4 ms·

Your article sounds great... if you ignore the mountain of skulls left by the Soviets, the Chinese, the Khmer Rouge, etc. There's a much simpler explanation fo

Your article sounds great... if you ignore the mountain of skulls left by the Soviets, the Chinese, the Khmer Rouge, etc. There's a much simpler explanation for what caused economic growth and employee compensation in real dollars to decouple in 1971: https://www.barrons.com/articles/gold-standard-dollar-dominance-bretton-woods-51628890861 https://www.barrons.com/articles/gold-standard-dollar-domina...

xen2xen1 4y ago
Interesting, I've never heard an answer to "what happened in 1971". So decoupling from gold basically gave the elite a really good handle to manipulate the economy? Fascinating.
- HideousKojima 4y ago
  Exactly. I'm not a gold bug (and the last 50 years have shown it doesn't behave too differently from any other commodity) but by requiring the government to tie the value of currency to something, anything, that they can't just create out of thin air limited how much the federal reserve and banks were able to screw over the average citizen.
  - inawarminister 4y ago
    To be fair even ancient Romans used to meddle around with reducing gold and silver content in their physical coinage, resulting in the crisis of the 3rd century. And Spanish silver bullion was too bad... But yes. Much better than limitless fiat being summoned from the void.
AndrewKemendo 4y ago
All of the people you mention assumed two things that aren't true: 1. There aren't enough resources for everyone 2. Humans are fundamentally evil/selfish Both are demonstrably wrong Everything in the paper shows the counter-productivity of violence and coercion. In fact you'll see that I demonstrate in fact the opposite: >Provided you have a relative scarcity of empathy, premeditated violent conquest of indigenous peoples is a viable and successful strategy for resource acquisition, which cemented it as a practical template for future structures of dominance. I mean I literally quote S Tzu to make this point: "The costs of conflict always weaken our position even if we ‘beat’ our opponent" further... >To anyone who is worried about “Aligning” AI globally, your charge is this: Invert structural incentives in your organization to demonstrate cooperation rather than competition, and sharing rather than hoarding as much as possible. This issue cannot be resolved by force, and the fact of using force or coercion, as you point out, destroys the entire process. Peace and sharing is literally the only way out So my guess is, like most people, you still believe one of those two myths I started with. Edit: Also, I've been studying the great decoupling for a long time and my theory predicts it as post scarcity requires an increasing mis-allocated production based on luxury consumption. That is not possible without arbitrary limits on intermediated resources (currency). If demand for luxury goods is impeded by the growth of currency - then you just change what currency represents - eg. It is perfectly alienated from capital and thus does not represent a relationship between "value" and production.
- HideousKojima 4y ago
  Oh, you quoted Sun Tzu so that means your logic and arguments are correct, good to know. You're correct that humans have lived in peaceful, cooperative societies in the past. What you don't seem to grasp is that those societies were never larger than a few hundred members and, critically, they were only peaceful within their own ranks. Cooperative societies require trust, and humans have extreme difficulty in building trust outside of their immediate friends and family. Millenia spent establishing robust institutions and legal systems are the only reason modern society enjoys the levels of trust it does today, and all attempts to replace those institutions with new ones that encourage cooperation (or else!) have lead to mountains of skulls. We can look to primates, and most of the animal kingdom, for further proof of this. Chimps get into wars over resources with anyone outside of their own troup, and even enslave other chimps at times. Ants have extremely high trust, cooperative societies... until they run into a competing colony. Why are humans magically different? If you're going to make a religious argument that God made us different I'd consider it, but nothing in biology or history supports it.
  - AndrewKemendo 4y ago
    Humans are not "magically" different, we are measurably biologically different and that makes all of the difference. We have the capacity to care beyond Dunbar's number (which you obliquely reference) but again, structurally we built systems of competition and distrust to survive - precisely the opposite actually of what you claim. These are not systems of trust they are systems of mutual fear. The systems that got us here will not work any further I'd appreciate you not making claims that I don't make nor assuming things I do not state. Feel free to prove my argument wrong with a robust response. All of your claims I rebut in the paper.

xen2xen1 4y ago

Interesting, I've never heard an answer to "what happened in 1971". So decoupling from gold basically gave the elite a really good handle to manipulate the economy? Fascinating.

HideousKojima 4y ago
Exactly. I'm not a gold bug (and the last 50 years have shown it doesn't behave too differently from any other commodity) but by requiring the government to tie the value of currency to something, anything, that they can't just create out of thin air limited how much the federal reserve and banks were able to screw over the average citizen.
- inawarminister 4y ago
  To be fair even ancient Romans used to meddle around with reducing gold and silver content in their physical coinage, resulting in the crisis of the 3rd century. And Spanish silver bullion was too bad... But yes. Much better than limitless fiat being summoned from the void.

AndrewKemendo 4y ago

All of the people you mention assumed two things that aren't true: 1. There aren't enough resources for everyone 2. Humans are fundamentally evil/selfish Both are demonstrably wrong Everything in the paper shows the counter-productivity of violence and coercion. In fact you'll see that I demonstrate in fact the opposite: >Provided you have a relative scarcity of empathy, premeditated violent conquest of indigenous peoples is a viable and successful strategy for resource acquisition, which cemented it as a practical template for future structures of dominance. I mean I literally quote S Tzu to make this point: "The costs of conflict always weaken our position even if we ‘beat’ our opponent" further... >To anyone who is worried about “Aligning” AI globally, your charge is this: Invert structural incentives in your organization to demonstrate cooperation rather than competition, and sharing rather than hoarding as much as possible. This issue cannot be resolved by force, and the fact of using force or coercion, as you point out, destroys the entire process. Peace and sharing is literally the only way out So my guess is, like most people, you still believe one of those two myths I started with. Edit: Also, I've been studying the great decoupling for a long time and my theory predicts it as post scarcity requires an increasing mis-allocated production based on luxury consumption. That is not possible without arbitrary limits on intermediated resources (currency). If demand for luxury goods is impeded by the growth of currency - then you just change what currency represents - eg. It is perfectly alienated from capital and thus does not represent a relationship between "value" and production.

HideousKojima 4y ago
Oh, you quoted Sun Tzu so that means your logic and arguments are correct, good to know. You're correct that humans have lived in peaceful, cooperative societies in the past. What you don't seem to grasp is that those societies were never larger than a few hundred members and, critically, they were only peaceful within their own ranks. Cooperative societies require trust, and humans have extreme difficulty in building trust outside of their immediate friends and family. Millenia spent establishing robust institutions and legal systems are the only reason modern society enjoys the levels of trust it does today, and all attempts to replace those institutions with new ones that encourage cooperation (or else!) have lead to mountains of skulls. We can look to primates, and most of the animal kingdom, for further proof of this. Chimps get into wars over resources with anyone outside of their own troup, and even enslave other chimps at times. Ants have extremely high trust, cooperative societies... until they run into a competing colony. Why are humans magically different? If you're going to make a religious argument that God made us different I'd consider it, but nothing in biology or history supports it.
- AndrewKemendo 4y ago
  Humans are not "magically" different, we are measurably biologically different and that makes all of the difference. We have the capacity to care beyond Dunbar's number (which you obliquely reference) but again, structurally we built systems of competition and distrust to survive - precisely the opposite actually of what you claim. These are not systems of trust they are systems of mutual fear. The systems that got us here will not work any further I'd appreciate you not making claims that I don't make nor assuming things I do not state. Feel free to prove my argument wrong with a robust response. All of your claims I rebut in the paper.