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The underlying assumption to reach this conclusion is basically a false dichotomy though. Why is it that the invisible hand must govern desperate people? Could

The underlying assumption to reach this conclusion is basically a false dichotomy though. Why is it that the invisible hand must govern desperate people? Could we not keep the optimizing aspects of market economies even in a world where people are safe enough to say no?

ben_w 8y ago
I don’t think we can. We might be able to replace market economies with something better, but any free market’s optimisation strategy requires people to make rational self-interested decisions. Obviously we’re not great at the rational part, but my limited understanding is that we have not already successfully replaced free markets because our economic science knowledge is still nowhere near good enough at predicting the desires of nation-sized populations.
pjc50 8y ago
> Could we not keep the optimizing aspects of market economies even in a world where people are safe enough to say no? That requires the provision of safety and security outside of market mechanisms. This is where "basic income" (security against destitution, but still using the market) and "universal healthcare" (variety of not-quite-market options) are coming from. It also requires some kind of firewalling of political and psychological security against market mechanisms, otherwise the invisible hand will reach back in to exploit people's unsafety.
- zozbot123 8y ago
  It's not just safety and security that must be provided, but social inclusion as well - especially if what you care about is countering the negatives of the "attention market". Traditional societies are actually very good at this, thanks to their highly-refined social structures which mesh well with human social ("tribe") instincts. Modern-day societies that try to be "market-based" to a rather extreme extent are a lot more atomized. You can deal with that if you're lucky enough to have relatively-high income or wealth, but it's essentially a crappy, inefficient band-aid-- and the people in "relative poverty" are still SOL.
  - erikb 8y ago
    > It's not just safety and security that must be provided, but social inclusion as well Isn't it curious that we need to provide this as external source of safety? I'm not disagreeing, I also think so, but it's still surprising. If we think about that "the machine" is objective, and that it can look into our hearts, that it wants to reach as many of us as possible, and wants to convince us to do its bidding by positive feedback loops, then why doesn't provide safety and security as a default? Makes me wonder if our feedback loop is somehow "buggy" and that the feedback loop and our needs are not really correlating that much.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> The underlying assumption to reach this conclusion is basically a false dichotomy though. It's a dichotomy, sure. The support for your contention that it is a false one is... where? > Could we not keep the optimizing aspects of market economies even in a world where people are safe enough to say no? That's kind of the idea of the balance sought in principle by the modern mixed economy; the problem is (well, a problem is) that the people who are most successful in that economy (and therefore wield disproportionate power) keep trying to drag it back to being capitalism because they benefit by minimizing the mitigating measures, even without us having achieved “a world where people are safe enough to start no.” Maybe that middle ground exists, but our experience shows that any middle ground is unstable.
- CuriousSkeptic 8y ago
  I don’t think the burden of proof against dichotomies should be on me. But as a counter point consider the massive amount of economic value produced in commons based peer-production a means of production that seems to flourish despite the world insistence on fitting everything into the market economy. Regarding the feedback from capital owners I believe a Geoliberal approach to capitalism could counter that.

ben_w 8y ago

I don’t think we can. We might be able to replace market economies with something better, but any free market’s optimisation strategy requires people to make rational self-interested decisions. Obviously we’re not great at the rational part, but my limited understanding is that we have not already successfully replaced free markets because our economic science knowledge is still nowhere near good enough at predicting the desires of nation-sized populations.

pjc50 8y ago

> Could we not keep the optimizing aspects of market economies even in a world where people are safe enough to say no? That requires the provision of safety and security outside of market mechanisms. This is where "basic income" (security against destitution, but still using the market) and "universal healthcare" (variety of not-quite-market options) are coming from. It also requires some kind of firewalling of political and psychological security against market mechanisms, otherwise the invisible hand will reach back in to exploit people's unsafety.

zozbot123 8y ago
It's not just safety and security that must be provided, but social inclusion as well - especially if what you care about is countering the negatives of the "attention market". Traditional societies are actually very good at this, thanks to their highly-refined social structures which mesh well with human social ("tribe") instincts. Modern-day societies that try to be "market-based" to a rather extreme extent are a lot more atomized. You can deal with that if you're lucky enough to have relatively-high income or wealth, but it's essentially a crappy, inefficient band-aid-- and the people in "relative poverty" are still SOL.
- erikb 8y ago
  > It's not just safety and security that must be provided, but social inclusion as well Isn't it curious that we need to provide this as external source of safety? I'm not disagreeing, I also think so, but it's still surprising. If we think about that "the machine" is objective, and that it can look into our hearts, that it wants to reach as many of us as possible, and wants to convince us to do its bidding by positive feedback loops, then why doesn't provide safety and security as a default? Makes me wonder if our feedback loop is somehow "buggy" and that the feedback loop and our needs are not really correlating that much.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> The underlying assumption to reach this conclusion is basically a false dichotomy though. It's a dichotomy, sure. The support for your contention that it is a false one is... where? > Could we not keep the optimizing aspects of market economies even in a world where people are safe enough to say no? That's kind of the idea of the balance sought in principle by the modern mixed economy; the problem is (well, a problem is) that the people who are most successful in that economy (and therefore wield disproportionate power) keep trying to drag it back to being capitalism because they benefit by minimizing the mitigating measures, even without us having achieved “a world where people are safe enough to start no.” Maybe that middle ground exists, but our experience shows that any middle ground is unstable.

CuriousSkeptic 8y ago
I don’t think the burden of proof against dichotomies should be on me. But as a counter point consider the massive amount of economic value produced in commons based peer-production a means of production that seems to flourish despite the world insistence on fitting everything into the market economy. Regarding the feedback from capital owners I believe a Geoliberal approach to capitalism could counter that.