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The Price of Anarchy

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Re: The Price of Anarchy

#21

Post by brbrodude »

quotemstr wrote: post #5
schoen wrote: post #2

That has the most math notation of anything I've seen written about anarchy in some time!

Math is important. It tells us the shape of the possible. Game theory tells us when we're creating an unstable set of incentives. Our intuition for fairness is only a crude approximation of game theory. Societies and their moral systems (there's little difference) don't come out of nowhere. Sentiments like "game theory is just capitalistic ideology" make me sad. Math, like all sciences, is true whether you accept it…

That does not mean it's infallible. Basically, Nassim Taleb stuff. We're wrong all the f*ing time and the more confident and blinded by our models we are, the greater are the effects of our screw ups, there IS such thing as hubris, we've known it long before but it's too abstract to constantly take it into consideration, so we just stop minding. It has happened countless times and there's little evidence we've been able to tame our cognitive blind spots at all, we're just humans, after all.

Re: The Price of Anarchy

#22

Post by JumpCrisscross »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #20
automatwon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 c…

> Too many people seem to approach economy as an ideology rather than a complex system

Few of these people have any decision-making authority. This mass ignorance of economics does occasionally bubble up on the policy side. But it is generally, at least in the United States, contained by more knowledgeable (and influential) parties.

Re: The Price of Anarchy

#23

Post by ghgfhgfhn »

Proven wrote: post #17
ue_ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I was bracing myself for comments that either missed the point entirely or low brow attempts to dismantle the piece.

I am surprised and happy to find an intelligent discussion! It's becoming rarer on hn.

Re: The Price of Anarchy

#24

Post by dunslandsboo »

ue_ wrote: post #14
CaptainSwing wrote: post #9

I 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.

Most anarcho-capitalists that I know and from who I learn are absolutely not about "every man for himself" at all. Charity and voluntary cooperation are major parts of the society as they would like it to become. See https://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Friendly_society and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispute_resolution_organizatio...

Re: The Price of Anarchy

#25

Post by CaptainSwing »

pron wrote: post #18
CaptainSwing wrote: post #9

I 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).

You're right that it is tricky. Many social anarchists and communists use the phrase 'voluntary cooperation' to describe the social order in a communist society (in the sense of a society without either capitalism or the state).

Whether this is possible or not is beside the point. The argument I was making was simply that the use of the word anarchy in the concept is at odds with its use by most adherents to anarchism

Re: The Price of Anarchy

#26

Post by Chestofdraw »

madmaniak wrote: post #16
madmaniak wrote: post #3

"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?

Why do you assume that the big set is altruistic? Isn't it selfishly trying to optimize towards its goal, at the detriment of some single units.

Re: The Price of Anarchy

#27

Post by jessaustin »

pron wrote: post #18
CaptainSwing wrote: post #9

I 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).

Alternatively, one could simply pay attention to how life is lived. Most things humans do are done out of habit. One might suspect that all our beneficial habits would break down if there weren't an almighty parental figure lying in wait to punish us, but that also contradicts lived experience: humans in more permissive societies habitually live in relative harmony even more than those in less permissive ones.

Re: The Price of Anarchy

#28

Post by madmaniak »

grive wrote: post #19
madmaniak wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

Thank you for your reply.

"Who is to say that the central planner must be the ontological equal of a single unit"

My impression is that's what most people here are discussing.

I can see a definition of an anarchy in your quorum example, can't you? But you say we could have AI which will find a balance. Interesting concept. Does it imply obeying AI obeying the law?

Re: The Price of Anarchy

#30

Post by ue_ »

Proven wrote: post #17
ue_ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>You can't run business if you don't serve your customers well.

Serving your customers well is entirely out of self interest, especially in large corporations; in fact, this is the easiest example of "every man for himself". You serve your customers well because ultimately it brings you more profit. Sure, it's not as sure sighted as screwing over every customer, but people who are selfish aren't necessarily stupid. I would argue that the very act of running a business in such a society is not only wrong due to the exploitation of workers, but also the motivation underlying (almost) every transaction in which your goal is to sell things in such a way as to get yourself the largest profit.

Of course that doesn't happen in real life. People have moral standards. I think I'm just a cynical ancom with regard to how people would really behave in the absence of all regulation. Let's not forget what large companies can still get away with today, and imagine what it would be like with anti-competitive monopolies, oligarchies, and two or three organisations controlling mainstream information sources.

So sure, your business doesn't last long because you were too obviously selfish. Your next plan of action is to pay a news outlet (or better yet, already be in control of one) to cover you. Or if you can't do that, there's still hope - you can band together with like minded people and start another business. Not without worker exploitation, of course. You need all the surplus value you can get.

I simply do not have the hope that "serving your customers well" is enough to prevent what actors in a capitalist system are truly capable of doing.

Let's not forget the sheer paradoxical nature of "anarcho-capitalism" (the inherent class system set up of the bourgeoisie and proletariat is the exact opposite of non-hierarchical relations).

I'm not really a proponent of central planning myself, so I agree with you on that.

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