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To see why that is true, imagine we lived in a sports-based economy. In such a marketplace, I would be a flop. You could supply me with the world’s best instruc

To see why that is true, imagine we lived in a sports-based economy. In such a marketplace, I would be a flop. You could supply me with the world’s best instruction, and I could endlessly strive to improve my skills. But, alas, on the gridiron or basketball court I would never command even a minimum wage. The brutal truth is that an advanced economic system, whether it be geared to physical or mental skills, will leave a great many people behind. --Warren Buffett

maxharris 10y ago
Our alternative is to live in a primitive economic/political system, such as Europe in the middle ages or Venezuela today. Even the scraps of giants make me better off than I'd be in either of those places.
- summerdown2 10y ago
  There must be more than two alternatives, though? Surely we can have a 21st century economy to match 21st century challenges? I don't know what that might look like yet - but I think we will know in a decade or so. Currently there's a storm of protest from those being left behind (Trump in the US, Brexit in the UK), and it won't be long before different solutions will be tried for these - eg UBI, direct democracy, charter cities, etc. Eventually, one of these solutions will stick and look obvious in hindsight. Also there is an argument that even if everyone objectively does better under a particular system, increasing inequality is still a bad thing. To take just one example, access to money may be correlated to access to better outcomes from the criminal justice system (eg rather than the facts of the case).
  - maxharris 10y ago
    There must be more than two alternatives, though? If we're examining it from the perspective of advancement, and we know that political restrictions on economic development (i.e., regulation) slow development (compare the development delta of periods in 19th century with today), what we end up with is an infinite number of mixtures between freedom and controls. What I'm telling you is that there are some controls we have in place today that are helping to kill me, and it is almost perceptually obvious that an alternative (freedom) is possible, and that is what we should move toward. Freedom from political and economic controls is good for those that want to work and think. It doesn't do much for those who can't or won't, but so what? Those people that work and think are the source of everything, and they have the right to priority. (Consider the effects on societies where the complete opposite principle is in action: the Soviet Union, Dark Ages Europe, Nazi Germany, Chavismo in Venezuela, Maoist China, ... possibly America in 20-40 years?)
    - cmurf 10y ago
      On the one hand you argue for a free market approach (less regulations and hence more doctors) but then you also argue for a meritocracy (those who work and think should get priority). Both of these are definitely not democratic, and for the time being democracies are the preeminent social construct with massive momentum behind them. Changing that abruptly would be seriously destabilizing for the entire world.
      - maxharris 10y ago
        Changing that abruptly would be seriously destabilizing for the entire world. You're absolutely right about this point, which is why benefits need to be removed over time. (People that have expected a Social Security check, and have paid into it their entire lives can't be expected to react just as they reach retirement. However, a 25-year-old can be told, "save for your own retirement, because this won't be there for you.") Having said that, controls can be removed instantly, and to very positive effect. Even a partial relaxation could massively improve things! Imagine how much better my situation would be if the federal government had, in 1999, decided not to keep restricting the number of medical residents allowed to enter/be funded each year. (https://www.aamc.org/advocacy/gme/71178/gme_gme0012.html https://www.aamc.org/advocacy/gme/71178/gme_gme0012.html)
        ZenPsycho 10y ago
        Disingenuously left out of your arguments here is the fact that a medical education costs a hell of a lot of money, and your economic measures would remove the ability to study medicine from a lot of people who might be willing to learn, but don't have massively rich parents. Deregulating university fees, getting rid of social security, and so fourth massively reduces the number of people who are able to study medicine.
        maxharris 10y ago
        Disingenuously left out of your arguments here First, this is way out of line. I'm going to reply anyway, but please don't do this kind of thing in your next reply. Second, instead of treating it like a black box that has a fixed cost that we have to accept, take a medical education apart the way Musk would do when figuring the ultimate cost of one his cars or rockets: Putting people in a room, books in their hands, and having them sit in front of a lecturer is not actually that expensive. I won't name names, but two medical students I knew in the last fifteen years actually skipped most of their lectures, studied straight out of the book and did just fine. It is true that the hands-on aspect of medical training is more expensive, but people in much poorer countries manage to do it. Even if you managed to show that this education outlined above is inferior to the ones available today, right now I'd still be overjoyed to see a doctor educated in this manner. It's better than waiting two months (note that this is not even for treatment - it's just a biopsy!) while I can feel this thing getting bigger, with sharper pain as time goes on. Finally, what is the point here? An more economically "equal" society, or a society where people like me don't die waiting in line for care? I stridently advocate for the latter.
- infinite8s 10y ago
  That's true only in the case of economic scarcity. If there aren't enough jobs around (because of automation) then scarcity is no longer the driving force and we need to look to economic systems that were not scarcity constrained (for example, the potlach societies of papua new guinea).
jdminhbg 10y ago
> To see why that is true, imagine we lived in a sports-based economy. Sports are zero-sum, the real-world economy is not.
- squeaky-clean 10y ago
  Are sports economics zero-sum? Both teams get paid for playing. If one team loses, they don't give money to the other team.
  - jdminhbg 10y ago
    Depending on the sport, there is frequently prize money at stake, so while you're not actively giving money to the winner, you're all competing for a fixed prize. But beyond that, the more salient point is that unlike in sports, in the real world, for me to win does not necessarily mean that you have to lose. Every time I make a shot in basketball, I've increased the "value" of my team and also decreased the value of my opponent.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - michaelt 10y ago
    Most sports are zero-sum in the sense that over a given set of matches, the number of wins has to equal the number of losses. Obviously not every sport is that way. A major marathon might have one male and one female winner among 30,000 entrants.
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      By the same logic: the more losers, the more winners (for pairwise matches). You can't have winning teams without losers.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - 10y ago

maxharris 10y ago

Our alternative is to live in a primitive economic/political system, such as Europe in the middle ages or Venezuela today. Even the scraps of giants make me better off than I'd be in either of those places.

