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A lot of us think so. Assuming that uncoordinated market forces and powerful people seeking profit is the best way to care for human happiness comes off as absu

A lot of us think so. Assuming that uncoordinated market forces and powerful people seeking profit is the best way to care for human happiness comes off as absurd to a lot of people. I’m all for markets most of the time, but some good old fashioned coordination and cooperation seems lacking from bare capitalism. Luckily capitalism doesn’t prevent cooperation, we just need to get it in our heads to actually do it.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
> Luckily capitalism doesn’t prevent cooperation, we just need to get it in our heads to actually do it. It effectively does, under enough competitive pressure. Incentives are stacked in such a way that for any attempt at coordination, it's profitable to be the one to defect. In fact, a big (if not the main) job of regulations is to enforce cooperation in situations where market guides people to defect.
- TaylorAlexander 8y ago
  I don’t like using the government for these problems. I think private collectives could be very powerful here. If you have a collective of a few thousand members cooperating with another collective, the members would have to all choose profit over cooperation to defect. Our normal corporate structure with a tiny board of directors creates perverse incentives for the board to profit greatly at everyone else’s expense. Collectives can be designed without a board of directors, or the board can be better held accountable to the members. That means collectives are less likely to choose profit over public interest, because the voting members are the public much more so than the few members of some corporate board.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    The people within the collective may not - initially - choose to defect against the collective, but if the collective is in competition with other collectives, it'll likely find itself defecting against them (with reciprocity). Cooperate/defect applies recursively at all levels of social structure - from individuals to countries. As for my "initially" remark, a collective of thousands is way too big to remain flat. I'd expect it to grow at least 2 layers of internal governance, at which point the "cooperate/defect" mechanism will start applying to people at one level trying to work together under rules set by the level above.
Gibbon1 8y ago
The question is why does capitalism need to be protected from government run alternatives if it's so super duper?
- PaulHoule 8y ago
  I think there are some countries in which people are too quick to socialize things but that's not the case here. (Except maybe in New York City where a city councilperson from Queens insisted that Off-Track Betting get a bailout to "save jobs" and where some other politicians will block cannabis legalization unless black people get the profits from it... it's not enough to take away an reason for mass incarceration...)
  - Gibbon1 8y ago
    > I think there are some countries in which people are too quick to socialize things but that's not the case here. So how many more decades do you think that US's Health Insurance Industry needs be protected from government competition?
    - TaylorAlexander 8y ago
      Hopefully none. I’m really hoping Bernie can pull this thing off, even if it will be a very difficult fight.
- rayiner 8y ago
  You can’t “compete” in any meaningful sense of the word with a service that doesn’t need to run a profit because it’s taxpayer subsidized. To provide an example: many Asian cities have profitable private subway systems. Why can’t we have that in Washington DC? Because taxpayers pay $0.50 of every dollar it costs to run the Metro, and it’s impossible for a private company to compete with that.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

> Luckily capitalism doesn’t prevent cooperation, we just need to get it in our heads to actually do it. It effectively does, under enough competitive pressure. Incentives are stacked in such a way that for any attempt at coordination, it's profitable to be the one to defect. In fact, a big (if not the main) job of regulations is to enforce cooperation in situations where market guides people to defect.

TaylorAlexander 8y ago
I don’t like using the government for these problems. I think private collectives could be very powerful here. If you have a collective of a few thousand members cooperating with another collective, the members would have to all choose profit over cooperation to defect. Our normal corporate structure with a tiny board of directors creates perverse incentives for the board to profit greatly at everyone else’s expense. Collectives can be designed without a board of directors, or the board can be better held accountable to the members. That means collectives are less likely to choose profit over public interest, because the voting members are the public much more so than the few members of some corporate board.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  The people within the collective may not - initially - choose to defect against the collective, but if the collective is in competition with other collectives, it'll likely find itself defecting against them (with reciprocity). Cooperate/defect applies recursively at all levels of social structure - from individuals to countries. As for my "initially" remark, a collective of thousands is way too big to remain flat. I'd expect it to grow at least 2 layers of internal governance, at which point the "cooperate/defect" mechanism will start applying to people at one level trying to work together under rules set by the level above.

Gibbon1 8y ago

The question is why does capitalism need to be protected from government run alternatives if it's so super duper?

PaulHoule 8y ago
I think there are some countries in which people are too quick to socialize things but that's not the case here. (Except maybe in New York City where a city councilperson from Queens insisted that Off-Track Betting get a bailout to "save jobs" and where some other politicians will block cannabis legalization unless black people get the profits from it... it's not enough to take away an reason for mass incarceration...)
- Gibbon1 8y ago
  > I think there are some countries in which people are too quick to socialize things but that's not the case here. So how many more decades do you think that US's Health Insurance Industry needs be protected from government competition?
  - TaylorAlexander 8y ago
    Hopefully none. I’m really hoping Bernie can pull this thing off, even if it will be a very difficult fight.
rayiner 8y ago
You can’t “compete” in any meaningful sense of the word with a service that doesn’t need to run a profit because it’s taxpayer subsidized. To provide an example: many Asian cities have profitable private subway systems. Why can’t we have that in Washington DC? Because taxpayers pay $0.50 of every dollar it costs to run the Metro, and it’s impossible for a private company to compete with that.