3 ms·

What's a bummer is that Walter is a smart and talented engineer, yet has a very stubborn and out of touch economic perspective that is at least half a century e

by wyre 1mo ago

What's a bummer is that Walter is a smart and talented engineer, yet has a very stubborn and out of touch economic perspective that is at least half a century expired. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Bright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Bright

stackghost 1mo ago
Just like Kyrie Irving is a talented basketball player but also a catastrophically-deluded flat-earther, it's just as possible for gifted software engineers to have flawed reasoning about the economy.
- WalterBright 1mo ago
  > it's just as possible for gifted software engineers to have flawed reasoning about the economy. Are you sure your reasoning is flawless? Free markets correspond with prosperity, in case after case.
  - stackghost 1mo ago
    A truly free market is also free of regulation and embraces predatory actions by monopolists. Think being paid in company scrip instead of dollars. Think a single food supply monopoly with patented seeds you can be prosecuted for propagating, and harmful additives in food because it's cheaper. Think better education inaccessible for those nincompoops who weren't born into wealth. Serves them right for choosing to be born poor, amirite? Some amount of regulation is required if you want a just, healthy, society, with economic mobility. People say they want 100% free markets but they don't really comprehend what that looks like.
    - WalterBright 1mo ago
      > company scrip Did you know that paychecks are private money? They aren't legal tender. RSU's are company scrip, too. Besides, nobody can make you take a job you don't want. > patented seeds Patents are a government invention, and I'm on record opposing them. > harmful additives Harming and/or defrauding customers is against the law and is actionable. > better education inaccessible Government run schools are pretty much bottom of the barrel.
      - stackghost 1mo ago
        >Did you know that paychecks are private money? They aren't legal tender. I did know this, actually. Thankfully your banks are not free market profiteers. They're subject to stringent regulations to ensure a more orderly and efficient market, and thus they'll dependably convert cheques to dollars. Another point against free market absolutism. >Harming and/or defrauding customers is against the law and is actionable. That's why Big Tobacco was dismantled and are no longer advertising and selling harmful, addictive products to teens, right? Teenagers after all are well-known for their astute abilities to assess risk and make rational, informed decisions that are in their long-term best interests, right? More regulation is needed here, not less. >Government run schools are pretty much bottom of the barrel. In the USA, certainly. That's not an indictment of public education as a whole, though, only of American society's "Fuck you, I got mine" values. If Americans were less selfish they could have the most highly-educated citizens on the planet, with global-elite schooling available to every American schoolchild. In any case, free market absolutism is delusional for all but the billionaire class (for whom it's optimal) and I'm not interested in continuing this conversation further.
    - slopinthebag 1mo ago
      > A truly free market is also free of regulation and embraces predatory actions by monopolists. This is a non sequitur and also makes no sense. A free market doesn’t “embrace” anything, it’s the sum of the decisions individuals make absent external coercion. That you might be unhappy with the decisions others make doesn’t necessarily make it a problem. But every single economy is heavily controlled, regulated, and interfered with, and the so-called “free market” examples people use like healthcare in the States are examples of the most tightly controlled and regulated markets (if you can even call them that) on the planet. So when people complain about “free markets” they’re complaining about heavily controlled markets without even knowing it.
      - stackghost 1mo ago
        Sounds like we agree that the USA does not have a truly free market, and that some regulation is essential. I'm glad!
        slopinthebag 1mo ago
        We agree on the first point yes, lol.
  - nrr 1mo ago
    > Are you sure your reasoning is flawless? Oh, heavens no. I'm human, so I almost certainly make logic errors all the time, whether in terms of truth or validity. However, one thing I am very careful about is that the definitions I use are falsifiable, which makes them minimally empirically testable. ("A hypothesis forbidding some observations means that hypothesis is testable.") In the best case, I can proceed a priori with my reasoning and entirely sidestep needing to approach a posteriori, but real life is very often not that nice. I generally find capital-L Libertarian free markets less than useful for analysis because the syllogism tends to break down thus: 1. Free markets produce prosperity. 2. Prosperity indicates the presence of a free market. 3. Therefore, free markets are prosperous. Like, that'd be a perfectly valid form of proving both directions of a biconditional if it were possible in this framework to show the presence of a free market that doesn't produce prosperity or that prosperity happens without a free market. Unfortunately, they're taken as axiomatic, so they don't admit the reasoning required for such a proof. I want to be wrong though. Perhaps I'm missing something? > Free markets correspond with prosperity, in case after case. I'll caution that correspondence does not admit causal inferences.
slopinthebag 1mo ago
If he is a libertarian that perspective is more modern than socialism, technocracy, or pretty much any other political ideology. Modern libertarianism is from the mid 20th century. And if you share the view that societies gradually shift from materialist values (economic stability, physical safety, law and order, and maintaining traditional group norms) towards post-materialist values (individual autonomy, freedom of speech, gender equality, environmental protection, and self-expression) as societies develop, then freedom of exchange is something you would expect from a more advanced perspective, not one which is outdated. What is outdated is authoritarian, statist, and technocratic rule.
- imtringued 1mo ago
  >What is outdated is authoritarian, statist, and technocratic rule. And yet the most popular model for freeing us from the horrors of capitalism is exactly that: Authoritarian, static and technocratic rule. Yes, that's what communism and Marxist socialism are. You could even say that Marxism is basically this idea: The capitalists are rushing to the top, trying to own the entire world, why don't we accelerate this foregone conclusion with a violent revolution to institute a government that owns everything? What was the original justification for this again? Oh, it's because capital that is scarce in relation to labor has power over labor, but there is no physical capital rule that says that the capital formation process has to stop right there. That's a monetary rule called the zero lower bound that actively prevents capital formation and guess who instated that rule? The very government that is supposed to save us by owning everything, including the workers. It's like having the arsonist in charge of putting out the fire.

by wyre 1mo ago

stackghost 1mo ago

Just like Kyrie Irving is a talented basketball player but also a catastrophically-deluded flat-earther, it's just as possible for gifted software engineers to have flawed reasoning about the economy.

