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Indeed. Those sort of naturalistic[0] and appeal to nature[1] fallacies are infuriating. One advantage of being human is that "this is how things are" doesn't
by Amorymeltzer 7y ago
Indeed. Those sort of naturalistic[0] and appeal to nature[1] fallacies are infuriating. One advantage of being human is that "this is how things are" doesn't have to mean "this is how things must be."
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature
- amelius 7y agoSadly, the essence of our economy seems copied from nature with concepts like "winner takes all" and "survival of the fittest".
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Mirioron 7y agoThat's because humans need stuff to live. You want an economic system that keeps improving and nature is pretty good at it.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y agoNature is pretty good at finding good-enough local minima, but (ironically) very poor at finding best-possible intelligent designs. There has never been an economy like the latter, and it's a tragic failure of human imagination to believe that it isn't possible.
- collyw 7y agoThere have been designed economies. They don't appear to be very desirable places to live.
- tmerse 7y agoI think you mean local maxima as opposed to "best possible .. designs"/global maxima
- the8472 7y agoNature also optimizes for far more variables than humans do. We min-max for a handful of KPIs at most. Nature optimizes for everything that an organism needs to survive, including in once-in-a-lifetime circumstances. It must do so since most organisms don't have dedicated support infrastructures. Cars don't need to concern themselves with reproducing, a jaguar does. Sure, there are genuine inefficiencies like the laryngeal nerve but there also are plenty of apparently useless things that turn out to have some niche importance such as the appendix.
- wyoh 7y agoIntelligent designs economies are best associated with tyranny. See CCCP.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y agoIt's definitely possible. That's what large companies are for; they subsume some part of the economy into themselves, intelligently design it in ways that could never be found through an unplanned search, and are greatly rewarded if they do it well. Amazon, for example, found one of the best possible designs for both direct-to-consumer shipping and cloud systems. But we don't usually think about it that way. Most people who advocate for a planned economy don't want that kind of planning; they think it's bad to innovate in things like how jobs are structured, bad have a single large company in charge of most of your shipping, and bad that Jeff Bezos can build such a good company that his stake in it is worth billions. Planned economy advocates that I see generally want the economy to work how they specifically would prefer, without much regard for whether other people think that's the best way.
- collyw 7y agoSadly? Look at the history of the alternatives.
- whatshisface 7y agoIn theory you have bankruptcy, limited liability and the corporate person as devices meant to insulate human beings from the harsh natural environment that makes businesses work. Unfortunately, businesses can't stand being treated harshly (and politicians don't have the guts to do it) so we have bailouts, protective regulation, and federal troubled asset purchases, kind of defeating the point.