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Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

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Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

#51

Post by neilv »

Terr_ wrote: post #19
martin-t wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today's social structures exist because they evolved through history and shifting incentives. I sometimes wonder if we could design a better system today taking today's knowledge of psychology (and psychopathology) into account and optimizing for values we have today like freedom, balance of power and equality of opportunity.

> I sometimes wonder if we could design a better system today [...] optimizing for values we have today like freedom, balance of power and equality of opportunity. I think it's important to point out that some people... don't seem to share the same ground-assumptions, and it's forming a rather sharp divide in modern US politics. There's a model for analyzing "how could you think that" disagreements which I've found u…

> > that there will always be people at the top and people at the bottom, so any claim towards making things equal must be a Trojan-horse for something that benefits them.

They're right... when the other is someone like them.

And they have a blind spot for an other who is not like them.

Meanwhile, what is the blind spot of the people who are not like that (i.e., who believe in equality)?

Is their blind spot that they can't imagine so many people who are trying to gain advantage, and being deceitful about it?

Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

#52

Post by Yoric »

Buttons840 wrote: post #38
roenxi wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, trivially. The tricky part is building a system that the median citizen (and the officers in the military) can verify has been optimised that way vs competing, poorly optimised systems that sound good. Factor in the median citizen has maybe a couple of hours to do research, isn't very principled and doesn't understand game theory well. Also consider that high status people are perfectly happy to set up an "exper…

One day society will collapse and in the chaos people will come together to create a new constitution. The people who find themselves in a position to write that constitution will not have time to read up on psychology and systemantics and cryptography and voting theory and AI, etc, etc. There's all these ideas that may or may not have a place in writing the optimal constitution, but probably nobody is going to utili…

> There's all these ideas that may or may not have a place in writing the optimal constitution, but probably nobody is going to utilize them when the times comes.

I'm not certain.

Both the US Constitution and the first French Constitution, for instance, were the produce of one century of thinking ideas through. Each successive French Constitution has been redesigned to avoid the problems that led to the fall of the previous one.

I'm less familiar with other examples.

Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

#53

Post by DeathArrow »

martin-t wrote: post #6
docsaintly wrote: post #5

This series will really make you examine social hierarchies, including the ones that exist today. They are no accident.

Today's social structures exist because they evolved through history and shifting incentives. I sometimes wonder if we could design a better system today taking today's knowledge of psychology (and psychopathology) into account and optimizing for values we have today like freedom, balance of power and equality of opportunity.

>I sometimes wonder if we could design a better system today taking today's knowledge of psychology (and psychopathology) into account and optimizing for values we have today like freedom, balance of power and equality of opportunity.

That would work in MMO games,not in reality. If the system is not naturally evolving, it will produce tragedies. Look at communism. It was supposed to produce "a better" society but resulted in tens of millions of deaths, loss of freedom and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.

Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

#54

Post by sokoloff »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #39
ch4s3 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

File this under Lies Engineers Believe About Political Science.

If you don’t understand that advertisement and public relations are merely propaganda, I’m not sure what to tell you beyond that. We think in terms of wholly different realities I guess. Nothing can convince you of my side and nothing can convince me against this conclusion that advertisement is fundamentally propaganda, and as long as we allow for it in politics we allow for the opportunity of malicious intent on th…

Suppose we allow only short published stump speeches and nothing else.

What prevents the green team from registering 200 yellow candidates who will all submit yellow-sounding platforms in order to split the vote?

Don’t we want to allow the public to judge candidates on more than their ability to write a single speech? Politics and representation is picking someone to perform tasks as our agent that go well beyond writing a single short speech with lots of lead time.

Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

#55

Post by ggm »

A reminder unemployment and underemployment and labour displacement existed in Roman times, and could be inferred to have carried into post Roman serfdom and the age of kings. It might not be the best choice for a peasant normally but walking off the land did happen. There are court records seeking the return of successful townspeople provably off their lords domain, and similar documents around marriage and land inheritance.

Peasant revolts would be fights for retained rights, even if informal - not just new rights, if at all about new rights.

Labour mobility predates the modern era.

Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

#56

Post by TFYS »

cjfd wrote: post #49
Terr_ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I sometimes wonder if we could design a better system today [...] optimizing for values we have today like freedom, balance of power and equality of opportunity. I think it's important to point out that some people... don't seem to share the same ground-assumptions, and it's forming a rather sharp divide in modern US politics. There's a model for analyzing "how could you think that" disagreements which I've found u…

This analysis is highly muddled. "making things equal" != democracy. Capitalism can both create and break hierarchies. The concepts of democracy and capitalism have a far greater reach than the current US political climate where both are malfunctioning. The US is a superpower attempting to become a third world country and corruption and incompetence are a great way to reach that goal.

There's no other way to have a true democracy than to make things as equal as possible. As soon as you allow any level of inequality to exist, the power differentials caused by it will be used to increase the power differential and inequality even more, and over a long period of time you'll end up with a dictatorship. Once you have extreme concentration of power, it's only a matter of time until someone that should not have it comes to have it. This is what every system so far has succumbed to. We need a truly equal system where all concentration of power is avoided unless absolutely necessary for the functioning of society to avoid an eventual collapse of the system.

Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

#57

Post by cjfd »

TFYS wrote: post #56
cjfd wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This analysis is highly muddled. "making things equal" != democracy. Capitalism can both create and break hierarchies. The concepts of democracy and capitalism have a far greater reach than the current US political climate where both are malfunctioning. The US is a superpower attempting to become a third world country and corruption and incompetence are a great way to reach that goal.

There's no other way to have a true democracy than to make things as equal as possible. As soon as you allow any level of inequality to exist, the power differentials caused by it will be used to increase the power differential and inequality even more, and over a long period of time you'll end up with a dictatorship. Once you have extreme concentration of power, it's only a matter of time until someone that should n…

This is nonsense. Most/all democracies have laws that only certified doctors can practice medicine. This makes doctors unequal from other people. Is this incompatible with democracy?

Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

#58

Post by DeathArrow »

Terr_ wrote: post #19
martin-t wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today's social structures exist because they evolved through history and shifting incentives. I sometimes wonder if we could design a better system today taking today's knowledge of psychology (and psychopathology) into account and optimizing for values we have today like freedom, balance of power and equality of opportunity.

> I sometimes wonder if we could design a better system today [...] optimizing for values we have today like freedom, balance of power and equality of opportunity. I think it's important to point out that some people... don't seem to share the same ground-assumptions, and it's forming a rather sharp divide in modern US politics. There's a model for analyzing "how could you think that" disagreements which I've found u…

>that there will always be people at the top and people at the bottom, so any claim towards making things equal must be a Trojan-horse for something that benefits them

That's true even in the most leftist and forcefully egalitarian regimes like communism. There are a few taking the ultimate decisions and there are some that benefit.

Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

#59

Post by bigstrat2003 »

verisimi wrote: post #45
ljf wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/medieval-peasant-only-work...

It is really great that Snopes was around in medieval times and can confirm or deny! /S The thing is, no one knows what medieval peasants were doing, cos we weren't there. We have this or that piece of evidence, but evidence can be misinterpreted.

The majority of people today don't work as hard as the farmers of today. It is completely implausible that they work harder than the farmers of the middle ages, who almost certainly had to work harder than modern farmers (thanks to no mechanization).

Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

#60

Post by DeathArrow »

TFYS wrote: post #56
cjfd wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This analysis is highly muddled. "making things equal" != democracy. Capitalism can both create and break hierarchies. The concepts of democracy and capitalism have a far greater reach than the current US political climate where both are malfunctioning. The US is a superpower attempting to become a third world country and corruption and incompetence are a great way to reach that goal.

There's no other way to have a true democracy than to make things as equal as possible. As soon as you allow any level of inequality to exist, the power differentials caused by it will be used to increase the power differential and inequality even more, and over a long period of time you'll end up with a dictatorship. Once you have extreme concentration of power, it's only a matter of time until someone that should n…

Democracy is following people's will, not "making things equal". In a democracy, the people have the power to decide and anyone has the power to elect, be elected and to voice his opinion freely.
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