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Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

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Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#231

Post by ls612 »

radlad wrote: post #140
ls612 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is one thing that we learned from the 20th century it is that societies that gave more private control over how resources were used did better than those that had more state control over how resources were used. Perhaps in the 21st century that has changed, but for me that falls under the "extraordinary claims" category with the corresponding evidence requirements.

> If there is one thing that we learned from the 20th century it is that societies that gave more private control over how resources were used did better than those that had more state control over how resources were used. In some metrics (such as GDP), yes. And in other metrics (such as wealth inequality and health care), the answer is less clear-cut.

The Soviet bloc did not have better healthcare than the West lol. Soviet life expectancy never crossed above 70 years.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#232

Post by jmyeet »

chermi wrote: post #187
jmyeet wrote: post #152

What I find fascinating about these kinds of legitimate complaints and the comments here and elsewhere is nobody wants to talk about the root cause: capitalism. What I've come to realize is Americans in particular can't define capitalism but will die on the hill of defending it. Another casualty of the Red Scare. Let me explain. People often like farmers markets. People like locally grown produce. People like Mom and…

"A farmer's market is socialism." Lolwut? Here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism . Are you thinking of farming collectives? Also, farmers markets (today, in the West) are basically luxuries for wealthy people. In the real world, we try to feed as many people as possible for as cheaply as possible. But sure, let's grow everything locally and let people starve, because farmers markets give us fuzzy warm feeling…

> Lolwut?

This is why I used this example because you've just demonstrated that you don't know what socialism is. There is a myth that capitalism is "free markets". First, there's no such thing as a free market. All markets require regulation to function. Second, markets exist in every organization of the economy and existed long before capitalism existed. We have records of such from Sumeria from 4000+ years ago. In late feudalism, serfs would sell the food they grew to pay their fedual landlord, an early from of taxation.

> Also, farmers markets (today, in the West) are basically luxuries for wealthy people.

Walmart is one of the most heavily subsidized businesses on Earth. Directly you have agricultural subsidies but another is food stamps paid to Walmart employees [1] as well as Medicaid. Why? Because Walmart pays below a living wage.

Also, Walmart is known for setting up in a town, selling their products at below cost to kill all local businesses and then jacking up the prices, if not leaving outright, creating a new food desert.

As for locally grown food being expensive, that's not really true once you look at the bigger picture. We've seen this pattern play out in every country the IMF and Wolrd Bank have gotten involved in. The IMF/WB place conditions such that local farmers can no longer produce crops to feed their populations. Those they have to buy from the West. Instead, farmers have to grow export crops to earn foreign currency to service debt.

In the short term this lowers food prices but forces all the farmers off their land. They then have to move to cities to seek work and/or become a drain on the state.

Inevitably, with and without manipulation, the local currency collapses and locals can no longer afford that foreign food. It's entirely predatory. A system was destroyed for foreign bankers. This is almost exactly what happened in Haiti and Somalia, to name just two examples.

Now if the community owned that supermarket, this predation just wouldn't happen. In other words, it's the worker's relationship to the means of production.

[1]: https://www.worldhunger.org/report-walmart-workers-cost-taxp...

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#233

Post by internet_points »

UncleMeat wrote: post #5

I dunno. Tao is a very smart person but it seems like a bad idea for a mathematician to be making claims like these without sources. His vibes are no more meaningful than anybody else's vibes. I'm not familiar with all of these subfields, but I know that the scholarship on the history of communication networks is extremely deep . Why would there be so much work if things were actually explained so easily? If you are…

but now it's on HN and people are discussing this idea that's been thrown out and some people agree and some don't and some bring up how it's similar to Bertrand de Jouvenal and others start thinking of de Tocqueville or Robert Putnam (I'm sure you could draw a connection to James C. Scott too) and before you know it you've got the beginnings of a bibliography right here in these threads

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#234

Post by jauntywundrkind »

masfuerte wrote: post #134
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worry that theres a cyclical nature to it all. When society has smaller organizations, people saw what community organizing looked like, and folks were far more likely to have a hand being leaders simply by virtue of there being so many businesses when they were smaller and more distributed. What terrifies me is a pocket thesis I have that the local leadership—the local activating & bringing people to a purpose— va…

I mostly agree, but is it cyclical? There doesn't seem to be any force pushing back against this social atomization.

