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I'll bite. Values are subjective. Resources are limited. Capitalism is one way to choose who's values are satisfied. It does this (in general) by giving poin

I'll bite. Values are subjective. Resources are limited. Capitalism is one way to choose who's values are satisfied. It does this (in general) by giving points to people who satisfy other people's values and proportional to how much they satisfy them. These points can be used to satisfy their own values after and this creates a feedback loop of value satisfaction. IMO a very good thing. Of course there are problems, every system has winners and losers and thats why we have taxation and welfare, to smooth out some of the issues. (perhaps not enough but thats another debate). If you have another system in mind, I'd like you to think about who the winners and losers are and talk about the alternative system in those terms.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago
Before we discuss my proposals, which will involve quite a lot of detail since I cannot resort to well-worn buzzwords, let alone strange in-group buzzwords like "values being satisfied" (I see we have a Slate Star Codex reader), I have a simple question: How can you show that the goal system you described in your post actually describes actually-existing capitalism? You have described how you imagine capitalism is supposed to function or should function. You have not described how the real-world system known as "capitalism" actually behaves. You have not made a prediction. (Further, the entire "values are subjective" premise is just plain wrong. Value is objectively psychological: different individuals have different minds, but the workings of those minds are just as amenable to objective investigation as anything else. Oh, and the agents involved are bounded-rational, and competition is not perfect, and information is nowhere near free...)
- grinnbearit 12y ago
  > Value is objectively psychological: different individuals have different minds, but the workings of those minds are just as amenable to objective investigation as anything else I agree, but if you go down that path you realise that morals are objectively psychological too and in which case why do people have different ones? are they just broken? and according to what standard? Its not that you can't predict someones morals/values from a copy of their brains, its that you can't rank them objectively, i.e. not using your own morals/values as a basis. > You have described how you imagine capitalism is supposed to function or should function. You have not described how the real-world system known as "capitalism" actually behaves. You have not made a prediction. I'm talking about capitalism as a system, its implementation has flaws and winners and losers and I think its important to fix them. But, I do think its a good system. I think it makes sense to start with an ostensibly good system than any other without very good reasons not to. > strange in-group buzzwords like "values being satisfied" chuckle why yes, I do read SSC but I picked that up from http://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Young-Economist-Robert-Murphy/dp/1933550880 http://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Young-Economist-Robert-Murphy/... many years before I ever heard about Scott Alexander.
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    >Its not that you can't predict someones morals/values from a copy of their brains, its that you can't rank them objectively, i.e. not using your own morals/values as a basis. Just because you are not currently a moral realist, doesn't mean there's no such thing as moral realism. Case in point: http://fas-philosophy.rutgers.edu/chang/Papers/Railton-MoralRealism.pdf http://fas-philosophy.rutgers.edu/chang/Papers/Railton-Moral... >I'm talking about capitalism as a system And here we've reached the heart of the disagreement: I don't think you are. You're talking about an imagined capitalist utopia. It no more resembles real capitalism (that is to say, the common features and behaviors we can generalize from all actually-existing capitalist systems) than "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" resembles Soviet Russia. >I think it makes sense to start with an ostensibly good system than any other without very good reasons not to. Why should you try to solve an optimization problem by examining only one proposed solution, and then simply apologizing that all real-world systems with the same name as the proposed theoretical solution are terrible, while not even examining the degree of resemblance between the proposal and the actuality, and never examining alternative hypotheses? After all, it's not like anti-capitalists lack for proposed utopias (see list of citations at the bottom). In fact, our proposals nowadays tend to have worked in experiments far better than the proposal of "Implement the capitalist utopia of Austrianism/libertarianism" has actually worked in experiment -- starting with the triumphs of the social-democratic era and going from there! http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/apr/29/ill-fares-the-land/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/apr/29/ill-far... https://www.jacobinmag.com/2012/12/the-red-and-the-black/ https://www.jacobinmag.com/2012/12/the-red-and-the-black/ http://grist.org/article/upgrading-capitalisms-operating-system/ http://grist.org/article/upgrading-capitalisms-operating-sys... http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100238350 http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=8014010023835... And this is all, of course, before we start addressing techno-utopian or techno-socialist proposals that run off the basic concept of, "Well, resources aren't that scarce..."
    - grinnbearit 12y ago
      > Just because you are not currently a moral realist, doesn't mean there's no such thing as moral realism. This is very important, more in a bit > You're talking about an imagined capitalist utopia. I really don't think I am, all I've described is the basis for the allocation of resources, not even a mention of how it will eventually lead to a Utopia. But this basis depends on moral/value subjectivity (which as an aside is also the basis for democracy). If that is not the case, then a command and control system which allocates resources based on that set of values and enforces laws according to that set of morals will be objectively better than anything capitalism can come up with. > And this is all, of course, before we start addressing techno-utopian or techno-socialist proposals that run off the basic concept of, "Well, resources aren't that scarce" As far as I can tell they are, at least for the moment, once we start hitting whole numbers on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale we can talk about this practically. I do love Dyson Spheres. --- I will read this paper on moral realism and get back to you.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago

