4 ms·

Imagine I happen to think that social and group dynamic factors are more important than individual competence. So I decide to start hiring prioritizing these ch

by rjf72 8y ago

Imagine I happen to think that social and group dynamic factors are more important than individual competence. So I decide to start hiring prioritizing these characteristics over individual ability. If my hypothesis is correct, I'm going to be able to outcompete other companies in my industry and grow, achieve success, and so on. Having a large array of amicable charismatic employees at my disposal would even help for things such as favorably lobbying government to my benefit. It's win win all around. This is the nice thing about capitalist systems. It simply selects for whatever works. At times this is not a good thing (e.g. - perhaps convincing people to buy drugs they don't need could be more profitable than making drugs people genuinely need), but in general it tends to be better, and more organic, than what any individual or group might try to dictate as what should be desired.

StrictDabbler 8y ago
Prisoner's dilemma, tragedy of the commons, etc. Local maxima. The best approach for the well-being of everybody is not always the most competitive approach. Your hypothetical co-operative company agrees to not testify and gets screwed over by the company that testifies against it. Capitalism selects for what works for certain individuals. We don't know that the success of capitalism isn't just a pyramid scheme that has yet to destroy the biosphere. We only know that on the scale of a few lifetimes, modern capitalism has worked ok-ish for us in the first world. It's been pretty rough on the former colonies and the proxy states. Capitalism is very new. Mercantilism is just in the rear-view mirror. Capitalism has been subsidized by the simultaneous rise of industrial technology. There have been flourishings of sudden well-being in the past. The Romans, the Mayans, etc. They discovered new techniques of agriculture, shipping, weapons manufacture, bloomed and expanded and collapsed and died. Capitalism has not yet matched the long-term success of the Roman republic or the subsequent empire, let alone the Egyptian and Chinese systems of successive dynasties supported by a civil service. It's a huge mistake to assume that capitalism works better just because we've been doing ok with it for a while and because it's the system embraced by the country that won WWII by being across an ocean. That gave capitalism a big leg up but the headstart is running out. Kleptocracy has a good chance of out-competing managed capitalism in the next fifty years by using regulatory capture. If you want to avoid regulatory capture by deregulating, remember that an unfettered market has always degenerated into kratocracy (government by the powerful) and kratocracy tends to turn into aristocracy. Capitalism: Doing OK for now!
- dleslie 8y ago
  And the Romans and Chinese thought that they were at the End of History, as well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_history https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_history
  - arcticbull 8y ago
    Thinking it and having the ability to single handedly enact it are two very different things. It’s one thing for me to personally think I’m at the end of history chilling in a coffee shop in SF, it’s quite another when I’ve got the finger on the nuclear codes.
    - dleslie 8y ago
      It's less about the annihilation of humanity and more about belief in the superiority of a particular form of Governance. From Wiki: > The end of history is a political and philosophical concept that supposes that a particular political, economic, or social system may develop that would constitute the end-point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and the final form of human government.
andrei_says_ 8y ago
Maybe “So I decide to start hiring prioritizing these characteristics along with individual ability?” As for capitalism and productivity I highly recommend Dan Lyons’ Lab Rats exposing the complete chaos that human management is in. People dynamics are complex and well, dynamic. Changes and rules carry potential for difficult to predict outcomes. Humans are not hens and capitalism has turned out to be extremely unproductive in many situations requiring collaboration — who would’ve thought that putting short term self interest above everything else is not the best of ideas.
- rjf72 8y ago
  Let's imagine you and I play Roshambo - rock, paper, scissors. The game theory optimal solution here is easy - I randomly pick one. This means I will never score better than 50% (in the longrun), but I will also never score worse than 50%. Now if I actually tried to play and beat you then I could, in theory, win every single time if I somehow I just managed to really get into your head. But at the same time, I now open myself up to exploitation and you could end up beating me every single game. So there are two ways we could approach this game. In the game theory optimal solution my goal is to minimize my worst possible outcome. In the exploitative solution my goal is to maximize my best possible outcome. This has an oddly direct analog to this conversation. > "..who would’ve thought that putting short term self interest above everything else is not the best of ideas." I fully agree with you. Elevating self interest to the highest assumption is an awful idea. But in practice it's the least awful of other even more awful ideas. By assuming the lowest common denominator (self interest > all) you create a scenario where the worst scenario, of people behaving in this way, is not catastrophic in any way. In fact it's wholly expected. You will probably never have a utopic outcome, but you'll also probably never have a catastrophic outcome. Other systems have been trialed multiple times. These systems are phenomenal in theory. So long as every person agrees to cooperate and play their assigned role in a fair and equitable way we can have a utopia where no one ever need go without and everybody can live a comfortable life without fear of ever going without. The problem here is that these systems are extremely dependent upon good behavior. With good behavior, you get what some might call a utopia. But when bad behavior emerges, instead of a utopia you get starvation, oppression, and a general nightmare of existence. --- Maybe one of the coolest things about capitalism though is that you're free to try any system you want, even within it! For instance the Garden of Eden [1] has been a phenomenally successful fully self sufficient independent commune. By contrast, if you'd like to try out a capitalist (or even some sort of communal system) within an enforced social economic system, you can't. And trying to do so would generally be met with a rather aggressive response from the government. Because once again, the sustenance of such systems require everybody play their role. If people just start doing whatever they want, the whole system would collapse. With a half dozen ideologically aligned people on a few acres of land, this works out phenomenally well. With millions of diverse people on millions or billions of acres of land, it tends to be somewhat less successful. [1] - https://www.intothegardenofeden.com/ https://www.intothegardenofeden.com/
drieddust 8y ago
Current form of Capitalism is only a century old and it's ridden with abusive practice. It will be stretch to say its successful. We are already seeing impacts of profit seeking on Environment and Society.

