91–100 of 140 posts
This submission seems to be a kind of follow-up to the one about Braess's paradox ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13352513 ).
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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…
It can last long enough to make you rich. Or it can last for several lifetimes as long as you have the clout to make it the only deal around (or historical and regional accidents made it so).
In fact, there's also the old saying "there's a sucker born every minute": you just get new customers.
I just want to mention that many commenters here are reading much more into the name politically than do the game theorists/computer scientists who actually do research on it. The research is focused on the game theory and not meant to make any sort of political points or value judgement. The main question asked is how to design systems so that even in a game-theoretic equilibrium, the total "welfare" is close to the…
Ding ding ding. The Price of Anarchy originally described the surprising result that internet routing seems to work despite the lack of a central planner. [1] The "central planner" is a theoretical maximum for the routing problem - it represents an oracle that automatically knows and applies an optimal routing solution. It's not some kind of government. It's kind of hilarious seeing all of these people commenting abo…
I suppose you're referring to me, since I'm the only one who has used that word.
To clarify, I was replying to a comment, not making any comment directly relevant to the paper or PoA.
That said, if someone applied this paper's results directly to a defense of anarchy, I would call that application Utopian because I don't think game theory provides a particularly compelling model for all of society. FWIW such an application certainly wasn't the author's intent, and also is not what was going on in that thread.
> Makes you wonder if a globally-standard-but-locally-owned electronic tolling system could replace gas taxes to fund our roads in a fairer way. This could remove the undue toll burden shouldered by certain unlucky people who have to commute across a heavily tolled bridge. (Seattlites should know what I'm talking about).
This is an interesting idea (which I think is the role that mathematical models applied to social systems should play -- as a stimulant for interesting ideas and possibly a way of bounding the possible. A basis from which you rapidly diverge, which is OK. TBF I think this is what is also going on in the other thread...)
By "standard", do you mean "every mile is taxed equally"? Or "according to construction/upkeep cost"?
The latter seems hard to calculate and easy to fabricate. I think in a realistic system you'd just always end up with really high bridge tolls. In that sense, I think this application of this paper is Utopian in the sense that, when applied to the toll problem, it makes unwarranted assumptions about accurate pricing.
If by standard you just mean "equal", why not just use gas taxes and set them so that tolls aren't necessary? They approximate distance traveled pretty well, so should be pretty identical to tolling each mile equally. With the added benefit of also indirectly taxing pollution.
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>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…
>Serving your customers well is entirely out of self interest This general tenet starts to break down the fewer competitors operate in the market. Monopolization allows corps to capture supernormal profit and externalize as much cost as possible. When there's only one person that's got what you need, they can treat you how they want. tl;dr: Comcast.
This is of course a old marxist argument, capital is inherently centralising.
There are however good reason to believe this is not true. In fact, most economist don't follow this line of thinking anymore.
No AnCap would deny that there would be some larger then healthy cooperations but its an acceptable problem that is pretty hard to solve for any system and is often made worse by state based systems.
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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…
Yes, they are serving their customers, and they are doing it because it is the selfish, self-optimizing solution.
That's the whole point! You have this awesome outcome, where purely selfish people are still doing the "right" thing.
You don't need nice people in order for people to do nice things.
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> My question is not terribly complex or dependent on unusual or unrealistic situations. No, usually the psychological arguments are needed to hand-wave away crucial but obvious problems. > Well, that's a big weakness of these theories No, it's not. It's perhaps their most important insight. I mean, IMO they're wrong, but the insight about the need for a psychological aspect is important and correct. Libertarians and…
Let me clarify: I'm saying that the "well, your objections are just psychological" aspect is the weakness. Sure, to have a psychological theory is fine, but too often it drifts into essentially "objections to our theory are merely based in the same psychological malformation that is produced by the current system - therefore when we get rid of the system, the objections will go away too". This is a weakness, I think.
Except maybe there's a system for which that's really true, and you and I prevent us from ever getting to that system because we reject arguments like this on the basis of form? Oh dear ;-)
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> ...as they would like it to become... Friendly society... DRO... I think this has always been my primary gripe with ancap -- it's Utopian. And all Utopian thinking has the same problem -- it's either irrational, or very rational but starting from very strong axioms. Ancap writers, to their credit, tend to care a lot about crafting strong, rational arguments. When I think about ancap (or any political theory that se…
> it's either irrational, or very rational but starting from very strong axioms. I'm not sure I understand why the latter is anywhere near as bad as the former, or even bad at all. ... Err, by "very strong" did you mean "makes (a conjunction of) many claims" rather than "resilient"?
