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Capital doesn't maximize capital; it maximizes productivity. In absence of controls, capital naturally flows to productivity in order to be maximized by the holders of capital; but only because productivity creates wealth, not the capital itself.
Capital is not what most people conceive of it to be. Capital is commonly (and correctly) viewed as a "store of wealth", or as "the crystallisation of labour-time" - but capital comes in different flavours, and when you deal with capital in the form of goods which provide an incremental benefit to the user, what you have is indeed capital, but when you deal with money... it's up to you whether it's capital or not. Of…
>capitalism is a system which currently optimises for money. If that were the case then cash reserves would be where the bulk of people poured their resources. In fact the majority of non-debt "capital" is held in real-estate and some combination of financial instruments (CD, bonds, common stock etc...). You are confusing how the assets are valued with what is actually being valued. What I think you are saying though…
Capital is not what most people conceive of it to be. Capital is commonly (and correctly) viewed as a "store of wealth", or as "the crystallisation of labour-time" - but capital comes in different flavours, and when you deal with capital in the form of goods which provide an incremental benefit to the user, what you have is indeed capital, but when you deal with money... it's up to you whether it's capital or not. Of…
Capital doesn't maximize capital; it maximizes productivity. In absence of controls, capital naturally flows to productivity in order to be maximized by the holders of capital; but only because productivity creates wealth, not the capital itself.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>capitalism is a system which currently optimises for money. If that were the case then cash reserves would be where the bulk of people poured their resources. In fact the majority of non-debt "capital" is held in real-estate and some combination of financial instruments (CD, bonds, common stock etc...). You are confusing how the assets are valued with what is actually being valued. What I think you are saying though…
Out of my depth here, but aren't the real estate and financial instruments being held merely as a generator of more money (except in the rare case that one actually lives on the real estate, I suppose)?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>capitalism is a system which currently optimises for money. If that were the case then cash reserves would be where the bulk of people poured their resources. In fact the majority of non-debt "capital" is held in real-estate and some combination of financial instruments (CD, bonds, common stock etc...). You are confusing how the assets are valued with what is actually being valued. What I think you are saying though…
Out of my depth here, but aren't the real estate and financial instruments being held merely as a generator of more money (except in the rare case that one actually lives on the real estate, I suppose)?
Further, by necessity most things are held at a notional value and the sum of all these notional values far far outweighs the total sum of all the money people are holding in bank accounts. Now obviously everyone in the world couldn't sell everything and achieve the notional values and put those in bank accounts, because in order for everyone to sell there would have to be buyers, but we can't have buyers because everyone is selling. But if somehow we could, the amount of money in banks would probably go up 100x or so, but definitely at least 10x.
That means that real assets far outweigh money in the economy and so it's kind of strange to think about 'capital' as money rather than as assets. Assets are things which are generally useful in some particular way (a car, a house, a factory, etc) rather than as their potential which is more what money is.
Wait, what? Capitalism maximizes "giving people what they want". This is much closer to the benevolent AI models than to paperclip maxizers.
There are also varied spectra of wants: on some level, I want to pursue self-actualization goals that are years away. On another level, I want to step out of the rat race and read a good book. On yet another level, I want to watch TV, eat candy, and click a button that delivers a dopamine reward directly to my brain. These wants are frequently in conflict, and capitalism is more incentivized (or capable) to satisfy some of those than others. (I remember a good PG essay about the phenomenon of short wants vs. long wants, but I can't find it; neighboring ideas are found in http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html and http://paulgraham.com/distraction.html)
I don't think markets are a bad technology, any more than any other technology. But the paperclip analogy fits: people do want paperclips, but they also want a variety of other things that aren't paperclips. If we create social machines that optimize some wants over others, a plethora of human needs and desires may be drastically under-supplied as an unintended side effect.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>capitalism is a system which currently optimises for money. If that were the case then cash reserves would be where the bulk of people poured their resources. In fact the majority of non-debt "capital" is held in real-estate and some combination of financial instruments (CD, bonds, common stock etc...). You are confusing how the assets are valued with what is actually being valued. What I think you are saying though…
Out of my depth here, but aren't the real estate and financial instruments being held merely as a generator of more money (except in the rare case that one actually lives on the real estate, I suppose)?
Capital is not what most people conceive of it to be. Capital is commonly (and correctly) viewed as a "store of wealth", or as "the crystallisation of labour-time" - but capital comes in different flavours, and when you deal with capital in the form of goods which provide an incremental benefit to the user, what you have is indeed capital, but when you deal with money... it's up to you whether it's capital or not. Of…
Robert Nozick offered this thought experiment to which I would not opt to maximize happiness:
> Nozick asks us to imagine a machine that could give us whatever desirable or pleasurable experiences we could want. Psychologists have figured out a way to stimulate a person's brain to induce pleasurable experiences that the subject could not distinguish from those he would have apart from the machine. He then asks, if given the choice, would we prefer the machine to real life? [0]