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I would say that kid's parents will notice that a given game is addictive and costs a lot and will just forbid children to play it? Side note. Free market (as

I would say that kid's parents will notice that a given game is addictive and costs a lot and will just forbid children to play it? Side note. Free market (as imagined by Adam Smith, Hayek and others) does not mean that greed and income maximization is everything. The same way democracy does not mean that majority can do everything ignoring minority. Without ethics neither democracy nor free market can exist. Some people believe that ethics can be replaced by law and regulations. To some extent this can be true, but the law will never cover all aspects of human life and in the society that accepts unethical behavior both democracy and free market will rot.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
> Free market (as imagined by Adam Smith, Hayek and others) does not mean that greed and income maximization is everything. (...) Without ethics neither democracy nor free market can exist. In real markets, there are feedback loops that are much stronger than individual ethics. Under intense enough competitive pressure, unethical actors outcompete ethical actors, because the former can sacrifice more human values. > in the society that accepts unethical behavior both democracy and free market will rot Unfortunately, in a society that is less accepting of unethical behavior, that is still only one input to the economy as a system, and to the extent the society is malleable, the input may diminish. Consider the following mental picture: imagine society's ethical standards as a tilted landscape, through which the river of market activity flows. In a maximally amoral society, the landscape would be so that the river flows straight. The more ethical/moral concern the society has, the more meandering the river becomes. Now two effects happen: one, a strong enough river flow will outright cut corners and flow over some bends. This can be compared to companies acting unethically and getting away with it. Second, the current will erode the landscape over time, bringing it closer to the amoral straight-line terrain. This can be compared to effects of competitive pressure described above, when viewed over longer time spans.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  Saying that all ethics must be obstructions commerce is a pretty extreme view, that I really can’t see any justification for. An economy is nothing more than the sum of decisions made by the individuals that comprise it. I’m pretty sure the only way anybody could hold such a view would be to view all decisions they disagree with as unethical. Which is an opinion, I guess...
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    I'm not saying all ethics is against commerce, though I can't think of an ethical rule for which I couldn't construct a situation, in which breaking it is profitable. What I am claiming, though, is that the market strives to extract profit from everything that's possible, and that it will break every ethical rule that can be broken for profit in absence of very strong controls against that. It's not about what I personally view as ethical or not[0]; here I'm talking about the market as if it was a fire. You don't act surprised that fire will burn everything combustible it can get to. As for "no more than sum of decisions", I disagree. Economic forces are way more powerful than any individual or group of individuals. Individuals reacting to them in aggregate give rise to behavior that's - to my current belief - best described as amoral, profit-seeking, non-human entities, essentially the closest humanity got to creating an AI. -- [0] - if we go there, I hold that most advertising is deeply unethical.
    - AmericanChopper 7y ago
      I mean this is really just a substanceless metaphor that you’ve come up with. Your definition of economics is also just flat out wrong. Economies are comprised entirely of economic actors interacting with each other. Every economic agent is either a human being, or a collection of human beings. There are no non-human economic agents, and there are no human non-economic-agents.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        By mentioning large bureaucratic structures like corporation and calling them "non-human actors", I wanted to focus your attention on the fact that behavior of a group of people working together, cooperating and competing with other such groups of people, is not well-predicted by looking at behavior of each individual involved. Much like you don't reason about a computer system by looking at what each transistor and resistor does - instead, you look at aggregates as a unit (CPU, power converter, ...), at aggregate's behavior (firmware) as modulated by the information and energy flow within the system. I'd say it's systems thinking 101 - the behavior of the system is nothing like the behavior of individual components, and is defined primarily by the interactions that happen.