by rjf72 8y ago

StrictDabbler 8y ago

Prisoner's dilemma, tragedy of the commons, etc. Local maxima. The best approach for the well-being of everybody is not always the most competitive approach. Your hypothetical co-operative company agrees to not testify and gets screwed over by the company that testifies against it. Capitalism selects for what works for certain individuals. We don't know that the success of capitalism isn't just a pyramid scheme that has yet to destroy the biosphere. We only know that on the scale of a few lifetimes, modern capitalism has worked ok-ish for us in the first world. It's been pretty rough on the former colonies and the proxy states. Capitalism is very new. Mercantilism is just in the rear-view mirror. Capitalism has been subsidized by the simultaneous rise of industrial technology. There have been flourishings of sudden well-being in the past. The Romans, the Mayans, etc. They discovered new techniques of agriculture, shipping, weapons manufacture, bloomed and expanded and collapsed and died. Capitalism has not yet matched the long-term success of the Roman republic or the subsequent empire, let alone the Egyptian and Chinese systems of successive dynasties supported by a civil service. It's a huge mistake to assume that capitalism works better just because we've been doing ok with it for a while and because it's the system embraced by the country that won WWII by being across an ocean. That gave capitalism a big leg up but the headstart is running out. Kleptocracy has a good chance of out-competing managed capitalism in the next fifty years by using regulatory capture. If you want to avoid regulatory capture by deregulating, remember that an unfettered market has always degenerated into kratocracy (government by the powerful) and kratocracy tends to turn into aristocracy. Capitalism: Doing OK for now!

dleslie 8y ago
And the Romans and Chinese thought that they were at the End of History, as well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_history https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_history
- arcticbull 8y ago
  Thinking it and having the ability to single handedly enact it are two very different things. It’s one thing for me to personally think I’m at the end of history chilling in a coffee shop in SF, it’s quite another when I’ve got the finger on the nuclear codes.
  - dleslie 8y ago
    It's less about the annihilation of humanity and more about belief in the superiority of a particular form of Governance. From Wiki: > The end of history is a political and philosophical concept that supposes that a particular political, economic, or social system may develop that would constitute the end-point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and the final form of human government.

andrei_says_ 8y ago

Maybe “So I decide to start hiring prioritizing these characteristics along with individual ability?” As for capitalism and productivity I highly recommend Dan Lyons’ Lab Rats exposing the complete chaos that human management is in. People dynamics are complex and well, dynamic. Changes and rules carry potential for difficult to predict outcomes. Humans are not hens and capitalism has turned out to be extremely unproductive in many situations requiring collaboration — who would’ve thought that putting short term self interest above everything else is not the best of ideas.

rjf72 8y ago
Let's imagine you and I play Roshambo - rock, paper, scissors. The game theory optimal solution here is easy - I randomly pick one. This means I will never score better than 50% (in the longrun), but I will also never score worse than 50%. Now if I actually tried to play and beat you then I could, in theory, win every single time if I somehow I just managed to really get into your head. But at the same time, I now open myself up to exploitation and you could end up beating me every single game. So there are two ways we could approach this game. In the game theory optimal solution my goal is to minimize my worst possible outcome. In the exploitative solution my goal is to maximize my best possible outcome. This has an oddly direct analog to this conversation. > "..who would’ve thought that putting short term self interest above everything else is not the best of ideas." I fully agree with you. Elevating self interest to the highest assumption is an awful idea. But in practice it's the least awful of other even more awful ideas. By assuming the lowest common denominator (self interest > all) you create a scenario where the worst scenario, of people behaving in this way, is not catastrophic in any way. In fact it's wholly expected. You will probably never have a utopic outcome, but you'll also probably never have a catastrophic outcome. Other systems have been trialed multiple times. These systems are phenomenal in theory. So long as every person agrees to cooperate and play their assigned role in a fair and equitable way we can have a utopia where no one ever need go without and everybody can live a comfortable life without fear of ever going without. The problem here is that these systems are extremely dependent upon good behavior. With good behavior, you get what some might call a utopia. But when bad behavior emerges, instead of a utopia you get starvation, oppression, and a general nightmare of existence. --- Maybe one of the coolest things about capitalism though is that you're free to try any system you want, even within it! For instance the Garden of Eden [1] has been a phenomenally successful fully self sufficient independent commune. By contrast, if you'd like to try out a capitalist (or even some sort of communal system) within an enforced social economic system, you can't. And trying to do so would generally be met with a rather aggressive response from the government. Because once again, the sustenance of such systems require everybody play their role. If people just start doing whatever they want, the whole system would collapse. With a half dozen ideologically aligned people on a few acres of land, this works out phenomenally well. With millions of diverse people on millions or billions of acres of land, it tends to be somewhat less successful. [1] - https://www.intothegardenofeden.com/ https://www.intothegardenofeden.com/

drieddust 8y ago

Current form of Capitalism is only a century old and it's ridden with abusive practice. It will be stretch to say its successful. We are already seeing impacts of profit seeking on Environment and Society.