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You ask this question as if it were a rhetorical question. Is there any reason to believe that such an economic system that also combines much of "good" proper

You ask this question as if it were a rhetorical question. Is there any reason to believe that such an economic system that also combines much of "good" properties of capitalism cannot exist? Disciplines like game theory and mechanism design have made tremendous advances over the last few decades. Surely we can put these ideas to work in designing better political and economic systems.

tedunangst 15y ago
I would say, only half facetiously, that game theory has advanced to the point where we are very good at designing systems where everybody loses, but not so good at designing systems where everybody wins.
philwelch 15y ago
It wasn't a rhetorical question. Or rather, it remains a valid rhetorical question until it receives a satisfactory answer. Until that point, all supposed flaws with capitalism are really flaws with all industrial civilizations observed thus far. Tangentially, no real world economic system is "designed". They evolve out of competing interests. Even if you did design a system and implement it perfectly, it would have unintended consequences. We can't perfectly implement pre-designed political and economic systems, though; every attempt seems to turn into a bloodbath.
- microarchitect 15y ago
  Even if you did design a system and implement it perfectly, it would have unintended consequences. Sure, but what prevents you from then measuring these unintended consequences, plugging them back into your model and asking the question "how should my system change?". Is there any reason to believe we can never reach a stable fixed point? We do things sort of like this in microprocessor design for instance - where we need to deal with "unintended consequences" like parasitic capacitances and resistances that we cannot fully model until the design is complete, but we need to account for while designing the system.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    So who are the designers, and how are they going to do any of this in isolation? Previous attempts have resulted in bloodbaths because the only way anyone can design a society is with large amounts of force. And then the state of the society is better characterized by the bloodbath than by whatever design the bloodbath was intended to create or enforce. Unintended consequences aren't the only reason you can't design society. The main reason is that society insists on designing itself. It's obvious with a processor who is the designer and what is the designed. Societies are full of people who don't agree with other people's "designs" and won't voluntarily cooperate. So either you give up, or you spend most of your time designing cost-effective means of imposing your designs by force, which always turns into some combination of mass imprisonment, mass murder, and repression.
    - microarchitect 15y ago
      So who are the designers, and how are they going to do any of this in isolation? Previous attempts have resulted in bloodbaths because the only way anyone can design a society is with large amounts of force. And then the state of the society is better characterized by the bloodbath than by whatever design the bloodbath was intended to create or enforce. I don't buy the argument that this has to be done by force, or that this necessarily results in a bloodbath. What are governments trying to do when they tweak laws, interests rates and the like but trying to "design" societies? I'm just suggesting that we take more quantitative and model-based approach to this issue. We can start by simply involving more scientists and engineers in policy decisions, and ask them to use the tools we've developed to analyze complex systems to analyze the socio-economic system that we live in. To a certain extent, we're already doing this. A hundred years ago, most political decisions were ad hoc based on what "seemed right" to the party in charge. Decisions today are much more data-based and rely on expert input. Unintended consequences aren't the only reason you can't design society. The main reason is that society insists on designing itself. ... These are dogmatic statements unsupported by citations. I'm not sure how to respond to them. Societies are full of people who don't agree with other people's "designs" and won't voluntarily cooperate. It would have inconceivable five hundred years that "most" people would agree on the following: (1) large parts of the world would elect their own rulers. (2) women would have the same rights and privileges as men. (3) violence as a means of solving problems would be perceived as "wrong". This perception changed because we see now that these were decisions that benefited society as a whole.
taejo 15y ago
For those who don't know, "mechanism design" is the extremely interesting field which is the "opposite" of game theory: instead of analysing how rational players act in a certain game, it asks what game will force rational players to act in the desired way.
- mseebach 15y ago
  So that just leaves the problem of figuring out what the desired way is.
  - microarchitect 15y ago
    Rather than trying to design for how people should act, we can try to design in a manner that optimizes for measurable objectives that we can all agree on as good. A few objectives I can think of are "least number of people hungry", "most number of people reporting themselves as satisfied" etc. I don't understand why we aren't doing this now. Our political mechanisms and were designed a few centuries ago by people who had the mathematical and scientific sophistication of a contemporary high school student. There is every reason to believe that we can do better if we put our best minds on this task.
    - mseebach 15y ago
      Large scale hunger is typically a symptom of systemic failure, not a lack of food production ability. There's no consensus on how to fix that. Niall Ferguson suggests that the "killer apps" are competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the Protestant work ethic. This is controversial - see, for and example the comments on his TED talk[1] or the reviews of his book[2]. As for reporting yourself as satisfied, this is hugely subjective. I could be unsatisfied because I think my bosses at my well paid and comfortable programming job are doing things wrongly, this, I suspect, would be a luxury problem to an unemployed graduate on benefits, who again has a luxury problem compared to a homeless crack addict. > Our political mechanisms and were designed a few centuries ago by people who had the mathematical and scientific sophistication of a contemporary high school student. Will all due respect, but there's really no way to say this without being a dick: Go read a book. The big philosophers of the enlightenment are towering intellectual capacities. > There is every reason to believe that we can do better if we put our best minds on this task. Quite the contrary. People are people and they all have individual goals and desires. Societies can't be designed and directed on any significant scale without devolving into totalitarianism. Our enlightenment friends realized this, and anyone who's tried to do this has failed miserably and bloodily. 1: http://www.ted.com/talks/niall_ferguson_the_6_killer_apps_of_prosperity.html http://www.ted.com/talks/niall_ferguson_the_6_killer_apps_of... 2: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Civilization-Ways-West-Beat-Rest/dp/1846142733 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Civilization-Ways-West-Beat-Rest/dp/...

