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Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

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Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#201

Post by pdonis »

Joeri wrote: post #185
waps wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please note that the post gives an extremely bad impression. First of all, pareto efficiency and nash equilibria exist both in capitalism and other economic systems. And the obvious alternative economic system : centrally planned economies, are very much nash equilibria (if they are stable at all). But the second impression he gives is also very wrong. By definition, everyone is a "selfish dickhead" both in Nash equi…

I don't agree that the free market ever produces a pareto-efficient solution. If all market participants act selfishly in an unconstrained market you get a nash equilibrium because there are two avoidable downsides which the fully free market will naturally produce: the tragedy of the commons, and the concentration of resources. The tragedy of the commons can only be avoided by changing the rules of the market throug…

> The tragedy of the commons can only be avoided by changing the rules of the market through an external force (lawmaking) so participants must act altruistically to act selfishly.

You're assuming that the external force will somehow make the "right" rules, the ones that actually fix the problems with the market and force participants to find Pareto optimal outcomes. Experience suggests that this is not the case; what actually happens is that the external force that makes the rules gets co-opted by some of the market participants, and you end up with worse outcomes (i.e., further from being Pareto optimal) because the concentration of power in the external force (the government) makes it easier to corrupt. Look up "regulatory capture".

> The concentration of resources is typically avoided through wealth redistribution, another mechanism of mandatory altruism.

Again, you're assuming that whoever redistributes the wealth will do so in a way that gets closer to a Pareto optimal outcome. Experience suggests that this is not the case; what actually happens is that the rules for redistribution get co-opted by some of the market participants, so you end up with a worse distribution of wealth. When the economy tanked in 2008, wealth got redistributed, by the government, to the banks that had caused the collapse, not to the people who lost their homes and their retirement savings.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#202

Post by waps »

pdonis wrote: post #201
Joeri wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree that the free market ever produces a pareto-efficient solution. If all market participants act selfishly in an unconstrained market you get a nash equilibrium because there are two avoidable downsides which the fully free market will naturally produce: the tragedy of the commons, and the concentration of resources. The tragedy of the commons can only be avoided by changing the rules of the market throug…

> The tragedy of the commons can only be avoided by changing the rules of the market through an external force (lawmaking) so participants must act altruistically to act selfishly. You're assuming that the external force will somehow make the "right" rules, the ones that actually fix the problems with the market and force participants to find Pareto optimal outcomes. Experience suggests that this is not the case; wha…

Well add to that that you're assuming that "right" rules that are pareto efficient

1) exist

2) are significantly different from capitalism

All non-trivial pareto efficient rulesets I've ever seen involve some form of revenue sharing between both parties. Given what pareto-efficiency is, I think this may be a general property. Obviously somehow both parties need to be bound together for pareto efficiency to happen. Money's one way to do it, and I don't know that many others.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#203

Post by gaius »

Spooky23 wrote: post #154
xianshou wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, this analogy works very much at the company level, but reverses at the country level. For companies, patents represent weapons in an arsenal, in which MAD prevents offensive action, as you've said. For countries, the reverse holds: a country that jettisons its patent architecture, or never evolved a restrictive one to begin with, will be a bastion for innovators. The stable equilibrium is no bad patent…

I think you need to append "for software or business methods" liberally. For products where development costs dwarf manufacturing costs, patents provide the incentive to do stuff. Would anyone invest a few billion into a drug if anyone with access to a few million bucks could go manufacture it?

Quite; it's only software people that are upset by patents, and they are part of the wider Internet-based anti-IP movement that just wants everything to be a download away.

There is a whole 'nother world out there where people make real, actual things.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#204

Post by gaius »

xianshou wrote: post #49
nostromo wrote: post #14

I've been thinking of patents as nukes during the Cold War lately. Superpowers (US/USSR, Apple/Google) acquire very large nuclear/patent arsenals under the guise of protection/defense. These arsenals are relatively cheap for superpowers to build, but they are expensive for small states (small countries/small businesses) to acquire. The US and USSR were roughly equivalent in their arsenals so it made little sense for…

Interestingly, this analogy works very much at the company level, but reverses at the country level. For companies, patents represent weapons in an arsenal, in which MAD prevents offensive action, as you've said. For countries, the reverse holds: a country that jettisons its patent architecture, or never evolved a restrictive one to begin with, will be a bastion for innovators. The stable equilibrium is no bad patent…

a country that jettisons its patent architecture, or never evolved a restrictive one to begin with, will be a bastion for innovators.

Like, say, Somalia? Your hypothesis is trivially disproved.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#205

Post by 21echoes »

crusso wrote: post #143
21echoes wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of alternatives to Capitalism that do not involve State-heavy mechanisms. For instance, in Communism, despite your assertion to the contrary, there is actually no state at all.

Just because Marx and Engels put that in their manifesto doesn't mean that any system that has the features of Communism would even theoretically be possible without force (a state).

