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This essay is full of wishful expressions, such as "stagnation is a choice", "if we want to", and "we must circumvent", followed by exhortations to "regain the

• throwanem 7y ago
  That's why the article also talks about state coordination, of the sort most famously seen at the tail end of the (first) Great Depression and through the Second World War - the use of government power to construct a scheme of incentives whereby building a durable future becomes rational behavior. Which, granted, is also probably a pipe dream, the way things have gone lately. But it wasn't always, nor need it always be henceforward.
  • core-questions 7y ago
    There is a name for the third position where government works together to guide industry without centralizing everything, but it's gone out of vogue and is grossly mischaracterized most of the time by folks that don't understand the intention.
    • pbourke 7y ago
      This is the reason why the US made so many advances in aerospace, computing and networks during the midcentury. Not to mention the basic research that is funded (insanely cheaply) by the grant-making apparatus of the NIH, NSF, DOD, etc.
    • nickff 7y ago
      The problem with most government programs are not their stated intentions, it's that their actual results aren't very good or cost-effective.
      • throwanem 7y ago
        As opposed, of course, to the awe-inspiring efficiency of the status quo circa the Gilded Age - or today.
        • nickff 7y ago
          Well, SpaceX seems to be developing rockets at 3x the speed and 5x lower cost than NASA, so I would say that there are some examples of 'awe-inspiring efficiency'.
          • deleted 7y ago
            [deleted]
          • ssivark 7y ago
            Cherry-picking much?
            • throwanem 7y ago
              Hey, if the strongest argument he's got is to point to something that at best solves no social problems and arguably somewhat exacerbates at least a couple, that's pretty telling in its own right, you know?
            • nickff 7y ago
              Well on the corporate side, there's a spectrum from SpaceX to Theranos. On the government side there's a spectrum from Switzerland to North Korea... I'll admit there are many good and bad examples of both, but I think the average company does more good than the average government.
          • pbourke 7y ago
            You have provided an example of the above approach: > There is a name for the third position where government works together to guide industry without centralizing everything SpaceX's customer is NASA.
• clairity 7y ago
  a lot of it only seems rational because we allow externalities and other market corruptions to run rampant.
• heavyset_go 7y ago
  > No amount of exhortation will change rational behavior. Short-term thinking*. Rational behavior would be setting aside personal risks and benefits to do what needs to be done.
  • mgummelt 7y ago
    That's not what "rational" means, in economic terms.
  • MattGaiser 7y ago
    > Rational behavior would be setting aside personal risks and benefits We call that altruism or charity.
  • marcosdumay 7y ago
    No long term is any good if you'll be broken by tomorrow.
  • bregma 7y ago
    In the long term we're all dead.
  • seph-reed 7y ago
    I see you. Thank you for saying this. I will say though: if a person has no idea what they're missing out on, all of this seems very rational. Revolving the world largely around oneself is totally rational if you've never experienced a real community and can't understand how badly you're crippling your own life experience by not investing towards the good in others. Most of the people I know who do good in the world; it's because they've glimpsed how good life can really be. They've tasted a bit of utopian paradise, and see absolutely no point in sticking around with this. It's not a story worth living through and everything people do to hold onto it just seems oblivious and short-sighted.
• abtinf 7y ago
  I agree with you that this post is really unclear. But it reminded me of another post I recently read that I liked a lot. I just posted it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23035794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23035794
• DangitBobby 7y ago
  Rational does not need to be synonymous with "self interested to the detriment of all else." You can be both rational and realise that everyone can benefit greatly if you're willing to benefit slightly less. Why is it that sociopaths are the only rational beings in economic theory?
  • nickff 7y ago
    Sociopaths are not the only rational beings in economic theory. Leisure and social goods can be factors in economic calculations, and most (good) economists do take them into account. Adam Smith wrote: "[m]an naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love". Those who say that economics is based on the pocketbook are either posing a straw-man, or are very bad economists.
• raybb 7y ago
  > "companies and people have strong economic/competitive incentives NOT TO INVEST" This is true in traditional for-profit companies where money is the only motive. However, I'd like to add that we're seeing a rise in or organization structures that promote social impact over simple profit. On the more for-profit side there are B-Corps, which have been gaining ground in the past decade or so (at least based on google trends and branding on products). Right next to B-corps are social enterprises (which have many definitions but we can broadly can think of as basically, social impact as primary goal and at least partially self funded). I don't know if they're really gaining popularity but it brings me hope to see organizations pop up that are trying to fit this bill of doing good first and making money second. Shameless self plug for those interested in social enterprises. I've recently started collecting resources related to social enterprises (as an org structure, distinct from social entrepreneurship which tends to focus on the individual): https://github.com/RayBB/awesome-social-enterprise/ https://github.com/RayBB/awesome-social-enterprise/
  • sparkie 7y ago
    There's a kind of social enterprise in the UK called a CIC, but the requirements to open a CIC essentially say that it can't have any political nature to it - in other words, you can't criticize or disagree with the government as part of the operation of your CIC. The CIC must be vetted before it can be established. This effectively limits CICs to following the status quo, with little chance they can be useful as a vehicle to bring about any social change that the government doesn't take a liking to. Opening a CIC also establishes an "asset locked body," which effectively gives part ownership of the assets of the company to the government. There is no way that assets can be moved out of one of these bodies, but only transferred between them, which can include other CICs, non-profits and charities etc. No way of getting your assets back into private hands if you sign up for one and the government decides it doesn't like your plans for instance. Simply running a private company, and donating some of your profits to charitable causes (with tax reductions) seems like a better way to keep control of your company and assets, and perhaps you could put into the company's bylaws restrictions on what shareholders can take out of the company, and what percentage of profits should be put towards community goals.