Kind of. I certainly did not mean "resilient"!
when speaking of axioms, typically "strong" means "a lot of stuff follows from the axiom". It's in reference to the deductive power of the axiom, usually when taken as part of a larger system of deduction.
So for example, "False" is a really, really strong axiom in most systems of deduction.
Strong axioms aren't necessarily a bad thing. But if you need a lot of strong axioms, you might be saying something about a very specific hypothetical situation...
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Doesnt that seem like an oxymoron, anarcho-capitalist? Like up-down?
As far as I can tell it's the only consistent form of anarchy. For instance in discussions with anarchy-communists, if I were to develop a machine that manufactures widgets in my spare time at home, that machine would have to be seized since communism is the public ownership of the means of production. The communists I've talked to believe that there would be some public police force. When asked how any decision woul…
If you make a widget manufacturing machine, and it doesn't use much resources, and others can make their own, then there's no reason for society to care that you have your own widget manufacturing machine. Public ownership of widget manufacturing can be done simpy by making another widget manufacturing machine. Liberty is maximized by cloning your machine rather than by seizing it: You get to keep yours; society still gets widgets.
If you make a widget manufacturing machine, and it requires significant use of shared resources - more than your fair personal share - or require more people to operate, then a society that wishes to maximise liberty for all will simply deny you more than your share of shared resources, and deny you access to other workers unless you share control over your widget manufacturing: You are using not just your resources, but the resources of others too, and maximising their liberty involves not handing control over that to you as an individual.
And this is the big gaping contradiction between anarchy and ancaps: Whether you can monopolise resources beyond some reasonable definition of "personal property".
Almost all societies put strict limits on private property because we recognise that enforcement of private property, while it may enhance the liberty of some, will deprive others of liberty. Some societies more than others. E.g. I've in the past brought up the Scandivian countries "freedom to roam" which guarantees extensive access rights to non-built-up private land on the basis that letting a land owner prevent people from walking through their forest, for example, is a massive limitation of liberty on the overall public and only provides very minor additional liberty for property owners in comparison (in Sweden such rights are part of the constitution; in Norway it wasn't legislated until the 50's or 60's because the principle was considered so self-evident it wasn't seen necessary to codify it in law)
So from my point of view, ancap is incredibly logically inconsistent: It wants to enforce property rights, but doesn't want the power structures (the state etc.) are have been emergent from strong property rights.
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Doesnt that seem like an oxymoron, anarcho-capitalist? Like up-down?
"Anarcho-capitalist" was coined by Murray Rothbard, who himself was finally forced (by reality) to admit that: we are not anarchists, and that those who call us anarchists are not on firm etymological ground, and are being completely unhistorical Unfortunately the internet gives voice to lots of people who don't let facts get in the way of their opinions.
The entire paragraph of that essay:
> We must conclude that the question "are libertarians anarchists?" simply cannot be answered on etymological grounds. The vagueness of the term itself is such that the libertarian system would be considered anarchist by some people and archist by others. We must therefore turn to history for enlightenment; here we find that none of the proclaimed anarchist groups correspond to the libertarian position, that even the best of them have unrealistic and socialistic elements in their doctrines. Furthermore, we find that all of the current anarchists are irrational collectivists, and therefore at opposite poles from our position. We must therefore conclude that we are not anarchists, and that those who call us anarchists are not on firm etymological ground, and are being completely unhistorical. On the other hand, it is clear that we are not archists either: we do not believe in establishing a tyrannical central authority that will coerce the noninvasive as well as the invasive. Perhaps, then, we could call ourselves by a new name: nonarchist. Then, when, in the jousting of debate, the inevitable challenge "are you an anarchist?" is heard, we can, for perhaps the first and last time, find ourselves in the luxury of the "middle of the road" and say, "Sir, I am neither an anarchist nor an archist, but am squarely down the nonarchic middle of the road."
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As far as I can tell it's the only consistent form of anarchy. For instance in discussions with anarchy-communists, if I were to develop a machine that manufactures widgets in my spare time at home, that machine would have to be seized since communism is the public ownership of the means of production. The communists I've talked to believe that there would be some public police force. When asked how any decision woul…
> if I were to develop a machine that manufactures widgets in my spare time at home, that machine would have to be seized since communism is the public ownership of the means of product No. That's personal (not private) property. The MoP are manned by labour supplied by the proletariat. If you are having people working with that widget maker (aside from yourself), and you are paying them wages (or slavery), then it q…
This is because as soon as you start "freely organzing" a whole bunch of my property now apparently becomes "means of production" and gets siezed from me.
What if I and a group of other people want to organize and work together, in exchange for wages with fully voluntary other people?