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Kinda depressing that marketplace efficiency is more compelling than moral/ethical good, but I guess it is a sign of the times.

by ohyes 6y ago

__s 6y ago
Always has been
vikramkr 6y ago
In cases like this where marketplace efficiency is aligned with moral good, I think we should embrace using it as a tool/weapon to accomplish the moral good. You've got to use the tools you got, and I don't see using capitalistic means to argue for ending discrimination as automatically meaning you personally value markets more than morals. Markets are a tool. When I use a power drill to drill a hole - it's not really about the drill - it's about wanting the hole. Same idea.
pembrook 6y ago
Marketplace efficiency is a moral good. The more efficiently we allocate resources, the more we lift people out of poverty around the globe. Increasing marketplace efficiency is the headline story of the last 100 years of human history. Billions of people are now living indoors with electricity, have running water, reliable food supply chains, and are killing each other less due to marketplace efficiency. You won’t hear that story on the news of course.
- abyssin 6y ago
  Is it market efficiency or is it cheap energy?
  - tasuki 6y ago
    Where does cheap energy come from?
    - abyssin 6y ago
      From vast, non renewable natural stocks found in the ground.
- shi314 6y ago
  What if increasing marketplace efficiency is just a by product instead of cause of great change? I mean main objective of business is wealth maximisation of shareholders and management (in modern times). It has nothing to do with efficient allocation of resources. The country that alleviated most people from poverty is a communist country. Communism uplifted a poor nation Russia to become one of the Superpower in 20th century.
  - pembrook 6y ago
    You may want to check where you got your history information from. You're correct, the country that alleviated the most from poverty is a communist country. But it wasn't Russia. It was China. And China did it by privatizing and opening up its markets to capitalism (and by capturing the subsequent efficiency gains). Not by command-and-control allocation of resources by a central body. China lifted roughly 850 million out of extreme poverty over the past 30 years according to the World Bank...more than the 6X the population of Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China Yes, the main objective of business is wealth maximization. But to create wealth (without stealing it), you must create value for other people. Theft is a zero sum game. Value creation is not. The search to create value by millions of different individual actors is how resources are so much more efficiently allocated in free market economies. Russia has still reduced poverty by roughly 10-20% since the fall of the USSR via more open markets. The reason this number isn't even larger, is because of widespread theft (see the above paragraph) by a corrupt oligarch class. This is super common in any country with lots of oil and no democracy (ask Venezuela for more info).
- ohyes 6y ago
  I would contest the notion that this is simply marketplace efficiency. We’ve burned through millions of years worth of stored solar energy in the last 100 years, and not yet paid the full price for that. That’s essentially a massive injection of capital into our system. Of course that would raise the standard of living. Does the market have any sense of what needs to be done to preserve our goals as a species. (What are those exactly, anyway?) Attribution of moral goodness to something that has circumstantially caused some good but lacks any moral compass doesn’t seem to be a solid rock to found your religion on. And there are certain things that we disallow (and in fact revile) that strictly speaking would be more efficient market wise. (Buying and selling people, child labor, stuff like that). Although capitalism deserves its due (which is a fair bit), attributing all of recent human progress to it seems a bit much.
  - pembrook 6y ago
    > "Attribution of moral goodness to something that has circumstantially caused some good but lacks any moral compass doesn’t seem to be a solid rock to found your religion on." You could also say the same thing about humanity itself. In any case, we're not talking about religion. We're simply talking about outcomes, and which are more favorable. In a majority of cases, the outcome of an efficient market is superior from a moral perspective than the outcome of individual humans running things. As to the problem of fossil fuels, the market will inevitably solve for this too. If polluting the earth with fossil fuels ends up killing humanity--that wasn't a very efficient use of resources was it?

Kinda depressing that marketplace efficiency is more compelling than moral/ethical good, but I guess it is a sign of the times.

by ohyes 6y ago

Kinda depressing that marketplace efficiency is more compelling than moral/ethical good, but I guess it is a sign of the times.

__s 6y ago

Always has been

vikramkr 6y ago

In cases like this where marketplace efficiency is aligned with moral good, I think we should embrace using it as a tool/weapon to accomplish the moral good. You've got to use the tools you got, and I don't see using capitalistic means to argue for ending discrimination as automatically meaning you personally value markets more than morals. Markets are a tool. When I use a power drill to drill a hole - it's not really about the drill - it's about wanting the hole. Same idea.

pembrook 6y ago

Marketplace efficiency is a moral good. The more efficiently we allocate resources, the more we lift people out of poverty around the globe. Increasing marketplace efficiency is the headline story of the last 100 years of human history. Billions of people are now living indoors with electricity, have running water, reliable food supply chains, and are killing each other less due to marketplace efficiency. You won’t hear that story on the news of course.

abyssin 6y ago
Is it market efficiency or is it cheap energy?
- tasuki 6y ago
  Where does cheap energy come from?
  - abyssin 6y ago
    From vast, non renewable natural stocks found in the ground.
shi314 6y ago
What if increasing marketplace efficiency is just a by product instead of cause of great change? I mean main objective of business is wealth maximisation of shareholders and management (in modern times). It has nothing to do with efficient allocation of resources. The country that alleviated most people from poverty is a communist country. Communism uplifted a poor nation Russia to become one of the Superpower in 20th century.
- pembrook 6y ago
  You may want to check where you got your history information from. You're correct, the country that alleviated the most from poverty is a communist country. But it wasn't Russia. It was China. And China did it by privatizing and opening up its markets to capitalism (and by capturing the subsequent efficiency gains). Not by command-and-control allocation of resources by a central body. China lifted roughly 850 million out of extreme poverty over the past 30 years according to the World Bank...more than the 6X the population of Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China Yes, the main objective of business is wealth maximization. But to create wealth (without stealing it), you must create value for other people. Theft is a zero sum game. Value creation is not. The search to create value by millions of different individual actors is how resources are so much more efficiently allocated in free market economies. Russia has still reduced poverty by roughly 10-20% since the fall of the USSR via more open markets. The reason this number isn't even larger, is because of widespread theft (see the above paragraph) by a corrupt oligarch class. This is super common in any country with lots of oil and no democracy (ask Venezuela for more info).
ohyes 6y ago
I would contest the notion that this is simply marketplace efficiency. We’ve burned through millions of years worth of stored solar energy in the last 100 years, and not yet paid the full price for that. That’s essentially a massive injection of capital into our system. Of course that would raise the standard of living. Does the market have any sense of what needs to be done to preserve our goals as a species. (What are those exactly, anyway?) Attribution of moral goodness to something that has circumstantially caused some good but lacks any moral compass doesn’t seem to be a solid rock to found your religion on. And there are certain things that we disallow (and in fact revile) that strictly speaking would be more efficient market wise. (Buying and selling people, child labor, stuff like that). Although capitalism deserves its due (which is a fair bit), attributing all of recent human progress to it seems a bit much.
- pembrook 6y ago
  > "Attribution of moral goodness to something that has circumstantially caused some good but lacks any moral compass doesn’t seem to be a solid rock to found your religion on." You could also say the same thing about humanity itself. In any case, we're not talking about religion. We're simply talking about outcomes, and which are more favorable. In a majority of cases, the outcome of an efficient market is superior from a moral perspective than the outcome of individual humans running things. As to the problem of fossil fuels, the market will inevitably solve for this too. If polluting the earth with fossil fuels ends up killing humanity--that wasn't a very efficient use of resources was it?