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As a class, they steer things through emergent behavior and overlapping self interest in certain areas. As individuals, they can’t afford to trust each other wi

As a class, they steer things through emergent behavior and overlapping self interest in certain areas. As individuals, they can’t afford to trust each other without leverage.

danielmarkbruce 20d ago
Sounds clever, makes no sense.
- iamnothere 20d ago
  As a class, they have a set of similar incentives (grow/retain resources and power networks) that lead to similar actions (avoid taxation, buy influence, weaken regulators, etc). They may cooperate at times, but they are not a coherent organization with a roster, votes, and leadership. As individuals, they are dangerous competitors, and they can’t afford to trust each other too much without some kind of mutual leverage. This could be in the form of mutual equity holdings, blackmail, complex arrangements where each party has exposure, whatever. But even then, trust has limits. There’s no cabal that runs things with rules and elections at this level. It’s all individuals who are immersed in the systems that made them wealthy. Those systems tend to lead to certain behaviors. That’s it.
  - danielmarkbruce 20d ago
    You could make this statement about any group at all. And then once you realize people are in multiple groups, the whole thing devolves into chaos.
    - iamnothere 20d ago
      To a degree, yes, it’s why looking at people on the level of groups is not that useful for predicting individual behavior and beliefs, only aggregate behavior and beliefs. However, some groups do have identifiable leadership, rules, membership rosters, etc. Political parties for instance, or governmental bodies. Decisions from groups like this often have an identifiable lineage (from proposal to vote) and are considered binding. This contrasts with the sort of emergent decisions I was discussing in the context of the very wealthy. There was no vote, there was no formal coordination, and the “decision” is not binding, yet everyone can see its effects. Opposing something like this is like boxing with a shadow.
    - godelski 20d ago
      > You could make this statement about any group at all. Yes, that's the point > And then once you realize people are in multiple groups, the whole thing devolves into chaos. You have bad priors. That would only happen if groups could only have singular and simple goals. It requires those goals to be mutually exclusive. Because as soon as they overlap, even just a little, cooperation becomes an effective strategy. Hell, history shows us enemies often cooperate. Mostly to defeat a mutual enemy, so they can go back to fighting each other, but that's still cooperation
      - danielmarkbruce 20d ago
        Nobody is suggesting nobody or group cooperates on anything ever. This comment could go in the definition section of "strawman". My comment was in response to the idea that there is "a conspiracy of the elite". It's just an absurd idea to anyone who has spent time in the world working with people, both "elite" and non "elite". In the bay area you'll find thousands and thousands of people who have worked at a company run by a billionaire founder. They will tell you said billionaire founder can't even get everyone in the company to conspire to row in the same direction.
        godelski 20d ago
        But the comment above wasn't about an explicit conspiracy, with billionaires meeting in dark rooms colluding. It was about implicit, uncoordinated conspiracy, where objectives align. My comment is defending the latter
        danielmarkbruce 20d ago
        Maybe I'm overindexing on "they steer" and "effective strategy" - it still reads that this group has way more control and deliberate planning than they do. And, "implicit, uncoordinated conspiracy" is an oxymoron. The word "conspiracy" has a definition. If all you are saying is "sometimes billionaires are aligned" - sure. Sometimes politicians are aligned. Sometimes teammates are aligned. If one wants a platitude with some predictive power "people are self interested" is going to work more often.
- Varelion 20d ago
  Look into a class on systems thinking.
  - danielmarkbruce 20d ago
    Systems thinking as applied to human systems is about as rigorous as psychology.
    - Varelion 19d ago
      Sounds like the genius take of a VP of AI Strategy.
      - danielmarkbruce 18d ago
        Or, someone who knows the books and hot takes on "systems thinking" are pop-science, and the actual good ideas have been around for a long time and taught in operations research, control theory etc.
- godelski 20d ago
  It doesn't need any intelligence at all. There's mutually beneficial things to any group of people. So it doesn't require explicit coordination. Even fairly unintelligent animals have symbiotic relationships with other species. So your argument is what, that billionaires are less intelligent than an ant?