WalterBright 1mo ago
> it's just as possible for gifted software engineers to have flawed reasoning about the economy. Are you sure your reasoning is flawless? Free markets correspond with prosperity, in case after case.
- stackghost 1mo ago
  A truly free market is also free of regulation and embraces predatory actions by monopolists. Think being paid in company scrip instead of dollars. Think a single food supply monopoly with patented seeds you can be prosecuted for propagating, and harmful additives in food because it's cheaper. Think better education inaccessible for those nincompoops who weren't born into wealth. Serves them right for choosing to be born poor, amirite? Some amount of regulation is required if you want a just, healthy, society, with economic mobility. People say they want 100% free markets but they don't really comprehend what that looks like.
  - WalterBright 1mo ago
    > company scrip Did you know that paychecks are private money? They aren't legal tender. RSU's are company scrip, too. Besides, nobody can make you take a job you don't want. > patented seeds Patents are a government invention, and I'm on record opposing them. > harmful additives Harming and/or defrauding customers is against the law and is actionable. > better education inaccessible Government run schools are pretty much bottom of the barrel.
    - stackghost 1mo ago
      >Did you know that paychecks are private money? They aren't legal tender. I did know this, actually. Thankfully your banks are not free market profiteers. They're subject to stringent regulations to ensure a more orderly and efficient market, and thus they'll dependably convert cheques to dollars. Another point against free market absolutism. >Harming and/or defrauding customers is against the law and is actionable. That's why Big Tobacco was dismantled and are no longer advertising and selling harmful, addictive products to teens, right? Teenagers after all are well-known for their astute abilities to assess risk and make rational, informed decisions that are in their long-term best interests, right? More regulation is needed here, not less. >Government run schools are pretty much bottom of the barrel. In the USA, certainly. That's not an indictment of public education as a whole, though, only of American society's "Fuck you, I got mine" values. If Americans were less selfish they could have the most highly-educated citizens on the planet, with global-elite schooling available to every American schoolchild. In any case, free market absolutism is delusional for all but the billionaire class (for whom it's optimal) and I'm not interested in continuing this conversation further.
  - slopinthebag 1mo ago
    > A truly free market is also free of regulation and embraces predatory actions by monopolists. This is a non sequitur and also makes no sense. A free market doesn’t “embrace” anything, it’s the sum of the decisions individuals make absent external coercion. That you might be unhappy with the decisions others make doesn’t necessarily make it a problem. But every single economy is heavily controlled, regulated, and interfered with, and the so-called “free market” examples people use like healthcare in the States are examples of the most tightly controlled and regulated markets (if you can even call them that) on the planet. So when people complain about “free markets” they’re complaining about heavily controlled markets without even knowing it.
    - stackghost 1mo ago
      Sounds like we agree that the USA does not have a truly free market, and that some regulation is essential. I'm glad!
      - slopinthebag 1mo ago
        We agree on the first point yes, lol.
- nrr 1mo ago
  > Are you sure your reasoning is flawless? Oh, heavens no. I'm human, so I almost certainly make logic errors all the time, whether in terms of truth or validity. However, one thing I am very careful about is that the definitions I use are falsifiable, which makes them minimally empirically testable. ("A hypothesis forbidding some observations means that hypothesis is testable.") In the best case, I can proceed a priori with my reasoning and entirely sidestep needing to approach a posteriori, but real life is very often not that nice. I generally find capital-L Libertarian free markets less than useful for analysis because the syllogism tends to break down thus: 1. Free markets produce prosperity. 2. Prosperity indicates the presence of a free market. 3. Therefore, free markets are prosperous. Like, that'd be a perfectly valid form of proving both directions of a biconditional if it were possible in this framework to show the presence of a free market that doesn't produce prosperity or that prosperity happens without a free market. Unfortunately, they're taken as axiomatic, so they don't admit the reasoning required for such a proof. I want to be wrong though. Perhaps I'm missing something? > Free markets correspond with prosperity, in case after case. I'll caution that correspondence does not admit causal inferences.

slopinthebag 1mo ago

If he is a libertarian that perspective is more modern than socialism, technocracy, or pretty much any other political ideology. Modern libertarianism is from the mid 20th century. And if you share the view that societies gradually shift from materialist values (economic stability, physical safety, law and order, and maintaining traditional group norms) towards post-materialist values (individual autonomy, freedom of speech, gender equality, environmental protection, and self-expression) as societies develop, then freedom of exchange is something you would expect from a more advanced perspective, not one which is outdated. What is outdated is authoritarian, statist, and technocratic rule.

imtringued 1mo ago
>What is outdated is authoritarian, statist, and technocratic rule. And yet the most popular model for freeing us from the horrors of capitalism is exactly that: Authoritarian, static and technocratic rule. Yes, that's what communism and Marxist socialism are. You could even say that Marxism is basically this idea: The capitalists are rushing to the top, trying to own the entire world, why don't we accelerate this foregone conclusion with a violent revolution to institute a government that owns everything? What was the original justification for this again? Oh, it's because capital that is scarce in relation to labor has power over labor, but there is no physical capital rule that says that the capital formation process has to stop right there. That's a monetary rule called the zero lower bound that actively prevents capital formation and guess who instated that rule? The very government that is supposed to save us by owning everything, including the workers. It's like having the arsonist in charge of putting out the fire.