131–140 of 297 posts
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> 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.
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…
Only if you define cash flow as the goal of the economy and production. If instead it is to provide food, shelter, and services, there is no need to speculate on how effective the (non extant) invisible hand is because it is evidently failing.
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>> 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…
If this involves things like burning absurd amounts of fossil fuels and shoving new phones down our throat every year, it is absolutely our shared problem that you are bad at allocating resources.
Edit: my → our shared
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There is no power imbalance except for the ones you create for yourself. A company doesn’t have much power over an employee willing to walk away for some other job.
And you think every person should be willing to walk away for some other job? How will that play out?
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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…
Almost every job i've worked outside of tech is pretty much some non essential service or product. Right now I turn mountains into countertops and fireplaces using large, expensive machines so rich people can have stone inside their homes. I provide nothing that is essential, yet every day customers spend tens of thousands of dollars and my spends thousands so rich people can have nice shiny stone inside their homes.…
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There's another big aspect to this: the orientation of the economy towards growth. When you start asking "What happens when the population and the economy are in a steady state, where we don't expect things to increase at 2% forever", and the answers are pretty grim. Retirement systems, for example, need a certain ratio of productive workers for each retiree, and I can't figure out any math that makes sense for the n…
I see what you are saying, but I largely disagree with the premise. We have had, and continue to have, enormous growth through technical and organizational achievements. Growth is relative, but life mostly remain constant. The requirements to house, cloth and transport people remain largely the same. The idea that we can't have retirement becomes absurd viewed over a lifetime of spending on housing, insurance and oth…
I'm beginning to agree. I think people should still be able to buy houses, but I think municipalities should also buy apartments/houses and rent them out at-cost. This would put significant downward pressure on "essentials" while still allowing choice (nobody is stopping you from buying a house).
Hypercommodification of every aspect of our lives is starting to grow tiresome and the benefits it gives ("choice" supposedly) is only realized by those who hold a decent portion of the capital.
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…
Actually, that's exactly how it works: we can't both own the same dollar. Duh.
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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…
Economics isn't so simple and only from the perspective of the buyer.
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Jobs are a proxy for both productivity and for citizens' share of value. Productivity without jobs is inequality, in a capitalist economy. If we had a socialist economy with a citizens dividend, we'd care more about productivity than jobs. Even so, a human is untapped potential, and jobs tap that potential.
The problem comes in that these systems of government only ever work on paper. People lay out Communism, socialism and capitalism as though they're these absolutes and forget that they have to exist in the real world run by real people, warts and all. People will find cracks in the system, exploit them and widen them to make them better for their particular group. Whatever "ism" you conjure is no panacea for whatever…
We either need more radical forms of wealth (re)distribution or we need to give everyone a share in the productive forces.
Yes, there will be cracks in the system, but I guarantee we'll be better off than we are now.
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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…
There might be gray areas in the middle. Some rough ideas:
- banning marketing
- Incentivising talented people toward roles that are best for society, and their results will pull people
- Do people really choose what they want ? people want affordable housing, to see their kids more, that the job conditions to be nice, etc. They settle for cheap consumer stuff, because that's what our society is aimed towards. It's a choice.