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>It's about both. I agree. But then why would we ever worship the few lucky ones and allow them to have basically unlimited power? We could even claim intellig

• ben_w 3y ago
  > I agree. But then why would we ever worship the few lucky ones and allow them to have basically unlimited power? Because hero worship is an evolved instinct that we're trying to confabulate a post-hoc justification for, rather than a coherent predictive framework. And because our monkey brains, being only numerate by evolutionary luck, have an emotional reaction to "a billion" approximately as if it was "two million" rather than "a thousand million". When kings ruled, some claimed it was by divine right. Those with power who didn't like the rise of money displacing the old forms of wealth use the term "nouveau riche" as a pejorative — this phrasing may be relatively modern French, but the idea goes back to at least Ancient Greece. > Why do they deserve that disproportionate amount of power? For most new-money billionaires — though ironically, not ones who got there "fairly" like JK Rowling or (after actually selling to Microsoft) Markus Persson, but I bet they invested their money in something like this after being paid — the money is predominantly in the form of shares granting the right to a say in the management of, and disbursal of the profits of, some corporation which gained its value through their leadership. As countries want tax revenue to get stuff done, their governments don't need any complex reasoning to place a high value on people who are competent at making high-value corporations. > That would be true, if the fact that monopolies - which are the consequence of competition - didn't allow them to hold their positions indefinitely. Their monopolies don't remain indefinitely. IBM used to be a monopoly, until it wasn't. Internet Explorer triggered a monopoly lawsuit, now even Microsoft doesn't support it. Games consoles was a Sega/Nintendo duopoly when I was a kid, Sega no longer makes hardware. Amazon wasn't allowed to buy up iRobot (nor Adobe, Figma) because governments are bigger than corporations and do actually step into prevent abusive behaviour. Bell Systems was, famously, forcibly broken up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System I won't be at all surprised if in the next decade half of Big Tech is split the same way Bell Systems was split — e.g. Amazon forced to split apart its main storefront, Audible, the Kindle book store, and all the web services. > Come on mate, SBF was ONE guy that got arrested. What about all the other ones that are still out there? Then don't use him as the example. Him being arrested is what makes him a bad example. If you want to say people don't get punished, give those other people as your example, not the very obvious example of someone who is getting punished. > 5 minutes of googling and you'll find thousands of scammers that got away with it. You clearly have different search results to me; the results I get are "until we arrested them". > Not including the ones that won't even show up in searches. Tautologically, but you have to show a reason why some invisible group is of some actual specific size in order to make any argument about them; and in your case you have to also show that the size of this invisible group is due to the economic choices of Capitalism rather than anything else. > The easiest way to get rich in our system is to lower your scruples. In any system. You don't get far in a feudal system without being willing to take freemen into debt bondage, or to bow before each of a series of monarchs that take turns flipping between "Catholicism is mandatory" and "Catholicism is forbidden" as the British ones did for a bit. > That's exactly what the system was designed to do: reward exploitation. That's the whole premise! No, the premise (which I would argue is flawed for due to "Prisoner's Dilemma"-type scenarios) is that everyone acting in their own self-interest will ultimately reward the collective. It assumes that any worker who is not treated fairly will switch jobs because someone else will want to out-bid their current employer. Etc. > If I can cheat you out your salary, your labor, your working conditions, your naivety, your situation, your health or whatever else I can, capitalism will reward you for it. That's what profit is. If. Under capitalism, a completely free market in a steady state and with perfect information will have no profit, because everyone will try to undercut everyone else until profits disappear. Temporary circumstances, such as floods or famines or whatever, drive up demand, creating a profit opportunity, attracting business to supply more stuff. Real markets don't have perfect information, and I'm told can't because that's apparently NP-hard. This is part of why I value government intervention, and also why I currently believe that it would be good for governments to directly control (either by owning or commissioning) parts of national production. Not all production in any sector, that would probably fail due to government monopolies having their own weird pathologies, but some production in several sectors.
  • Draiken 3y ago
    > Because hero worship is an evolved instinct that we're trying to confabulate a post-hoc justification for, rather than a coherent predictive framework. But that's not why I'm posing the question. Maybe my phrasing wasn't great. We are all about becoming more than just monkeys, so perpetuating a silly tendency especially on such a serious topic with enormous consequences should be avoided at all costs. I argue we should not worship lucky rich folks. > I bet they invested their money in something like this after being paid Yeah, probably. But once again, I posed a question of why should they be rewarded in such a way. There's no answer to that here. I'm not arguing people shouldn't be rewarded, but as it stands the proportions are simply insane. Part of the issue is that when you have capital you can literally change the rules of the game. So they don't just get rewarded with capital, they now can generate capital more easily too. It's a double advantage that breaks the system, in my view. > Their monopolies don't remain indefinitely. I honestly hope you are right, but I have serious doubts here. Rules that applied back in IBM days were different and companies and individuals simply got way better at retaining power. Monopolies are basically impossible to be broken in a globalized world, and companies know that. They also no longer leave room for the small guy. You won't ever have the Yahoo/Google situation again. If any company starts to show any threat to any monopoly, they get acquired immediately. In theory regulators could try to enforce some of these rules but I don't see it happening. Even the latest Apple app store debacle shows how little they actually care. They can get away with pretending to do something about it because they have too much power and money. > Then don't use him as the example. Fair, I guess. My point is that for every one guy that gets arrested, you have all the hundreds/thousands of people around them that also profited from these scams. Those are almost never arrested and end up profiting without consequences. For a high-profile example, you have famous influencers like Jake Paul scamming millions out of people and thriving. I watched a recent Netflix documentary Bitconned [1] which also shows another perfect example of someone scamming, getting caught, getting "punished" and still living their best lives. For every SBF with hundreds of years in prison, you have dozens/hundreds of others that get a slap on the wrist. Fines, for example, could just be written off as cost of business. I won't go searching for more because the topic doesn't interest me as much, but I am absolutely sure there are many, many more stories like these. But to your point, I can't prove the existence of those hundreds of millionaires that didn't get caught without going deep into it, so I won't try to. Guess you're a glass half-full kind of guy. I can't see how they don't exist. > It assumes that any worker who is not treated fairly will switch jobs because someone else will want to out-bid their current employer. Etc. Which would be true, in the utopia Capitalists believe in, where everyone has a choice. The reality, monopolies and lobbying exist, so workers always get fucked. Work or starve. > I currently believe that it would be good for governments to directly control I 100% agree that many parts of the national production should be owned by the people. Companies can simply exploit natural resources today basically for free, without consequences. > If Looking at what we have today, there's barely an "if" there. Take any company above a certain size and a lot of its profit comes from exploitation: underpaying workers because they target vulnerable communities, bad working conditions because they lobbied for no worker rights, cheap materials/manufacturing from poorer countries that in turn exploit their workers even more, exploiting/overworking young talent because of their naivety, overcharging due to monopolies, and the list goes on. I take it back, there is definitely an "if", but it is only a matter of capital. Once the company gets enough capital, it turns up its dials of exploitation. If they don't do that, they don't survive. Maybe there are examples of companies that grow and don't become an exploitation center, but I have never seen one. The system rewards exploitation, because that's the best way to extract profit out of human resources. And since companies are not people, they can and will do anything regardless of morality, leading to the current state of affairs. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitconned https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitconned