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Economists and auction theorists have a term of art: “revealed preference”. It’s typically not applied to society in the large, but I think it’s useful to zoom

Economists and auction theorists have a term of art: “revealed preference”. It’s typically not applied to society in the large, but I think it’s useful to zoom out from time to time. Our society, whatever the internal dynamics, has a revealed preference in the extreme, a preference so forceful it’s an idee fixe, a singular objective. We will sacrifice anything: arbitrary loss of life, arbitrary suffering and indignity, arbitrary damage to the planet to transfer wealth upwards constantly to the maximum extent that we can blow past the feeble speed bumps that our institutions represent. This upwards wealth transfer is in two senses of the word “up”: from poor to rich, and from young to old. We openly advertise targets for the economy like “the stock market” (US equities overwhelming held by boomers and rich people), or GDP growth (real wages at the median, go back to Venezuela commie). We don’t even pretend we’re optimizing for anything else. Lina Khan is trying to enforce laws already on the books and is deemed dangerously radical. You think these sociopaths won’t kill people? They’ll kill millions of people if they have to, they’ve done it before.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> to transfer wealth upwards constantly This is overly simplistic. Truer: we will sacrifice a lot to maintain our relative standard of living.
- benreesman 2y ago
  Who’s standard of living? We will render arbitrary people homeless to constrain the supply and push up real asset prices for homeowners. We’ll tolerate flagrant cartel monopoly and flagrant securities fraud and all manner of evil to drive equities up? Qui bono? Not the working person at the median.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Who’s standard of living? Each person's. It's an individual determination. > We will render arbitrary people homeless to constrain the supply and push up real asset prices for homeowners Yes. Because from the homeowner's perspective, they're maintaining their real standard of living. Crafting good policy requires being very careful about whose relative standard of living you're sacrificing for the greater good. Because no matter how privileged you think someone is, for them, it's the baseline. > We’ll tolerate flagrant cartel monopoly and flagrant securities fraud and all manner of evil to drive equities up? No, not really. Shareholders win in the aftermath of antitrust action and trusted equity markets. We tolerate those things, the first much more than the second, but not for the reasons you presume.
    - benreesman 2y ago
      I’m not sure what the theme of your contention is: it sounds like you’re basically saying everyone will fight as hard as possible with whatever means at their disposal to be maximally selfish. But that tired toy example from game theory shows that everyone loses if both grass the other up. Countless studies of both human beings and computer programs in the iterated prisoner’s dilemma show that the wining strategy is not in fact to drive housing prices so high that the homeless problem eventually wrecks your property value. This smash and grab, “how much can you carry” mafia capitalism has been tried before and the result was a guillotine.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > everyone will fight as hard as possible with whatever means at their disposal to be maximally selfish No, I'm saying loss aversion is often misunderstood [1]. Both in its existence and strength. And the fact that it operates in relative terms, i.e. someone who is materially better off than they were 10 years ago may still throw their toys out of the pram if their neighbor is much better. > the wining strategy is not in fact to drive housing prices so high that the homeless problem eventually wrecks your property value Sure. The point is you also can't drive home prices down, because that hurts homeowners and activates them as a political bloc. (The solution is real home price growth as close to zero as possible amidst rising real incomes.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion
        benreesman 2y ago
        I’m aware of the concept of loss aversion, but I think it as an explanatory factor for macro economics is a red herring: one of a long list of diversions in the grand company of all trickle-down economics. People say that the without arbitrary incentives for arbitrary wealth that hard work and innovation won’t happen. Demonstrably false! The Internet that the current cartel is looting was a public private partnership! The best software these days is done substantially by passionate hobbyists! People point to Silicon Valley and say “this wouldn’t be possible in Europe”. Then they point to the market capitalizations of the vampire megacorps that the world would be far better without as the success story. People make other arguments slightly craftier: punitive taxes on the mega wealthy wouldn’t raise enough revenue to matter. True, but that’s not the point of a punitive wealth tax: the point of a punitive billionaire tax is to deprive billionaires of godlike power to restructure society in their own interest. Anyone outside a few narrow bubbles can see that this is going very badly. I’ll agree with you this far: it’s going to be a tall hill to climb to get people with homes worth 20 times what they paid and 401ks to vote for a sane future. But this is a comparatively recent phenomenon: older people used to be obsessively concerned with the prospects of younger people for trivial biological reasons. These days? That “blood boy” transfusion thing Thiel is always on about? It’s a terrifying metaphor for the bigger picture. The procedure was pioneered so a father could keep his daughter alive at great risk to himself. For some reason we now tolerate if not celebrate the vampire ideal of running that backwards.
- benreesman 2y ago
  I want to answer this point separately. My standard of living ten years ago was so high it was honestly gross, I imagine it was easily in the ballpark of a BlackRock quant. The year I quit was my second highest earning year in which I made an amount that is shameful given that my job was to sell digital fentanyl. I will sacrifice my standard of living up to and including not living because I feel a deep identification with the abstraction I call “my fellow person”. A lot of people will sacrifice their principles to preserve their standard of living. In what is looking to be a rough decade or two those people are a liability to that same abstraction.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > lot of people will sacrifice their principles to preserve their standard of living The line where principles outweigh personal interests (alternatively, where individual interest should be suppressed for the group) vary from person to person, group to group. But they are universally ahead of where those who’d prefer humans weren’t flawed, in their view, imagine them to be. The easy excuse is to conclude everyone is evil. The hard work, that granted few of us are cut out for, is making do with the world we have. (The fun, in exploring the richness these “flaws” produce.) Note: I’m not asking anyone to settle for a lower moral rung. I’m saying: see the world as it is, not as you judge it to be. Would spacefaring be simpler without gravity? Yes. But the universe’s beauty, ourselves included, could not then exist. Human ambition and aspiration and yes, greed, are not aspects of ourselves I’d ever wish away. Even if it would make some problems easier.
    - benreesman 2y ago
      I want to express my admiration that you’ve engaged with me on this tricky and controversial topic. I actually wish I had acknowledged several very astute points that I strongly agree with. I’m not a RenTech quant, but I’ve spent enough time around heavyweights to know one when I see one. I’d like to have a dialog. If you feel the same please email me at b7r6@b7r6.net

