[HN Gopher] The Ideal Economy
___________________________________________________________________
The Ideal Economy
Author : master255
Score : 36 points
Date : 2021-10-17 09:46 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (habr.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (habr.com)
| Blackhawk117 wrote:
| The article promotes totalitarian government, caps on wealth, a
| social credit system and completely misses the point of
| cryptocurrencies. The right title would be "Let's turn every
| country into China". No thanks.
| EGreg wrote:
| That's why we started the project https://intercoin.org
|
| The open source code is at https://github.com/Intercoin
|
| Documentation at https://community.intercoin.org
|
| Interviews with economists and regulators at
| https://youtube.com/c/intercoin
|
| Sound money, communities, similar to what this guy is talking
| about -- but an autonomous and libertarian version of that.
|
| Because if crypto doesn't step up and become actually adopted
| and useful, then we are going to live in a world where
| megacorps like Amazon/Facebook, as well as your friendly
| Federal Government, issue the currency and know everything
| about you and centrally plan who can pay and who can be ...
| shall we say gently excluded from the economy due to their
| rating.
|
| This builds on my earlier work on
| https://github.com/Qbix/Platform to build an open source
| alternative to Web 2.0 platforms like Facebook, Twitter etc.
|
| EDIT: I am curious. For a decade, I do the work to prevent the
| otherwise inevitable outcome of centralized control, freely
| give away the code, document it publicly, make public
| interviews with standards bodies, regulators, economists to get
| it right, spend a ton of my own money and time to get it
| implemented (without raising any VC etc.) but then every time I
| would merely mention it on HN, would always get heavily
| downvoted by people who prefer not to say a single word as to
| why. I can understand if people give me feedback, but they
| prefer to silently downvote. OK, what's your better plan, what
| have you done to prevent this outcome? Why do you take actions
| to bury workable solutions to avert this situation?
| satvikpendem wrote:
| It's because you're shilling your random coin on an article
| not specifically about cryptocurrency. Feels like spam to
| many.
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| for me it would be a "yes please". see how different people and
| preferences are.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| And this is why we should never forget that the brain is that
| organ which was developed _to move_ (to pick your optimal
| direction and, directly or cunningly, _go there_ ).
|
| How very lucky that the solution spaces are sparse and
| different. How very unlucky that they may not be numerous and
| optimal enough.
| MightyCat99 wrote:
| Xi Jinping, is that you?
|
| Seriously though, i find the comments much more interesting
| than the original article. Amazing breadth of thought.
| rc2634 wrote:
| Maybe those who prefer a system like this should move to
| China instead of trying to bring the system to a country
| where most people are not in favor of such system.
| zzzeek wrote:
| > I am not an economist, but in light of current events with
| cryptocurrencies and the economy in general, I would like to
| share my thoughts on some kind of ideal economy, around which
| everything is happening now.
|
| OMG sorry, i haven't read the article. i can't believe someone
| wrote that paragraph and pressed "publish". OK, well let's read
| on. cant wait!
| Mave83 wrote:
| Lol, why should I work day and night? Why should I build a
| company and hire people if nothing good will it bring me?
|
| If I do not earn a great amount by giving up my personal free
| time and risk my entire life, i wouldn't do it. That's easy.
| dijit wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand, are you saying this is a good or a
| bad thing?
|
| Maybe I've been living in Sweden too long and the emphasis on
| living your life is maybe a bit too high here but the idea of
| working day and night to earn "a lot more" feels like game
| theory.
|
| > If I _don't_ break my back and give up my life then someone
| else will and I will lose out in the big picture!
|
| We shouldn't live to work, we should work to live.
|
| If you're not getting fulfilled in your work and/or you're
| giving your life to your job then you're not really living-
| you're a meat robot.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Look I think "work to live not live to work" is a great
| philosophy, and one that probably makes for a fulfilling
| life. But virtually everything you take for granted about
| modern civilization only exists because of work-obsessed
| lunatics.
|
| At the very least if someone chooses to work day and night to
| build, society should be celebrating them-- not discouraging
| them. It may be bad from their perspective, but civilization
| as a whole cannot advance without people like this. All of
| the rest of us are free-riding off people like this both past
| and present.
|
| I think it's really great the European culture of la vita
| dolce. But the reality is virtually all new products and
| companies come from places with less cultural aversion to
| working nights and weekends than The Continent.
| sjtindell wrote:
| A fun point that I would also temper a bit by saying those
| work obsessed lunatics do what they do with lots of support
| from the plebs around them (friends, family, employees).
| Azsy wrote:
| Work-obsessed lunatics are like that even without
| 'unreasonable' amounts of profits.
|
| Greed-obsessed lunatics is a different subset ( with
| overlap ) but play a very different role in societies.
|
| Your view of innovation on The Continent is likely 10% true
| and 90% PR. You just don't think about innovations as
| European because we don't put faces on companies.
| bjornsing wrote:
| But your standard of living largely comes from people who
| step out of that comfort zone, work hard and take economic
| risk... Your local pizza guy or startup founder, are those
| the people you call "meat robots"?
| flopunctro wrote:
| > your standard of living largely comes from people who
| step out of that comfort zone, work hard and take economic
| risk
|
| Citation needed for the above.
|
| Maybe their standard of living largely comes from the high
| taxes imposed on the rich. Or maybe it comes from decades
| of free education, or maybe from the oil reserves of some
| scandinavian states.
|
| Or maybe we just don't know; and that's ok too. I'm just
| saying that we shouldn't be so sure that the protestant
| work ethic is _the_ necessary and sufficient thing for a
| good standard of living.
| Jensson wrote:
| Soviet had all of those, but didn't allow risk taking
| founders. So far not a single country which doesn't
| enable risk taking founders to create big companies has
| succeeded in creating a good economy. So the data is
| really in the risk taking founders favor.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Virtually all improvements in living standards occur from
| the creation of new, more efficient products. Virtually
| all new products are created by risk-taking
| entrepreneurs, or very close equivalents inside larger
| corporations.
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| >Your local pizza guy or startup founder
|
| Won't someone spare a thought for the minimum-wage,
| physically-risky lifestyle of the startup founder?! _And_
| you need your own car! You know, it 's a more dangerous job
| than being a cop!
|
| ...oh, oh wait, that's pizza guy, sorry, I too get those
| "jobs" confused all the time!
| techbio wrote:
| >> You know, it's [amore]
|
| FTFY
| bjornsing wrote:
| The pizza guy and the startup founder does have some
| things in common though: they live outside the comfy
| Swedish 9-to-5 mainstream, and could both be seen as
| "meat robots" I guess, if you are so inclined.
| imtringued wrote:
| >the idea of working day and night to earn "a lot more" feels
| like game theory.
|
| Yeah because it is a prisoners dilemma type situation. If
| everyone starts working harder but people don't start
| consuming harder there is less work to be done which
| consolidates work to the hardest working members without
| actually helping the overall economy.
|
| The economy wants 10 cars (aggregate demand), 10 people build
| 10 cars, 5 decide to build them twice as fast which means 10
| cars are being built which means the last 5 don't have to
| work but they also didn't get paid and cannot afford the 5
| extra cars which means aggregate demand is now 5 cars and
| some of the hard workers also get fired. If everyone built
| one car then nobody would be worse off.
|
| https://youtu.be/EKd6WURBqOY
| Dazdraperma wrote:
| Wrong. It's not a football match. There's no upper limit.
| If some needs are fulfilled, new ones (that used to be
| unimportant) appear. No enough cars for everyone, you
| produce cars. If the demand is fulfilled, you produce
| personal planes, etc. ad infinitum. Wrist watches were once
| unaccessable and kind of unnecessary for the majority, too.
| Just like stockings and other things that were once
| considered luxurous. EVeryone will find their niche.
| chii wrote:
| > last 5 don't have to work but they also didn't get paid
|
| The last 5, being uncompetitive in car building, ought to
| choose a different field for which they are competitive. If
| they don't work, they don't eat and thus drop out of "the
| game".
| [deleted]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That example is too simplistic.
|
| The root cause of working day and night is to maintain or
| increase your socioeconomic position so that you are able
| to obtain scarce (demand greater than supply) resources
| when you want to. This can apply on a tribal level (family
| all the way to country and alliances).
|
| For example, large amounts of people around the world want
| avocados all the time all year round, but there are
| insufficient avocados to go around. How are the limited
| number of avocados allocated?
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Success.
|
| Mots people work hard because they want to succeed, not because
| they want to get rich.
|
| You never become a great athlete for the money, you become a
| great athlete because you want to win. You never start a
| business for the money, you go $BIG_CORP if you want money, you
| start a business because what you want is success.
|
| In 90 years the western world has never been as inegalitarian
| as today, do you think people in the sixties didn't create
| anything?
| evancox100 wrote:
| If capital gains rates were a lot higher than they are now,
| we would never have such innovative companies as Apple and
| Microsoft.
| tangjurine wrote:
| I thought most of the innovations those companies use were
| done by others, and what these companies are really good at
| is packaging things to make them appealing to the consumer?
|
| What happened to the Microsoft hate that used to be on this
| forum?
|
| Calling Microsoft innovative is a little... off, right?
| imtringued wrote:
| Your criticism is too simplistic. The fact that you stop
| working once you reach the cap is actually the point of the
| cap.
| amelius wrote:
| I'd say that a fair economy should always reward those who
| decide to work more than average.
|
| However, those people should not be able to use their extra
| earned money against the rest of us, who made different life
| choices.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Although it's working an unhealthy amount and it pulls
| everyone else to do the same, perhaps not ?
| avgcorrection wrote:
| /deleted
| Jensson wrote:
| > But who influences regulation and legislation?
|
| The voters do. People vote for corrupt politicians since
| they care about other things. They would do that even if
| you didn't have capitalism. The problem is therefore the
| implementation of your democracy and not capitalism.
| Removing capitalism while keeping the flawed democracy
| would just result in another Soviet scenario or even worse.
|
| So the problem isn't capitalism, it is corrupt democracy. A
| corrupt democracy will try to do whatever it can to enrich
| its politicians, like taking bribes from companies etc. A
| healthy democracy doesn't take those bribes. You can find
| many countries where politicians works mostly for the
| people and not for companies, that is how it should be.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > So the problem isn't capitalism, it is corrupt
| democracy.
|
| Keep going down the rabbit hole and the problem is
| corrupt humans. Transparency to enable everyone to keep
| everyone else in check is the only solution I can see.
| Jensson wrote:
| Scandinavian countries have quite a lot of transparency
| and it works fairly well. I agree that humans are pretty
| corrupt but it can be mitigated in a lot of ways. I live
| in Scandinavia and yes, our politicians are corrupt as
| well but the systems and how people vote incentivise them
| to do the right thing most of the time.
| sokoloff wrote:
| What would reward be useful for if not to trade it for scarce
| goods? Literally there are only so many miles of coastline,
| so many front-row tickets to the Super Bowl, so many square
| feet of land within a 5 minute walk of any given place on
| Earth, etc.
|
| At some point, that reward is going to be traded for
| something else that's in demand and where the demand exceeds
| the supply. If you interpret that as "use their extra earned
| money against the rest of us", then it seems that you are
| going to have to disallow the notion of rewarding those who
| decide to work more than average.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Define "against the rest of us". The whole point of earning
| "extra" money is to be able to lay claim to scarce resources.
| Inevitably, outbidding someone for something will be felt as
| using the extra earned money against them. If you cannot
| outbid someone, then the extra money is worth nothing, and
| hence there is no reason to work more than average.
