5 ms·

Or simply, our means of production have become so efficient that it didn't matter whether you were right or wrong, things would still hum along and the profits

Or simply, our means of production have become so efficient that it didn't matter whether you were right or wrong, things would still hum along and the profits would continue. In the agricultural age, if you fucked up a harvest, you and your family could starve. Before agriculture, if you fucked up a hunt, your whole kin-clan could starve. Nowadays, if you fuck up the housing market, and millions of people go bankrupt, nothing gets broken enough to turn a concern into a crisis, so we never fix anything, and nothing ever changes.

api 9y ago
Many people have proposed variations of this as the reason civilizations collapse. They are destroyed by their success. They gain so much surplus that it completely isolates them from any kind of feedback mechanism, over time causing them to completely rot from within. Eventually the core becomes so rotten that the whole system falls apart. This can be sudden. I think an intuitive grasp of this is why so many conservatives have a natural disdain for welfare. But I think their disdain for welfare at the individual level is misplaced. The isolation of the most powerful and largest scale systems from consequences at the macro level is a far larger problem than the isolation of individuals from consequences at the micro level. Welfare can indeed become addictive and lead to a "welfare class," but these are largely powerless and relatively poor people who may be somewhat of a burden on society but do little damage otherwise. The real danger is a rich powerful professional welfare class that makes big ugly mistakes and is isolated from the consequences of these by power and abundance.
- CalChris 9y ago
  This is about right. Think of the F35 as welfare, a big ugly mistake isolated from consequences yet employing and profiting a professional welfare class.
  - api 9y ago
    The F35 is indeed welfare, but it's not the most damaging kind. Things like that represent waste but do little in the way of active harm, and sometimes they can even have side benefits like funding the development of advanced technologies that can find more productive use elsewhere. The real active harm comes when you get a professional class that does very bad things. These can be mistakes, like the total collapse of the economy in 2008, or they can be intentional crimes. Either way if there are no consequences then no correction gets applied and the problem gets worse. A large scale wealthy civilization can absorb a tremendous amount of official incompetence and misconduct.
    - CalChris 9y ago
      Agreed. However, in addition to viewing the F35 as welfare you can also see it as Too Big To Fail. I think there are side benefits to defense spending. Silicon Valley was built on that [1]. But there's tremendous risk with large (and doomed) projects when they fail (which they will). [1] https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ Uber is going to fail. The F35 is going to fail. Throwing good money after bad will stave off that day of reckoning but then only make it a worse accounting.
      - dmoy 9y ago
        At some point though, if major world powers never go to war with each other, then the F35 can't really fail insofar as it will never actually see combat. It reminds me of the sci fi novels Dread Empire's Fall, in which the galactic civilization's ship fleet has never fought a battle in thousands of years, so nobody can actually know how to do it, and they don't know if a certain tactic, ship, etc is really a failure or not.
        rm_-rf_slash 9y ago
        Historical anecdote: at the start of the U.S. Civil War, only two sitting Union generals had ever seen combat (back in the Mexican-American War 20 years back), and the top general had gotten so fat by then he couldn't even ride a horse.
        somecontext 9y ago
