That has the most math notation of anything I've seen written about anarchy in some time!
some time
There was a time you've seen more math notation written about anarchy? I'm curious. It'd be great if you can link.
The Price of Anarchy
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Re: The Price of Anarchy
#12Isn't libertarian thinking (put very heavily on the edge) the exact opposite? That a system will become more efficient if actors are let to do things for their own sake, and that actors are smart enough to calculate the negative impact of short term selfish action (that is, actors can help out now, with an exception of a positive roi)
This assumes a theoretical optimal central planner, a superintelligent BDFL of sorts.
Libertarian thinking is that in practice humans are so bad at management that every time we tried central planning it came up even worse than non-optimal Nash Equilibria (which are the failure mode of non-centrally-managed agent systems.) Libertarians would say that no dictator or government in history turned out to know better than The Market. That The Cost of Regulation is higher than The Cost of Anarchy.
Of course, both costs are high for some problems and low for others, and the solution to practical problems usually lies at neither this extreme nor that one.
Re: The Price of Anarchy
#13Already in the first line it claims that anarchy is a system wherein >a system degrades due to selfish behavior of its agents To my point of view, most game theory is just capitalistic ideology disguised in mathematical models.
If anything, this sounds anti-capitalistic - capitalism is based on an assumption that selfish behaviour of individuals produces greater good for the society.
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest" - Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
I tend to think of self-interest being equivalent to selfishness. Your point makes me wonder if self-interest is not equivalent to selfishness, at least to Economists.
Re: The Price of Anarchy
#14I think that this is a really interesting concept, but dislike the name. All social anarchists (anarchist-communists, anarchist-syndicalists, even mutualists etc) would see anarchy as a social process rather than a purely individualised "every man for himself" system. It disregards the possibility for non-coercive collective forms of decision making. but, saying this, a concept that discovers the loss in a system whe…
I talk with a lot of anarchists and perhaps the only ones of them who are truly in the spirit of "every man for himself" are an-caps and Stirnerists.
Re: The Price of Anarchy
#15Isn't libertarian thinking (put very heavily on the edge) the exact opposite? That a system will become more efficient if actors are let to do things for their own sake, and that actors are smart enough to calculate the negative impact of short term selfish action (that is, actors can help out now, with an exception of a positive roi)
Some Libertarians are non-consequentialists. They argue that even if the outcome is less efficient, there are moral reasons to oppose central planning. What is interesting is that many argue both points: that markets are more efficient and morally superior. A good example of the distinction is David D. Friedman (consequentialist) vs Ayn Rand (non-consequentialist).
Re: The Price of Anarchy
#16"In the 'centralized' solution, a central authority can tell each agent which path to take in order to minimize the average travel time" That's a wishful thinking. Central authority can and usually is selfish and corrupted but the impact of it is much bigger. So we can call this piece of math a science but voting for centralized systems based on that is super naive.
I see my comment is not well received.
Who will explain me why we assume that a single unit is selfish, but a big one contained of many selfish units is altruistic?
Re: The Price of Anarchy
#17I think that this is a really interesting concept, but dislike the name. All social anarchists (anarchist-communists, anarchist-syndicalists, even mutualists etc) would see anarchy as a social process rather than a purely individualised "every man for himself" system. It disregards the possibility for non-coercive collective forms of decision making. but, saying this, a concept that discovers the loss in a system whe…
I talk with a lot of anarchists and perhaps the only ones of them who are truly in the spirit of "every man for himself" are an-caps and Stirnerists.
I don't think ancaps are all like that.
You can't run business if you don't serve your customers well. Does that translate into pathological selfishness and other extreme behavior that goes in customers' nerves? I don't think so, because such business wouldn't last long.
I agree with the GP post above, and I'd also like to point out the idiocy of the "scientific" assumption from Wikipedia that "central planners" have superior information compared to self-interested agents who follow their own optimization strategies. F. A. Hayek is one of best authors on this topic.
Re: The Price of Anarchy
#18I think that this is a really interesting concept, but dislike the name. All social anarchists (anarchist-communists, anarchist-syndicalists, even mutualists etc) would see anarchy as a social process rather than a purely individualised "every man for himself" system. It disregards the possibility for non-coercive collective forms of decision making. but, saying this, a concept that discovers the loss in a system whe…
> the possibility for non-coercive collective forms of decision making.
Can you define "non-coercive"? If you want to disallow coercion you must study how coercion actually works on humans rather than decide a priori what constitutes coercion. It is therefore possible that a "non-coercive collective forms of decision making" does not exist (or can only exist under certain unrealistic parameters).
Re: The Price of Anarchy
#19"In the 'centralized' solution, a central authority can tell each agent which path to take in order to minimize the average travel time" That's a wishful thinking. Central authority can and usually is selfish and corrupted but the impact of it is much bigger. So we can call this piece of math a science but voting for centralized systems based on that is super naive.
I see my comment is not well received. Who will explain me why we assume that a single unit is selfish, but a big one contained of many selfish units is altruistic?
You assume the central planner to be the same as a single unit (as in, of the same kind, the same species).
Who is to say that the central planner must be the ontological equal of a single unit? Why not a more complex system?
You could have for example a quorum of single-unit who will need to reach a consensus concerning their diverging self-beneficial impetus. You can also imagine, if you represent the interest of each single unit as a vector in some kind of space, that the quorum must navigate a product of those vectors.
You can imagine an AI then, a machine exploring that vector space that could learn to balance the wants and needs of its single units.
Et cætera. I don't know exactly why you comment was not well received, I am not able myself to downvote comments here and I did not do that, but my own opinion about yours was that it was basing itself on some assumptions that were biased by some real-world considerations that were irrelevant for the concept presented.
Re: The Price of Anarchy
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
If anything, this sounds anti-capitalistic - capitalism is based on an assumption that selfish behaviour of individuals produces greater good for the society.
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest" - Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith I tend to think of self-interest being equivalent to selfishness. Your point makes me wonder if self-interest is not equivalent to selfishness, at least to Economists.
Well, what you quote is true, but I think a lot of discussion stems from focusing on the wrong question, namely "does selfishness lead to better outcomes" as opposed to when it does, and when it does not.
Too many people seem to approach economy as an ideology rather than a complex system in which a given approach produces good results here and bad results there, and everything should be subject to optimization and careful design.