| amelius wrote:
| If you take my comment as a basic premise of a fair
| economy, then "outbidding" does not make any sense. In
| fact, it makes more sense to share scarce resources.
|
| There are still many non-scarce things you can spend your
| extra money on.
|
| An example of what you can do: buying expensive cars.
|
| An example of what you can't do: buying up land so that
| everybody else has to pay higher prices for housing.
| agent327 wrote:
| Expensive cars are just as much a scarce resource as
| everything else is.
| chii wrote:
| > non-scarce things you can spend your extra money on
|
| if they are non-scarce, then you already have obtained
| your required amount, and thus no longer demand more.
|
| > buying up land so that everybody else has to pay higher
| prices for housing.
|
| buying up assets, since assets would be scarce, allows
| you to demand payment for their use, and thus, ensure
| your future financial situation is secure.
|
| It sucks for those who don't own assets, but this system
| resolves the conflict of how to assign assets amongst
| people. And it gives those who don't own assets the
| motivation to work harder. The resulting society will
| then have more aggregate wealth than before.
| Jensson wrote:
| No, the scarcest resource is human time. If person A
| works for 1 hour then he added 1 hour of human work time
| to the pool of resources. Therefore it makes sense that
| he can now extract 1 extra hour of human work time from
| the pool of resources. Him doing that trade doesn't
| reduce the number of human work hours available to
| others, instead he increased the value of the pool since
| now there is more diversity of jobs the pool is capable
| of performing.
|
| Your assumption here is that you can trade human work
| hours for finite natural resources on some market, and
| that everyone has to pay for those resources on the
| market. There is nor reason why you should be able to do
| that, rather the natural system is to allocate all finite
| resources equally to each person and then you an pay for
| those with your work, but you working harder to pay a
| person to share his resources with you wouldn't affect
| anyone else in the economy unless they too wants to have
| extra of that resource.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > If person A works for 1 hour then he added 1 hour of
| human work time to the pool of resources. Therefore it
| makes sense that he can now extract 1 extra hour of human
| work time from the pool of resources.
|
| What if no one wants that 1 hour of labor? What if more
| people want 1 hour of a certain type of labor that
| exceeds the supply of that certain type of labor?
| Jensson wrote:
| > What if no one wants that 1 hour of labor?
|
| Doesn't have to be hours, the hour was just to represent
| that it is a human working and not a finite resource.
| Different human work can be valued differently.
| sokoloff wrote:
| That wasn't at all clear (and you seemed to me to be
| suggesting exactly the opposite) in your comment
| upthread.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| That motivation to work harder breaks down the moment it
| becomes common belief that the amount of additional hard
| work required to secure such assets is unrealistic for
| the average person.
| amelius wrote:
| > It sucks for those who don't own assets, but this
| system resolves the conflict of how to assign assets
| amongst people.
|
| It sounds like we can assign bandwidth to the highest
| bidder then. Who needs Net Neutrality?
|
| Seriously, the problem with your thinking is that you're
| stuck with the idea that our current economy is the only
| and most fair way to divide resources.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The current economy already has marginal income/wealth
| taxes to divide resources in a more "fair" way. Obviously
| they can and should be tweaked as changing parameters
| call for it to be tweaked in order to achieve whatever
| goals society is working for (such as a floor on standard
| of living).
| amelius wrote:
| This is true, but one problem is that in our current
| system fairness is always secondary. Something we tweak
| for when things go askew. A more ideal economy would flip
| this around, to ensure we don't allow some people to
| spoil it for others. And certainly not a minority
| spoiling it for the majority, as is the case all too
| often. The law simply can't keep up with the evil
| business schemes cooked up by a rich and greedy minority.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > An example of what you can do: buying expensive cars.
|
| The fact that it is expensive is what defines it as scare
| (i.e. lots of demand relative to little supply).
|
| How about using a less fuel efficient vehicle? Is that
| "against others" as it uses up the non polluted portion
| of the environment?
|
| > An example of what you can't do: buying up land so that
| everybody else has to pay higher prices for housing.
|
| Land is not the same everywhere. Low humidity,
| Mediterranean climate, coast California views are
| extremely scarce and in high demand. How are you going to
| fit 8B people onto the world's desirable land?
| Jensson wrote:
| > Land is not the same everywhere. Low humidity,
| Mediterranean climate, coast California views are
| extremely scarce and in high demand. How are you going to
| fit 8B people onto the worlds desirable land?
|
| If you want better than median living conditions then you
| work for it. There is no reason why it should be free to
| live in the best parts of the world if not everyone can,
| otherwise the privilege of living there would be a source
| of injustice.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Who decides what is median living conditions and how is
| that decided?
| Jensson wrote:
| The conditions that are left when those above median have
| chosen theirs. If you want better you work for it. If you
| don't want better then you share the work those who
| worked for theirs produced. So you work just as much as
| you want, and others working more means those who don't
| have more.
|
| It is true that if you want a luxury resource, like a
| very attractive location to live in, then others working
| more for that position means you also would have to work
| harder if you want to have it. But I don't consider
| people competing for luxury resources a problem, no that
| is a feature and is what makes the economy tick. If you
| don't want that rat race you have to live in median
| conditions.
| gruez wrote:
| >There are still many non-scarce things you can spend
| your extra money on.
|
| >An example of what you can do: buying expensive cars.
|
| Why are expensive cars not scarce? They're ultimately
| built using scarce resources (eg. steel, rubber, plastic,
| labor).
| m_ke wrote:
| An ideal economy would limit the aggregation of power, hit
| compounding with a logarithm to make it harder to amass more
| political and economic power.
| Jensson wrote:
| How would you limit political power? Would you assign a person
| to ensure nobody else has too much political power?
| Congratulations, you just invented dictatorship!
