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The Price of Anarchy

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Re: The Price of Anarchy

#121

Post by ue_ »

pdonis wrote: post #117
ue_ wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So by your reasoning, all buyers are selfish just as much as all sellers are selfish. I don't disagree with this. But I think that there is more harm that comes from the corporation to the consumer than there is from the consumer to the corporation, or at least more potential harm. And I think that arises out of selfishness that is unfortunately built into the system. >Moral standards existed long before any regulat…

> it does not mean that such cooperation is fair "Fair" is subjective. Our moral intuitions give us fairly consistent answers for simple cases, but most cases are not simple. One response to this problem is to point out that a free market is the best mechanism we know of for maximizing "fairness" in the sense of bargaining power. But free markets are actually pretty rare. For example, large corporations' wage structu…

"Fair" is subjective. But from a utilitarian perspective, I think still it would be fairer for the working class to own the means of production.

From a Marxist perspective, a "free market" in which people sell their labour in order to survive isn't fair at all. Whether or not you have a corporation with a big internal centralised form of deciding wages, you still have the product of labour sold for more value than it was bought at.

It might be fairer if corporations became smaller and there was more bargaining power because there is more accessibility for decision in the free market. But I don't think it's fair in other aspects - the aforementioned exploitation (occurring even in the absence of regulation), there is nobody to defend property or even establish the validity of the concept of property, you probably have to pay to be protected by a police force, and all the egregious institutions of today would probably continue, including needlessly expensive health care, there is still the problem of sweatshop labour (which most people, even though informed, don't care enough about to do anything about; imagine how it is if Apple/Nike/whoever were to own a few news agencies too). On top of that, the fact that few exchanges are truly voluntary for many who are less fortunate.

However I can see that there may be more workplace democracy, as a result of internal practices being opened to the free market.

Re: The Price of Anarchy

#122

Post by pdonis »

ue_ wrote: post #121
pdonis wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it does not mean that such cooperation is fair "Fair" is subjective. Our moral intuitions give us fairly consistent answers for simple cases, but most cases are not simple. One response to this problem is to point out that a free market is the best mechanism we know of for maximizing "fairness" in the sense of bargaining power. But free markets are actually pretty rare. For example, large corporations' wage structu…

"Fair" is subjective. But from a utilitarian perspective, I think still it would be fairer for the working class to own the means of production. From a Marxist perspective, a "free market" in which people sell their labour in order to survive isn't fair at all. Whether or not you have a corporation with a big internal centralised form of deciding wages, you still have the product of labour sold for more value than it…

> from a utilitarian perspective, I think still it would be fairer for the working class to own the means of production.

However attractive this might seem theoretically (it doesn't to me, but I understand it does to many people), we have run this experiment in practice and it doesn't work, at least not in the obvious sense of "workers own the means of production". The problem is that "own the means of production" doesn't help unless ownership means control; and in practice, if you have large industrial factories organized with centralized top-down control, it's impossible for all the workers to "own" it in any useful sense. So it just ends up being another vehicle for centralized power.

OTOH, if "own the means of production" really means that each worker owns and controls all the tools he needs to produce, and simply trades what he produces for what other workers produce, then what you have is a free market. In other words, for "workers own the means of production" to be true in any useful sense, every worker needs to be an entrepreneur, basically owning himself and his skills and tools as a small business. I would love to see this happen, but unfortunately I don't think it's likely to on any large scale any time soon. (In some fields, though--programming as a free-lance craft is an example--it can already be true for a significant number of people.)

> you still have the product of labour sold for more value than it was bought at

I don't understand what you mean by this. The value of any product of labor is not determined by the laborer; it's determined by whoever is going to use that product. That's not because of an evil plot by large corporations; it's an unavoidable fact of life. Anyone who cannot produce everything they need by themselves has to trade with others; and that means being able to produce something that someone else will trade for at a price that is enough to compensate you for the labor involved, plus whatever surplus you need to obtain other things you need. There is no reason for the someone else to pay you more just because you used more labor, if the value to them is the same either way.

Everybody understands this when they are the user; if you hire someone to paint your house, you're not going to pay them more if they use a toothbrush to do it. (IIRC pg used this example in one of his essays.)