• hinkley 7y ago
  You get a really, really big dopamine hit by writing about something you imagine yourself doing (or, I expect, challenging others to do and thus feel like you made it happen). Just showing up is a smaller dopamine hit, but more sustainable. On your worst day you can think, well, at least I did X. A rising tide lifts all boats. Chasing dopamine hits just gives you bigger mood swings, not better moods over all. It's a trap. Get out. We have DIY groups, repair culture. We have craftsman trying to start a renaissance in various professions and quite a few hobbies. We have environmental groups, permaculture, people cleaning public spaces and parks. It's all 'out there' figuratively, and sometimes also literally. Just gotta go look for it. And I think if you want it for other people, that you get far more traction working with an existing group to succeed, be it getting more things done, or making it more accommodating to newcomers. I worked with an amazing group that got 100 volunteers every month, probably a dozen new faces every time. Most of the work of the regulars was making sure that everyone else had something to do to feel included. Basically what is at stake here is trying to get people to have more authentic, real world experiences, and that's not going to happen by using marketing tricks. By trying to sell to people who don't know they're buying. It's going to happen by doing things and helping other people explore doing things themselves. Who is this Isaac Wilks guy? This appears to be his first post on Palladium. The twitter account that appears to be him is just some kid. What's he doing? What's he built? It looks like he might be into architecture. I hope there's some building going on, but I don't see it.
• AndrewKemendo 7y ago
  This is spot on. I'd add to it this way: Humans have not been successful in identifying an explicit objective function for society and then building social, political and economic mechanisms to support/enforce those. We point to the Former Soviet Union, Great Leap forward etc... as failed experiments in authoritarian enforcement of an objective function. As a result we have defaulted to the random walk and iterative nature of capital markets as the way of communicating, aggregating and forecasting individual objective functions into a collective function. It's clear however that, for a lot of reasons, this system optimizes for short term rewards and not for long term planning. That would make sense, since in effect the system is aggregating short time horizons and lack of capacity to plan long term. It's also fairly easy to hack parts of the system (marketing, arbitrage etc) for individual gain.
  • cs702 7y ago
    After decades of outsourcing ever more social policy to the invisible hand of "the market," many important components of the system we have in the US -- political, regulatory, financial, educational, healthcare, etc. -- now appear to be stuck in lousy Nash equilibrium after lousy Nash equilibrium. Everyone is worse off than they could be, and fully aware of it (judging by opinion pieces like the OP), but no one has an incentive unilaterally to break out of it.
    • bhupy 7y ago
      I'm not sure what to say if you think that American healthcare and eduction in 2020 is the result of "outsourcing policy to the invisible hand of the market".
      • pbourke 7y ago
        I agree with you. They both seem to be a worst-of-all-worlds approach.
      • throwanem 7y ago
        Aren't they? How else do you explain their subversion of the mechanisms of government to maximize their own profits without regard for societal cost?
• the_af 7y ago
  Thanks for the clip! I had forgotten that movie, "Other People's Money". It has so many funny dialogues between Larry and Kate. Larry is as likeable an antihero as it can get.
• abvdasker 7y ago
  I think what the article is alluding to is that "rational behavior" is relative. The behavior by large, established corporations to suppress competition, engage in rent-seeking, regulatory capture and short-term profit extraction is only rational within the current incentive structure and regulatory environment. Both the author of this article and Andreessen know too little about the alternatives to our current mode of production to really diagnose the problem, let alone offer solutions. The economic problems facing the US lie outside of their vocabulary, so the best they can really imagine are vague ideas to "build", though I appreciate that Isaac Wilks at least understands that building with a kind of conscientious intention can never be divorced from politics. Andreessen's original article comes across as almost laughably naive. > I’m with Nicholas Stern when he says that capitalism is how we take care of people we don’t know — all of these fields are highly lucrative already and should be prime stomping grounds for capitalist investment, good both for the investor and the customers who are served. For some reason I always imagine people with Horowitz's level of wealth and influence as being smarter and more knowledgeable than they are. Anyone who dismisses possible solutions derived from criticism of capitalism so easily is not really serious about finding a solution and should be dismissed, no matter how much money and influence they may have.