tedunangst 15y ago

I would say, only half facetiously, that game theory has advanced to the point where we are very good at designing systems where everybody loses, but not so good at designing systems where everybody wins.

philwelch 15y ago

It wasn't a rhetorical question. Or rather, it remains a valid rhetorical question until it receives a satisfactory answer. Until that point, all supposed flaws with capitalism are really flaws with all industrial civilizations observed thus far. Tangentially, no real world economic system is "designed". They evolve out of competing interests. Even if you did design a system and implement it perfectly, it would have unintended consequences. We can't perfectly implement pre-designed political and economic systems, though; every attempt seems to turn into a bloodbath.

microarchitect 15y ago
Even if you did design a system and implement it perfectly, it would have unintended consequences. Sure, but what prevents you from then measuring these unintended consequences, plugging them back into your model and asking the question "how should my system change?". Is there any reason to believe we can never reach a stable fixed point? We do things sort of like this in microprocessor design for instance - where we need to deal with "unintended consequences" like parasitic capacitances and resistances that we cannot fully model until the design is complete, but we need to account for while designing the system.
- philwelch 15y ago
  So who are the designers, and how are they going to do any of this in isolation? Previous attempts have resulted in bloodbaths because the only way anyone can design a society is with large amounts of force. And then the state of the society is better characterized by the bloodbath than by whatever design the bloodbath was intended to create or enforce. Unintended consequences aren't the only reason you can't design society. The main reason is that society insists on designing itself. It's obvious with a processor who is the designer and what is the designed. Societies are full of people who don't agree with other people's "designs" and won't voluntarily cooperate. So either you give up, or you spend most of your time designing cost-effective means of imposing your designs by force, which always turns into some combination of mass imprisonment, mass murder, and repression.
  - microarchitect 15y ago
    So who are the designers, and how are they going to do any of this in isolation? Previous attempts have resulted in bloodbaths because the only way anyone can design a society is with large amounts of force. And then the state of the society is better characterized by the bloodbath than by whatever design the bloodbath was intended to create or enforce. I don't buy the argument that this has to be done by force, or that this necessarily results in a bloodbath. What are governments trying to do when they tweak laws, interests rates and the like but trying to "design" societies? I'm just suggesting that we take more quantitative and model-based approach to this issue. We can start by simply involving more scientists and engineers in policy decisions, and ask them to use the tools we've developed to analyze complex systems to analyze the socio-economic system that we live in. To a certain extent, we're already doing this. A hundred years ago, most political decisions were ad hoc based on what "seemed right" to the party in charge. Decisions today are much more data-based and rely on expert input. Unintended consequences aren't the only reason you can't design society. The main reason is that society insists on designing itself. ... These are dogmatic statements unsupported by citations. I'm not sure how to respond to them. Societies are full of people who don't agree with other people's "designs" and won't voluntarily cooperate. It would have inconceivable five hundred years that "most" people would agree on the following: (1) large parts of the world would elect their own rulers. (2) women would have the same rights and privileges as men. (3) violence as a means of solving problems would be perceived as "wrong". This perception changed because we see now that these were decisions that benefited society as a whole.

taejo 15y ago

For those who don't know, "mechanism design" is the extremely interesting field which is the "opposite" of game theory: instead of analysing how rational players act in a certain game, it asks what game will force rational players to act in the desired way.

mseebach 15y ago
So that just leaves the problem of figuring out what the desired way is.
- microarchitect 15y ago
  Rather than trying to design for how people should act, we can try to design in a manner that optimizes for measurable objectives that we can all agree on as good. A few objectives I can think of are "least number of people hungry", "most number of people reporting themselves as satisfied" etc. I don't understand why we aren't doing this now. Our political mechanisms and were designed a few centuries ago by people who had the mathematical and scientific sophistication of a contemporary high school student. There is every reason to believe that we can do better if we put our best minds on this task.
  - mseebach 15y ago
    Large scale hunger is typically a symptom of systemic failure, not a lack of food production ability. There's no consensus on how to fix that. Niall Ferguson suggests that the "killer apps" are competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the Protestant work ethic. This is controversial - see, for and example the comments on his TED talk[1] or the reviews of his book[2]. As for reporting yourself as satisfied, this is hugely subjective. I could be unsatisfied because I think my bosses at my well paid and comfortable programming job are doing things wrongly, this, I suspect, would be a luxury problem to an unemployed graduate on benefits, who again has a luxury problem compared to a homeless crack addict. > Our political mechanisms and were designed a few centuries ago by people who had the mathematical and scientific sophistication of a contemporary high school student. Will all due respect, but there's really no way to say this without being a dick: Go read a book. The big philosophers of the enlightenment are towering intellectual capacities. > There is every reason to believe that we can do better if we put our best minds on this task. Quite the contrary. People are people and they all have individual goals and desires. Societies can't be designed and directed on any significant scale without devolving into totalitarianism. Our enlightenment friends realized this, and anyone who's tried to do this has failed miserably and bloodily. 1: http://www.ted.com/talks/niall_ferguson_the_6_killer_apps_of_prosperity.html http://www.ted.com/talks/niall_ferguson_the_6_killer_apps_of... 2: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Civilization-Ways-West-Beat-Rest/dp/1846142733 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Civilization-Ways-West-Beat-Rest/dp/...