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> My point is that your conception of individually-oriented social utility is based on hierarchical forms of epistemology that the people you cite themselves di

• claudeganon 6y ago
  > Are you rejecting the concept of variation in aggregate utility? I don't think that you need any sort of capitalist epistemology, or hierarchical vision of society to explain the presence of utility variance. No, of course there is variance in aggregate utility. It’s what weight that variance is given relative to support of the entire network that determines its ability to produce and further, useful knowledge. Overemphasis on individual contributions and direction of resources to them and away from the overall health of the network results in various forms of gaming and pseudo-novelty. Citation rings and replication crises are obvious examples of this. >Identifying individual variations in utility is how you maximize network growth. That is precisely the reason capitalism is structured the way that it is. Direct resources to people and entities who are growing the network, in proportion to how much they are growing it. That is the distilled essence of capitalism. The distilled essence of Capitalism is that people who own Capital accrue more by using it to buy the labor of others, who must concede to this arrangement as a condition of their survival. I expect on this point we’d irreconcilably disagree, so it’s probably best to leave it aside. Resources in Capitalism, however, are not directed toward people who are growing the network in socially useful or ways that sustain its overall health (including maintaining its diversity), but toward individual nodes or small clusters that pursue their own short term growth for growth’s sake at the expense of the network’s overall health. The externalities of pursuing such growth and the periodic crises it produces are almost never taken into account. Google is a good example of this because again, they observed a useful signal within a knowledge network and added extra utility in making it available to be easily leveraged by others. But from there, the prioritizing of their own growth deteriorated the network’s overall health, as observed in things like the explosion in various forms of SEO optimization and content mills, surveillance advertising and its malware, foreclosing of the web in services like AMP, and use of its market position to bully competitors and quash innovation independent of them.
  • darawk 6y ago
    > Resources in Capitalism, however, are not directed toward people who are growing the network in socially useful or ways that sustain its overall health (including maintaining its diversity), but toward individual nodes or small clusters that pursue their own short term growth for growth’s sake at the expense of the network’s overall health. The externalities of pursuing such growth and the periodic crises it produces are almost never taken into account. It seems like your point here is mostly just that capitalism, as currently constructed, is imperfect at directing resources towards productive activities, and I would agree with that. But I think it's extremely hard to argue with how successful capitalism has been at creating network growth. Global utility as measured (imperfectly) by GDP has grown tremendously since the introduction of market capitalism. I suppose you could argue that capitalism achieved this 'by accident', but i'm not sure whether that matters. The fact is that capitalism has caused huge swathes of the world to be substantially better off than they were before, and promises to do the same for more as time moves forward. Other economic systems have failed to achieve similar kinds of growth, and absent that growth, they simply don't have the ability to raise people out of poverty, no matter how nice their intentions. > Google is a good example of this because again, they observed a useful signal within a knowledge network and added extra utility in making it available to be easily leveraged by others. But from there, the prioritizing of their own growth deteriorated the network’s overall health, as observed in things like the explosion in various forms of SEO optimization and content mills, surveillance advertising and its malware, foreclosing of the web in services like AMP, and use of its market position to bully competitors and quash innovation independent of them. Yes, Google has created various forms of waste. But you can't look at a single externality and indict a system with it in isolation. You need to look at the net change in utility. I think it's very hard to argue that Google's net impact on the world was not positive.