> there is nobody to defend property or even establish the validity of the concept of property

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. The need to defend property and property rights is inherent in the idea of trade; if we all need to trade with others, then we all need to have property and property rights, and have them defended if they are threatened. That will be true whether the average corporation is large or small, or even if corporations did not exist at all.

Re: The Price of Anarchy

#123

Post by dragonwriter »

pdonis wrote: post #122
ue_ wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fair" is subjective. But from a utilitarian perspective, I think still it would be fairer for the working class to own the means of production. From a Marxist perspective, a "free market" in which people sell their labour in order to survive isn't fair at all. Whether or not you have a corporation with a big internal centralised form of deciding wages, you still have the product of labour sold for more value than it…

> from a utilitarian perspective, I think still it would be fairer for the working class to own the means of production. However attractive this might seem theoretically (it doesn't to me, but I understand it does to many people), we have run this experiment in practice and it doesn't work, at least not in the obvious sense of "workers own the means of production". The problem is that "own the means of production" do…

> However attractive this might seem theoretically (it doesn't to me, but I understand it does to many people), we have run this experiment in practice and it doesn't work, at least not in the obvious sense of "workers own the means of production".

The main large scale experiment I am aware of that meets the "obvious sense" of workers owning the means of production is the Mondragon system and similar labor cooperative ventures, which seem at least modestly successful, even when operating in a legal and political environment in which that structure is not the norm around which most rules are optimized.

There are certainly failed experiments where precapitalist states have been overthrown by regimes in which the state, run by a vanguard party acting nominally in the name of the workers, collectively, owned the means of production, which have failed spectacularly for reasons which may be related to the ownership structure (though other explanations are available), but those don't seem to be operating in anything like the "obvious sense" of workers owning the means of production.

Re: The Price of Anarchy

#124

Post by sebastos »

yarrel wrote: post #120
bo1024 wrote: post #38

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…

Then they should use less political and value judgement entailing language. That they don't indicates that they enjoy the attention doing so brings to their otherwise dry mathematical endeavors. Or that they aren't very good at rational decision making. In which case it's not clear that they are the best people to be writing about it. Don't shoot the recipient.

Yeesh. Remind me to never publish a paper that gets mentioned in a Wikipedia article and then posted to Hackernews 15 years later. I wouldn't want somebody to knock on my door and demand that I find a substitute for the term "Curse of Dimensionality", being that there are no actual witches involved.

Re: The Price of Anarchy

#125

Post by pdonis »

dragonwriter wrote: post #123
pdonis wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> from a utilitarian perspective, I think still it would be fairer for the working class to own the means of production. However attractive this might seem theoretically (it doesn't to me, but I understand it does to many people), we have run this experiment in practice and it doesn't work, at least not in the obvious sense of "workers own the means of production". The problem is that "own the means of production" do…

> However attractive this might seem theoretically (it doesn't to me, but I understand it does to many people), we have run this experiment in practice and it doesn't work, at least not in the obvious sense of "workers own the means of production". The main large scale experiment I am aware of that meets the "obvious sense" of workers owning the means of production is the Mondragon system and similar labor cooperativ…

> The main large scale experiment I am aware of that meets the "obvious sense" of workers owning the means of production is the Mondragon system and similar labor cooperative ventures

Um, what about the Soviet Union?

(I'm not familiar with the Mondragon system but I'll look it up.)

> those don't seem to be operating in anything like the "obvious sense" of workers owning the means of production.

If you are including the Soviet Union in this category, you are rejecting the very Marxist terminology that you appeared to be using, since the whole point of the Soviet Union was that the workers would own the means of production. Yes, I know it failed spectacularly; that was my point.

Re: The Price of Anarchy

#126

Post by dragonwriter »

pdonis wrote: post #125
dragonwriter wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However attractive this might seem theoretically (it doesn't to me, but I understand it does to many people), we have run this experiment in practice and it doesn't work, at least not in the obvious sense of "workers own the means of production". The main large scale experiment I am aware of that meets the "obvious sense" of workers owning the means of production is the Mondragon system and similar labor cooperativ…

> The main large scale experiment I am aware of that meets the "obvious sense" of workers owning the means of production is the Mondragon system and similar labor cooperative ventures Um, what about the Soviet Union? (I'm not familiar with the Mondragon system but I'll look it up.) > those don't seem to be operating in anything like the "obvious sense" of workers owning the means of production. If you are including t…

> If you are including the Soviet Union in this category, you are rejecting the very Marxist terminology that you appeared to be using

I think if you read the thread, you'll see that you are using the word "you" quite sloppily.

