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I agree with the author that questions of ethics are social optimization problems. > We must balance optimizing for oneself with optimizing for others Yet if
by ivjw 2y ago
I agree with the author that questions of ethics are social optimization problems.
> We must balance optimizing for oneself with optimizing for others
Yet if each person would optimize for themself, then the balancing is automatically taken care of. The invisible hand is even more free and dexterous on the social scale than the economic.
> the belief in the magical power of the free market always to serve the public good has no theoretical basis. In fact, our current climate crisis is a demonstrated market failure.
The power of the free market is at least as theoretically and empirically sound as the climate crisis.
- epgui 2y agoI think this is naive, because a flaw of such free market thinking is its failure to price in externalities. That’s what the relationship with the climate crisis link was about.
- ivjw 2y agoHow is the environment, which is directly of concern to the primary economic sector, and to the entire economic enterprise in the long run, an externality?
- epgui 2y agoIt’s actually the classic textbook example. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/externality.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/externality.asp
- ivjw 2y agoUnless you are studying an a priori science, textbook examples are pedagogical simplifications. Yes, the cost of environmental pollution is paid neither by factories nor their customers, yet both suffer the consequences, and as such are not "uninvolved" with the third party, as the definition goes.
- epgui 2y agoYour point being? I think everyone understands that there are higher-order consequences of externalities, which affect many (if not all) actors. That's why people are interested in the question of whether they are priced efficiently in markets, and it's why people are interested in ways to improve the pricing of externalities. The question is not whether they are priced at all, the question is whether they are efficiently priced.
- machinestops 2y agoThe problem with optimising exclusively for oneself is that you definitionally optimise at the expense of others. Gaps are easily widened, and your balancing idea falls apart when the scales are tipped from the start.
- ivjw 2y agoIt is not as simple as "my profit" vs. "others' expense". The elegance of the invisible hand theory is that it also accounts for the cases where others' expense is my expense and others' benefit is my benefit just as well as the others. The scales sure can be tipped on the individual level, but you are only considering the "one individual vs. one individual" case. Many cliques of extreme power have been taken down by the weaker majority, which is also one of the processes contributing to the collapse of monopolies.
- machinestops 2y agoNo, it isn't, which is why I added "definitionally". Let's say we have a limited resource, X, that is beneficial to hold, and it is more beneficial to hold more of it. As it is limited, acquiring necessarily means depriving another of it. Assuming one has the means to acquire more without impacting oneself negatively, in which situation (taking optimising for oneself as a maxim) you not seek to acquire more?
- ivjw 2y agoNone, but that's exactly the point. _Everyone_ would like to have more of it. This is a unifaceted way of posing problems, often also done with monopolization.
- machinestops 2y agoPrecisely. As of such, those with increased capacity for access will deprive access to others. No balance of care forms. Your recommended ethic is what Kant wished to address with his categorical imperative. Of course this is a unifaceted way of posing a problem: it's a model, given we're dealing with philosophical ideas. I should hope that I needn't provide examples for the model, given the state of the world at present won't let you swing a cat without hitting one.