I don't think "theoretically" is the right word to use here -- it is literally the theory of Communism that it is without a state.

Semantic quibbling aside, there are, as stated in my other comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7887756), plenty of decidedly non-"theoretical" cultures which have very Communist features and no entity which fits most conceptions of a state (certainly not your original stated concept of a state as something with a "crap-ton of government bureaucracy, rules and regulations to tell people exactly how to live")

Additionally, there is plenty of theory about how one would have a system that has the features of Communism without a state: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism being the most direct and pure version. Frankly, asserting flippantly to the contrary makes your whole line of reasoning in these threads very hard to take seriously. There are piles upon piles of books, research, etc. about the intersection of the market and the state, and none of them really try to say, as you have, that without a state there must be private property. Indeed, most works in the space (including the original Locke, etc.) assert precisely the contrary -- that one of the main reasons the state exists is to enforce private property.

More broadly, of course, it really depends on how you define "state". Are all systems of non-interpersonal power a "state"? Is even organized interpersonal power a state? Is it even at all possible for there to be no state? etc.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#206

Post by ahomescu1 »

sergiosgc wrote: post #110
hibikir wrote: post #41

Trust is not a binary decision, it is a continuum. And within that continuum, the US is way further to being a trusting society than not. When we sign a contract, we have an expectation that it will be fulfilled, and that if it isn't, the courts will work, albeit slowly. You get a job, and you tend to get paid. Go in a cab, not expect to get robbed, or murdered. If you hire an employee, you expect him to at least att…

> There's a reason Southern Europe has worse economic outcomes, and that's trust. I have no idea where you got this impression from. It is wrong, though. I did business in several southern Europe countries, and you can seal a deal with a handshake and be confident it'll go through.

> It is wrong, though.

As an Eastern European, I think he got it right. From my own experience, there's a huge difference in trustworthiness between the Western and other countries/regions.

I have tons of stories to support this, but here's just one: in supermarkets in my own country, you're not allowed to walk in with a backpack (you have to seal it outside or leave it in a locker); I've never had to do that in the US.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#207

Post by ahomescu1 »

21echoes wrote: post #99
cgh wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name a historical example where such a system has been successfully implemented?

All cultures prior to the invention of the modern state. Basically all current "native" cultures, including but in no sense limited to: the Bemba, the Nuer, the Iroquois, Polynesians, Melanesians, etc. etc. etc. Almost all day to day interactions (familial, friendly, etc.). And that's also honestly not relevant to the discussion at hand. OP stated "the alternative to capitalism is to remove negotiation from individua…

> All cultures prior to the invention of the modern state. Basically all current "native" cultures, including but in no sense limited to: the Bemba, the Nuer, the Iroquois, Polynesians, Melanesians, etc. etc. etc. Almost all day to day interactions (familial, friendly, etc.).

Do those scale to populations of millions?

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#208

Post by ahomescu1 »

E_Carefree wrote: post #42

If Tesla did this in the early game, would they still be in the position they are today? I think this open source movement works but only if you have the next thing in hand or after you've taken your fill and are ready to move on. In Tesla's case, I think both are true. If a hunter goes out, learns out how to kill an animal, and then teaches everyone else in the tribe how to do the same, he is shooting himself in the…

> If a hunter goes out, learns out how to kill an animal, and then teaches everyone else in the tribe how to do the same, he is shooting himself in the foot because he is no longer useful. The tribe can get their own food and his specialization is no longer special. So he dies off. Unless, he's ready to retire the hunting business and/or holds the monopoly for creating the weapons.

This ignores competitive and first-mover advantages. Maybe he's the best hunter (because of experience or talent), or maybe no one else wants or is able to be a hunter (especially if it's dangerous or physically-demanding).

Essentially, you're arguing that the sole hunter should keep a strong grip on the hunting monopoly by keeping everyone ignorant. In practice, this never works out well.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#210

Post by novaleaf »

poolpool wrote: post #116
novaleaf wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A nice hypothesis, do you have any examples that show this to be true? The realist in me bets that innovation has only a weak relationship to IP laws, and rather a strong relationship to a certain world-view that fosters innovation since childhood (go USA!)

How does the US foster innovation? It certainly puts the rich (Some of which who were innovators) on pedestals, but the education system certainly does not preach innovation for the first 18 years of a child's life. You could argue that it actually penalizes innovation.

I only have two personal anecdotes: My own childhood growing up in Washington State, and my experience in Thailand for the last 7 years.

In the USA, we often hear about how our (USA) school systems are too easy/relaxed compared to foreign countries.

In Thailand, it's the opposite, in the most terrible way possible. Everything is about test scores, and thus "thinking outside the box" is severely penalized.

People in the USA might not have the raw-academics, but the applied problem solving and team collaboration skills absolutely crushes the competition (Though of course that doesn't help manual labor jobs much)

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