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OK, so people who are good at managing their money are ... drum roll, please ... better at managing their money. This is a tautology. The question is not whet
by PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
OK, so people who are good at managing their money are ... drum roll, please ... better at managing their money.
This is a tautology.
The question is not whether rich people are better at running their own finances, it is whether they are the best people to be making resource allocation decisions.
In US capitalism, the argument for coupling the two normally consists of "well, they want to make money, so they will do what people want, and so we get what we want and they get rich and that's good".
This is just so absurd that it's really not worth deconstructing.
- WalterBright 3y ago> This is just so absurd that it's really not worth deconstructing. Do you believe Bezos got rich by not giving people what they wanted?
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoThe age old conundrum: do people want what they get, or want what they get? Bezos got rich by buying labor from people for less it was worth, buying products for less than he could sell them, and using them both to create a new retail possibility that had some distinct benefits for a lot of us in our role as consumers. Oh, and AWS.
- WalterBright 3y ago> Bezos got rich by buying labor from people for less it was worth, It was worth it to the people who took the jobs. > buying products for less than he could sell them, It was worth it to the people who sold it to Amazon. > and using them both to create a new retail possibility that had some distinct benefits for a lot of us in our role as consumers. I.e. not zero sum.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoI never used the phrase zero sum, and I don't think it's appropriate in this context at all. There's almost nothing that happens in a modern society that isn't a good deal for some of the people involved. Consequently, "it was worth it to X" isn't much of a metric. I get the sense that you're not a big fan of the concept of externalities.
- ben_w 3y agoIn the Prisoner's dilemma, defecting is "worth it" to both, but neither wants to be in a situation where the other will. It is easy to create equivalent scenarios — one does not even need to intend to do so, though of course the scenario from which the name comes, the situation was constructed to get an outcome that a powerful person wanted. I think it is an important part of government, now that we know about Nash equilibria, to make sure that social and economic incentives are such that the collective good is aligned with the personal good. Neither Adam Smith and Karl Marx knew about these when they wrote their famous works, and (I think) just assumed these would be aligned. This is not to say that Bezos did or didn't do anything in particular; while there are things I'd criticise Amazon for, I think roughly half the usual talking points are misunderstandings.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoAlso, your question sort of implicitly requires ignoring all the attempts to do "something like what Bezos did" that failed. A bunch of resources went into those efforts that came to nothing. This is not a zero cost to society. There was always going to be someone who succeeded at this, so noting that Bezos did so is relatively information free. The bigger question is whether the way this happened - let a bunch of money be thrown against the wall and see what sticks - is really the best we can do as a society and as an economy.
- WalterBright 3y agoIt's worked far better than any other system. It isn't even close.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoGreat. I suppose humanity is done! We've figured it out! This is as good as it get folks! Back to work! Pareto optimality and all that.