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The number of people making the decisions doesn't matter. Democratize things as much as you want and you'll often get irrational choices. By your logic, litera

The number of people making the decisions doesn't matter. Democratize things as much as you want and you'll often get irrational choices. By your logic, literally every single endeavor that involves human decision-making is flawed in that exact same same way. Socialism is flawed because humans are in the loop. Representative democracies, monarchies, oligarchies, and anarchy are flawed because humans are in the loop. Both science and religion have the same flaw, because humans are in the loop. It's not that it's untrue... It's just common to any venture where humans are in the loop, so it carries almost no information and isn't worth saying. I guess capitalism is flawed because resources are not infinite? Is capitalism flawed because humans die? Is Usain Bolt flawed because he has only two legs?

wpietri 7y ago
Yes, but the kinds of bad choices you get using different decision processes will be different. WeWork is a very capitalist boondoggle. It's not the kind of failure you'd see even in Mittelstand capitalism. Let alone Mondragon-style cooperatives, which could reasonably be called capitalist. And it's definitely not what you'd see in an ejido or a European-style commons. American-style venture capitalism is almost unique in terms of the amount of resources a single person can allocate. I think only authoritarian regimes come close to letting one person decide to bet $12 billion on a poorly-considered vision.
pytester 7y ago
>The number of people making the decisions doesn't matter. Democratize things as much as you want and you'll often get irrational choices. Of course you will. The point about the greater fool theory is that the market system for equities generates a negative feedback loop rather than being dampened by rational actors in the system. This perpetuates an enormously wasteful misallocation of resources. >I guess capitalism is flawed because resources are not infinite? Is capitalism flawed because humans die? Something tells me that if I were talking about the soviet shoe factory principle you wouldn't be so eager to excuse socialist misallocation of resources. Could it be that your argument is based more upon tribalism than logic?

wpietri 7y ago

Yes, but the kinds of bad choices you get using different decision processes will be different. WeWork is a very capitalist boondoggle. It's not the kind of failure you'd see even in Mittelstand capitalism. Let alone Mondragon-style cooperatives, which could reasonably be called capitalist. And it's definitely not what you'd see in an ejido or a European-style commons. American-style venture capitalism is almost unique in terms of the amount of resources a single person can allocate. I think only authoritarian regimes come close to letting one person decide to bet $12 billion on a poorly-considered vision.

pytester 7y ago

>The number of people making the decisions doesn't matter. Democratize things as much as you want and you'll often get irrational choices. Of course you will. The point about the greater fool theory is that the market system for equities generates a negative feedback loop rather than being dampened by rational actors in the system. This perpetuates an enormously wasteful misallocation of resources. >I guess capitalism is flawed because resources are not infinite? Is capitalism flawed because humans die? Something tells me that if I were talking about the soviet shoe factory principle you wouldn't be so eager to excuse socialist misallocation of resources. Could it be that your argument is based more upon tribalism than logic?