| m_ke wrote:
| Term limits for all positions, ranked choice voting and more
| direct democracy.
| X3AY7yZfpyWCmf wrote:
| What language is that?
| newsclues wrote:
| To me the ideal economy has multiple choices for regulations so
| that there is regulatory competition.
|
| Decentralized regulators, and if things are open and transparent,
| people can pick what works best for them.
| delusional wrote:
| What do you do when the choices of two people conflict? What if
| you want to throw me in jail for stealing your house, but in my
| regulatory framework houses aren't owned but merely occupied?
|
| You can't have "personal choice" as the foundation of
| government.
| newsclues wrote:
| I'm thinking more about consumers and businesses.
|
| Think about a food truck.
|
| As the owner I can pick a high standard regulator that has a
| higher cost of compliance but more customers are interested
| in the cleanest standard food service.
|
| Or I can go for low cost regulations and maybe exceed them on
| my own and pocket the difference in regulations.
|
| However, I think the US states originally was intended to
| more like what you say before the federal government
| overreach began.
| Dazdraperma wrote:
| > To me the ideal economy has multiple choices for regulations
| so that there is regulatory competition.
|
| That's called free market. And voluntary certification (by
| independent standards committees) for the "regulatory part".
| newsclues wrote:
| Independent regulators tend to grow in power become
| gatekeepers to the industry and harm innovation.
|
| I think having competing regulation/certifications is
| different than the status quo and offers benefits.
|
| As a consumer and business operator, I want to be able to
| choose.
|
| Yes, a free market, something that doesn't largely exist!
| hamilyon2 wrote:
| The article somehow misses many different points, perhaps
| deliberately, as a satire of sorts.
|
| The point of money creation and subsequent inflation is funding
| for infrastructure, real estate and public projects. There will
| be outsized returns to road building, city sewers systems and
| such. However, good luck collecting funding for them without
| banks issuing money. Good luck fundung any project which has
| large upfront costs and time to return investment of more than a
| decade.
|
| The system currently exists is in place party because we
| historically knew how to capture positive spillover effects of
| such projects. Naive systems which does not even consider credit
| against future spillover effects will be very much like ours, but
| will develop slower and eventually collapse.
|
| Credit is good. Banks printing money with credit is a feature.
| Opaqueness of banks is a feature.
| anm89 wrote:
| This is a pretty rosy picture you are painting. So where do the
| tomahawk missiles and multi decamillion dollar police budgets
| for military gear, and the funding to run Iran Contra schemes
| get accounted for?
|
| We put a VERY small percentage of government spending into
| infrastructure so making that out to be the entire point of the
| system is just misleading IMO
| evancox100 wrote:
| New slogan: "Missile Systems are Infrastructure"?
| hamilyon2 wrote:
| Well-funded military is remarkably similar to well-maintainad
| roads if we look at consequences.
|
| Putting questions about what is the optimum amount to spend
| to each. Both promote trade and large-scale division of
| labour. Both directly (road-pavers specialize at that,
| infantry specialize at application of force) and indirectly,
| by promoting people and goods movement.
|
| Trade creates wealthy merchants, banks, and eventually
| further division of labour, manufacturing, large-scale
| specialized manufacturing and agriculture.
|
| In a sence, it is military who we should thank for silicon
| integrated circuits.
|
| We could agree or disagree about certain parts of military
| spending, but current global world would be unthinkable if
| huge armed forces didn't ensure peace for everyone.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Banks don't print money. A double ledger accounting system does
| not create new dollars.
| nly wrote:
| Money creation is surely and simply to keep up with the volume
| of goods and services in the economy? If we didn't create money
| we'd have deflation (prices would drop year on year).
|
| The interesting side of things is really about the _different
| ways_ money is created and where it goes. Money created through
| lending is paid back, it 's ultimately backed by consumption or
| investment. Money created through QE is more onerous and can
| lead to financial repression instead of deleveraging of an
| overleveraged economy.
|
| I don't see why you tie this to infrastructure projects.
| Infrastructure projects are funded by government because it's
| government who can reap taxes to pay for them. It's government
| who can coordinate huge projects on a state scale, compulsory
| purchase land, and regulate and ensure fair access, etc etc.
| The alternative of thousands of miles of private roads and
| tolls would be hell.
|
| Monetary vs fiscal intervention is definitely important. If the
| government wants to go spend $1T on research and development or
| infrastrucmture for the next 100 years, fine. But a lot of
| what's been happening over the last 13 years is just robbing
| savers (lower savings and pension annuity rates) and driving
| inequality (the rich leveraging up)
| imtringued wrote:
| >If we didn't create money we'd have deflation (prices would
| drop year on year).
|
| Calling deflation a drop in prices is misleading in my
| opinion. What really is happening is that money gets more
| expensive. People then start speculating on money the same
| way they speculate on stocks, real estate or Bitcoin.
| nly wrote:
| Nominal prices falling is the widely held definition of
| deflation.
|
| Life would be somewhat easier if we could all had magic
| glasses that converted prices on menus in to [hours you
| worked to earn this purchase], but for now we all deal with
| fiat.
| Dazdraperma wrote:
| > Money creation is surely and simply to keep up with the
| volume of goods and services in the economy? If we didn't
| create money we'd have deflation (prices would drop year on
| year).
|
| Then why the guy from the FBI showed up the last time I tried
| to create more money to save the world from deflation?
| thriftwy wrote:
| The economy which caps maximum income at some small value removes
| incentive to perform. When combined with helping the poor it
| would encourage parasitism.
|
| Parasitism is a very convenient life style once you adopt to it,
| and very hard to abandon even if you wish to.
| imtringued wrote:
| I don't get it. If you cap income then some people stop working
| and other people start working. There is no need for parasites.
| The idea of an income cap is wrong because absolute income does
| not determine willingness to spend. It is unspent money that
| should be capped via taxes.
