4 ms·

Of course, with redistribution, that actually becomes the case... Redistribution is a necessary evil, though. It's zero-sum* in the immediate term, but it's a

Of course, with redistribution, that actually becomes the case... Redistribution is a necessary evil, though. It's zero-sum* in the immediate term, but it's a necessary upkeep measure for the long-term health of society. Money is essentially a device for allocating resources to those who have put them to good/profitable use in the past. The problem with it is that there are so many degeneracies, such as crime and dumb luck, that also influence the flow of money. Foremost among these degeneracies is the way money is filtered through large corporations. Large companies profit or fail on account of reasonable market forces, but then go ahead and distribute the money in a manner that has 100 times more to do with office politics than actual productivity. Inheritances are also an enormous corrupting influence, in that they bequeath large amounts of capital to individuals who are entirely unworthy of the influence that it provides. I tend to think of money and capitalism as shoddy (but the best we have) AI algorithms that need to be continuously tweaked in order to avoid divergence. If you start from an initial state where everyone is roughly equal, and allow capital to flow via a money economy, you'll have a system where more productive people have more control of the resources, and progressive improvements will result. Eventually, though, the degeneracies take over, and it starts to erode society; an elite selected not on merit emerges, and uses its influence to restructure society in its favor further, much in the way a cancer starves a body. (* edit: I'd actually even argue against redistribution being "zero-sum" in any meaningful sense. From a utilitarian perspective, it's arguably positive-sum so long as we accept that the utility curve of material wealth is concave.)

drewcrawford 18y ago
but then go ahead and distribute the money in a manner that has 100 times more to do with office politics than actual productivity. Of course, the alternative to this (i.e. distribution by a government) would be the distribution of wealth that has an infinite number of times more to do with _actual_ politics. Office politics is at least distributed, i.e. there are several companies that distribute their own individual wealth according to some non-perfect system. But some will be more perfect than others, and hopefully natural selection will reward those more than others. Government redistribution does not have that characteristic. But not only is it missing the only piece of redeeming value in any distribution system, it is not in essence any different than the private redistribution system. That is, there are still people deciding how to spend money. It is true that people are flawed; but they are no less flawed because we call them government. In fact they are more so: we have removed the only incentive to improve redistribution that they may have had. But then it is not easy to silence the voices of those who ask whether it is not paradoxical to entrust the nation's welfare to the decisions of voters whom the law itself considers incapable of managing their own affairs; whether it is not absurd to make those people supreme in the conduct of government who are manifestly in need of a guardian to prevent them from spending their own income foolishly." - Ludwig von Mises
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
MaysonL 18y ago
When the US government engaged in redistributing money for the common good(investment in commons), with minimal political influence, as for example, ARPA pre-Mansfield and the interstate highway system, the returns were high enough that any VC doing as well would be very happy.

drewcrawford 18y ago

but then go ahead and distribute the money in a manner that has 100 times more to do with office politics than actual productivity. Of course, the alternative to this (i.e. distribution by a government) would be the distribution of wealth that has an infinite number of times more to do with _actual_ politics. Office politics is at least distributed, i.e. there are several companies that distribute their own individual wealth according to some non-perfect system. But some will be more perfect than others, and hopefully natural selection will reward those more than others. Government redistribution does not have that characteristic. But not only is it missing the only piece of redeeming value in any distribution system, it is not in essence any different than the private redistribution system. That is, there are still people deciding how to spend money. It is true that people are flawed; but they are no less flawed because we call them government. In fact they are more so: we have removed the only incentive to improve redistribution that they may have had. But then it is not easy to silence the voices of those who ask whether it is not paradoxical to entrust the nation's welfare to the decisions of voters whom the law itself considers incapable of managing their own affairs; whether it is not absurd to make those people supreme in the conduct of government who are manifestly in need of a guardian to prevent them from spending their own income foolishly." - Ludwig von Mises

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]

MaysonL 18y ago

When the US government engaged in redistributing money for the common good(investment in commons), with minimal political influence, as for example, ARPA pre-Mansfield and the interstate highway system, the returns were high enough that any VC doing as well would be very happy.