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I hate the implication of coordination. I think it's more likely that every person at every link in the chain is following some incentive: financial experts wi

by strken 4y ago

I hate the implication of coordination. I think it's more likely that every person at every link in the chain is following some incentive: financial experts within banks are saying whatever they think will get governments to stop putting up interest rates (we're in a banking crisis), journalists are repeating interesting and dramatic news from their sources (that we're in a banking crisis), their editors are careful not to block an important message (that we're in a banking crisis), and so on. The net effect is possibly going to be moving wealth to the top, but if you take a conspiratorial view, the solution seems like it's "find the shadowy council working behind the scenes and force them to stop". If it's just distributed rational decision-making you have to take a systems-level view of what the incentives are and work to change the overall behaviour of everyone, which is a much more complicated problem.

nicoburns 4y ago
I mean the right-wing political parties are pretty open about their desire to keep the status quo economic system which causes wealth the move to the top (and in many cases increase the extent to which it does by doing things like privatising public industries, deregulating industries, etc). And they're obviously a coordinated entity by nature of being a political party. No conspiracy theories required.
- chiefalchemist 4y ago
  To be fair, the left isn't much better. Sure their rhetoric might sound a bit different but they're still part of the boarder system. A system that as consistently failed the people they've been elected to represent. It's a distraction to point fingers at left or right.
Avshalom 4y ago
The rhetorical problem is that it's a sort of inverse of Yossarian's "they're trying to kill me", coordination is often not usefully distinct from a system which incentivizes the same actions that would be achieved through coordination. Some things are very hard to describe without sounding like a conspiracy no matter how little communication happens between actors, precisely because those incentives are a form of communication.
matthewdgreen 4y ago
People seem to have a hard time believing that organizations and people with large amounts of concentrated wealth would take coordinated actions to protect their wealth and ensure they gain more of it. They believe this counterintuitively, even when discussing organizations that are literally set up for the purpose of maintaining and gaining new wealth. None of this is a conspiracy, it’s just systems following incentives.
- strken 4y ago
  Coordination within a bank is expected, yeah: a banker will say whatever is financially advantageous for them, and this is exactly what we all expect. Conspiracies like "rig the LIBOR index in exchange for day-old sushi" exist and don't surprise anyone too much when they're found out. Close willing coordination between a whole bank or a whole newspaper is less believable. Small-scale coordination is possible, yeah: PR firms pitching articles, revolving-door hiring, conflicts of interest, bias upstream in academia, or even an editor meeting a banker for golf and squashing a story; these things are all believable. These are not the same as a statement like "the news media is helping shift wealth to the top", or at least they have many caveats.
chiefalchemist 4y ago
> I hate the implication of coordination. I hate the implications of dated mental models. Like entities with like goals are going to take like actions. There doesn't have to be back room top-secret coordination. FFF starlings do it. Starlings!!!
imtringued 4y ago
It's called a local maximum or prisoners dilemma. Ironically, the way out of a prisoners dilemma is coommunication and cooperation which implies that we are sitting in some mental prison rather than a physical one.

by strken 4y ago

nicoburns 4y ago

I mean the right-wing political parties are pretty open about their desire to keep the status quo economic system which causes wealth the move to the top (and in many cases increase the extent to which it does by doing things like privatising public industries, deregulating industries, etc). And they're obviously a coordinated entity by nature of being a political party. No conspiracy theories required.

chiefalchemist 4y ago
To be fair, the left isn't much better. Sure their rhetoric might sound a bit different but they're still part of the boarder system. A system that as consistently failed the people they've been elected to represent. It's a distraction to point fingers at left or right.

Avshalom 4y ago

The rhetorical problem is that it's a sort of inverse of Yossarian's "they're trying to kill me", coordination is often not usefully distinct from a system which incentivizes the same actions that would be achieved through coordination. Some things are very hard to describe without sounding like a conspiracy no matter how little communication happens between actors, precisely because those incentives are a form of communication.

matthewdgreen 4y ago

People seem to have a hard time believing that organizations and people with large amounts of concentrated wealth would take coordinated actions to protect their wealth and ensure they gain more of it. They believe this counterintuitively, even when discussing organizations that are literally set up for the purpose of maintaining and gaining new wealth. None of this is a conspiracy, it’s just systems following incentives.

strken 4y ago
Coordination within a bank is expected, yeah: a banker will say whatever is financially advantageous for them, and this is exactly what we all expect. Conspiracies like "rig the LIBOR index in exchange for day-old sushi" exist and don't surprise anyone too much when they're found out. Close willing coordination between a whole bank or a whole newspaper is less believable. Small-scale coordination is possible, yeah: PR firms pitching articles, revolving-door hiring, conflicts of interest, bias upstream in academia, or even an editor meeting a banker for golf and squashing a story; these things are all believable. These are not the same as a statement like "the news media is helping shift wealth to the top", or at least they have many caveats.

chiefalchemist 4y ago

> I hate the implication of coordination. I hate the implications of dated mental models. Like entities with like goals are going to take like actions. There doesn't have to be back room top-secret coordination. FFF starlings do it. Starlings!!!

imtringued 4y ago

It's called a local maximum or prisoners dilemma. Ironically, the way out of a prisoners dilemma is coommunication and cooperation which implies that we are sitting in some mental prison rather than a physical one.