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> Maybe I'm wrong to consider this a zero-sum game, but surely if ISOC made a good deal selling .org that means that Ethos Capital got the short end of the stic
by manwe150 7y ago
> Maybe I'm wrong to consider this a zero-sum game, but surely if ISOC made a good deal selling .org that means that Ethos Capital got the short end of the stick.
The field of economics, and pretty much all monetary transactions, are about demonstrating that sales (and thus wealth) are not a zero-sum game. Whether that’s true for any particular case, such as this one, can be debated forever still, just often not based simply on that assumption.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago> The field of economics, and pretty much all monetary transactions, are about demonstrating that sales (and thus wealth) are not a zero-sum game. Yes, a good chunk of them are really negative-sum games, once you include all secondary stakeholders in the calculations.
- iudqnolq 7y agoCare to expand on your one sentence dismissal of modern economics? Maybe a second sentence describing the means by which this happens, or an example, or even - gasp - a source?
- einpoklum 7y agoIf you've lived through the last US economic crisis you might not be that riled up about one-sentence dismissals of modern economics.
- iudqnolq 7y agoWhy?
- jessaustin 7y agoDid you "live through" it? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21725341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21725341
- iudqnolq 7y agoThis is completely unfair because the last crisis had major world-wide effects even if the US (probably) caused it.
- jessaustin 7y agoYes, that's the point. We're here for reasoned discussion. Facile appeals to emotion are always unfair, and always OT on HN. No one was on Mars sitting out the last big economic event.
- iudqnolq 7y agoWell, I wasn't old enough to know what was going on, so essentially that.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoIt's not a dismissal of the field of economics, but of some of the popular businesses and business practices. The science of economics identifies the negative-sum games too. Keywords include, "tragedy of the commons", "externalities". Examples include AirBnB, tobacco companies, consumer IoT, advertising industry.
- iudqnolq 7y agoI know what externalities are. Are you claiming the marginal social cost of everything is greater than the marginal social benefit?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Retric 7y agoI think the marginal cost of tobacco companies is clearly negative a negative sum, which is the strongest form of their argument. It’s also clear they are not suggesting the entire economy is zero sum. Do you feel the Tobacco industry is a net benefit to society? If not then it’s just a question of which industries make the list of net positives vs net negatives.
- iudqnolq 7y agoThat's possibly plausible, but it's a lot more complicated a claim than just those industries being bad. To take the example of tobacco, you'd need to quantify the enjoyment smokers get from it, the harm to their lives, the harm to other's lives, the benefit to everyone in the supply chain (from farm workers to farmers to advertisers to executives), the harm to everyone in the supply chain (especially the exploitation of those who are do the actually picking of the tobacco and assembly of the cigarettes), all the politicians who get benefits from, all the harm they cause, and so much more. It's also the wrong question to ask. It's asking if sum(negatives) > sum(positives). But not all those harms and benefits should be equally important under any rational more framework. For example, I don't think any reasonable person would count the benefit corrupt politicians get from tobacco companies slush funds to be an argument in favor of keeping tobacco legal. In other words determining if what you said is true is extremely difficult and extremely pointless.