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Is the latter part your second paragraph a serious? “We've got so much more value out of harnessing greed and activating selfishness that it might be all we ne

by yapyap 2y ago

Is the latter part your second paragraph a serious? “We've got so much more value out of harnessing greed and activating selfishness that it might be all we need to run a prosperous society” 1. who is this we? are you in the circles of mister jeffrey bezos? if you are talking about the U.S. lower to middle class, I doubt it. 2. When you look at “we” at a global scale where every person matters equally, cause we are all people, DEFINITELY not. No question about it. Forms of slavery are used to keep the entire Western world afloat, technology can only be this cheap because of the people slaving away for pennies in these far away countries. 3. If we were to harness greed to our full extent once again, all together, slavery would make a worldwide comeback. Just think of how profitable it is. If you don’t “care” and just want profit, it’s like the best way to make money.

roenxi 2y ago
1. Everyone. 2 & 3. Seems to me like you're overestimating the institution of slavery; outside of a couple of rare edge cases it is uncompetitive. Wikipedia estimates [0] that globally it generates around $150 billion annually vs around $115,500 billion for free labour. Ie, the global economic value add of slavery rounds to 0%. There is a reason no-one advocates to bring it back - it doesn't work. If slavery was legal the path to wealth for a rational slaveholder would be to immediately sell the slaves to someone a bit more silly and use the money to set up a company that pays people to do the work. Greedy people don't work with slaves because slaves cap out on value add extremely quickly. Said people would much rather be working in insurance and banking. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century#St...
- corimaith 2y ago
  We are quite lucky that slavery dosen't work out then, but there's nothing to say future innovations won't change the calculus that slavery wins out in opportunity cost compared to other activities. What would you do then? Besides, the long term incentives for Climate Change or Global Trade Balance or Housing Prices might align, but the short term often dosen't, and greedy very much then can walk down the path to their own destruction. Greed can't solve the Prisoner's Dilllema.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    > Greed can't solve the Prisoner's Dilllema. I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but greedy people can easily solve the iterated prisoners dilemma. Everyone cooperates. You get the Nash & global equilibrium where everyone maximises their long term outcomes. A classic "greedy" strategy wouldn't work, but greedy people don't usually choose that strategy because it is naive and the point is to end up well off.
    - corimaith 2y ago
      "Greedy" people sacrificing their short-term, even their generational self interest for the long term doesn't looks like to me that it fills in the conventional definition.
TacticalCoder 2y ago
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by yapyap 2y ago

roenxi 2y ago

1. Everyone. 2 & 3. Seems to me like you're overestimating the institution of slavery; outside of a couple of rare edge cases it is uncompetitive. Wikipedia estimates [0] that globally it generates around $150 billion annually vs around $115,500 billion for free labour. Ie, the global economic value add of slavery rounds to 0%. There is a reason no-one advocates to bring it back - it doesn't work. If slavery was legal the path to wealth for a rational slaveholder would be to immediately sell the slaves to someone a bit more silly and use the money to set up a company that pays people to do the work. Greedy people don't work with slaves because slaves cap out on value add extremely quickly. Said people would much rather be working in insurance and banking. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century#St...

corimaith 2y ago
We are quite lucky that slavery dosen't work out then, but there's nothing to say future innovations won't change the calculus that slavery wins out in opportunity cost compared to other activities. What would you do then? Besides, the long term incentives for Climate Change or Global Trade Balance or Housing Prices might align, but the short term often dosen't, and greedy very much then can walk down the path to their own destruction. Greed can't solve the Prisoner's Dilllema.
- roenxi 2y ago
  > Greed can't solve the Prisoner's Dilllema. I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but greedy people can easily solve the iterated prisoners dilemma. Everyone cooperates. You get the Nash & global equilibrium where everyone maximises their long term outcomes. A classic "greedy" strategy wouldn't work, but greedy people don't usually choose that strategy because it is naive and the point is to end up well off.
  - corimaith 2y ago
    "Greedy" people sacrificing their short-term, even their generational self interest for the long term doesn't looks like to me that it fills in the conventional definition.

TacticalCoder 2y ago

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