6 ms·

A bit hard to read but some fun images and examples. I appreciated his post on capitalism as not a zero sum game.

by wek 9mo ago

AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
Capitalism is 100% a zero sum game and capitalists love to try to pretend that it’s not The fact of resource extraction from society and externalities like pollution not being counted by capitalist because they “can’t count them “and just bundle them as externalities demonstrably destroy any concept of non-zero sum game There are limited resources on the planet and that’s the sum. If you want to take it even further the extraction pace is even more important than the total gross amount of resources because of inefficient allocation and distribution processes So no the universe itself is zero some we’re not creating more Mattar and especially in the context of humans on earth the functional and numerical reality is zero sum
- MontyCarloHall 9mo ago
  >The fact of resource extraction from society and externalities like pollution not being counted by capitalist because they "can’t count them" and just bundle them as externalities demonstrably destroy any concept of non-zero sum game The article explicitly addresses this: The fact that Capitalism is non-zero-sum doesn't mean it is necessarily positive-sum. An economy that gets out of balance can produce very negative results (which are still non-zero). Cons of capitalism: — Can not be relied on to provide adequate social services, including healthcare and education. — Can be expected to run at a cost to externalities like the environment. — Can produce products that are detrimental to well-being. Based on your other comment [0], it seems you have a bad-faith axe to grind against this site. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46434065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46434065
  - AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - SapporoChris 9mo ago
      If capitalism is zero sum then how do countries with capitalism manage to succeed and grow for hundreds of years?
      - AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
        By pillaging and conquering nations that have abundant resources through violence and coercion Like this is the entire history of capitalism and it’s not even close the fact that other organizations (USSR, China) do the same thing (horde property and then use consolidated resources to enforce economic heirarchy) but don’t call it capitalism doesn’t make it any less true They can say “communism” all day but if the functional properties of the system of the Russian Federation or CCP are that Property control is limited to a small group of elites who then use those resources to create a command economy that is purely capitalist philosophy.
        nuancebydefault 9mo ago
        The hording and eliteness is not a property of the capitalistic system. It might be an unwanted side effect. Imperialism, greed, urge to expand control, subordination of others are unfortunately human traits. You might attribute that behavior to any system, why single out capitalism?
        AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
        Because capitalism explicitly encodes transactionalism into the social structure by alienating labor from the fruits of the labor. There’s no period of time where that has not been true for some portion is society, but we reached a point to which there are no places where that is not true.
        zozbot234 9mo ago
        > By pillaging and conquering nations that have abundant resources through violence and coercion That's pretty much backwards. The industrial revolution was the first time in human history where people could get rich on a very large scale via some way other than pillage and conquest. If you think "capitalism" started in the late 18th century and is essentially coterminous with industry (which is quite nonsensical since you had forms of capital as far back as ancient farming societies, but that's the way many scholars choose to use the term) that's exactly what let us choose something that was not plunder and conquest.
  - immibis 9mo ago
    Steel man: GP could be using "capitalism" to refer to the distribution of capital - financial markets - rather than the entire system. Financial markets are zero-sum as they don't produce anything and their consumption (wages, electricity, etc) is paid in by their users. They can influence wealth creation asnd destruction but that isn't part of the market itself.
- Xirdus 9mo ago
  That's a very reductionist view of economy. For starters, it ignores the entire services sector, which is like half of GDP of most developed capitalist countries. Services are an extremely clear example of positive sum - no resources disappeared from the world, as much money was gained as was spent, but on top of it somebody got something of value.
  - AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
    You should read about Baumol cost disease if you want to understand why what you just said is totally misguided https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect If I pay somebody to dig a ditch and I pay somebody else to fill it in was something of value created? Unequivocally no. Whether or not that allowed somebody to survive and feed their family is entirely orthogonal to the question of the zero-sum nature of the universe Nothing is free energy comes from somewhere and you have to eat food which takes from the environment, that somebody else can’t eat or some other process can’t utilize, so by a function of your existence you cost energy to maintain that would’ve otherwise gone to some other mechanical process No free lunch theorem describes this mathematically and you can go all day reading about that
    - eru 9mo ago
      Your argument would at most prove that you can't have a positive sum. But it doesn't say anything about not having a negative sum. We CAN needlessly increase entropy without that benefiting anyone. It's easy. The sum doesn't have to be zero. And, of course, once you agree that the sum can go negative. Then we can work on trying to avoid that. Game theory doesn't actually care all that much about any finite offset. Whether the maximum we can reach is 0 or ten quadrillion, it's all the same to the theory.
    - cowpig 9mo ago
      > energy comes from somewhere and you have to eat food which takes from the environment, that somebody else can’t eat or some other process can’t utilize, so by a function of your existence you cost energy to maintain Your assertion that "energy comes from somewhere" seems to be borrowing a concept from thermodynamics and apply it, at the scale of the entire universe, to an opinion about the properties of economic/political system. Our planet, as a system, is unequivocally energy-positive. We are inundated with energy from the sun. Does that mean capitalism is positive-sum on Earth?

