The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism • Hacker News Board

Re: The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism

#81

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Dec 18, 2017, 7:04 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #70

dgllghr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article does not say that capitalism is a danger to society, it says that Runaway Capitalism is a danger to society. I think there is a lot of evidence out there of the damage that too much free market causes, just as there is a lot of evidence for that damage that too much centralization in an economy causes. I don't disagree with you in some of these points, but I do disagree (as someone who thinks that the au…

*> the damage that too much free market causes This is an unfortunate misunderstanding of the term "capitalism". While many people who call themselves capitalists would like everyone else to think it means a free market, the capitalists themselves don't mean that. They mean simply that they acquire control of more capital, by hook or by crook. If they can most easily acquire control of more capital in a free market,…

Looking at how the free market works, in many cases I would seriously reconsider what we mean by "voluntary" here. Just because a transaction wasn't made at gunpoint, doesn't mean it wasn't coerced, or that one party wasn't duped into it through scam/advertising.

Re: The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism

#82

Post by civilian » Mon, Dec 18, 2017, 7:04 PM UTC

tstactplsignore wrote: post #67

hal9000xp wrote: post #29

Capitalism is danger for civilization? Writes who? A buzzfeed. A very, very leftist media site. How we end up in situation when huge portion (if not majority) of hacker community turned out to be die hard socialists ? (nowadays they call themselves social-democrats) I remember when I lived in Uzbekistan and I didn't have access to internet, I got floppy disk with saved copies of Eric Raymond articles. Once I've read…

Your worldview is common, but doesn't really understand where left-wing, pro-democratic socialists are coming from. Like you, we are driven by a deep mistrust of power. We hate absolute authority, like decentralization, and are especially interested in out of the box thinking. Right now, the box we find ourselves in is a capitalist society where capitalist ideology is completely pervasive. The most powerful and dange…

Socialist governments killed tens of millions of people in the 20th century. They acquired power far more completely than any company has.

Big companies come and go. They may have power, but it's temporary, and there's nothing violent when they start losing their footing.

I'd rather have Amazon delivery my groceries than live in Venezuela.

Re: The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism

#83

Post by raintrees » Mon, Dec 18, 2017, 7:05 PM UTC

civilian wrote: post #13

Runaway capitalism, oh shit. So that does that mean: - Global poverty will continue to decrease - We'll get a variety of options to choose from whenever we want to buy something - We'll get to choose how to spend our own money - We'll get quick and diligent service - If we don't like something, we can choose to stop buying it or working for them? The horror!!!!!

I would be interested to see Mr. Chiang (I have enjoyed his other stories) separate the effects of government capture from capitalism. Part of what he warns against is the distortion of capitalism by power/captured government.

Re: The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism

#84

Post by Animats » Mon, Dec 18, 2017, 7:05 PM UTC

"Runaway capitalism" means one big winner in each sector. This is the result of the "frictionless economy" - distance doesn't affect cost much, and organizations can scale to planetary size. It started with shipping containers and faxes, and continued to cloud-based services and the attention economy.

So we have Google, Facebook, and Amazon. (China has Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba, but they need the Great Firewall to compete.) The US is down to four big trillion-dollar banks. (Bank #5, the Bank of New York, is about a third the size of #4.) Telecom is consolidating to AT&T and Comcast.

These companies act like monopolies. They stop competing on price and influence government and culture instead. While organizations, rather than AIs, they optimize for size and shareholder value. That's runaway capitalism.

Re: The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism

#85

Post by dnthvpasswdarnd » Mon, Dec 18, 2017, 7:05 PM UTC

hal9000xp wrote: post #29

Capitalism is danger for civilization? Writes who? A buzzfeed. A very, very leftist media site. How we end up in situation when huge portion (if not majority) of hacker community turned out to be die hard socialists ? (nowadays they call themselves social-democrats) I remember when I lived in Uzbekistan and I didn't have access to internet, I got floppy disk with saved copies of Eric Raymond articles. Once I've read…

Socialism is not necessarily authoritarian. The other side of socialism is anarchism, or libertarian socialism, which has a long tradition on the internet. In fact IETF is an anarchist organization originally, with a motto along the lines of "no kings, no presidents, no voting, consensus and running code". The whole Free Software movement, to which ESR more or less belongs (though he created more liberal "open-souce" branch), is also socialist. Neither free software nor open source is individualist, it is impossible for a lone "hacker" create anything significant without using a vast amount of Free Software. W3C has mostly followed IETF style governance (consensus), and switching to more formal voting procedure has only led to adoption of DRM as a web standard.