| thriftwy wrote:
| It would be very cool if money would need to be invested in
| the real sector at the end. we would be sending people to
| Mars already.
|
| Right now they just fuel blowing bubbles.
| bserge wrote:
| Someone from 1800 or earlier would call us parasites.
|
| We work so little and own so much!
|
| Time to go back to owning nothing and working all day every day
| under threat of actual violence and starvation.
|
| Now that's performance!
|
| (I'm afraid some rich assholes actually believe that today, of
| course they'd be the leaders of such a society)
|
| There's still room for QoL improvement, and income isn't the
| only incentive.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > The economy which caps maximum income at some small value
| removes incentive to perform.
|
| And yet there is no shortage of t-shirts, shoes and cheap
| clothing. And parasites do thrive off of the worker's back.
| thriftwy wrote:
| This is because poor people have to make them or starve.
|
| If those countries had safety nets, no more t-shirts for you,
| since producing these, not to mention cotton farming, is not
| exciting at all. You just do it for money.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| It he only incentive to do stuff money?
|
| Asking because I find myself building a lot of stuff despite
| not really making money off it.
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| The author thinks so. Money isn't the only way to be
| compensated, but it's a measure of value.
|
| I wonder if the author would cap all value transfers, or just
| monetary. What about limiting in-kind compensation by
| transfers of land, securities, food, or reputation?
| agumonkey wrote:
| building what ? I'm curious
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I've built and operate a search engine.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Are you building hobby things for your entertainment (which I
| do as well) or building things which make society advance and
| which others benefit from?
|
| It's the loss of incentives for the latter that concern me.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Well, both. I'm building and running this:
| https://search.marginalia.nu/
|
| Paid the server out of pocket, built the code all by
| myself.
|
| I do take donations that currently just about cover the
| running costs, but at this surplus it will take me
| something like 30 years to get back the hardware investment
| (assuming no hardware fails in the interim and running
| costs don't increase).
|
| Don't take this as complaining, it's just a statement of
| facts. I'm incredibly grateful that so many people are
| supporting it.
| stickfigure wrote:
| For _some_ stuff, the only incentive is money. Nobody 's
| going to haul your garbage away because that's what fulfills
| them.
| tibbetts wrote:
| The idea that the only, or even primary, incentive to do
| stuff is money is an invention of 20th century economics. It
| was then tragically taught to most educated people,
| especially business leaders. That made it a sort of self-
| fulfilling prophecy, along with the shareholder value myth
| (the idea that companies should be (may even be required to
| be) entirely short term profit motivated out of a duty to
| shareholders. These are among the most harmful ideas from the
| 20th century. To answer your original question, no money is
| not the only incentive to do stuff. But in Econ 101 that
| assumption is made to make the math easy.
| [deleted]
| gruez wrote:
| > along with the shareholder value myth (the idea that
| companies should be (may even be required to be) entirely
| short term profit motivated out of a duty to shareholders
|
| The only myth here is you thinking that "shareholder value"
| = "short term profits". Amazon (in the past) and uber are
| counterexamples of that.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The incentive to do work is to gain power. The power to
| feed and house your kids, the power to not be tortured or
| killed if you are a slave, the power to obtain other things
| you want. Money is a proxy for power. Has a better
| alternative proxy to power been demonstrated to exist?
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Do all people want power? Seems like Nietzsche would
| probably agree, but Damocles would voice objections.
|
| Seems like what most people want is something more akin
| to self-determination. It isn't quite power, and it isn't
| quite freedom, but somewhere in the middle.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| What is self determination? Having the freedom to do what
| you want to do is the same as having the power to do what
| you want to do.
|
| Having the power to attract your desired mate is also a
| power, and it involves showing you have power.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| The nuance is in the contrast between freedom from
| compulsion and the ability to compel. Most care about the
| former but power only grants the latter.
|
| Do you want to enslave your partner? Compel them to live
| with you against their will?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The power to be free from compulsion is also power. I
| understand the distinction you are trying to make, but it
| is all on one spectrum.
|
| Do I want to enslave my partner or compel them to live
| with me against their will? No. I am sure others in
| history have wanted that and still do today. But the
| important thing is you need power to not be enslaved by
| others, even if that just means living within the borders
| of a tribe of people who act against slavery.
|
| Since money is a proxy for power, and since resources are
| finite and we do not live in this world without effecting
| others, I would say the distinction of having the power
| to be free from compulsion and the power to compel others
| is very, very murky.
|
| For example, I am not using my power to directly compel
| someone with violence like a slave owner, but I know that
| living the quality of life that people in the top 10% to
| 20% of the US do is for sure compelling others to live
| with more pollution and/or fewer resources due to me
| consuming so many resources. I am pretty sure this claim
| could be made for anyone living in a detached single
| family house, or even people with more than 2 kids. Or
| maybe even 1 kid.
|
| If we go back to the original claim:
|
| > The idea that the only, or even primary, incentive to
| do stuff is money is an invention of 20th century
| economics.
|
| Yes, people like doing things for their community or
| helping others here and there, but functionally no one is
| going to change bed pans in a nursing home without
| getting something in return.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| It is questionable whether these two ever actually met,
| but the moral of the story is relevant so I'll repeat the
| tale.
|
| Alexander the Great, the embodiment of power, approached
| notorious hobo philosopher Diogenes the Cynic and asked
| if there was anything he can do for him. Sunbathing
| Diogenes asks Alexander if he wouldn't mind stepping to
| the side a bit, as he is blocking the light.
|
| Alexander is able to compel armies and lay countries to
| ruin, but Diogenes is resistant to all compulsion but is
| without land, possessions, rank, title, nobility,
| reputation, and so on. There is nothing you can take away
| from him he hasn't already given up, no hardship you can
| impose on him that he does not willingly endure. Even the
| times he is de facto enslaved, he is still free, because
| he willingly subjects himself to any punishment.