A bit hard to read but some fun images and examples. I appreciated his post on capitalism as not a zero sum game.

by wek 9mo ago

A bit hard to read but some fun images and examples. I appreciated his post on capitalism as not a zero sum game.

Capitalism is 100% a zero sum game and capitalists love to try to pretend that it’s not The fact of resource extraction from society and externalities like pollution not being counted by capitalist because they “can’t count them “and just bundle them as externalities demonstrably destroy any concept of non-zero sum game There are limited resources on the planet and that’s the sum. If you want to take it even further the extraction pace is even more important than the total gross amount of resources because of inefficient allocation and distribution processes So no the universe itself is zero some we’re not creating more Mattar and especially in the context of humans on earth the functional and numerical reality is zero sum

MontyCarloHall 9mo ago
>The fact of resource extraction from society and externalities like pollution not being counted by capitalist because they "can’t count them" and just bundle them as externalities demonstrably destroy any concept of non-zero sum game The article explicitly addresses this: The fact that Capitalism is non-zero-sum doesn't mean it is necessarily positive-sum. An economy that gets out of balance can produce very negative results (which are still non-zero). Cons of capitalism: — Can not be relied on to provide adequate social services, including healthcare and education. — Can be expected to run at a cost to externalities like the environment. — Can produce products that are detrimental to well-being. Based on your other comment [0], it seems you have a bad-faith axe to grind against this site. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46434065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46434065
- AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - SapporoChris 9mo ago
    If capitalism is zero sum then how do countries with capitalism manage to succeed and grow for hundreds of years?
    - AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
      By pillaging and conquering nations that have abundant resources through violence and coercion Like this is the entire history of capitalism and it’s not even close the fact that other organizations (USSR, China) do the same thing (horde property and then use consolidated resources to enforce economic heirarchy) but don’t call it capitalism doesn’t make it any less true They can say “communism” all day but if the functional properties of the system of the Russian Federation or CCP are that Property control is limited to a small group of elites who then use those resources to create a command economy that is purely capitalist philosophy.
      - nuancebydefault 9mo ago
        The hording and eliteness is not a property of the capitalistic system. It might be an unwanted side effect. Imperialism, greed, urge to expand control, subordination of others are unfortunately human traits. You might attribute that behavior to any system, why single out capitalism?
        AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
        Because capitalism explicitly encodes transactionalism into the social structure by alienating labor from the fruits of the labor. There’s no period of time where that has not been true for some portion is society, but we reached a point to which there are no places where that is not true.
      - zozbot234 9mo ago
        > By pillaging and conquering nations that have abundant resources through violence and coercion That's pretty much backwards. The industrial revolution was the first time in human history where people could get rich on a very large scale via some way other than pillage and conquest. If you think "capitalism" started in the late 18th century and is essentially coterminous with industry (which is quite nonsensical since you had forms of capital as far back as ancient farming societies, but that's the way many scholars choose to use the term) that's exactly what let us choose something that was not plunder and conquest.
- immibis 9mo ago
  Steel man: GP could be using "capitalism" to refer to the distribution of capital - financial markets - rather than the entire system. Financial markets are zero-sum as they don't produce anything and their consumption (wages, electricity, etc) is paid in by their users. They can influence wealth creation asnd destruction but that isn't part of the market itself.
Xirdus 9mo ago
That's a very reductionist view of economy. For starters, it ignores the entire services sector, which is like half of GDP of most developed capitalist countries. Services are an extremely clear example of positive sum - no resources disappeared from the world, as much money was gained as was spent, but on top of it somebody got something of value.
- AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
  You should read about Baumol cost disease if you want to understand why what you just said is totally misguided https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect If I pay somebody to dig a ditch and I pay somebody else to fill it in was something of value created? Unequivocally no. Whether or not that allowed somebody to survive and feed their family is entirely orthogonal to the question of the zero-sum nature of the universe Nothing is free energy comes from somewhere and you have to eat food which takes from the environment, that somebody else can’t eat or some other process can’t utilize, so by a function of your existence you cost energy to maintain that would’ve otherwise gone to some other mechanical process No free lunch theorem describes this mathematically and you can go all day reading about that
  - eru 9mo ago
    Your argument would at most prove that you can't have a positive sum. But it doesn't say anything about not having a negative sum. We CAN needlessly increase entropy without that benefiting anyone. It's easy. The sum doesn't have to be zero. And, of course, once you agree that the sum can go negative. Then we can work on trying to avoid that. Game theory doesn't actually care all that much about any finite offset. Whether the maximum we can reach is 0 or ten quadrillion, it's all the same to the theory.
  - cowpig 9mo ago
    > energy comes from somewhere and you have to eat food which takes from the environment, that somebody else can’t eat or some other process can’t utilize, so by a function of your existence you cost energy to maintain Your assertion that "energy comes from somewhere" seems to be borrowing a concept from thermodynamics and apply it, at the scale of the entire universe, to an opinion about the properties of economic/political system. Our planet, as a system, is unequivocally energy-positive. We are inundated with energy from the sun. Does that mean capitalism is positive-sum on Earth?