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From an economic perspective: The market is not fully efficient, and it's a horrible assumption to pretend that it is (akin to asserting P = NP). Business/capit

From an economic perspective: The market is not fully efficient, and it's a horrible assumption to pretend that it is (akin to asserting P = NP). Business/capitalist thought deliberately embraces this when setting out to find/create market inefficiencies (eg "build a moat"), but then feigns the opposite when criticized. At best we can say it's efficient to some epsilon, but this epsilon is nowhere near negligible at human(e) scales. Legal rights/entitlements are essentially a form of non-fungible wealth that resists the common pattern - being turned into an "asset class", centralized, and packaged up into recurring rent streams collected from wider society. It remains an open question whether the overall trend would be so strongly towards centralization without the continual government handouts powering the financial industry (witness all the whinging about interest rates existing again). But unless that dynamic is actually reformed then non-fungible guarantees seem like a necessary backstop for maintaining distributed power throughout society.

Terr_ 3y ago
> Business/capitalist thought deliberately embraces this when setting out to find/create market inefficiencies (eg "build a moat"), but then feigns the opposite when criticized. Agreed, to recycle a comment [0] in the same vein: > On Monday, capital-C-Capitalism is celebrated as being the most efficient and economist-approved system (i.e. the bestest) when--if--there is somehow perfect price/deal information available to all actors. > On Tuesday, no-True-Capitalism is lauded as immune to cartels and collusion, because any actor will quickly undercut the others with secret prices and deals and hidden identities and wash-trading. > On Wednesday, Virtuous Capitalism needs no oversight because nasty behavior will be seen and detected by consumers who will vote with their wallets. > On Thursday, Property-Respecting Capitalism refuses to infringe on the owners' essential freedom... to construct impenetrable webs of shifting corporate ownership to obfuscate all controlling relationships. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38368257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38368257

Terr_ 3y ago

> Business/capitalist thought deliberately embraces this when setting out to find/create market inefficiencies (eg "build a moat"), but then feigns the opposite when criticized. Agreed, to recycle a comment [0] in the same vein: > On Monday, capital-C-Capitalism is celebrated as being the most efficient and economist-approved system (i.e. the bestest) when--if--there is somehow perfect price/deal information available to all actors. > On Tuesday, no-True-Capitalism is lauded as immune to cartels and collusion, because any actor will quickly undercut the others with secret prices and deals and hidden identities and wash-trading. > On Wednesday, Virtuous Capitalism needs no oversight because nasty behavior will be seen and detected by consumers who will vote with their wallets. > On Thursday, Property-Respecting Capitalism refuses to infringe on the owners' essential freedom... to construct impenetrable webs of shifting corporate ownership to obfuscate all controlling relationships. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38368257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38368257