> since the whole point of the Soviet Union was that the workers would own the means of production.

The whole point of Leninist vanguardism, of which the USSR is obviously the first concrete manifestation, was to adapt Marxist rhetoric to be used in societies in which the perquisites Marx identified for socialism as a step on the route to communism were not met, to justify mechanism which were not what Marx and Engels pres cribed. Leninism is, itself, a substantive rejection of Marxism while adopting it's superficial structure.

That said, Marx is hardly the only thinker (even of his time) to argue for workers owning the means of production, and the indirect manner of such ownership in Marxist socialism -- and even moreso it's Leninist vanguardism adaptation -- is pretty far from the most obvious sense of workers owning the means of production.

The actual workers of individual firms controlling them directly rather than the state doing so in their name is, clearly, much closer to the obvious sense of that phrase.

Re: The Price of Anarchy

#127

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

pyrale wrote: post #58
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually anarcho-capitalism permits anarcho-communist, anarcho-syndicalist, and mutualist enclaves (in addition to any voluntary organization) within of a polycentric legal order. It is the most inclusive variety of anarchism.

Anar-caps permit any other form of anarchism - provided you own land. Statism permits any other form of government - provided you pay taxes and respect the law.

You don't actually have to own the land...You could rent the land or hold the land as a collective.

Re: The Price of Anarchy

#128

Post by logfromblammo »

danharaj wrote: post #119
logfromblammo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism and nationalist mercantilism are historically related, but one does not necessarily follow from the other. Anarcho-capitalists usually define "capitalism" as "societal convention allows an individual to own property for that person's sole benefit". In that school of thought, your ability to own things is limited by your ability to defend what you have claimed. You can't just take your money, use it to buy…

I am talking about capitalism in material terms as it happens because that's what the post I replied to was doing, not an ideal, hypothetical form of capitalism. likewise if we were having a discussion about the real life consequences about Marxism-Leninsim (like a productive discussion on that topic can actually happen on HN) I would be criticizing the USSR as it actually developed and not, say, as it was described…

This is exactly why no one who wishes to have a serious discussion should ever say the word "capitalism"--never, not ever--because you will either waste time up front in defining terms, or later on, when different people are using different meanings for the same words.

"Anarcho-capitalism" will never be realized, because it combines two such words into one brand that virtually guarantees that no two people will be able to describe it in the same way.

Re: The Price of Anarchy

#129

Post by pdonis »

dragonwriter wrote: post #126
pdonis wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The main large scale experiment I am aware of that meets the "obvious sense" of workers owning the means of production is the Mondragon system and similar labor cooperative ventures Um, what about the Soviet Union? (I'm not familiar with the Mondragon system but I'll look it up.) > those don't seem to be operating in anything like the "obvious sense" of workers owning the means of production. If you are including t…

> If you are including the Soviet Union in this category, you are rejecting the very Marxist terminology that you appeared to be using I think if you read the thread, you'll see that you are using the word "you" quite sloppily. > since the whole point of the Soviet Union was that the workers would own the means of production. The whole point of Leninist vanguardism, of which the USSR is obviously the first concrete m…

> I think if you read the thread, you'll see that you are using the word "you" quite sloppily.

Ah, sorry, I missed the change in who I was responding to. I did not mean to attribute to you (dragonwriter) things that someone else said. My apologies for the mixup.

Re: The Price of Anarchy

#130

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

pyrale wrote: post #58
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually anarcho-capitalism permits anarcho-communist, anarcho-syndicalist, and mutualist enclaves (in addition to any voluntary organization) within of a polycentric legal order. It is the most inclusive variety of anarchism.

Anar-caps permit any other form of anarchism - provided you own land. Statism permits any other form of government - provided you pay taxes and respect the law.

Under US form of government, it is not permitted to have multiple overlapping anarchist legal orders, unless the system was radically reformed.
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