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The room the economy can't see

wilsoniumite.com

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Re: The room the economy can't see

#261

Post by svnt »

duskdozer wrote: post #117
svnt wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is mostly written by llm. “narrower” and “I want to put a fence here” hedging, etc. This is very 4.8. Maybe llm that has been somewhat massaged by a human to sound less ai.

It's possible we're at the point now where it fools me, but I didn't see it that way. I think more evidence against would be the fact that the author discloses genAI usage in another article [0] and provides their own version of the same [1]. [0] https://wilsoniumite.com/2026/06/14/labor-pressures-causing-... [1] https://wilsoniumite.com/2026/06/07/labor-is-a-market-distor...

The one they claim is in their voice [1] has zero of the tells I am referring to. You can compare and contrast it with your fully/generated reference 0 (although that is fable and I have little experience reading its writing it seems to use many similar comventions) and the title piece and see what I mean.

[1] https://wilsoniumite.com/2026/06/07/labor-is-a-market-distor...

Re: The room the economy can't see

#262

Post by ergl »

The market has been creeping into more and more facets of our lives, with delirious results: social networks are the market mediating family and friendship, dating apps are the market mediating meeting strangers, etc. I wouldn't expect that the answer to these problems would be letting the market mediate even more aspects of our lives.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#263

Post by cousin_it »

hakfoo wrote: post #253
inigyou wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone who owns a home is incentivized to keep the property value up, but not all of them actually feel and respond to that incentive. In the same way that a pig farm owner is incentivised to keep the beautiful clean nature, but makes more money farming smelly pigs instead.

Isn't the solution just to take the market out of real estate? At the individual-homeowner level, a lot of NIMBYism, HOA activity, and other toxic activity is grounded in "I have $400k of equity sunk into this square of land and it's the only meaningful asset I have for my increasingly oncoming retirement." There are probably plenty of people who are subconsciously self-sabotaging due to that-- they may personally pr…

If people can move freely, and there's no price mechanism to allocate housing and construction, there will be problems. So "taking the market out of real estate" is a very big ask. In the USSR you couldn't freely move to another city, you needed to get government approval on the basis of a job change. People complained about this registration system all the time.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#264

Post by thrance »

ieatcandlewax wrote: post #250
thrance wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue they're even worse. By taking away funding for public institutions, they're removing very important freedoms, like the freedom to live a long and healthy life, to get an education, to have a functional postal service, to know what will become of the climate and to prepare for its evolutions, etc.

Those aren't freedoms, those are rights. Calling them freedoms is nonsensical

They're positive freedoms (freedom to...). American political discourse usually only revolves around negative freedoms (freedom from...) but that doesn't mean the things I listed aren't freedoms.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#265

Post by roenxi »

andrewflnr wrote: post #134
roenxi wrote: post #65

I think the premise here is wrong; the market is perfectly capable of coming up with communal spaces. Some of the nicest buildings in a small town can be the churches, for example. The issue is creating a space for a group of teenagers to exist in would be a legal hornets nest that anyone touching it would get stung by. It is a sex scandal waiting to happen, a fight waiting to happen, a drug den waiting to happen and…

Churches are funded by donations, not sales. They're a prime example of what the article is talking about.

The article is drawing a contrast between the market vs the state funding things. Donations are part of the market from that perspective. They don't stem from the state.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#266

Post by robocat »

Favours, status, time, attention, information, morals, desires:

Individuals seem to run on invisible currencies, not money.

Earning and spending money does influence our decisions, but to me most people seem to have other invisible drives.

Even businesses have goodwill: a $ valuation of many non-financial values.

I haven't done economics at university: is utility and externalities the only words that covers that concept?

Re: The room the economy can't see

#267

Post by inigyou »

hakfoo wrote: post #253
inigyou wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone who owns a home is incentivized to keep the property value up, but not all of them actually feel and respond to that incentive. In the same way that a pig farm owner is incentivised to keep the beautiful clean nature, but makes more money farming smelly pigs instead.

Isn't the solution just to take the market out of real estate? At the individual-homeowner level, a lot of NIMBYism, HOA activity, and other toxic activity is grounded in "I have $400k of equity sunk into this square of land and it's the only meaningful asset I have for my increasingly oncoming retirement." There are probably plenty of people who are subconsciously self-sabotaging due to that-- they may personally pr…

Yes it is, but history has proven the state can't be trusted to do better either.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#268

Post by inigyou »

cousin_it wrote: post #263
hakfoo wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the solution just to take the market out of real estate? At the individual-homeowner level, a lot of NIMBYism, HOA activity, and other toxic activity is grounded in "I have $400k of equity sunk into this square of land and it's the only meaningful asset I have for my increasingly oncoming retirement." There are probably plenty of people who are subconsciously self-sabotaging due to that-- they may personally pr…

If people can move freely, and there's no price mechanism to allocate housing and construction, there will be problems. So "taking the market out of real estate" is a very big ask. In the USSR you couldn't freely move to another city, you needed to get government approval on the basis of a job change. People complained about this registration system all the time.

There's still a cost. Cost of living in the most popular places is that they're slums, because everyone is building everything. The slum factor will cancel out whatever was making them popular.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#269

Post by throwaway98797 »

svnt wrote: post #70
throwaway98797 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are so wrong. this is not ai.

Parts of it seem not to be, but the bulk of it is. Here is a particularly clear example of opus-4.8-speak. > Now, I want to be careful here, because this is the part where it would be very easy to start waving my arms around. Every single one of these has many causes. Suburbs and cars. Television, and then phones. A long list of things that have nothing to do with me at all. I am not going to claim I have found the o…

i wish i could codify voice.

probably someone has.

i’m not beyond being fooled, but when there’s voice there’s a human.

this is especially true with certain types of awkward phrasings that LLMs love to correct but humans don’t.

one day my internal filter will fail, but not today.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#270

Post by svnt »

throwaway98797 wrote: post #269
svnt wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parts of it seem not to be, but the bulk of it is. Here is a particularly clear example of opus-4.8-speak. > Now, I want to be careful here, because this is the part where it would be very easy to start waving my arms around. Every single one of these has many causes. Suburbs and cars. Television, and then phones. A long list of things that have nothing to do with me at all. I am not going to claim I have found the o…

i wish i could codify voice. probably someone has. i’m not beyond being fooled, but when there’s voice there’s a human. this is especially true with certain types of awkward phrasings that LLMs love to correct but humans don’t. one day my internal filter will fail, but not today.

Right, this is cyborg text. The opening is in human voice. I am acknowledging that. Then it ebbs and flows over llm rocks.

The piece would be maybe 6-8 grafs without claude, and much of claude is papered over.

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