Fun fact, there is an RFC stating that the Internet is a cooperative anarchy: https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1726.txt

For an introduction into IETF-style anarchy see: https://www.wired.com/1995/10/ietf/

On W3C: https://cyber.harvard.edu/archived_content/people/reagle/reg...

Murray Rothbard even said in his books that the word "libertarian" was used by "libertarian socialist" first. It is only recently that capitalist and extremely individualist views became popular among hackers. Hackers were always anarchist, but only recently anarchy started to mean extreme liberalism, essential point of which is absolute private property, including copyright.

For more on anarchist view on "libertarian" views, read Anarchist FAQ. Ironically, you can install it with "apt-get install anarchism" on any Debian-based distro.

Re: The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism

#86

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 18, 2017, 7:06 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #73

tstactplsignore wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your worldview is common, but doesn't really understand where left-wing, pro-democratic socialists are coming from. Like you, we are driven by a deep mistrust of power. We hate absolute authority, like decentralization, and are especially interested in out of the box thinking. Right now, the box we find ourselves in is a capitalist society where capitalist ideology is completely pervasive. The most powerful and dange…

> Like you, we are driven by a deep mistrust of power. We hate absolute authority, like decentralization, and are especially interested in out of the box thinking. > The best hopes for decentralization lie in genuinely decentralized solutions that give power back to workers, like worker cooperatives, democratic labor unions, and political protest. All of these "solutions" have been tried. They all failed at your stat…

[deleted]

Re: The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism

#87

Post by raintrees » Mon, Dec 18, 2017, 7:06 PM UTC

raintrees wrote: post #83

civilian wrote: post #13

Runaway capitalism, oh shit. So that does that mean: - Global poverty will continue to decrease - We'll get a variety of options to choose from whenever we want to buy something - We'll get to choose how to spend our own money - We'll get quick and diligent service - If we don't like something, we can choose to stop buying it or working for them? The horror!!!!!

I would be interested to see Mr. Chiang (I have enjoyed his other stories) separate the effects of government capture from capitalism. Part of what he warns against is the distortion of capitalism by power/captured government.

Hint: It has frequently been suggested the United States of America has never practiced real capitalism....

Re: The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism

#88

Post by dgllghr » Mon, Dec 18, 2017, 7:06 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #70

dgllghr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article does not say that capitalism is a danger to society, it says that Runaway Capitalism is a danger to society. I think there is a lot of evidence out there of the damage that too much free market causes, just as there is a lot of evidence for that damage that too much centralization in an economy causes. I don't disagree with you in some of these points, but I do disagree (as someone who thinks that the au…

*> the damage that too much free market causes This is an unfortunate misunderstanding of the term "capitalism". While many people who call themselves capitalists would like everyone else to think it means a free market, the capitalists themselves don't mean that. They mean simply that they acquire control of more capital, by hook or by crook. If they can most easily acquire control of more capital in a free market,…

You make a very good point about capitalism vs. free market. I would only amend my comment to say that I think there is evidence that too much of either capitalism or free market can be damaging. For instance (and to use your definitions -- which I like -- if I understand them correctly), Comcast is the result of runaway capitalism, and the US healthcare system is too much free market.

I also like your point about acquiring a monopoly by exploiting bugs in the cognitive system. I think in that sense it's a monopoly on attention and time, which results in both an economic and information monopoly. The information monopoly is especially scary to me. At least Standard Oil didn't also control what news the country read.

Re: The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism

#89

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Dec 18, 2017, 7:07 PM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #77

chrisco255 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please show me a country where unregulated capitalism exists.

Cartel Mexico?

The fact that the nominal government isn't the de facto government of every part of the country doesn't mean that unregulated capitalism rules.

(Of course, unregulated capitalism is an oxymoron; capitalism involves active government intervention to enforce a very specific model of property rights; it is a particular application of regulation, not it's absence.)

Re: The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism

#90

Post by Fraterkes » Mon, Dec 18, 2017, 7:07 PM UTC

hal9000xp wrote: post #29

Capitalism is danger for civilization? Writes who? A buzzfeed. A very, very leftist media site. How we end up in situation when huge portion (if not majority) of hacker community turned out to be die hard socialists ? (nowadays they call themselves social-democrats) I remember when I lived in Uzbekistan and I didn't have access to internet, I got floppy disk with saved copies of Eric Raymond articles. Once I've read…

Politically I would think anarchism fits better with the hacker mindser as you describe it. And anarchism has a long leftist tradition. Also, to bridge the gap between ideologies a little; in my mind leftism dosnt dislike creative freedom or progress, they just think that large corporations are more at risk of stiffling it than regulations.