6 ms·

Cool, now do socialism. Anything in the extreme is bad. Can any system work if everyone acts perfectly rationally and and the same time with full empathy? Sure

by vxNsr 4y ago

Cool, now do socialism. Anything in the extreme is bad. Can any system work if everyone acts perfectly rationally and and the same time with full empathy? Sure, but such people in reality are few and far between so instead we need to account for the edge cases of which there are many. And as any good software engineer knows you end up spending 80% of your time chasing down the last 1% of your edge cases.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
Socialism is not a great ideology if it's applied indiscriminately, but at least it has useful real world applications in some areas. Libertarianism on the other hand is hardly even an ideology, but based on the ill-conceived notion that if we purposely make no collective effort to have a better society, it will somehow magically fall into place for us. If libertarianism was a software project methodology, it would be the one where you just lock a bunch of programmers into an office with some computers and let them fend for themselves.
- mixmastamyk 4y ago
  > just lock a bunch of programmers into an office with some computers and let them fend for themselves. Bad example. This is how just about every technical breakthrough in the industry has happened.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    Right I forgot to mention all of the programmers have to be sociopaths with no common goal whatsoever.
- vxNsr 4y ago
  > Socialism is not a great ideology if it's applied indiscriminately, but at least it has useful real world applications in some areas. This is literally what I said and is also true for libertarianism, your false analogy notwithstanding.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    It is not true for libertarianism simply because it is far too enamoured with the Smithian ideal of the self-interested rational actor. While this has been a useful model in economics, it is not an actual description of the world, which economics has had to come to terms with as a field. That's why libertarian ideals only makes sense in fantasy land and don't map onto the world. Most people are not acting only in self interest.
braingenious 4y ago
>Cool, now do socialism. I didn’t “do” libertarianism? I recommended a book that I found interesting that’s related to the topic of the article that this discussion thread is in response to. Socialism has been brought up a couple times in response to my book recommendation and I’m a little confused by that. Is the assumption that the reporter that spent years meticulously researching, interviewing, and documenting the factual record of events is a socialist? Am I a socialist for having read it? Is this like an amish thing where everybody outside of the orthodox group is called “english”? Anyway, it’s a good book and I stand by my recommendation!
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  There is an increasing tendency to interpret these things in false dichotomies, I've found. If you criticise libertarians you must be a socialist and vice versa. I had a similarly frustrating encounter the other day, where my critique of the interaction between capitalism and democracy in the US was constantly construed as some sort of glorification of socialism, even when I never mentioned it. My patience for this type of thinking is worn pretty thin these days. My view is simply this: there are numerous different consensus methods in our society. Democracy, academia, courts, markets, bureaucracy, technocracy, and hierarchical command structures. They all have strengths and weaknesses for different problems on which a consensus must be reached. But democracy sits above all these and plays the important role of slowly figuring out where these should be applied and how they should be weighted. This is a very hard problem, no ideology has a self-contained solution. Democracy must be an evolutionary process. The ideas that work stick around after a change of power, and the ones that don't go away, ideally. Based on this it's crucial for democracy and therefore the government to have some measure of regulatory power over all of these. This is where libertarianism really breaks down. It's far too corrosive to the usefulness of democracy, which is the only thing keeping everything together in the end.
  - dalmo3 4y ago
    > But democracy sits above all these Does it? Isn't Earth's political system libertarian? The emerging conflict/cooperation between nation states is a market phenomenon. The UN is akin to a chamber of commerce. Democracy has, at most, continental reach (EU).

by vxNsr 4y ago

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago

Socialism is not a great ideology if it's applied indiscriminately, but at least it has useful real world applications in some areas. Libertarianism on the other hand is hardly even an ideology, but based on the ill-conceived notion that if we purposely make no collective effort to have a better society, it will somehow magically fall into place for us. If libertarianism was a software project methodology, it would be the one where you just lock a bunch of programmers into an office with some computers and let them fend for themselves.

mixmastamyk 4y ago
> just lock a bunch of programmers into an office with some computers and let them fend for themselves. Bad example. This is how just about every technical breakthrough in the industry has happened.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  Right I forgot to mention all of the programmers have to be sociopaths with no common goal whatsoever.
vxNsr 4y ago
> Socialism is not a great ideology if it's applied indiscriminately, but at least it has useful real world applications in some areas. This is literally what I said and is also true for libertarianism, your false analogy notwithstanding.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  It is not true for libertarianism simply because it is far too enamoured with the Smithian ideal of the self-interested rational actor. While this has been a useful model in economics, it is not an actual description of the world, which economics has had to come to terms with as a field. That's why libertarian ideals only makes sense in fantasy land and don't map onto the world. Most people are not acting only in self interest.

braingenious 4y ago

>Cool, now do socialism. I didn’t “do” libertarianism? I recommended a book that I found interesting that’s related to the topic of the article that this discussion thread is in response to. Socialism has been brought up a couple times in response to my book recommendation and I’m a little confused by that. Is the assumption that the reporter that spent years meticulously researching, interviewing, and documenting the factual record of events is a socialist? Am I a socialist for having read it? Is this like an amish thing where everybody outside of the orthodox group is called “english”? Anyway, it’s a good book and I stand by my recommendation!

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
There is an increasing tendency to interpret these things in false dichotomies, I've found. If you criticise libertarians you must be a socialist and vice versa. I had a similarly frustrating encounter the other day, where my critique of the interaction between capitalism and democracy in the US was constantly construed as some sort of glorification of socialism, even when I never mentioned it. My patience for this type of thinking is worn pretty thin these days. My view is simply this: there are numerous different consensus methods in our society. Democracy, academia, courts, markets, bureaucracy, technocracy, and hierarchical command structures. They all have strengths and weaknesses for different problems on which a consensus must be reached. But democracy sits above all these and plays the important role of slowly figuring out where these should be applied and how they should be weighted. This is a very hard problem, no ideology has a self-contained solution. Democracy must be an evolutionary process. The ideas that work stick around after a change of power, and the ones that don't go away, ideally. Based on this it's crucial for democracy and therefore the government to have some measure of regulatory power over all of these. This is where libertarianism really breaks down. It's far too corrosive to the usefulness of democracy, which is the only thing keeping everything together in the end.
- dalmo3 4y ago
  > But democracy sits above all these Does it? Isn't Earth's political system libertarian? The emerging conflict/cooperation between nation states is a market phenomenon. The UN is akin to a chamber of commerce. Democracy has, at most, continental reach (EU).