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Capitalism doesn’t set any goals, people do that. It just recognises and guarantees individual ownership rights and economic freedoms, but what people do with t

by simonh 5y ago

Capitalism doesn’t set any goals, people do that. It just recognises and guarantees individual ownership rights and economic freedoms, but what people do with that is up to them. It’s just that achieving any material goal takes capital, whatever your economic system. Elon Musk is as capitalist as you can get, but his goal isn’t to accumulate as much capital as possible, it’s to build a civilisation. Bill Gates is a capitalist and is busily giving away as much capital as efficiently as he can. This is of course all about goal setting. I think those fearful of maximisers are being rational, but if we’re going to build AIs then we need to make them part of our community. The things that stop us as individuals going off the rails and taking everyone else around us down with us is respect for community, for others rights and interests. The need to seek consensus and consent. Figuring out how to implement that is the real challenge.

beaconstudios 5y ago
Capitalism is a system that rewards capital accumulation, the richer you are, the more power and freedom you have. Therefore, it incentivises capitalistic behaviour. People can break with those incentives, but I'm not critiquing people's ability to have good goals - I'm critiquing capitalism. Capitalism does optimise for property rights, that's true - but if you're taking a utilitarian perspective (as all good rationalists should) then you have to ask what the material outcomes of that are. What we see is accumulation of massive power in the hands of a few, many of whom are doing active harm to the planet (just look at oil billionaires' behaviour). Supporting them is a worldwide underclass of people working in sweatshop conditions or actual human slavery. Maybe optimising for private property isn't providing very good outcomes.
- aetherson 5y ago
  What we actually see is broad wealth generation that is relatively widely spread (albeit not perfectly uniformly spread) lifting billions out of the crushing malthusian poverty that has been the fate of 99% of humanity, and the creation of social orders in which the rich, while they are rich, have strict limits on their abilities to control the lives of the majority.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    That broad wealth generation isn't caused by capitalism, it's caused by technological innovation. Capitalism is just the means by which the rewards are distributed. If we start a company together that increases grain yields, it could either be capitalistic and whoever "owns" the company just pays everyone else wages while keeping all the profit, or it can be cooperative where the rewards are decided democratically and everyone who works there "owns" the company. The latter example is not capitalism, even with the presence of markets!
    - indymike 5y ago
      I'm pretty sure that the way it worked is the vast majority of wealth accumulated with the King and 7-10 people close to the King. Everyone else... was not important to the King. Capitalism is simply an economic system where regular people can own the means of production. It is not about distributing rewards. That is the language of a feudal economy.
      - beaconstudios 5y ago
        A system can distribute rewards just as a person can. If acting in the capitalist economy incentivises specific behaviours, that economy is distributing rewards based on those incentives.
        indymike 5y ago
        Systems are operated by people, which is why many great ideas on paper devolve into dictatorships, oppression and death in real life. See Ukraine for an example.
        beaconstudios 5y ago
        Putin's dictatorship is operated by a person, but capitalism is not - it's made of people. Nobody runs the markets, they run by themselves based on people's participation, governed by rules. Invisible hand and all that.
rland 5y ago
I would urge you to take a closer look at Elon, Gates, or any other billionaire who pledges to have any goal other than "accumulate more." For example, Elon's personal spending and the structure of his compensation. If he just wants to go to mars, why does the stock price and his share thereof matter so dang much? Or Bill's net worth, which has curiously increased despite his mission of giving it all away.
- simonh 5y ago
  The stock price matters because it affects SpaceX ability to raise capital, and going to Mars takes a lot of capital. His share of the stock matters so he can retain control, so that he can make sure SpaceX remains focused on going to Mars, as against anything else. If it was just about making money for himself he'd float the company.

by simonh 5y ago

beaconstudios 5y ago

Capitalism is a system that rewards capital accumulation, the richer you are, the more power and freedom you have. Therefore, it incentivises capitalistic behaviour. People can break with those incentives, but I'm not critiquing people's ability to have good goals - I'm critiquing capitalism. Capitalism does optimise for property rights, that's true - but if you're taking a utilitarian perspective (as all good rationalists should) then you have to ask what the material outcomes of that are. What we see is accumulation of massive power in the hands of a few, many of whom are doing active harm to the planet (just look at oil billionaires' behaviour). Supporting them is a worldwide underclass of people working in sweatshop conditions or actual human slavery. Maybe optimising for private property isn't providing very good outcomes.

aetherson 5y ago
What we actually see is broad wealth generation that is relatively widely spread (albeit not perfectly uniformly spread) lifting billions out of the crushing malthusian poverty that has been the fate of 99% of humanity, and the creation of social orders in which the rich, while they are rich, have strict limits on their abilities to control the lives of the majority.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  That broad wealth generation isn't caused by capitalism, it's caused by technological innovation. Capitalism is just the means by which the rewards are distributed. If we start a company together that increases grain yields, it could either be capitalistic and whoever "owns" the company just pays everyone else wages while keeping all the profit, or it can be cooperative where the rewards are decided democratically and everyone who works there "owns" the company. The latter example is not capitalism, even with the presence of markets!
  - indymike 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure that the way it worked is the vast majority of wealth accumulated with the King and 7-10 people close to the King. Everyone else... was not important to the King. Capitalism is simply an economic system where regular people can own the means of production. It is not about distributing rewards. That is the language of a feudal economy.
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      A system can distribute rewards just as a person can. If acting in the capitalist economy incentivises specific behaviours, that economy is distributing rewards based on those incentives.
      - indymike 5y ago
        Systems are operated by people, which is why many great ideas on paper devolve into dictatorships, oppression and death in real life. See Ukraine for an example.
        beaconstudios 5y ago
        Putin's dictatorship is operated by a person, but capitalism is not - it's made of people. Nobody runs the markets, they run by themselves based on people's participation, governed by rules. Invisible hand and all that.

rland 5y ago

I would urge you to take a closer look at Elon, Gates, or any other billionaire who pledges to have any goal other than "accumulate more." For example, Elon's personal spending and the structure of his compensation. If he just wants to go to mars, why does the stock price and his share thereof matter so dang much? Or Bill's net worth, which has curiously increased despite his mission of giving it all away.

simonh 5y ago
The stock price matters because it affects SpaceX ability to raise capital, and going to Mars takes a lot of capital. His share of the stock matters so he can retain control, so that he can make sure SpaceX remains focused on going to Mars, as against anything else. If it was just about making money for himself he'd float the company.