- adnzzzzZ 7y ago
  Many extremely smart people have made the point you're disagreeing to before https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6JYk5aCB4A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6JYk5aCB4A and your reply is not addressing it correctly. >Under intense enough competitive pressure, unethical actors outcompete ethical actors This isn't what actually happens in reality because highly unethical behavior is distasteful to most people and for the most part people don't want to work alongside unethical people. Your river analogy has similarly flawed premises that make it hard to even engage with.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > This isn't what actually happens in reality because highly unethical behavior is distasteful to most people and for the most part people don't want to work alongside unethical people. Yes, and because of that, nothing highly unethical ever happens on the market. No wide-scale environmental destruction, no robbing whole populations of their livelihoods, no murders for control over assets, or just to cut down on safety-related costs. And definitely no exposure of children to gambling. > Your river analogy has similarly flawed premises that make it hard to even engage with. Can you name these faulty premises?
    - adnzzzzZ 7y ago
      >Yes, and because of that, nothing highly unethical ever happens on the market. This is quite the leap. The world is a big place full of people and of course there will always be unethical people doing unethical things somewhere, that's a fact of life. But you musn't be so cynical to think that the outliers are the norm when they aren't. If unethical behavior was the norm society wouldn't function, which is what the person you first replied to said and what the video I posted also said.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        There's degree to unethical behavior, but I've become disillusioned and no longer thing it's an outlier on the market. Some things I've seen: - When writing the paragraph you quoted the beginning of, I had mostly particular situations involving large corporations in mind. You see such shenanigans featured regularly on HN, and if people are outraged, they aren't really surprised. - People I know personally worked in "pedestrian", small-business areas like e-commerce, customer service, shipping&handling, grocery stores, restaurants and medical care. I've heard plenty about practices that are common in these businesses - like bribing people to remove negative ratings, blatant copyright violation on promotional material, washing stale food with detergent to remove the smell and selling it as fresh, microwaving food and adding burn marks and then selling it as grilled, etc. Minor and major issues. - Then there's plenty of companies like Groupon or AirBnB that an ethical person would shut down, or at least heavily rework their business model, upon learning how big a negative impact they have on the market at large. - Then there's the whole advertising industry, which turns a lot of otherwise friendly interactions into adversarial experiences. A lot of this is caused not (just) by ethical deficiency of people involved, but through market pressure. Consider grocery stores washing stale food: I don't know of a worker who's happy about it (but they do this, or else they lose jobs). I'm convinced managers aren't happy about it either - but they have an inventory that will otherwise go to waste, and they need to figure something out or else it's their job. My standard of ethics is that of friendly cooperation. That standard is routinely broken in interactions with businesses, big and small (and I do my best to keep trading with businesses that do not break that standard). Thus I conclude it's the market at large, and not some occasional bad actor.
sabas123 7y ago
> I would say that kid's parents will notice that a given game is addictive and costs a lot and will just forbid children to play it? They can also become "successful" betters starting out from nothing, and in such a case I would be suprised if your typical parrent would notice (see csgo/dota skins)

