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This is all correct, and the standard capitalist's party line. What it misses is conflating Money and Optimization. Money is absolutely the complete and only g

This is all correct, and the standard capitalist's party line. What it misses is conflating Money and Optimization. Money is absolutely the complete and only goal, and yes corporation Optimize to make more money. Regulations put guard rails on the optimization. It was only a few decades ago that rivers were catching fire because it was cheaper to just dump waste. There will always be some mid-level manager that needs to hit a budget and will cut corners, to dump waste or cut baby formula with poison, or skip cleaning cycles and kill a bunch of kids with tainted peanut butter(yes, happened). But, your are correct, there really isn't an answer. Government is supposed to be the will of the people to put structure, through laws/regulation, on how they want to live in a society, to constrain the Corporation. Corporations will always maximize profit and we as a society have chosen that the goal of Money is actually the most important thing to us. So guess we get what we get.

FrustratedMonky 4y ago
To complete my thought. Yes Money is used as an optimization function, its just that we have chosen Money as the Goal of our Money Optimization function. We aren't trying to Optimize 'resources' as believed, that is just a byproduct that sometimes occurs, but not necessarily.
- robocat 4y ago
  That seems backwards. There is an optimisation system of independent actors, and money is emergent from that. You could get rid of money, but you just end up with another measure. > we as a society have chosen that the goal of Money is actually the most important thing to us I disagree. We enact laws as constraints because our society says that many other things are more important than money. Often legal constraints cost corporations money. Here are a few solutions I have heard proposed: 1: stop progress. Opinion: infeasible. 2: revert progress back to a point in the past. Opinion: infeasible. 3: kill a large population. Opinion: evil and probably self-destructive. 4: revolution - completely replace our systems with different systems. Opinion: seen this option fail plenty and hard to find modern examples of success. Getting rid of money would definitely be wholesale revolution. 5: progress - hope that through gradual improvements we can fix our mistakes and change our systems to achieve better outcomes and (on topic) hopefully avoid catastrophic failures. Opinion: this is the default action of our current systems. 6: political change - modify political systems to make them effective. Opinion: seen failures in other countries, but in New Zealand and we have had some so-far successful political reforms. I would like the US to change its voting system (maybe STV) because the current bipartisan system seems to be preventing necessary legislation - we all need better checks and balances against the excesses of capitalism. I don’t even get a vote in the USA, so my options to effect change in the USA are more limited. In New Zealand we have an MMP voting system: that helped to somewhat fix the bipartisan problem, but unfortunately MMP gave us unelected (list) politicians which is arse. The biggest strength of democracy is voting those we don’t like out (every powerful leader or group wants to stay in power). 7: world war - one group vying for power to enlighten the other group. Opinion: if it happens I hope me and those I love are okay, but I would expect us all to be fucked badly even in the comparatively safe and out-of-the-way New Zealand.
  - FrustratedMonky 4y ago
    [flagged]
m4nu3l 4y ago
> Money is absolutely the complete and only goal If that were the case it would be easy to optimize. Just divert all resources to print more money.
- cookingrobot 4y ago
  You’re sort of reinforcing the point. Only laws prevent companies from running printing presses to print money.
  - m4nu3l 4y ago
    Let me introduce you to free-banking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_banking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_banking that made possible some of the most stable financial systems in history.
- worik 4y ago
  Money is not currency
  - FrustratedMonky 4y ago
    ah, the old lets play at being a stickler on vocabulary to divert attention from the point. so lets grant the point that we could be using sea shells for currency, and that printed money is a 'theoretical stand in for something like trust, or a promise or other million things that theoreticians can dream up'. It doesn't change any argument at all.
- FrustratedMonky 4y ago
  This did use to happen. IN the 20's, companies could just print more shares and sell them, with no notification to anybody that they had diluted them. Until there were laws created to stop it.
  - throw10920 4y ago
    "ah, the old lets play at being a stickler on vocabulary to divert attention from the point"[1] Company shares are not money. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35846017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35846017

FrustratedMonky 4y ago

To complete my thought. Yes Money is used as an optimization function, its just that we have chosen Money as the Goal of our Money Optimization function. We aren't trying to Optimize 'resources' as believed, that is just a byproduct that sometimes occurs, but not necessarily.

robocat 4y ago
That seems backwards. There is an optimisation system of independent actors, and money is emergent from that. You could get rid of money, but you just end up with another measure. > we as a society have chosen that the goal of Money is actually the most important thing to us I disagree. We enact laws as constraints because our society says that many other things are more important than money. Often legal constraints cost corporations money. Here are a few solutions I have heard proposed: 1: stop progress. Opinion: infeasible. 2: revert progress back to a point in the past. Opinion: infeasible. 3: kill a large population. Opinion: evil and probably self-destructive. 4: revolution - completely replace our systems with different systems. Opinion: seen this option fail plenty and hard to find modern examples of success. Getting rid of money would definitely be wholesale revolution. 5: progress - hope that through gradual improvements we can fix our mistakes and change our systems to achieve better outcomes and (on topic) hopefully avoid catastrophic failures. Opinion: this is the default action of our current systems. 6: political change - modify political systems to make them effective. Opinion: seen failures in other countries, but in New Zealand and we have had some so-far successful political reforms. I would like the US to change its voting system (maybe STV) because the current bipartisan system seems to be preventing necessary legislation - we all need better checks and balances against the excesses of capitalism. I don’t even get a vote in the USA, so my options to effect change in the USA are more limited. In New Zealand we have an MMP voting system: that helped to somewhat fix the bipartisan problem, but unfortunately MMP gave us unelected (list) politicians which is arse. The biggest strength of democracy is voting those we don’t like out (every powerful leader or group wants to stay in power). 7: world war - one group vying for power to enlighten the other group. Opinion: if it happens I hope me and those I love are okay, but I would expect us all to be fucked badly even in the comparatively safe and out-of-the-way New Zealand.
- FrustratedMonky 4y ago
  [flagged]

m4nu3l 4y ago

> Money is absolutely the complete and only goal If that were the case it would be easy to optimize. Just divert all resources to print more money.

cookingrobot 4y ago
You’re sort of reinforcing the point. Only laws prevent companies from running printing presses to print money.
- m4nu3l 4y ago
  Let me introduce you to free-banking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_banking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_banking that made possible some of the most stable financial systems in history.
worik 4y ago
Money is not currency
- FrustratedMonky 4y ago
  ah, the old lets play at being a stickler on vocabulary to divert attention from the point. so lets grant the point that we could be using sea shells for currency, and that printed money is a 'theoretical stand in for something like trust, or a promise or other million things that theoreticians can dream up'. It doesn't change any argument at all.
FrustratedMonky 4y ago
This did use to happen. IN the 20's, companies could just print more shares and sell them, with no notification to anybody that they had diluted them. Until there were laws created to stop it.
- throw10920 4y ago
  "ah, the old lets play at being a stickler on vocabulary to divert attention from the point"[1] Company shares are not money. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35846017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35846017