power within the system, making his "morality" and "goodness" irrelevant--because it has no power to change anything.)

I agree also. The problem is quantifying the value the tree in the forest. And if you take that line of thought to the end, the guy not being allowed to cut down the tree would leave him homeless and possibly starving.  

 

14 hours ago, mbohu said:

All this together provides certain incentives for action. People who listen to these incentives will be successful in the system. Those who don't will fail.

What alternative incentives do to you suggest if not more access to more resources for the individual? I think that is the fundamental problem. Nobody has a full belly due to feeling well or working for the whole... Apparently you know German so I will quote Brecht: "Erst kommt das Fressen dann kommt die Moral". 

14 hours ago, mbohu said:

Cancer is an often used example: When a cell stops to be connected to other cells (in its function and purpose) and starts working only for its own reproduction and benefit it becomes a cancer cell. Initially it benefits and reproduces its genetic code exponentially, outcompeting all the other cells around it. So it "wins" temporarily. However, eventually it kills the entire organism that it depends upon for its survival and self-terminates. So in the end it looses.
One can argue that it is in the nature of the cell to only look out for its own benefit--but that isn't true for healthy cells. They look out for their own benefit, but in a way that also benefits the whole. And in the end this is the more successful strategy...and it is also the more natural one, I'd argue.

Yes and that is why the capitalistic "cancer cells" are constantly being restrained by laws like taxation, anti trust and so on. In countries where this more prominent the societies are often more peaceful with less social problems. That's why we don't have a completely free market because it would have imploded long ago. Still, the personal incentives for people to reap direct rewards are fundamental for a free and successful society. 

 

14 hours ago, mbohu said:

So these are arguments, why it would be useful to think about systems that are not self-terminating and yet have a relationship to our "nature" (keeping in mind that our "nature" is as much influenced by the system we grow up in, as it influences that system)

You are IMHO opinion wrong that this system is self terminating. It has proven pretty resilient over the last 400 years or so. It does require
constant updates though. If you look at the excesses of the 20th century you can see to what the alternatives lead to. 

 

14 hours ago, mbohu said:

EDIT: The important thing to know about these game theory examples is that the preferred outcome of such games is not just sub-optimal for the WHOLE but is also sub-optimal for the INDIVIDUALS in the game, even though they each strive to maximize their own benefit. They each loose out, compared to what they could have gotten.

Yes, the fundamental problem of how to get people to work against their own interests. The only people that have made an art of this and been very successful is the GOP :-) 

 

14 hours ago, mbohu said:

Now: You may be right that we have no idea how to IMPLEMENT such a system, if we ever came up with it, given that we already know that "planned economy" does not work. But to me that is no reason not to think about the implications of systems (and especially the implication of self-termination).

Like I said I disagree that this system if self terminating and through constant updates is the most successful system we have. 

[ibx 2]

14 hours ago, billvon said:

I disagree.  Capitalism has changed dramatically over the years.  We now have societal organizations that attempt (and often succeed) to mitigate the anti-social effects capitalism has.  They have worked.  It stands to reason that in the future, other mitigations will work as well.

 

Where exactly are you disagreeing with me? Taxes where always a part of capitalism which is a mitigation in itself. Capitalism is also not a monolithic system but implemented differently in many forms all over the world. The fact remains, that all countries that have implemented their version of capitalism have been more successful in nearly any quantifiable metric than countries that have not. 

[billvon 2,380]

3 hours ago, ibx said:

Where exactly are you disagreeing with me? 

We have been changing this system for well over 200 years.  We now have a system that is a mix of capitalism, socialism and communism (think national parks - 'owned by everyone.')  The most successful systems use a mix of them - and are not afraid to change them continuously.

[brenthutch 383]

36 minutes ago, billvon said:

We have been changing this system for well over 200 years.  We now have a system that is a mix of capitalism, socialism and communism (think national parks - 'owned by everyone.')  The most successful systems use a mix of them - and are not afraid to change them continuously.

The US is demonstrably the most successful, because it is primarily a capitalist system.  Then again it depend on the metric one uses to determine "success".  If you want to avoid the scourge of income inequality then the socialist Venezuelan model is clearly superior.  

[billvon 2,380]

8 hours ago, brenthutch said:

The US is demonstrably the most successful, because it is primarily a capitalist system.

It is the most successful because it is not a purely capitalist system.  Hong Kong are far "purer" capitalists than the US - but have a lower GDP per person.