5 ms·

What are you talking about? I don't think authority is bad. What we're talking about isn't purely organizational, its economical. Of course we need leaders, an

by Atlas667 10mo ago

What are you talking about? I don't think authority is bad. What we're talking about isn't purely organizational, its economical. Of course we need leaders, and groups, and hierarchy. What we don't need is structures that take from peoples labor. Hierarchy can be an abstraction of group decision making and not a relationship to the products of labor (as it is now). Or do you think people will only do things if others own the products of their labor? Would it be impossible to exist as a society without a small group of people owning the products of millions of peoples labor? Like I said with my original comment our current notion of great men is mostly a political fabrication by the rich. The rich being the people who own the media outlets we consume, the publishing houses, the internet, the people who own the vast majority of the things we need. They have the power to influence our morality through information culling, exposure and/or volume. Thus they have birthed the modern idea of "great men". "Great men" as they exist today are not great by us, they are great by them. Do you think these forms that currently exist are the end form of human organization? These forms breed too many ills to be able to last forever, monetary corruption IS the real manifestation of these forms of human organization.

AnthonyMouse 10mo ago
Hierarchy is someone being at the top. Who really freed the slaves, Abraham Lincoln or all the people who elected him and then fought as solders to win the ensuing war? > Of course we need leaders, and groups, and hierarchy. What we don't need is structures that take from peoples labor. These are inherently synonyms for each other. As soon as you have anyone deciding how resources are allocated, they're taking them from whoever did the work to create them to begin with. The best you can hope for is voluntary interactions, which is to say competitive markets rather than oligopolies or government central planning. And that is going to result in large companies and big personalities -- it's only a problem when they become so large that they no longer have adequate competition, which is something that happens well after the point that they have leaders whose names people know.
- Atlas667 10mo ago
  Someone at the top isnt necessarily autocratic. To preside is not autocracy. Both of them freed the slaves. > These are inherently synonyms for each other. As soon as you have anyone deciding how resources are allocated, they're taking them from whoever did the work to create them to begin with. Nah, this is a very wrong take. If that were true what are portfolio managers doing? If they ran away with your money what would happen? Thats just a tiny little example. There are millions of other examples where trust is employed without theft because the consequences matter. > The best you can hope for is voluntary interactions... Thats the deep problem with capitalism. It intends to be free but its own laws allow it to quickly be dominated by a few. And then the rest of us are supposed to trust the very-corruptible government to aid us? Capitalism REALLY is just oligopoly with extra steps. They know this and count on it.
  - AnthonyMouse 10mo ago
    > Someone at the top isnt necessarily autocratic. To preside is not autocracy. This is sort of like saying that an oligopoly isn't a monopoly. Technically true but not a solution to the problem. The only way to have a large central government but not have a small handful of people with an outsized amount of power would be to make the decisions through direct democracy, which is the thing that doesn't scale to organizations that size. > Both of them freed the slaves. But only one of them ever gets credit for it. > If that were true what are portfolio managers doing? If they ran away with your money what would happen? There are two ways to frame this. The first is, you're in charge of your portfolio and the manager is just your employee, so the one at the top is you, but then you're only in charge of your own money and not anyone else's. The second is, retail investors are unsophisticated and lack the understanding necessary to hold portfolio managers to account, so the managers engage in shell games to steal from the investors and buy themselves yachts and otherwise act against the investors' interests. In which case they're at the top and they're autocrats. > Thats the deep problem with capitalism. It intends to be free but its own laws allow it to quickly be dominated by a few. And then the rest of us are supposed to trust the very-corruptible government to aid us? Nearly by definition the only types of organizations are public (i.e. government) and private (i.e. capitalism, any organization that isn't a government). If you don't like private organizations, and the government is corrupt, then what are you even proposing? The inherent problem here is that if you have centralized power structures of any kind, Machiavellian opportunists will try to capture them for their own ends. What you need is a structure of government that prevents that from happening. It's nominally supposed to look like a government constrained in what it can do (checks and balances and enumerated powers) to prevent it from having the authority to issue competition-destroying regulations in the event it gets captured, and therefore reduce the incentive to capture it. But still having the authority to enforce antitrust rules, to prevent the same thing from happening in private markets. We don't actually have that. A lot of the original checks and balances were removed by populists in the early 20th century so now the US federal government is thoroughly captured and in turn issues thousands of competition-destroying regulations and doesn't meaningfully enforce antitrust laws. But the only thing to do is fix that, because what else is there?