summerdown2 10y ago
There must be more than two alternatives, though? Surely we can have a 21st century economy to match 21st century challenges? I don't know what that might look like yet - but I think we will know in a decade or so. Currently there's a storm of protest from those being left behind (Trump in the US, Brexit in the UK), and it won't be long before different solutions will be tried for these - eg UBI, direct democracy, charter cities, etc. Eventually, one of these solutions will stick and look obvious in hindsight. Also there is an argument that even if everyone objectively does better under a particular system, increasing inequality is still a bad thing. To take just one example, access to money may be correlated to access to better outcomes from the criminal justice system (eg rather than the facts of the case).
- maxharris 10y ago
  There must be more than two alternatives, though? If we're examining it from the perspective of advancement, and we know that political restrictions on economic development (i.e., regulation) slow development (compare the development delta of periods in 19th century with today), what we end up with is an infinite number of mixtures between freedom and controls. What I'm telling you is that there are some controls we have in place today that are helping to kill me, and it is almost perceptually obvious that an alternative (freedom) is possible, and that is what we should move toward. Freedom from political and economic controls is good for those that want to work and think. It doesn't do much for those who can't or won't, but so what? Those people that work and think are the source of everything, and they have the right to priority. (Consider the effects on societies where the complete opposite principle is in action: the Soviet Union, Dark Ages Europe, Nazi Germany, Chavismo in Venezuela, Maoist China, ... possibly America in 20-40 years?)
  - cmurf 10y ago
    On the one hand you argue for a free market approach (less regulations and hence more doctors) but then you also argue for a meritocracy (those who work and think should get priority). Both of these are definitely not democratic, and for the time being democracies are the preeminent social construct with massive momentum behind them. Changing that abruptly would be seriously destabilizing for the entire world.
    - maxharris 10y ago
      Changing that abruptly would be seriously destabilizing for the entire world. You're absolutely right about this point, which is why benefits need to be removed over time. (People that have expected a Social Security check, and have paid into it their entire lives can't be expected to react just as they reach retirement. However, a 25-year-old can be told, "save for your own retirement, because this won't be there for you.") Having said that, controls can be removed instantly, and to very positive effect. Even a partial relaxation could massively improve things! Imagine how much better my situation would be if the federal government had, in 1999, decided not to keep restricting the number of medical residents allowed to enter/be funded each year. (https://www.aamc.org/advocacy/gme/71178/gme_gme0012.html https://www.aamc.org/advocacy/gme/71178/gme_gme0012.html)
      - ZenPsycho 10y ago
        Disingenuously left out of your arguments here is the fact that a medical education costs a hell of a lot of money, and your economic measures would remove the ability to study medicine from a lot of people who might be willing to learn, but don't have massively rich parents. Deregulating university fees, getting rid of social security, and so fourth massively reduces the number of people who are able to study medicine.
        maxharris 10y ago
        Disingenuously left out of your arguments here First, this is way out of line. I'm going to reply anyway, but please don't do this kind of thing in your next reply. Second, instead of treating it like a black box that has a fixed cost that we have to accept, take a medical education apart the way Musk would do when figuring the ultimate cost of one his cars or rockets: Putting people in a room, books in their hands, and having them sit in front of a lecturer is not actually that expensive. I won't name names, but two medical students I knew in the last fifteen years actually skipped most of their lectures, studied straight out of the book and did just fine. It is true that the hands-on aspect of medical training is more expensive, but people in much poorer countries manage to do it. Even if you managed to show that this education outlined above is inferior to the ones available today, right now I'd still be overjoyed to see a doctor educated in this manner. It's better than waiting two months (note that this is not even for treatment - it's just a biopsy!) while I can feel this thing getting bigger, with sharper pain as time goes on. Finally, what is the point here? An more economically "equal" society, or a society where people like me don't die waiting in line for care? I stridently advocate for the latter.
infinite8s 10y ago
That's true only in the case of economic scarcity. If there aren't enough jobs around (because of automation) then scarcity is no longer the driving force and we need to look to economic systems that were not scarcity constrained (for example, the potlach societies of papua new guinea).

jdminhbg 10y ago

> To see why that is true, imagine we lived in a sports-based economy. Sports are zero-sum, the real-world economy is not.

squeaky-clean 10y ago
Are sports economics zero-sum? Both teams get paid for playing. If one team loses, they don't give money to the other team.
- jdminhbg 10y ago
  Depending on the sport, there is frequently prize money at stake, so while you're not actively giving money to the winner, you're all competing for a fixed prize. But beyond that, the more salient point is that unlike in sports, in the real world, for me to win does not necessarily mean that you have to lose. Every time I make a shot in basketball, I've increased the "value" of my team and also decreased the value of my opponent.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- michaelt 10y ago
  Most sports are zero-sum in the sense that over a given set of matches, the number of wins has to equal the number of losses. Obviously not every sport is that way. A major marathon might have one male and one female winner among 30,000 entrants.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    By the same logic: the more losers, the more winners (for pairwise matches). You can't have winning teams without losers.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - 10y ago