The curse of the potato • Hacker News Board

Re: The curse of the potato

#41

Post by ci5er » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 11:52 PM UTC

wz1000 wrote: post #32

wyager wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Better for quality of life for the average person? Probably not so much. Sure, if you don't think medicine, technology, or literacy contribute to quality of life. All evidence suggests that, back then at least, large, organized social structures were very important for developing technology.

Even if technological progress was slowed, leading to a worse average quality of life compared to more advanced societies, wouldn't the lag be worthwhile if the society was more egalitarian by the time progress did happen?

Egalitarian? That just means equal protection under the law. I' guessing you mean something akin to everyone ending up with the same size basket of goodies at the end of each round of the game...

Of the societies we humans apparently know how to create... We know how to create societies with equal misery. We have from time-to-time been able to construct unequal societies with growing wealth, where everyone did better than their parents, over time -- and than those in many societies around them and in history.

What we have never been able to construct is a society where everyone is equal and wealthy and getting more-so. This may or may not be possible with human beings. One thing is certain -- we're not bees.

While poverty is a real tragedy and a real grind, a harm to people that should be mitigated, it's not clear that the fact that someone somewhere might be richer than me is any sort of tragedy whatsoever that needs to be addressed.

Re: The curse of the potato

#42

Post by gopz » Sun, May 01, 2016, 12:07 AM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #21

paganel wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Japan had developed full-on derivatives markets (not just futures but CDS-style bets) for its rice crops. Any English-written resources for that? It sounds really interesting.

Was trying to find the section in a textbook I had read about this, but this article[0] on the Dojima Market goes into a good amount of detail about this, and is a fun read. [0]: http://disciplinas.stoa.usp.br/pluginfile.php/69204/mod_reso...

> Recognizing the potential profit opportunity, the Nagoya merchant bought the future harvest of his region by paying approximately 10% to the farmers and writing drafts for the rest of the negotiated amount. These drafts were not to be presented for payment before the rice was actually sold. When the harvest came in, he stored it and after three or four months sold it with a profit of 30- 40%, as prices had climbed in the meantime.2

It is interesting that this sort of financial instrument would have been totally impossible with water logged veggies.

Re: The curse of the potato

#43

Post by wz1000 » Sun, May 01, 2016, 2:26 AM UTC

ci5er wrote: post #41

wz1000 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if technological progress was slowed, leading to a worse average quality of life compared to more advanced societies, wouldn't the lag be worthwhile if the society was more egalitarian by the time progress did happen?

Egalitarian? That just means equal protection under the law. I' guessing you mean something akin to everyone ending up with the same size basket of goodies at the end of each round of the game... Of the societies we humans apparently know how to create... We know how to create societies with equal misery. We have from time-to-time been able to construct unequal societies with growing wealth, where everyone did better…

> What we have never been able to construct is a society where everyone is equal and wealthy and getting more-so. This may or may not be possible with human beings. One thing is certain -- we're not bees.

This is false, or at least unjustified. Sure, an equal society may not grow as fast as an unequal one, and so the latter may take the former out of the competition. But how can you conclude that such a society won't progress in isolation?

Re: The curse of the potato

#44

Post by wz1000 » Sun, May 01, 2016, 2:39 AM UTC

JBReefer wrote: post #36

wz1000 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if technological progress was slowed, leading to a worse average quality of life compared to more advanced societies, wouldn't the lag be worthwhile if the society was more egalitarian by the time progress did happen?

No. I don't care if your and my kids both starve equally.

Here's a hypothetical model of two societies:

1. Everybody starves equally for many years until technology progresses to the point where no one has to starve. The quality of food is a small percentage better each year.

2. Everybody starves in the beginning, and after every few years some small x℅ of people don't have to starve anymore.

Depending on the specifics of the numbers, it is possible that is you had to be born in one of the societies at a random time in their existence, you would choose the former. I don't see how it is possible to dismiss the former as worse than the latter for the average person without any more evidence.

Re: The curse of the potato

#45

Post by ci5er » Sun, May 01, 2016, 3:28 PM UTC

wz1000 wrote: post #43

ci5er wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Egalitarian? That just means equal protection under the law. I' guessing you mean something akin to everyone ending up with the same size basket of goodies at the end of each round of the game... Of the societies we humans apparently know how to create... We know how to create societies with equal misery. We have from time-to-time been able to construct unequal societies with growing wealth, where everyone did better…

> What we have never been able to construct is a society where everyone is equal and wealthy and getting more-so. This may or may not be possible with human beings. One thing is certain -- we're not bees. This is false, or at least unjustified. Sure, an equal society may not grow as fast as an unequal one, and so the latter may take the former out of the competition. But how can you conclude that such a society won't…

> But how can you conclude that such a society won't progress in isolation?

Don't know. We aren't bees or ants - we're tribal hierarchical apes - so we don't have a lot of isolated (or even positive) "everyone is equal here" examples to study.

The socio-biologist E.O. Wilson, when asked about such altruistic-sounding theories, responded: "Right theory - wrong species".