        For some context, the document http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/075/75-1/CMH_Pub_75-1.pdf http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/075/75-1/CMH_Pub_75-1... indicates on page 50 that in December 1860, "on the Eve of War", the army had a total strength of 18k men, of which 1k were commissioned officers, of which four were generals. A different source ("Armies South, Armies North" by Alan Axelrod, also author of the more compellingly-named "Generals South, Generals North") provides more detail, including names: Winfield Scott, William Harney, David Twiggs, and John Wool. This and other sources also include Joseph Johnston, then quartermaster general of the US Army, as a fifth general. There were also two more brevetted generals: Albert Johnston (no relation to Joseph) and Newman Clarke. Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott (the commanding general of the US Army) was 74 years old and indeed unable to ride a horse. However, all seven of the generals had seen combat. In particular, four served in the War of 1812, all served in the Mexican-American War, and all served in the Indian Wars. With the exception of Joseph Johnston, all of them even served in war as generals (at least brevet, but usually full).
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    Alternatively, because being a functional and happy member of modern society is predicated on full time employment (for health care, if nothing else), then there is enormous pressure to create these employments for people. If we were to engage in universal welfare, we'd remove a false feedback signal and allow ourselves to focus on what actually creates value rather than what pays rent, food, essential health care and education. I don't think there is much debate that not giving people access to those things is bad. But we seem strangely averse to just making them part of the core of our society.
- thruflo22 9y ago
  That's really interesting. Makes me think about what the feedback mechanism could be. A high rate / corp tax rate that's proportional to an objective inequality measure? Trouble is taxation is avoided but it is the only thing that really stings.
crpatino 9y ago
It is not that we are so efficient, but that a priviledged tiny cabal have learned how to push the consequences of their mistakes to the rest of the population. To borrow your example: In agricultural age, if you fucked up harvest your family starves. Today, if you fuck up the housing market, thousand of families end up in bankrupcy, and tens of thousands of small investors loose their savings... but you do not personally know any of them, so you wont even feel shame when you cash-in that million dollar yearly bonus. There's historic precedent for that kind of divorce between actions and consequences, and it is not pretty. There's a certain French doctor you should google: his name's Josheph Guillotin.
- mercurial 9y ago
  > There's historic precedent for that kind of divorce between actions and consequences, and it is not pretty. There's a certain French doctor you should google: his name's Josheph Guillotin. I'm not sure what analogy you are going for. Guillotin did not invent the guillotine, and only advertised it as a more humane way of execution. He was opposed to the death penalty.
  - acabal 9y ago
    They're referring to the French Revolution, and then the Terror. One of the causes of the revolution was the poor being fed up with the massive wealth imbalance. An economic depression was making the masses starve in the streets, while the wealthy 1% enjoyed lives of comfort and luxury enabled by the rigged aristocratic land-owning system. So the peasants had their bloody revolution, killed a lot of the aristocrats using Dr. Guillotine's invention, and now we have modern France. (This is, of course, a gross oversimplification of a complex historical topic. Please feel free to correct me.)
    - mercurial 9y ago
      I am well aware of the French revolution and its causes, thank you. As I said, Guillotin did not invent the machine. He did not like death penalty, but if it had to be done, he would rather have had it done by a machine than by axe or sword (for the nobility) which occasionally did not kill in one hit, or by hanging (for the ordinary populace). The actual inventor of the guillotine is one Antoine Louis [1]. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Louis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Louis