AnthonyMouse 10mo ago

Hierarchy is someone being at the top. Who really freed the slaves, Abraham Lincoln or all the people who elected him and then fought as solders to win the ensuing war? > Of course we need leaders, and groups, and hierarchy. What we don't need is structures that take from peoples labor. These are inherently synonyms for each other. As soon as you have anyone deciding how resources are allocated, they're taking them from whoever did the work to create them to begin with. The best you can hope for is voluntary interactions, which is to say competitive markets rather than oligopolies or government central planning. And that is going to result in large companies and big personalities -- it's only a problem when they become so large that they no longer have adequate competition, which is something that happens well after the point that they have leaders whose names people know.

Atlas667 10mo ago
Someone at the top isnt necessarily autocratic. To preside is not autocracy. Both of them freed the slaves. > These are inherently synonyms for each other. As soon as you have anyone deciding how resources are allocated, they're taking them from whoever did the work to create them to begin with. Nah, this is a very wrong take. If that were true what are portfolio managers doing? If they ran away with your money what would happen? Thats just a tiny little example. There are millions of other examples where trust is employed without theft because the consequences matter. > The best you can hope for is voluntary interactions... Thats the deep problem with capitalism. It intends to be free but its own laws allow it to quickly be dominated by a few. And then the rest of us are supposed to trust the very-corruptible government to aid us? Capitalism REALLY is just oligopoly with extra steps. They know this and count on it.
- AnthonyMouse 10mo ago
  > Someone at the top isnt necessarily autocratic. To preside is not autocracy. This is sort of like saying that an oligopoly isn't a monopoly. Technically true but not a solution to the problem. The only way to have a large central government but not have a small handful of people with an outsized amount of power would be to make the decisions through direct democracy, which is the thing that doesn't scale to organizations that size. > Both of them freed the slaves. But only one of them ever gets credit for it. > If that were true what are portfolio managers doing? If they ran away with your money what would happen? There are two ways to frame this. The first is, you're in charge of your portfolio and the manager is just your employee, so the one at the top is you, but then you're only in charge of your own money and not anyone else's. The second is, retail investors are unsophisticated and lack the understanding necessary to hold portfolio managers to account, so the managers engage in shell games to steal from the investors and buy themselves yachts and otherwise act against the investors' interests. In which case they're at the top and they're autocrats. > Thats the deep problem with capitalism. It intends to be free but its own laws allow it to quickly be dominated by a few. And then the rest of us are supposed to trust the very-corruptible government to aid us? Nearly by definition the only types of organizations are public (i.e. government) and private (i.e. capitalism, any organization that isn't a government). If you don't like private organizations, and the government is corrupt, then what are you even proposing? The inherent problem here is that if you have centralized power structures of any kind, Machiavellian opportunists will try to capture them for their own ends. What you need is a structure of government that prevents that from happening. It's nominally supposed to look like a government constrained in what it can do (checks and balances and enumerated powers) to prevent it from having the authority to issue competition-destroying regulations in the event it gets captured, and therefore reduce the incentive to capture it. But still having the authority to enforce antitrust rules, to prevent the same thing from happening in private markets. We don't actually have that. A lot of the original checks and balances were removed by populists in the early 20th century so now the US federal government is thoroughly captured and in turn issues thousands of competition-destroying regulations and doesn't meaningfully enforce antitrust laws. But the only thing to do is fix that, because what else is there?