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I'd say it doesn't have to be binary. Corporations are evolving to use less and less human labor. That doesn't need to be 0 for very bad outcomes for society an

I'd say it doesn't have to be binary. Corporations are evolving to use less and less human labor. That doesn't need to be 0 for very bad outcomes for society and the human species. the stock market is already a paperclip optimizer. Most wealthy spend the bulk of their wealth in service of more paperclips plus maybe a guilt tax.

jjoonathan 3y ago
> Most wealthy spend the bulk of their wealth in service of more paperclips What? No. They spend their money fighting with other wealthy people over who gets the passive income from the paperclip machine. The game they play is about maximizing this income. Whether or not this also maximizes paperclips is completely immaterial to them. If they had an opportunity to form a paperclip cartel and profit from cutting supply, they would be happy to do that instead. Yes, the idea of a paperclip cartel is ridiculous -- but no less ridiculous than the idea that maximizing paperclips maximizes investor profit. Companies are about investor profit. Everything else is a side effect.
- sharemywin 3y ago
  a paperclip is just a symbol for money.
  - sharemywin 3y ago
    Actually ChatGPT-4 explains it way better than I do: The author is trying to convey that the situation with corporations and human labor doesn't have to be an extreme of either using human labor or not using it at all. They argue that corporations are gradually relying less on human labor, but that doesn't mean it has to drop to zero for negative consequences to occur within society. They also bring up the stock market as an example of a system that focuses on optimizing for profit (paperclips) rather than human welfare. The author implies that many wealthy individuals primarily focus on accumulating more wealth (paperclips) and may only contribute a small portion (guilt tax) to alleviate any sense of responsibility for the negative consequences of their actions on society.
    - jjoonathan 3y ago
      Respectfully, I don't think that you understand my point. Paperclips are an extremely poor metaphor for financial assets. Rich people want to get paid for being rich. That's what financial assets do. Paperclips do not do that.
      - musha68k 3y ago
        “runaway rent seeking”?
        jjoonathan 3y ago
        Sort of. Less cynically, the economy is not a zero sum game so some of those returns can be organic shares of positive-sum activities that make life better for everyone. Cynically, they sure don't have to be, because peasant juice tastes just as sweet. There is an awful lot of runaway rent seeking hiding in the clothes of "investment." Either way, assets represent an entitlement to the proceeds. My point here isn't so much to pass moral judgement on capitalism as it is to assert that money and assets have fundamentally different character. They are easy to confuse due to the liquid market for exchanging the two, but the lines of reasoning that lead us to a concept of "enough money" do not lead us to a concept of "enough assets." We might independently arrive at a concept of "enough assets" by hypothesizing a situation where one person controls a 10% of world GDP or something but world GDP is 100T and the richest people own about 100B in assets so at a 10x multiple they are probably at least three orders of magnitude removed from a self-serving definition of "enough assets" (and that would be the relevant definition, since they would be the ones defining "enough.") tl;dr Rich people DO stop maximizing money -- but then they start maximizing power, which can be bought with money, and which we measure in units of money.
    - musha68k 3y ago
      I like the idea of “paperclips” as a substitute for the change of what money / profits mean “post Realwirtschaft”. Finance keeps on reigning supreme (ever increasingly) since the 80s. Why not change the vocabulary to better reflect that.

jjoonathan 3y ago

> Most wealthy spend the bulk of their wealth in service of more paperclips What? No. They spend their money fighting with other wealthy people over who gets the passive income from the paperclip machine. The game they play is about maximizing this income. Whether or not this also maximizes paperclips is completely immaterial to them. If they had an opportunity to form a paperclip cartel and profit from cutting supply, they would be happy to do that instead. Yes, the idea of a paperclip cartel is ridiculous -- but no less ridiculous than the idea that maximizing paperclips maximizes investor profit. Companies are about investor profit. Everything else is a side effect.

sharemywin 3y ago
a paperclip is just a symbol for money.
- sharemywin 3y ago
  Actually ChatGPT-4 explains it way better than I do: The author is trying to convey that the situation with corporations and human labor doesn't have to be an extreme of either using human labor or not using it at all. They argue that corporations are gradually relying less on human labor, but that doesn't mean it has to drop to zero for negative consequences to occur within society. They also bring up the stock market as an example of a system that focuses on optimizing for profit (paperclips) rather than human welfare. The author implies that many wealthy individuals primarily focus on accumulating more wealth (paperclips) and may only contribute a small portion (guilt tax) to alleviate any sense of responsibility for the negative consequences of their actions on society.
  - jjoonathan 3y ago
    Respectfully, I don't think that you understand my point. Paperclips are an extremely poor metaphor for financial assets. Rich people want to get paid for being rich. That's what financial assets do. Paperclips do not do that.
    - musha68k 3y ago
      “runaway rent seeking”?
      - jjoonathan 3y ago
        Sort of. Less cynically, the economy is not a zero sum game so some of those returns can be organic shares of positive-sum activities that make life better for everyone. Cynically, they sure don't have to be, because peasant juice tastes just as sweet. There is an awful lot of runaway rent seeking hiding in the clothes of "investment." Either way, assets represent an entitlement to the proceeds. My point here isn't so much to pass moral judgement on capitalism as it is to assert that money and assets have fundamentally different character. They are easy to confuse due to the liquid market for exchanging the two, but the lines of reasoning that lead us to a concept of "enough money" do not lead us to a concept of "enough assets." We might independently arrive at a concept of "enough assets" by hypothesizing a situation where one person controls a 10% of world GDP or something but world GDP is 100T and the richest people own about 100B in assets so at a 10x multiple they are probably at least three orders of magnitude removed from a self-serving definition of "enough assets" (and that would be the relevant definition, since they would be the ones defining "enough.") tl;dr Rich people DO stop maximizing money -- but then they start maximizing power, which can be bought with money, and which we measure in units of money.
  - musha68k 3y ago
    I like the idea of “paperclips” as a substitute for the change of what money / profits mean “post Realwirtschaft”. Finance keeps on reigning supreme (ever increasingly) since the 80s. Why not change the vocabulary to better reflect that.