As a class, they steer things through emergent behavior and overlapping self interest in certain areas. As individuals, they can’t afford to trust each other without leverage.

danielmarkbruce 20d ago

Sounds clever, makes no sense.

iamnothere 20d ago
As a class, they have a set of similar incentives (grow/retain resources and power networks) that lead to similar actions (avoid taxation, buy influence, weaken regulators, etc). They may cooperate at times, but they are not a coherent organization with a roster, votes, and leadership. As individuals, they are dangerous competitors, and they can’t afford to trust each other too much without some kind of mutual leverage. This could be in the form of mutual equity holdings, blackmail, complex arrangements where each party has exposure, whatever. But even then, trust has limits. There’s no cabal that runs things with rules and elections at this level. It’s all individuals who are immersed in the systems that made them wealthy. Those systems tend to lead to certain behaviors. That’s it.
- danielmarkbruce 20d ago
  You could make this statement about any group at all. And then once you realize people are in multiple groups, the whole thing devolves into chaos.
  - iamnothere 20d ago
    To a degree, yes, it’s why looking at people on the level of groups is not that useful for predicting individual behavior and beliefs, only aggregate behavior and beliefs. However, some groups do have identifiable leadership, rules, membership rosters, etc. Political parties for instance, or governmental bodies. Decisions from groups like this often have an identifiable lineage (from proposal to vote) and are considered binding. This contrasts with the sort of emergent decisions I was discussing in the context of the very wealthy. There was no vote, there was no formal coordination, and the “decision” is not binding, yet everyone can see its effects. Opposing something like this is like boxing with a shadow.
  - godelski 20d ago
    > You could make this statement about any group at all. Yes, that's the point > And then once you realize people are in multiple groups, the whole thing devolves into chaos. You have bad priors. That would only happen if groups could only have singular and simple goals. It requires those goals to be mutually exclusive. Because as soon as they overlap, even just a little, cooperation becomes an effective strategy. Hell, history shows us enemies often cooperate. Mostly to defeat a mutual enemy, so they can go back to fighting each other, but that's still cooperation
    - danielmarkbruce 20d ago
      Nobody is suggesting nobody or group cooperates on anything ever. This comment could go in the definition section of "strawman". My comment was in response to the idea that there is "a conspiracy of the elite". It's just an absurd idea to anyone who has spent time in the world working with people, both "elite" and non "elite". In the bay area you'll find thousands and thousands of people who have worked at a company run by a billionaire founder. They will tell you said billionaire founder can't even get everyone in the company to conspire to row in the same direction.
      - godelski 20d ago
        But the comment above wasn't about an explicit conspiracy, with billionaires meeting in dark rooms colluding. It was about implicit, uncoordinated conspiracy, where objectives align. My comment is defending the latter
        danielmarkbruce 20d ago
        Maybe I'm overindexing on "they steer" and "effective strategy" - it still reads that this group has way more control and deliberate planning than they do. And, "implicit, uncoordinated conspiracy" is an oxymoron. The word "conspiracy" has a definition. If all you are saying is "sometimes billionaires are aligned" - sure. Sometimes politicians are aligned. Sometimes teammates are aligned. If one wants a platitude with some predictive power "people are self interested" is going to work more often.
Varelion 20d ago
Look into a class on systems thinking.
- danielmarkbruce 20d ago
  Systems thinking as applied to human systems is about as rigorous as psychology.
  - Varelion 19d ago
    Sounds like the genius take of a VP of AI Strategy.
    - danielmarkbruce 18d ago
      Or, someone who knows the books and hot takes on "systems thinking" are pop-science, and the actual good ideas have been around for a long time and taught in operations research, control theory etc.
godelski 20d ago
It doesn't need any intelligence at all. There's mutually beneficial things to any group of people. So it doesn't require explicit coordination. Even fairly unintelligent animals have symbiotic relationships with other species. So your argument is what, that billionaires are less intelligent than an ant?