TeMPOraL 7y ago

> Free market (as imagined by Adam Smith, Hayek and others) does not mean that greed and income maximization is everything. (...) Without ethics neither democracy nor free market can exist. In real markets, there are feedback loops that are much stronger than individual ethics. Under intense enough competitive pressure, unethical actors outcompete ethical actors, because the former can sacrifice more human values. > in the society that accepts unethical behavior both democracy and free market will rot Unfortunately, in a society that is less accepting of unethical behavior, that is still only one input to the economy as a system, and to the extent the society is malleable, the input may diminish. Consider the following mental picture: imagine society's ethical standards as a tilted landscape, through which the river of market activity flows. In a maximally amoral society, the landscape would be so that the river flows straight. The more ethical/moral concern the society has, the more meandering the river becomes. Now two effects happen: one, a strong enough river flow will outright cut corners and flow over some bends. This can be compared to companies acting unethically and getting away with it. Second, the current will erode the landscape over time, bringing it closer to the amoral straight-line terrain. This can be compared to effects of competitive pressure described above, when viewed over longer time spans.

AmericanChopper 7y ago
Saying that all ethics must be obstructions commerce is a pretty extreme view, that I really can’t see any justification for. An economy is nothing more than the sum of decisions made by the individuals that comprise it. I’m pretty sure the only way anybody could hold such a view would be to view all decisions they disagree with as unethical. Which is an opinion, I guess...
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  I'm not saying all ethics is against commerce, though I can't think of an ethical rule for which I couldn't construct a situation, in which breaking it is profitable. What I am claiming, though, is that the market strives to extract profit from everything that's possible, and that it will break every ethical rule that can be broken for profit in absence of very strong controls against that. It's not about what I personally view as ethical or not[0]; here I'm talking about the market as if it was a fire. You don't act surprised that fire will burn everything combustible it can get to. As for "no more than sum of decisions", I disagree. Economic forces are way more powerful than any individual or group of individuals. Individuals reacting to them in aggregate give rise to behavior that's - to my current belief - best described as amoral, profit-seeking, non-human entities, essentially the closest humanity got to creating an AI. -- [0] - if we go there, I hold that most advertising is deeply unethical.
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    I mean this is really just a substanceless metaphor that you’ve come up with. Your definition of economics is also just flat out wrong. Economies are comprised entirely of economic actors interacting with each other. Every economic agent is either a human being, or a collection of human beings. There are no non-human economic agents, and there are no human non-economic-agents.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      By mentioning large bureaucratic structures like corporation and calling them "non-human actors", I wanted to focus your attention on the fact that behavior of a group of people working together, cooperating and competing with other such groups of people, is not well-predicted by looking at behavior of each individual involved. Much like you don't reason about a computer system by looking at what each transistor and resistor does - instead, you look at aggregates as a unit (CPU, power converter, ...), at aggregate's behavior (firmware) as modulated by the information and energy flow within the system. I'd say it's systems thinking 101 - the behavior of the system is nothing like the behavior of individual components, and is defined primarily by the interactions that happen.
adnzzzzZ 7y ago
Many extremely smart people have made the point you're disagreeing to before https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6JYk5aCB4A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6JYk5aCB4A and your reply is not addressing it correctly. >Under intense enough competitive pressure, unethical actors outcompete ethical actors This isn't what actually happens in reality because highly unethical behavior is distasteful to most people and for the most part people don't want to work alongside unethical people. Your river analogy has similarly flawed premises that make it hard to even engage with.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > This isn't what actually happens in reality because highly unethical behavior is distasteful to most people and for the most part people don't want to work alongside unethical people. Yes, and because of that, nothing highly unethical ever happens on the market. No wide-scale environmental destruction, no robbing whole populations of their livelihoods, no murders for control over assets, or just to cut down on safety-related costs. And definitely no exposure of children to gambling. > Your river analogy has similarly flawed premises that make it hard to even engage with. Can you name these faulty premises?
  - adnzzzzZ 7y ago
    >Yes, and because of that, nothing highly unethical ever happens on the market. This is quite the leap. The world is a big place full of people and of course there will always be unethical people doing unethical things somewhere, that's a fact of life. But you musn't be so cynical to think that the outliers are the norm when they aren't. If unethical behavior was the norm society wouldn't function, which is what the person you first replied to said and what the video I posted also said.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      There's degree to unethical behavior, but I've become disillusioned and no longer thing it's an outlier on the market. Some things I've seen: - When writing the paragraph you quoted the beginning of, I had mostly particular situations involving large corporations in mind. You see such shenanigans featured regularly on HN, and if people are outraged, they aren't really surprised. - People I know personally worked in "pedestrian", small-business areas like e-commerce, customer service, shipping&handling, grocery stores, restaurants and medical care. I've heard plenty about practices that are common in these businesses - like bribing people to remove negative ratings, blatant copyright violation on promotional material, washing stale food with detergent to remove the smell and selling it as fresh, microwaving food and adding burn marks and then selling it as grilled, etc. Minor and major issues. - Then there's plenty of companies like Groupon or AirBnB that an ethical person would shut down, or at least heavily rework their business model, upon learning how big a negative impact they have on the market at large. - Then there's the whole advertising industry, which turns a lot of otherwise friendly interactions into adversarial experiences. A lot of this is caused not (just) by ethical deficiency of people involved, but through market pressure. Consider grocery stores washing stale food: I don't know of a worker who's happy about it (but they do this, or else they lose jobs). I'm convinced managers aren't happy about it either - but they have an inventory that will otherwise go to waste, and they need to figure something out or else it's their job. My standard of ethics is that of friendly cooperation. That standard is routinely broken in interactions with businesses, big and small (and I do my best to keep trading with businesses that do not break that standard). Thus I conclude it's the market at large, and not some occasional bad actor.

sabas123 7y ago

> I would say that kid's parents will notice that a given game is addictive and costs a lot and will just forbid children to play it? They can also become "successful" betters starting out from nothing, and in such a case I would be suprised if your typical parrent would notice (see csgo/dota skins)