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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 countrie
by Xirdus 10mo 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 10mo agoYou 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 10mo agoYour 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 10mo 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?
- AndrewKemendo 10mo agoHumans can’t convert sun energy into biological energy. We aren’t plants. However we eat plants and we eat the things that eat plants. So do you consider plants and animals part of your environment or not? Is the basic requirements for having an economy being a set of humans in a society that has language and culture and exchange? There’s no free lunch Human activity takes from the non-human environment. Under an abstracted society which you could call capitalism if you like these resource extractions are done with no view to externalities and we know this because even in a basic undergraduate economics degree you will be told companies do not price externalities and there are no pricing mechanisms for externalities outside of Reactionary measures historically Again I’ll reference here the entire history of ecology and cybernetics has tried to make this abundantly clear that these are all connected and the fact that you seem befuddled about these connections tells me everything I need to know about this conversation
- when_creaks 10mo agoIn your opinion which society / nation / government in human history is closest to your ideal of how things should be?
- AndrewKemendo 10mo agoClosest seems to be the mondragon cooperative
- Xirdus 10mo agoLet's stop at the first half. If I pay somebody to dig a ditch. Period. End of story. Let's assume I'm not clinically insane and I actually needed that ditch for something. Is the sum still zero? Just because pointless things are possible doesn't mean not pointless things are not possible. Nothing is free, but the service isn't free either. It's not free because people find it valuable, so valuable they're willing to pay for it. More than the cost of food needed to compensate energy spent. Way more in most cases. Is the sum still zero?
- AndrewKemendo 10mo agoYou’re describing positive-sum outcomes in subjective preference space. I’m describing conservation laws in physical state space. Preference gains don’t violate thermodynamics, but they also don’t escape zero-sum reality once you include energy, ecology, and time. You’re doing what I’m complaining about separating Economics from ecology - there’s a very firm reason why climate changes the most important topic of our decade is because we have to merge our lived experience with the work experience and kill this embedded dualism that somehow human environments are different than the rest of the universe. It’s like you’re trying to do control theory without energy constraints.
- Xirdus 10mo agoAh, so you indeed are doing the extremely reductionist view of economy that completely ignores services. And then calling capitalists wrong. While not even talking about the same subject as capitalists. This is lalala I can't hear you with extra steps.
- AndrewKemendo 10mo agoI can’t believe I wasted my time thinking through that thoughtful response to you Thats on me
- Xirdus 10mo agoI'm very open to a serious discussion. But only if it's actually serious. I don't consider reducing economy to thermodynamics to be serious. Any statement about any economy is meaningless if you're ignoring services. Especially when discussing the totality of an economic system, such as the question whether capitalism is zero-sum. I am happy to hear actual arguments how the value of services always, necessarily, by definition comes at the cost of some environment somewhere. I'm not happy to hear arguments that dismiss existence of services entirely. I was sure you were a troll yourself after that hole digging line. My bad.