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It's because people are trained to think in terms of individual actors instead of systems. They're also trained to think their country's system is great if not

It's because people are trained to think in terms of individual actors instead of systems. They're also trained to think their country's system is great if not for the X, Y, Z people ruining it. Of course, those who are educated and those with power often have to face the reality that we must focus on systems and processes. It's not "conspiratorial" to assume corporations are invested in extracting the highest labour power at the lowest cost. It's what they are designed to do in the system we have.

godelski 4y ago
> It's not "conspiratorial" to assume corporations are invested in extracting the highest labour power at the lowest cost. This isn't what any of us (at least me) are calling conspiratorial. The conspiratorial nature involves the... conspiring part. That organizations are in fact not doing what I quotes but instead working together in back rooms to help maintain the elite statuses. While this happens to some extent, it is not this Bilderberg group type things. If individual elite companies and billionaires independently lobby for their personal self interests then others of that same group often benefit from the same things. This should be unsurprising. But it doesn't require collusion, it just requires statistics. It is not Dems and Reps plotting in back rooms to make Americans fight and hand over power to billionaires. You're watching too many movies. The easier explanation is that they all come from the same types of families and have gone to the same types of schools. They don't need to conspire because they already have the same reference frame of the world. They're not omniscient, they just have the same biases in their priors. But that's not conspiracy, that's emergence. A perfect example of the conspiracy we are talking about is the top comment. I am willing to bet that theater was closed (primarily) due to the pandemic rather than because they wanted to squash these performers' demands. But as the old saying goes: never let a tragedy go to waste. The judgement of intentions are being made based on the outcome, and in many of these cases could not have been predicted apriori. So either the owner got "lucky" or they were omniscient. If the latter, why the fuck are they running an theater? The same can be said about a lot of common beliefs. The outcomes might be similar or look the same as if these mega smart people planned all this, but that's a bias seeing the "successes" and ignoring the failures (a quite common human trait). The difference between these two views may not matter in terms of outcomes, but it sure does matter in terms of preventing the same things from happening in the future. Frankly this is the key failure point of many suggestions for how to resolve these issues and why we have decades or centuries of attempts that result in failures. Because we aren't looking at the complex causal chain of events (which we can't even know beyond a certain level of accuracy and is constantly changing).
- nkjnlknlk 4y ago
  The tone of your comment reads as if you're disagreeing with my comment but you're in fact agreeing? I'm a bit confused. :) A slight disagreement FWIW, > Frankly this is the key failure point of many suggestions for how to resolve these issues and why we have decades or centuries of attempts that result in failures. Because we aren't looking at the complex causal chain of events (which we can't even know beyond a certain level of accuracy and is constantly changing). I believe that is true in the West more than anything. It's hated on HackerNews (an obviously neoliberal culture) but there is a reason any good economics program teaches Marxist thought.
  - godelski 4y ago
    What I'm disagreeing with is the way you use the word "conspiratorial" because it is not aligned with the usage in the previous conversation (i.e. multiple people were using it with one meaning and you used it with a different meaning).

godelski 4y ago

> It's not "conspiratorial" to assume corporations are invested in extracting the highest labour power at the lowest cost. This isn't what any of us (at least me) are calling conspiratorial. The conspiratorial nature involves the... conspiring part. That organizations are in fact not doing what I quotes but instead working together in back rooms to help maintain the elite statuses. While this happens to some extent, it is not this Bilderberg group type things. If individual elite companies and billionaires independently lobby for their personal self interests then others of that same group often benefit from the same things. This should be unsurprising. But it doesn't require collusion, it just requires statistics. It is not Dems and Reps plotting in back rooms to make Americans fight and hand over power to billionaires. You're watching too many movies. The easier explanation is that they all come from the same types of families and have gone to the same types of schools. They don't need to conspire because they already have the same reference frame of the world. They're not omniscient, they just have the same biases in their priors. But that's not conspiracy, that's emergence. A perfect example of the conspiracy we are talking about is the top comment. I am willing to bet that theater was closed (primarily) due to the pandemic rather than because they wanted to squash these performers' demands. But as the old saying goes: never let a tragedy go to waste. The judgement of intentions are being made based on the outcome, and in many of these cases could not have been predicted apriori. So either the owner got "lucky" or they were omniscient. If the latter, why the fuck are they running an theater? The same can be said about a lot of common beliefs. The outcomes might be similar or look the same as if these mega smart people planned all this, but that's a bias seeing the "successes" and ignoring the failures (a quite common human trait). The difference between these two views may not matter in terms of outcomes, but it sure does matter in terms of preventing the same things from happening in the future. Frankly this is the key failure point of many suggestions for how to resolve these issues and why we have decades or centuries of attempts that result in failures. Because we aren't looking at the complex causal chain of events (which we can't even know beyond a certain level of accuracy and is constantly changing).

nkjnlknlk 4y ago
The tone of your comment reads as if you're disagreeing with my comment but you're in fact agreeing? I'm a bit confused. :) A slight disagreement FWIW, > Frankly this is the key failure point of many suggestions for how to resolve these issues and why we have decades or centuries of attempts that result in failures. Because we aren't looking at the complex causal chain of events (which we can't even know beyond a certain level of accuracy and is constantly changing). I believe that is true in the West more than anything. It's hated on HackerNews (an obviously neoliberal culture) but there is a reason any good economics program teaches Marxist thought.
- godelski 4y ago
  What I'm disagreeing with is the way you use the word "conspiratorial" because it is not aligned with the usage in the previous conversation (i.e. multiple people were using it with one meaning and you used it with a different meaning).