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> to transfer wealth upwards constantly This is overly simplistic. Truer: we will sacrifice a lot to maintain our relative standard of living.

benreesman 2y ago
Who’s standard of living? We will render arbitrary people homeless to constrain the supply and push up real asset prices for homeowners. We’ll tolerate flagrant cartel monopoly and flagrant securities fraud and all manner of evil to drive equities up? Qui bono? Not the working person at the median.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Who’s standard of living? Each person's. It's an individual determination. > We will render arbitrary people homeless to constrain the supply and push up real asset prices for homeowners Yes. Because from the homeowner's perspective, they're maintaining their real standard of living. Crafting good policy requires being very careful about whose relative standard of living you're sacrificing for the greater good. Because no matter how privileged you think someone is, for them, it's the baseline. > We’ll tolerate flagrant cartel monopoly and flagrant securities fraud and all manner of evil to drive equities up? No, not really. Shareholders win in the aftermath of antitrust action and trusted equity markets. We tolerate those things, the first much more than the second, but not for the reasons you presume.
  - benreesman 2y ago
    I’m not sure what the theme of your contention is: it sounds like you’re basically saying everyone will fight as hard as possible with whatever means at their disposal to be maximally selfish. But that tired toy example from game theory shows that everyone loses if both grass the other up. Countless studies of both human beings and computer programs in the iterated prisoner’s dilemma show that the wining strategy is not in fact to drive housing prices so high that the homeless problem eventually wrecks your property value. This smash and grab, “how much can you carry” mafia capitalism has been tried before and the result was a guillotine.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > everyone will fight as hard as possible with whatever means at their disposal to be maximally selfish No, I'm saying loss aversion is often misunderstood [1]. Both in its existence and strength. And the fact that it operates in relative terms, i.e. someone who is materially better off than they were 10 years ago may still throw their toys out of the pram if their neighbor is much better. > the wining strategy is not in fact to drive housing prices so high that the homeless problem eventually wrecks your property value Sure. The point is you also can't drive home prices down, because that hurts homeowners and activates them as a political bloc. (The solution is real home price growth as close to zero as possible amidst rising real incomes.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion
      - benreesman 2y ago
        I’m aware of the concept of loss aversion, but I think it as an explanatory factor for macro economics is a red herring: one of a long list of diversions in the grand company of all trickle-down economics. People say that the without arbitrary incentives for arbitrary wealth that hard work and innovation won’t happen. Demonstrably false! The Internet that the current cartel is looting was a public private partnership! The best software these days is done substantially by passionate hobbyists! People point to Silicon Valley and say “this wouldn’t be possible in Europe”. Then they point to the market capitalizations of the vampire megacorps that the world would be far better without as the success story. People make other arguments slightly craftier: punitive taxes on the mega wealthy wouldn’t raise enough revenue to matter. True, but that’s not the point of a punitive wealth tax: the point of a punitive billionaire tax is to deprive billionaires of godlike power to restructure society in their own interest. Anyone outside a few narrow bubbles can see that this is going very badly. I’ll agree with you this far: it’s going to be a tall hill to climb to get people with homes worth 20 times what they paid and 401ks to vote for a sane future. But this is a comparatively recent phenomenon: older people used to be obsessively concerned with the prospects of younger people for trivial biological reasons. These days? That “blood boy” transfusion thing Thiel is always on about? It’s a terrifying metaphor for the bigger picture. The procedure was pioneered so a father could keep his daughter alive at great risk to himself. For some reason we now tolerate if not celebrate the vampire ideal of running that backwards.
benreesman 2y ago
I want to answer this point separately. My standard of living ten years ago was so high it was honestly gross, I imagine it was easily in the ballpark of a BlackRock quant. The year I quit was my second highest earning year in which I made an amount that is shameful given that my job was to sell digital fentanyl. I will sacrifice my standard of living up to and including not living because I feel a deep identification with the abstraction I call “my fellow person”. A lot of people will sacrifice their principles to preserve their standard of living. In what is looking to be a rough decade or two those people are a liability to that same abstraction.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > lot of people will sacrifice their principles to preserve their standard of living The line where principles outweigh personal interests (alternatively, where individual interest should be suppressed for the group) vary from person to person, group to group. But they are universally ahead of where those who’d prefer humans weren’t flawed, in their view, imagine them to be. The easy excuse is to conclude everyone is evil. The hard work, that granted few of us are cut out for, is making do with the world we have. (The fun, in exploring the richness these “flaws” produce.) Note: I’m not asking anyone to settle for a lower moral rung. I’m saying: see the world as it is, not as you judge it to be. Would spacefaring be simpler without gravity? Yes. But the universe’s beauty, ourselves included, could not then exist. Human ambition and aspiration and yes, greed, are not aspects of ourselves I’d ever wish away. Even if it would make some problems easier.
  - benreesman 2y ago
    I want to express my admiration that you’ve engaged with me on this tricky and controversial topic. I actually wish I had acknowledged several very astute points that I strongly agree with. I’m not a RenTech quant, but I’ve spent enough time around heavyweights to know one when I see one. I’d like to have a dialog. If you feel the same please email me at b7r6@b7r6.net