|
| It would be an absurd conclusion that the reason Diogenes
| is able to make a mockery of this request is because this
| homeless man is more powerful than Alexander the Great.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > It would be an absurd conclusion that the reason
| Diogenes is able to make a mockery of this request is
| because this homeless man is more powerful than Alexander
| the Great.
|
| The only moral of this story I understood is that it is
| nonsensical to compare two different metrics. I do not
| know how one would come to the above conclusion,
| comparing Alexander's power over many others to Diogenes'
| power over himself and presumably pain receptors.
|
| Alexander being able to kill Diogenes more easily than
| Diogenes being able to kill Alexander would be a proper
| comparison, or Alexander being able to compel more people
| than Diogenes, but even then, I fail to see the utility
| for this discussion.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Well let's go back to the statement you made a few
| comments ago
|
| > Money is a proxy for power. Has a better alternative
| proxy to power been demonstrated to exist?
|
| Here the a man with no possessions suddenly has power,
| and the richest most powerful man in the world struggles
| to exert power.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I disagree with characterizing Person A not wanting
| something from Person B as person B struggling to exert
| power.
| megameter wrote:
| Aristotle's virtue ethics is a helpful lens to view the
| power dynamic within this story. Virtue is defined as a
| purpose or reason for being: Alexander is good where he
| fits his purpose, like how you would judge a tool to use.
| As a great ruler, he should be able to demonstrate not
| just his ability to kill and threaten, but positive
| qualities like providing for his subjects.
|
| When Diogenes asks Alexander to move aside, it
| demonstrates the limits of this power, and therefore
| Alexander's virtue as a ruler: someone who doesn't want
| anything gets exactly as much benefit from this king as
| from anyone else. If the only thing Alexander can
| contribute is threats, that would simply make him
| unvirtuous - and equivalent in power to any armed madman.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > When Diogenes asks Alexander to move aside, it
| demonstrates the limits of this power, and therefore
| Alexander's virtue as a ruler: someone who doesn't want
| anything gets exactly as much benefit from this king as
| from anyone else.
|
| This seems like a trivial fact to me, or I am missing
| what is notable about this "virtue".
|
| > If the only thing Alexander can contribute is threats,
| that would simply make him unvirtuous - and equivalent in
| power to any armed madman.
|
| I guess so in this specific interaction, but it would be
| ridiculous to say a person that commands armies is
| equivalent in power to any armed madman in the big
| picture. My responses are in the context of societies
| using money as a tool to incentivize people, to which I
| am not aware of there being a better known alternative.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| That's essentially modernism (or at least, its economic
| side); there's a reason postmodernism is hot right now, and
| it's because modernism is both wrong and rubbish.
| bart_spoon wrote:
| Money isn't the only incentive to do anything, but there are
| plenty of things for which money is the only incentive, a lot
| of which are pretty critical for functioning societies.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| No it just removes one incentive to work, enriching yourself
| beyond what is needed shouldnt be necessary as an "incentive"
| agumonkey wrote:
| I wonder if previous eras (before the massive space taken by
| economic principles) had a different view on incentives and
| performance.
|
| The current system doesn't reward performance in general, just
| a few instances here and there, the rest is actually backward
| (good employees are ignored, sometimes hated, sometimes fired
| even).
| mdp2021 wrote:
| The fault is within a decadent culture that has stopped
| striving for excellence as an ideal and demanding quality as
| an underlying mental tenet.
|
| The "performance indicators" are often calibrated
| permissively towards a "very pessimistic perspective taken as
| realism" which lets ample pools of bestiality in. When this
| becomes "locally" systemic, it will be a chocker for the
| individual potential, systemically misfit.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I don't blame the culture in itself. It's a byproduct of
| itself.. when you live with nothing, excellency == survival
| and better life, but when capital/marketing makes people
| live "softer" by doing nothing.. the incentive is removed.
| At least on the surface.. I don't think people are that
| happy binging on netflix.
|
| That said I'm curious about how to revive this, before the
| potential climate collapse especially :)
| Jensson wrote:
| > The current system doesn't reward performance in general
|
| The current system rewards performance more than any other
| system in history. You can go from living in poverty to
| earning hundreds of thousands of dollars just by doing well
| at enough tests. Things are stacked against you, true, but
| that path is still possible today. Is the system worse today
| than 30-40 years ago? Maybe, it is hard to tell, it is the
| same system though so you can't blame the system, it is other
| factors.
|
| Could it reward performance more? Yes! But we have already
| came extremely far.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Wrong, tests are not the bottleneck, you'll have to present
| well, play along politics, fake. You could be the best
| person on earth, if someone doesn't feel you, you're out.
| Jensson wrote:
| You don't have to do any of that to get a software
| engineer job. Just do well on tests in school, do well
| enough that you get accepted into college with a free
| ride, do well enough in college tests to get an
| interview, do well enough on the algorithm tests in the
| interview to get a job. That is all you need. It isn't
| easy, having money etc helps, but ultimately all you need
| to do is pass a bunch of tests to get a lot of money.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I did all of these multiple times and got rejected.
| You're view on life lacks data I'm sorry. The harder I
| worked, the more I adapted to peoples need, the less I
| got. A simple friend in the field gets me a job without
| effort. Society doesn't reward excellency that often, the
| social structure comes first.
| Jensson wrote:
| Getting rejected from multiple interviews isn't a
| particularly big roadblock, you just need to do more. Or
| you have to improve. If you have a degree and aren't
| completely incompetent you will get a job sooner or later
| as long as you don't stop applying.
|
| "But I got rejected once, it is proof that hard work and
| performance doesn't pay off!"
|
| No, hard work includes trying multiple times. Over
| multiple tries the probability of you being unlucky in
| the interview goes to 0. It might take hundreds of tries,
| but if you can do the work you will get accepted at some
| point. Life being unfair doesn't mean that performance or
| hard work doesn't pay off, just that they maybe don't pay
| off as much as they ought to.
| agumonkey wrote:
| The argument was not about interviews but tests and
| skills. Which I did.
|
| The "luck/unfair" argument is exactly what I was talking
| about. You shouldn't need luck to get hired in a system
| after 7+ years of hard work.
|
| Add to that that I've seen a lot of incompetent people
| (both in skills, dedication or even diligence) in the
| field. This renders the excellence argument moot.
|
| The system is filled with low efficiency bits at every
| scale, HR only call you if they match a tag or a fancy
| school, the tech interviewer might very well be a young
| dude knowing moot but not willing to annoy his superior
| with bad hires. It's mostly tribalism and politics
| driving the machine. Not objective qualities.
| Jensson wrote:
| At first I thought you were one of those who spent years
| not getting their first job, but no you worked in the
| industry for 7 whole years! Did you get paid much more
| than McDonalds wage during those years? Then you got
| rewarded for your performance! You are therefore a
| perfect example of someone getting rewarded for
| performance. Rewards aren't perfectly correlated with
| performance, no, but that doesn't mean that performance
| doesn't get rewarded.
|
| Sure, it is hard to earn more than you earn now. But you
| are still earning way more than most, and all that
| required was to pass a few tests. How can you call that
| not rewarding performance?
| agumonkey wrote:
| 7 years of study.
|
| Also we're not on the same page about reward/excellency.
| Having a high salary after graduation doesn't mean you're
| doing good / excellent work. You can, and I've heard a
| lot of people saying it, coast along being paid for not a
| lot.
|
| Every company I worked at had terrible software, there
| was no excellency in them (which backfires toward all
| society). Another proof to me that the system is not
| optimizing excellency. It's short term gain spread over a
| wide network of ignorance (your customer can never assess
| of your work quality, he has no clue about the domain).
| stickfigure wrote:
| Furthermore, there are many other paths to wealth. Not
| that any of them are easy, but they allow a variety of
| different types of people to succeed.
|
| For anyone who thinks it is harder now: Name the specific
| time period where performance was rewarded more and let
| the HN commenters pick apart your choice.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Parasitism is a very convenient life style once you adopt to
| it, and very hard to abandon even if you wish to.
|
| 100% agree, look no further than current communist, and ex-
| communist countries.
|
| Even ones which succesfully "decommunized" still have that ex-
| party member class which still lives off fraud, and economic
| crimes 30 years after.
| bserge wrote:
| You actually think the political class is not full of thieves
| anywhere else?
|
| It's a career path that attracts this kind of people, like
| flies to shit.
| baybal2 wrote:
| I am calling countries in which communists are no longer
| the political class, but even when turned into a social
| underlayer class, these fellows, and their offspring, or
| even their grandchildren cannot vean themselves off
| economic parasitism, and economic crime.
|
| They are becoming a multigenerational class living off
| economic crime.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I can't help but laugh because your last line perfectly
| describes inheritance, a practice whose abolishment was
| demanded in The Communist Manifesto.
| bserge wrote:
| Yeah, I often hate doctors myself. Doesn't mean the
| majority are bad.
| shitloadofbooks wrote:
| I think you're forgetting (or deliberately ignoring) all the
| great political and economic frauds that have happened in
| capitalist systems too.
|
| I don't think any political/economical/social system can ever
| be immune to fraud and sociopaths.
| rc2634 wrote:
| It's true that fraud and corruption will always exist but
| it's also true that it's less prevalent in a capitalist
| system because it's more (not completely) transparent than
| any other system that has been tried by humans so far.
| dijit wrote:
| How does that worldview jive with the notion that I'd do my job
| even if I wasn't so handsomely paid?
|
| There will always be differentiators.
|
| I don't work with garbage or have to break my back, this is
| worth "performing" for.
| thriftwy wrote:
| This is because you have culture which encourages
| performance.
|
| Once you enable parasitism other cultures also arise, which
| discourage performance, and the people of those cultures just
| don't have that notion.
|
| They may even look attractive. Think hippies. They surely
| look better and have greater outlook than wage slaves,
| housewives or salesmen.
|
| And that trend is notoriously hard to reverse. Even in EU
| they have massive problems with even getting some minorities
| to attend school.
| dijit wrote:
| >Even in EU they have massive problems with even getting
| some minorities to attend school.
|
| I think you're reaching a conclusion that the evidence
| doesn't completely support here.
|
| I live in the EU and I was one of the people who didn't
| want to attend school, because school is glorified daycare
| and in impoverished areas it quite literally feels like
| prison.
|
| I don't really know if you're right, my mum and I grew up
| living on income support and while it was awful I do
| cherish the fact that I got to spend time with her.
|
| She now works for the government, I work in tech, we've
| both "done more" but the money she earns now isn't the
| reason for that, it's because:
|
| 1) It's BORING to sit on your arse and do nothing
|
| 2) People identify with their purpose (hippies identified
| with anti-war, and even hippies have had productive impacts
| on society with social movements, music and art)
|
| 3) When free to do anything: you do the thing you love
|
| This last point means you can't keep treating service
| workers like shit, which is why it's unpopular.
| Dazdraperma wrote:
| > When free to do anything: you do the thing you love
|
| The thing is, what you love is not what others need. Do
| you love tinkering with my sewage system? Clean my house?
| Wash my toilet?