Piketty describes at length & with enormous evidence that Capital is cyclically heading one way, but while important & a core cycle turning up the heat on humanity-slowly-boiling-in-the-pot that wasn't really my gist here, which is about how the memetics of human connection and organization replicate (or not).

I see the cycle as one of: corporatism depriving us of organizational experience (power instead trickling top down from often far off far above offices), weakening organizational muscle & maturation of human agency. Resulting in people who don't have the experience to make & run orgs, leaving less orgs, which cuts off the remaining opportunities to participate & organize.

More simply: the less organizing opportunities we have the less people do organize which results in less opportunities still. Contrapositively perhaps, to organize is to non-zero sum grow & developer human agency.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#235

Post by PaulHoule »

thewebguyd wrote: post #99
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do, when citizens have the ability to steer their nation state (i.e. the ability to vote.) You can also vote in the shareholders meeting.

You have to buy your way into voting as a shareholder. In a democracy, it's just your given right as a citizen.

You also have a "vote" as a consumer. The market could be much more responsive than a "democratic" system.

For instance, say you think pesticides are a bad thing. You can get 49% of the population to vote to the ban them and what do you accomplish? Nothing

No wonder people look at politics with despair.

If you can get 5% of the population to eat organic food on the other hand, you've reduced pesticide use by 5%. You create trade associations, the idea of organic food spreads more widely and maybe someday you get enough support that you can change the law.

That's hope.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#236

Post by radlad »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #185
thewebguyd wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to buy your way into voting as a shareholder. In a democracy, it's just your given right as a citizen.

> You have to buy your way into voting as a shareholder. In a democracy, it's just your given right as a citizen. In a democratic country, only the people who have citizenship are allowed to vote. In a shareholders meeting, only the shareholders are allowed to vote. You sometimes cam buy your way into citizenship. As a shareholder, it is your given right to vote in a shareholders meeting.

Shareholders receive power proportionate to their buying power. Citizens get a single vote.

> You sometimes cam buy your way into citizenship. As a shareholder, it is your given right to vote in a shareholders meeting.

Maybe - depending on your jurisdiction. Just like whether you have citizenship or not.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#237

Post by Fraterkes »

woah wrote: post #100
bluGill wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They say that, but when you point out that they could have that if they accept a lower standard of living they lose interest (and if possiple downvote or otherwise try to shout you down)

They want a trad farming lifestyle without technology but they get mad when you tell them that they have to work 4am-10pm in the summer and one child dies per winter

You'd be a useful guy to have around on my trad farm. A strawman for every field

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#238

Post by tempestn »

Funny coincidence. I was just pondering last night how an extremely intelligent person would look at the problems in the world. (And whether it would be incredibly frustrating!) For those who aren't familiar, Terence Tao is considered one of the greatest living mathematicians, and arguably one of the world's most brilliant minds.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#239

Post by slt2021 »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #104
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Democracies, even if flawed, are accountable to their citizens at least to an extent. Stock corporation, even if flawed, are accountable to their stock holders at least to an extent; thus your point > Private companies are accountable to no one clearly does not hold. Corporations, of course, can also be steered and course-corrected (shareholders meetings).

Corporations are in principle and practice accountable to those with more money. For all its flaws our democracy is still one person one vote.

[dead]

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#240

Post by tempestn »

rangestransform wrote: post #37
cs702 wrote: post #21

Great post, thought-provoking. Highly recommended. Interestingly, in the past, the US federal government actively made efforts to keep private organizations from becoming too dominant. Here are just a few examples, from memory: * The Bell system was broken up, resulting in a geographically distributed telecom network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System : Your phone company was local. * Banks cou…

- What if Google didn't have more money than god, and couldn't afford to bankroll Waymo ~10b? - Would TSMC have gotten as far if Apple couldn't reliably buy out months of capacity on the next node, bankrolling TSMC's tech development? - Would we even have >10B-param LLMs at all? There is something to be said for the concentration of resources, such that they can be deployed on projects with payoffs years or decades l…

That's sort of the problem, right? Large organizations have become dominant precisely because of reasons like this, and there are indeed huge benefits. But if the hypothesis is correct that the crowding out of smaller organizations is fraying the fabric of society, that's a pretty significant drawback.
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