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Is everything an MLM

annehelen.substack.com

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Re: Is everything an MLM

#121

Post by seibelj »

cheerlessbog wrote: post #110
seibelj wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting it's better to ban individual choice because of the existence of landfills and climate change? The market could effectively and efficiently price those into products, if society would pass a law.

No. Did I say that? I like living in a predominantly capitalist society. I would like us to pay more attention to the consequences of consumption. One way to do that is to build it into prices (such as a carbon tax, or upstreaming disposal cost) or by regulation. Building cost into price is actually a very capitalist and arguably libertarian approach as it enables the market to reallocate resources to minimize what w…

Great, so we are in agreement. I was confused because:

> Often the choices made by "the individual" don't account for externalities that aren't built into the price...

You put "the individual" in quotes as if to critique some sort of free-market system based on individuals, and I wanted to emphasize that the system we have can solve those problems.

Re: Is everything an MLM

#122

Post by njepa »

rectang wrote: post #112
seibelj wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative to letting the individual determine what they want is to let someone else choose for them. I’m arguing on fundamental principles because the parent commenter is advocating a reorganization of market-based economies. I don’t care how complex the system is. If you aren’t letting me, the individual, determine what is best for my life, then you are coming from a place of superiority and belief that you kn…

> The alternative to letting the individual determine what they want is to let someone else choose for them. In real-world "free" markets, the poor have their choices made for them by the wealthy.

It is less "real-world markets" and just markets. Markets are one dollar one vote.

Re: Is everything an MLM

#123

Post by AznHisoka »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #47
AznHisoka wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm is this growth in population predominantly in the working age group? If more babies are being born, then they cant exactly work yet. Furthermore, what about people retiring?

Yes. Most of the growth is immigration. People don't immigrate to retire. They immigrate to work.

are most of these people qualified for most job openings?

Re: Is everything an MLM

#124

Post by petra »

stickfigure wrote: post #99
petra wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It’s not on someone else to tell me what I should and should not want. That's true. >> If I desire it and a company provides it for a price, it doesn’t matter that the smart refrigerator is a waste in your vision. People are not good at knowing(or at least acting) on what will make them deeply happy, happier over the longer term, or even just happy. Psychological research tells us that. Add to that the power of ad…

Is that really true that the majority of people don't know what will make them happy? I mean yeah, there's a lot of tragic and unhappy people out there, but is it enough that we need to question the nature of our society? I, and most people I know, are pretty happy. Not every choice I make turns out well, but at least it's my choice and I accept the consequences. There are a few chemically depressed people in my soci…

>> Is that really true that the majority of people don't know what will make them happy?

Decision and experience: why don't we choose what makes us happy?

""Recent years have witnessed a growing interest among psychologists and other social scientists in subjective well-being and happiness. Here we review selected contributions to this development from the literature on behavioral-decision theory. In particular, we examine many, somewhat surprising, findings that show people systematically fail to predict or choose what maximizes their happiness, and we look at reasons why they fail to do so. These findings challenge a fundamental assumption that underlies popular support for consumer sovereignty and other forms of autonomy in decision-making (e.g. marriage choice), namely, the assumption that people are able to make choices in their own best interests. "

http://mail.im.tku.edu.tw/~myday/teaching/1001/SMM/S/1001SMM...

>> I mean yeah, there's a lot of tragic and unhappy people out there, but is it enough that we need to question the nature of our society?

There's really a lot of unnecessary suffering, and also unrealized potential.

And is the nature of our society so sacred that it's beyond questioning ?

Because it's not a smart move, historically speaking.

Re: Is everything an MLM

#125

Post by p1esk »

seibelj wrote: post #83
UweSchmidt wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economy that you describe, is the simplified econ 101 version. The market fixes everything, and the invisible hand steers everything to optimality. The human being you describe in your last paragraph is from the same economics textbook: A perfectly rational human being making rational decisions 24/7. Both are simplified models that help doing some undergrad economics...but are absolutely insufficient to explain t…

The alternative to letting the individual determine what they want is to let someone else choose for them. I’m arguing on fundamental principles because the parent commenter is advocating a reorganization of market-based economies. I don’t care how complex the system is. If you aren’t letting me, the individual, determine what is best for my life, then you are coming from a place of superiority and belief that you kn…

How can you be that naive? On the large scale, marketing (which includes paid for by industry, biased scientific studies) is what shapes people’s desires. Vast majority of people are perfectly happy with letting someone else choose for them, and even smart people fall for it. It has truly became a fundamental principle of our society.

Re: Is everything an MLM

#127

Post by Drakim »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #111
seibelj wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting it's better to ban individual choice because of the existence of landfills and climate change? The market could effectively and efficiently price those into products, if society would pass a law.

No, only to reduce individual choice when it's clearly pushing away from significantly better global optima than individual choice can achieve.

For example, while an individual might benefit from stealing, but hurts overall more than it helps, so we try to block that individual choice despite the fact that we might be hurting somebody who is really good at stealing.

Re: Is everything an MLM

#128

Post by tepidandroid »

cheerlessbog wrote: post #98
seibelj wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are coming from the socialist angle, which is a loaded word that will probably derail the conversation, but essentially you see the free market and competition as a waste of resources that harms society. The base argument is that we don’t need 80 brands of deodorant, and the fact we have so many is a colossal waste of resources, duplication, and moral failure of society. Whereas I see 80 brands of deodorant and t…

> essentially you see the free market and competition as a waste of resources that harms society. GP made no general statement of this sort. Misrepresenting other perspectives is boring.

GP unequivocally did make exactly that statement.

Re: Is everything an MLM

#129

Post by orthecreedence »

seibelj wrote: post #68
bluetomcat wrote: post #53

Most of the economy in the so called "developed countries" is nowadays a zero-sum game between winners and losers. Seen from a macro perspective, it resembles a multi-agent system where independent agents compete to provide inessential products and services in exchange for being able to afford basic necessities like housing, food and child care. The finite resource that such companies are fighting for is people's att…

I’m sorry that this is your world view, because it is deeply flawed and focusing on such cynicism leads to depression. Most of HN lives in a tech bubble where everyone is focused on building semi-useless software like you describe. However the majority of society still does “normal” things like construction, manufacturing, sales, etc. and some sort of fundamental reorganizing of society on non-market principles doesn…

> The economy is not a zero-sum game.

Wealth is. I wrote an entire article articulating the point: https://killtheradio.net/economics/wealth-is-mostly-a-zero-s...

Re: Is everything an MLM

#130

Post by petra »

seibelj wrote: post #74
petra wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It’s not on someone else to tell me what I should and should not want. That's true. >> If I desire it and a company provides it for a price, it doesn’t matter that the smart refrigerator is a waste in your vision. People are not good at knowing(or at least acting) on what will make them deeply happy, happier over the longer term, or even just happy. Psychological research tells us that. Add to that the power of ad…

I’d rather trust individuals to make their own purchasing decisions, and let the market experiment and figure out what is best, than reorganize society on non-market principles and let a committee determine what people should and should not want. Research may state that no one knows what will make themselves happy, but isn’t that one of life’s challenges? Finding happiness and purpose? I don’t need an academic paper…

>> Research may state that no one knows what will make themselves happy, but isn’t that one of life’s challenges?

Sure.

But if people don't really know what makes them happy, maybe they'll buy a lot of useless stuff ?

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