3 ms·

If we’re serious about changing the world, we need a better kind of economics

19 points by clarab 7y ago

durnygbur 7y ago
I would look for and inspiration in developed post-Communist countries where people are especially dissapointed. The whole 90s they had heard about privatisation, free market, supply-demand, "everyone is in charge of their own destiny" cliches - the environment which pushed them out to emigration to countries like Germany, UK, Sweden, Italy, etc. To the countries where, surprise!, rich and affluent families and clans hold and rule the whole economy and where one's social and financial status is defined by the place and the family one was born in.
- clarab 7y ago
  That is an interesting perspective to add to this article! thanks for sharing.
- walterstucco 7y ago
  > in developed post-Communist countries where people are especially dissapointed. but are looking back at protectionism and far right politics, so their disappointment it's not something to really look up to, it's something to be scared of Not only because the economy failed them, but because their anti communist sentiment made them reluctant to even engage in more balanced economies, because they are seen as a return of previous era when they where dominated by USSR. So their disappointment is more like "society is not awarding me enough for my skills and my diligence" than "we should inject some socialism back in society" And the enemy is the old same (it was an enemy in communists country as well) Look at Poland for example thousands of far-right activists and supporters marched to the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw to protest a law signed by Trump last year — the Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today Act — that aims to help Jews seek compensation for property lost during the Holocaust. Which is even worse than living in a country like Italy, where I live, where if you go to the hospital you don't have to rely on private insurances (good luck with that) or your own private money breaking bad style.
bawana 7y ago
We should figure out a way to quantify and exchange tokens that represent our human virtues- fairness, goodness, and happiness. Maximizing utility and profit currently only refer to money- the token for concrete things. Although money is a good approximation for utility in the ‘small’ regime, large amounts of money do not translate to large amounts of happiness. Perhaps I could write a neural net that would parse and analyze the input from my iPhone- the data captured by its sensors -audio, facial expression, facial blood flow (ir) - could be mapped to a happiness token. But even that is a fail. Just like systems we tried to make before- karma, kudos,upvoting,rep, etc
- walterstucco 7y ago
  money has ad advantage over other systems: it is fair. Fair not in the sense that flow towards people that deserve it more, but in the sense that it is neutral. Every system that relies on external inputs like fairness, goodness, happiness is inherently biased. Am I good? How much? Based on what standard? And if I am not, am I really not good or just surrounded by bad people? And how to monetize the virtues of neurotypical people? Take for example autistic people, they would be marginalized even more, now at least they can make money out of their perseverance. We need a way to globally tax those making too much money and use that money for public projects. Yes, of course project management is gonna be biased, of course politics is gonna take its share, of course there is gonna be corruption, but at least we will extract money from who have lots and use it for the good of general population. It is intolerable that Apple paid only the 0.005% of its profits in Europe[0] or that it "has a cash stockpile of more than $230bn, of which more than 90% is kept outside the US so that it does not attract US tax." [0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/30/eu-apple-ireland-tax-ruling-q-and-a https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/30/eu-apple-ir...

19 points by clarab 7y ago

I would look for and inspiration in developed post-Communist countries where people are especially dissapointed. The whole 90s they had heard about privatisation, free market, supply-demand, "everyone is in charge of their own destiny" cliches - the environment which pushed them out to emigration to countries like Germany, UK, Sweden, Italy, etc. To the countries where, surprise!, rich and affluent families and clans hold and rule the whole economy and where one's social and financial status is defined by the place and the family one was born in.

clarab 7y ago
That is an interesting perspective to add to this article! thanks for sharing.
walterstucco 7y ago
> in developed post-Communist countries where people are especially dissapointed. but are looking back at protectionism and far right politics, so their disappointment it's not something to really look up to, it's something to be scared of Not only because the economy failed them, but because their anti communist sentiment made them reluctant to even engage in more balanced economies, because they are seen as a return of previous era when they where dominated by USSR. So their disappointment is more like "society is not awarding me enough for my skills and my diligence" than "we should inject some socialism back in society" And the enemy is the old same (it was an enemy in communists country as well) Look at Poland for example thousands of far-right activists and supporters marched to the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw to protest a law signed by Trump last year — the Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today Act — that aims to help Jews seek compensation for property lost during the Holocaust. Which is even worse than living in a country like Italy, where I live, where if you go to the hospital you don't have to rely on private insurances (good luck with that) or your own private money breaking bad style.

bawana 7y ago

We should figure out a way to quantify and exchange tokens that represent our human virtues- fairness, goodness, and happiness. Maximizing utility and profit currently only refer to money- the token for concrete things. Although money is a good approximation for utility in the ‘small’ regime, large amounts of money do not translate to large amounts of happiness. Perhaps I could write a neural net that would parse and analyze the input from my iPhone- the data captured by its sensors -audio, facial expression, facial blood flow (ir) - could be mapped to a happiness token. But even that is a fail. Just like systems we tried to make before- karma, kudos,upvoting,rep, etc

walterstucco 7y ago
money has ad advantage over other systems: it is fair. Fair not in the sense that flow towards people that deserve it more, but in the sense that it is neutral. Every system that relies on external inputs like fairness, goodness, happiness is inherently biased. Am I good? How much? Based on what standard? And if I am not, am I really not good or just surrounded by bad people? And how to monetize the virtues of neurotypical people? Take for example autistic people, they would be marginalized even more, now at least they can make money out of their perseverance. We need a way to globally tax those making too much money and use that money for public projects. Yes, of course project management is gonna be biased, of course politics is gonna take its share, of course there is gonna be corruption, but at least we will extract money from who have lots and use it for the good of general population. It is intolerable that Apple paid only the 0.005% of its profits in Europe[0] or that it "has a cash stockpile of more than $230bn, of which more than 90% is kept outside the US so that it does not attract US tax." [0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/30/eu-apple-ireland-tax-ruling-q-and-a https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/30/eu-apple-ir...