4 ms·

Great statement, excellent articulation. " isn't even about them. It is about us and the world we want to live in. " ... we have to recognize that 'we don't o

by jariel 6y ago

Great statement, excellent articulation. " isn't even about them. It is about us and the world we want to live in. " ... we have to recognize that 'we don't own this stuff'. Yes - I do support anti-trust and possibly 'breaking up companies' but we have to be very, very careful at how we intercede into private groups affairs. The agents doing the 'breaking up' might just believe that they have incredible ability to 'oversee markets' and leverage the power for what they believe to be the 'greater good'. The power of 'free markets' is often overstated but we should remind ourselves that there is a lot of value there, more importantly it's not obvious. In the short run, it's easy for someone to delude themselves in to the view that 'one's responsibility to the ostensible greater good as governor' combined with 'the grand view of markets' should legitimately empower towards control and market manipulation. After all - a bunch of 'really smart analysts' should be able to maximize social utility through some kind of restructuring of whatever exists at any given time in the markets. It's a vey slippery slope and a hard thing to 'get right' - so any gains to be made here are going to be really correlated with how thoughtful and intelligent government will be on this one. Even with the greatest intentions it could be a mess. Whoever doing this needs to be really, really smart about it.

whimsicalism 6y ago
> private groups affairs. No such thing. They are relying on societal assurances that contracts they enter will be enforced, that property they hold will be protected, etc. Society is free to regulate those "private group affairs" since they are externalizing the costs onto society. > there is a lot of value there, more importantly it's not obvious Sure, but generally in the cases where politicians mistakenly intervene in markets with distortionary effects, economists are pretty united that the intervention will be a bad idea (see: rent control). On anti-trust, economists recognize monopolies as a pretty clear market failure and it seems to be the tech employees who are deploying the "free market" arguments in defense of Google, FB, et al.
- jariel 6y ago
  " Society is free to regulate those "private group affairs" since they are externalizing the costs onto society." Private property, freedom of association is a very real thing. It's a very serious thing to take private people's stuff from them. So we have to be careful.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    There's no state of nature where people are engaging in private transactions with legally enforced contracts, creating corporations with limited liability up to the size of the investment, etc. Those are all constructs of society. Your idea that there are these transactions and property 'outside of society' that we have to protect from interference from society does not seem coherent to me, when the existence of a society that does grant private property rights is what allows a Google to exist in the first place.
    - jariel 6y ago
      This is totally upside down. What is 'coherent' is a civil society that is consistent with the application of it's constitution. Of course 'private property' is a construct - but that construct is fundamental, Constitutional. It's like voting. If you take away people's property, your making some very deep transgression of the societal compact, and it's wrong. There are cases where we need to make change - like lowering or increasing the voting age, we have to be careful with that.
  - Frondo 6y ago
    It's also a very serious thing to use the resources of society to protect people's private accumulations. If people get to use the force of law to keep their stuff from being stolen, they do have an obligation to pony up for the shared costs of that law enforcement.
sdenton4 6y ago
Sure, markets are hard to beat with central control... But if the market is sufficiently consolidated, it's got a lot more in common with central control than what we would call a free market. Markets work because people can use purchasing power to solve their problems. When you have only one (or two basically identical) players in a market, there's no ability to use purchasing power to signal that one approach or another is better for your needs. Part of the point is that the best system might involve many approaches for different kinds of end user. What we currently have in many situations is people's problems are being ignored because they don't have any real alternatives. Simultaneously, Facebook (for example) is ultimately incentivized to solve the problems of their paying users (ad firms and political advertisers) over their non-paying users (humans). They've aggressively bought the competition which ensures that remains the reality. Political regulation of markets exists to ensure that the interests of the polis are ultimately served by businesses, precisely because markets have MANY failure modes that prioritize other interests to the detriment of overall societal health.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  Exactly this. Markets are incredibly powerful, but it's a double-edged sword. They also have failure cases and it is important to be aware and guard against those cases.

by jariel 6y ago

whimsicalism 6y ago

> private groups affairs. No such thing. They are relying on societal assurances that contracts they enter will be enforced, that property they hold will be protected, etc. Society is free to regulate those "private group affairs" since they are externalizing the costs onto society. > there is a lot of value there, more importantly it's not obvious Sure, but generally in the cases where politicians mistakenly intervene in markets with distortionary effects, economists are pretty united that the intervention will be a bad idea (see: rent control). On anti-trust, economists recognize monopolies as a pretty clear market failure and it seems to be the tech employees who are deploying the "free market" arguments in defense of Google, FB, et al.

jariel 6y ago
" Society is free to regulate those "private group affairs" since they are externalizing the costs onto society." Private property, freedom of association is a very real thing. It's a very serious thing to take private people's stuff from them. So we have to be careful.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  There's no state of nature where people are engaging in private transactions with legally enforced contracts, creating corporations with limited liability up to the size of the investment, etc. Those are all constructs of society. Your idea that there are these transactions and property 'outside of society' that we have to protect from interference from society does not seem coherent to me, when the existence of a society that does grant private property rights is what allows a Google to exist in the first place.
  - jariel 6y ago
    This is totally upside down. What is 'coherent' is a civil society that is consistent with the application of it's constitution. Of course 'private property' is a construct - but that construct is fundamental, Constitutional. It's like voting. If you take away people's property, your making some very deep transgression of the societal compact, and it's wrong. There are cases where we need to make change - like lowering or increasing the voting age, we have to be careful with that.
- Frondo 6y ago
  It's also a very serious thing to use the resources of society to protect people's private accumulations. If people get to use the force of law to keep their stuff from being stolen, they do have an obligation to pony up for the shared costs of that law enforcement.

sdenton4 6y ago

Sure, markets are hard to beat with central control... But if the market is sufficiently consolidated, it's got a lot more in common with central control than what we would call a free market. Markets work because people can use purchasing power to solve their problems. When you have only one (or two basically identical) players in a market, there's no ability to use purchasing power to signal that one approach or another is better for your needs. Part of the point is that the best system might involve many approaches for different kinds of end user. What we currently have in many situations is people's problems are being ignored because they don't have any real alternatives. Simultaneously, Facebook (for example) is ultimately incentivized to solve the problems of their paying users (ad firms and political advertisers) over their non-paying users (humans). They've aggressively bought the competition which ensures that remains the reality. Political regulation of markets exists to ensure that the interests of the polis are ultimately served by businesses, precisely because markets have MANY failure modes that prioritize other interests to the detriment of overall societal health.

whimsicalism 6y ago
Exactly this. Markets are incredibly powerful, but it's a double-edged sword. They also have failure cases and it is important to be aware and guard against those cases.