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There is no cohesive "humanity" with any sort of desire or ability to optimize for "the economy." Individuals optimize for their own (often short-term) economi

by ohazi 5y ago

There is no cohesive "humanity" with any sort of desire or ability to optimize for "the economy." Individuals optimize for their own (often short-term) economic benefit. That's it. The corporate overlords at ACME don't care about fighting obesity, because there are more than enough non-obese workers for them to exploit, and they don't want to cannibalize their highly profitable line of products that obese people need (i.e. insulin). Governments are composed of individuals, and the structures we have to hold these individuals accountable to their constituents are weak, so they still end up using their levers of power for their own gain, and for the gain of their corporate sponsors (also often short-term). Despite ~70 year lifespans, it seems that most of the population can't even be bothered to optimize for medium-term outcomes. This isn't going to change just because we invent a magic pill that lets you live youthfully till ~150. The problem isn't lifespan, the problem is that humanity is innately selfish and short-sighted. If this can't be fixed, we are completely fucked.

Ericson2314 5y ago
> Individuals optimize for their own (often short-term) economic benefit. That's it. Don't go to too far with this sort of atomistic analysis. Large firms are better at enforcing coordination than "society at-large" or other groupings. The fact that at different scales the coordination is markedly different has a huge affect. We're not an "economy of households" as the orthodox macro might have one model.
- ohazi 5y ago
  > Large firms are better at enforcing coordination than "society at-large" or other groupings. The "large firms" that I'm familiar with are cesspools of political infighting, gamesmanship, and backstabbing. People in positions of power at these firms use their influence to achieve their own goals, often at the expense of the firm and its employees. The counterexamples to this are so singularly rare that they are the exception that proves the rule.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    This is why larger companies tend to fail rather than growing to take over the world. There's another recent HN topic about how IBM's size prevented it from competing successfully in the PC market: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27912138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27912138
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    It's still miles above the e.g. non-interaction of neighbors in the same cookie cutter subdivision. The fact that people fight over how to divy up a budget vs have completely separate revenue and accounts says a lot, despite all the stuff you talk about.
WalterBright 5y ago
> humanity is innately selfish and short-sighted. If this can't be fixed, we are completely fucked. The communists tried pretty hard to do that, and just made things much worse.
- eitland 5y ago
  This is an incredibly important fact that is often downplayed. We remember the Inquisition and the Vikings but they are small fry compared to Communists (and Nazis). I'm not saying Communists are inherently evil - most of them are well meaning I think - but almost every single time it has been tried it has ended in genocide! The one single exception I am aware of is the Israeli Kibbutz system. Edit: communism has killed more people than nazism, probably because most people realize nazism is more or less pure evil while communism looks nice (edit:) on paper.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    The Kibbutzen don't work, either. The Israeli government taxes the capitalist businesses in order to subsidize the deficits of the Kibbutzen.
    - nwatson 5y ago
      What's the cost burden to Israel of the Kibbutzen vs the cost of supporting the ultra-conservative religious groups that don't serve in the military and rely (presumably) more heavily on welfare and other social subsidies?
    - eitland 5y ago
      You are probably right. And that is a good point too, it fails economically too. My original point was only that the Kibbutzen didn't end up massacring their inhabitants like almost every other communist experiment.
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        Only their neighbours.

by ohazi 5y ago

Ericson2314 5y ago

> Individuals optimize for their own (often short-term) economic benefit. That's it. Don't go to too far with this sort of atomistic analysis. Large firms are better at enforcing coordination than "society at-large" or other groupings. The fact that at different scales the coordination is markedly different has a huge affect. We're not an "economy of households" as the orthodox macro might have one model.

ohazi 5y ago
> Large firms are better at enforcing coordination than "society at-large" or other groupings. The "large firms" that I'm familiar with are cesspools of political infighting, gamesmanship, and backstabbing. People in positions of power at these firms use their influence to achieve their own goals, often at the expense of the firm and its employees. The counterexamples to this are so singularly rare that they are the exception that proves the rule.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  This is why larger companies tend to fail rather than growing to take over the world. There's another recent HN topic about how IBM's size prevented it from competing successfully in the PC market: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27912138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27912138
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  It's still miles above the e.g. non-interaction of neighbors in the same cookie cutter subdivision. The fact that people fight over how to divy up a budget vs have completely separate revenue and accounts says a lot, despite all the stuff you talk about.

WalterBright 5y ago

> humanity is innately selfish and short-sighted. If this can't be fixed, we are completely fucked. The communists tried pretty hard to do that, and just made things much worse.

eitland 5y ago
This is an incredibly important fact that is often downplayed. We remember the Inquisition and the Vikings but they are small fry compared to Communists (and Nazis). I'm not saying Communists are inherently evil - most of them are well meaning I think - but almost every single time it has been tried it has ended in genocide! The one single exception I am aware of is the Israeli Kibbutz system. Edit: communism has killed more people than nazism, probably because most people realize nazism is more or less pure evil while communism looks nice (edit:) on paper.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  The Kibbutzen don't work, either. The Israeli government taxes the capitalist businesses in order to subsidize the deficits of the Kibbutzen.
  - nwatson 5y ago
    What's the cost burden to Israel of the Kibbutzen vs the cost of supporting the ultra-conservative religious groups that don't serve in the military and rely (presumably) more heavily on welfare and other social subsidies?
  - eitland 5y ago
    You are probably right. And that is a good point too, it fails economically too. My original point was only that the Kibbutzen didn't end up massacring their inhabitants like almost every other communist experiment.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      Only their neighbours.