api 9y ago

Many people have proposed variations of this as the reason civilizations collapse. They are destroyed by their success. They gain so much surplus that it completely isolates them from any kind of feedback mechanism, over time causing them to completely rot from within. Eventually the core becomes so rotten that the whole system falls apart. This can be sudden. I think an intuitive grasp of this is why so many conservatives have a natural disdain for welfare. But I think their disdain for welfare at the individual level is misplaced. The isolation of the most powerful and largest scale systems from consequences at the macro level is a far larger problem than the isolation of individuals from consequences at the micro level. Welfare can indeed become addictive and lead to a "welfare class," but these are largely powerless and relatively poor people who may be somewhat of a burden on society but do little damage otherwise. The real danger is a rich powerful professional welfare class that makes big ugly mistakes and is isolated from the consequences of these by power and abundance.

CalChris 9y ago
This is about right. Think of the F35 as welfare, a big ugly mistake isolated from consequences yet employing and profiting a professional welfare class.
- api 9y ago
  The F35 is indeed welfare, but it's not the most damaging kind. Things like that represent waste but do little in the way of active harm, and sometimes they can even have side benefits like funding the development of advanced technologies that can find more productive use elsewhere. The real active harm comes when you get a professional class that does very bad things. These can be mistakes, like the total collapse of the economy in 2008, or they can be intentional crimes. Either way if there are no consequences then no correction gets applied and the problem gets worse. A large scale wealthy civilization can absorb a tremendous amount of official incompetence and misconduct.
  - CalChris 9y ago
    Agreed. However, in addition to viewing the F35 as welfare you can also see it as Too Big To Fail. I think there are side benefits to defense spending. Silicon Valley was built on that [1]. But there's tremendous risk with large (and doomed) projects when they fail (which they will). [1] https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ Uber is going to fail. The F35 is going to fail. Throwing good money after bad will stave off that day of reckoning but then only make it a worse accounting.
    - dmoy 9y ago
      At some point though, if major world powers never go to war with each other, then the F35 can't really fail insofar as it will never actually see combat. It reminds me of the sci fi novels Dread Empire's Fall, in which the galactic civilization's ship fleet has never fought a battle in thousands of years, so nobody can actually know how to do it, and they don't know if a certain tactic, ship, etc is really a failure or not.
      - rm_-rf_slash 9y ago
        Historical anecdote: at the start of the U.S. Civil War, only two sitting Union generals had ever seen combat (back in the Mexican-American War 20 years back), and the top general had gotten so fat by then he couldn't even ride a horse.
        somecontext 9y ago
        For some context, the document http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/075/75-1/CMH_Pub_75-1.pdf http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/075/75-1/CMH_Pub_75-1... indicates on page 50 that in December 1860, "on the Eve of War", the army had a total strength of 18k men, of which 1k were commissioned officers, of which four were generals. A different source ("Armies South, Armies North" by Alan Axelrod, also author of the more compellingly-named "Generals South, Generals North") provides more detail, including names: Winfield Scott, William Harney, David Twiggs, and John Wool. This and other sources also include Joseph Johnston, then quartermaster general of the US Army, as a fifth general. There were also two more brevetted generals: Albert Johnston (no relation to Joseph) and Newman Clarke. Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott (the commanding general of the US Army) was 74 years old and indeed unable to ride a horse. However, all seven of the generals had seen combat. In particular, four served in the War of 1812, all served in the Mexican-American War, and all served in the Indian Wars. With the exception of Joseph Johnston, all of them even served in war as generals (at least brevet, but usually full).
- KirinDave 9y ago
  Alternatively, because being a functional and happy member of modern society is predicated on full time employment (for health care, if nothing else), then there is enormous pressure to create these employments for people. If we were to engage in universal welfare, we'd remove a false feedback signal and allow ourselves to focus on what actually creates value rather than what pays rent, food, essential health care and education. I don't think there is much debate that not giving people access to those things is bad. But we seem strangely averse to just making them part of the core of our society.
thruflo22 9y ago
That's really interesting. Makes me think about what the feedback mechanism could be. A high rate / corp tax rate that's proportional to an objective inequality measure? Trouble is taxation is avoided but it is the only thing that really stings.

crpatino 9y ago

It is not that we are so efficient, but that a priviledged tiny cabal have learned how to push the consequences of their mistakes to the rest of the population. To borrow your example: In agricultural age, if you fucked up harvest your family starves. Today, if you fuck up the housing market, thousand of families end up in bankrupcy, and tens of thousands of small investors loose their savings... but you do not personally know any of them, so you wont even feel shame when you cash-in that million dollar yearly bonus. There's historic precedent for that kind of divorce between actions and consequences, and it is not pretty. There's a certain French doctor you should google: his name's Josheph Guillotin.

mercurial 9y ago
> There's historic precedent for that kind of divorce between actions and consequences, and it is not pretty. There's a certain French doctor you should google: his name's Josheph Guillotin. I'm not sure what analogy you are going for. Guillotin did not invent the guillotine, and only advertised it as a more humane way of execution. He was opposed to the death penalty.
- acabal 9y ago
  They're referring to the French Revolution, and then the Terror. One of the causes of the revolution was the poor being fed up with the massive wealth imbalance. An economic depression was making the masses starve in the streets, while the wealthy 1% enjoyed lives of comfort and luxury enabled by the rigged aristocratic land-owning system. So the peasants had their bloody revolution, killed a lot of the aristocrats using Dr. Guillotine's invention, and now we have modern France. (This is, of course, a gross oversimplification of a complex historical topic. Please feel free to correct me.)
  - mercurial 9y ago
    I am well aware of the French revolution and its causes, thank you. As I said, Guillotin did not invent the machine. He did not like death penalty, but if it had to be done, he would rather have had it done by a machine than by axe or sword (for the nobility) which occasionally did not kill in one hit, or by hanging (for the ordinary populace). The actual inventor of the guillotine is one Antoine Louis [1]. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Louis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Louis