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Clean your own house and wash your own toilet. You, not
| me, are the one who has to live there, anyway.
| headsoup wrote:
| Define 'perform.'
| thriftwy wrote:
| If I am to be working without monetary incentive, as many
| here suggest, I would still do something. But I will mostly
| focus on things which amuse me, and not on anything in real
| demand by society. Even then I will only do the most exciting
| part while leaving a trail of technical debt.
|
| Would you expect anything else? People fixing obscure bugs in
| legacy products for you instead of reinventing the wheel,
| poorly?
| imtringued wrote:
| >For the convenience of calculating, the sum of money was made
| not 100 rubles, but 0 rubles. To do this, from the state of the
| account of all participants was subtracted, half of all money.
| Instead of 0 rubles, it is now -50 (minus fifty). 0 means 50
| rubles in the account, and 50 means 100 rubles in the account.
| With each transaction between residents, the one who paid got
| minus to his account, and the one who sold plus. > Thus,
| regardless of the amount of money, the sum did not change, and
| money was created at the time of the transaction and there was
| exactly as much as was needed.
|
| What a revolutionary idea. Why haven't governments adopted this
| system? Oh wait. They did. Add up all debt and all credit and you
| end up with exactly 0 dollars left over.
|
| >The first thing that matters in it - is it possible to steal? is
| who releases the money. The government does that.
|
| >They estimate the rate of inflation and try to affect it by
| releasing money.
|
| No, the central bank tries to find the interest rate that
| balances individual demand for labor with the individual supply
| for labor. People borrow money themselves. Businesses who borrow
| to invest drive inflation just as much as consumers and
| governments. In fact, my opinion is that the Fed is unable to
| introduce additional money into the economy beyond what actors in
| the economy borrow. QE does absolutely nothing if people don't
| borrow. If anything the Fed should be thought of as a brake to
| the economy. If you are going downhill too fast the Fed will slam
| the brakes. Low interest rates don't stimulate anything, they
| merely stop enforcing reckless driving(=borrowing). The idea that
| governments "release" money through fiscal policy is actually a
| modern idea called MMT.
|
| >So they print a billion, but how do they pass it on to the
| people?
|
| They do not print a billion. They borrow a billion by creating
| both $1 billion as an asset and $1 billion as a liability.
|
| >it was decided to introduce a maximum of money. A store could
| not earn more than a certain amount of money. The money that the
| store made more than the maximum went to charity.
|
| Just force the store to spend all its money eventually. There is
| no meaningful difference between letting the store spend money
| itself and letting a charity spend the money. Capping income has
| the obvious downside that every industry needs a different cap
| (e.g. semiconductors need tens of billions just for a single
| fab). The idea of setting a maximum size to prevent monopolies
| does make sense but it would have to be flexible. This is
| probably something that could be solved with good old progressive
| taxation by taxing corporate income as personal income.
| hamilyon2 wrote:
| > Add up all debt and all credit and you end up with exactly 0
| dollars left over.
|
| Congratulations, you are are a part of lucky 10000 today.
| Please read about https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-
| reserve_banking
| losvedir wrote:
| Try really thinking about it and I think you'll see that even
| with fractional reserve banking, if you add up all the debt
| and credit, you'll still end up with exactly zero dollars.
| crawfordcomeaux wrote:
| False premise: "In general, buying and selling services and goods
| is all that interests modern society."
|
| Everything that follows from this is merely a thought experiment
| disconnected from reality and, as such, is unsafe.
|
| https://lethain.com/how-to-safely-think-in-systems/
|
| Any economic theory that doesn't account for gifting as the root
| of human behavior is going to start off skewed.
| Jensson wrote:
| > In order to fight monopoly, it was decided to introduce a
| maximum of money. A store could not earn more than a certain
| amount of money. The money that the store made more than the
| maximum went to charity.
|
| When you can't earn more by working fairly then people start to
| work unfairly, meaning they start taking bribes or perform other
| corrupt acts. Current capitalism has problems but at least the
| system doesn't encourage corruption. Some people will still be
| corrupt, of course, and some companies will work like a communist
| state and limit income for its workers encouraging those workers
| to become corrupt, but corruption will always be way worse when
| you put national caps on income like this.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > at least the system doesn't encourage corruption
|
| Corporations literally buy laws via lobbyists. Capitalism
| doesn't have to encourage corruption: it's already corrupted.
| Dazdraperma wrote:
| > Corporations literally buy laws via lobbyists.
|
| Both elected and unelected officials are so corrupted that
| they take money from the corporations to choke the
| competition on the free market. To fix this issue, let's give
| them even more power. That will show them and they'll stop
| being corrupted.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Why not outlaw professional lobbyists and private funding
| of politicians' campaigns? Once all bribery is illegal it
| could be easier to enforce consistently.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Can you name a country where lobbying is illegal? It's a
| core function of democracy.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > It's a core function of democracy.
|
| Lobbying is not democratic. Corporations have far more
| money than individuals and therefore far bigger lobbying
| power. As a result, laws and policies will reflect what
| the small elite wants rather than what the people want or
| need.
|
| Because of lobbying, the copyright monopolists have
| systematically robbed of our public domain rights.
| Because of lobbying, we might as well not have the right
| to reverse engineer anything.
|
| Lobbying is literally billion dollar industries asking
| the government to help protect their interests. Hard to
| think of anything less democratic than that.
| Jensson wrote:
| It is less corrupted. Without capitalism personal connections
| is the only source of power, so the only ones with power
| would be politicians and their friends. With capitalism we
| create another bastion of power, the capital class.
| Communists are politicians who don't want to share power with
| the capital class and instead hog it all for themselves. We
| all know what happens when politicians has no group to oppose
| them, everything goes to shit.
|
| Maybe you could think of some other system where personal
| connections isn't the only source of power, but so far
| democratic capitalism is the only thing we have.
|
| Edit: As for your scenario with capital paying money to
| influence politicians. The alternative is that the politician
| already have all the power (and money), nobody has to pay
| them. To me it is better that there is some corruption with
| money going to politicians rather than politicians just
| having all the money from the start.
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