Before we discuss my proposals, which will involve quite a lot of detail since I cannot resort to well-worn buzzwords, let alone strange in-group buzzwords like "values being satisfied" (I see we have a Slate Star Codex reader), I have a simple question: How can you show that the goal system you described in your post actually describes actually-existing capitalism? You have described how you imagine capitalism is supposed to function or should function. You have not described how the real-world system known as "capitalism" actually behaves. You have not made a prediction. (Further, the entire "values are subjective" premise is just plain wrong. Value is objectively psychological: different individuals have different minds, but the workings of those minds are just as amenable to objective investigation as anything else. Oh, and the agents involved are bounded-rational, and competition is not perfect, and information is nowhere near free...)

grinnbearit 12y ago
> Value is objectively psychological: different individuals have different minds, but the workings of those minds are just as amenable to objective investigation as anything else I agree, but if you go down that path you realise that morals are objectively psychological too and in which case why do people have different ones? are they just broken? and according to what standard? Its not that you can't predict someones morals/values from a copy of their brains, its that you can't rank them objectively, i.e. not using your own morals/values as a basis. > You have described how you imagine capitalism is supposed to function or should function. You have not described how the real-world system known as "capitalism" actually behaves. You have not made a prediction. I'm talking about capitalism as a system, its implementation has flaws and winners and losers and I think its important to fix them. But, I do think its a good system. I think it makes sense to start with an ostensibly good system than any other without very good reasons not to. > strange in-group buzzwords like "values being satisfied" chuckle why yes, I do read SSC but I picked that up from http://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Young-Economist-Robert-Murphy/dp/1933550880 http://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Young-Economist-Robert-Murphy/... many years before I ever heard about Scott Alexander.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  >Its not that you can't predict someones morals/values from a copy of their brains, its that you can't rank them objectively, i.e. not using your own morals/values as a basis. Just because you are not currently a moral realist, doesn't mean there's no such thing as moral realism. Case in point: http://fas-philosophy.rutgers.edu/chang/Papers/Railton-MoralRealism.pdf http://fas-philosophy.rutgers.edu/chang/Papers/Railton-Moral... >I'm talking about capitalism as a system And here we've reached the heart of the disagreement: I don't think you are. You're talking about an imagined capitalist utopia. It no more resembles real capitalism (that is to say, the common features and behaviors we can generalize from all actually-existing capitalist systems) than "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" resembles Soviet Russia. >I think it makes sense to start with an ostensibly good system than any other without very good reasons not to. Why should you try to solve an optimization problem by examining only one proposed solution, and then simply apologizing that all real-world systems with the same name as the proposed theoretical solution are terrible, while not even examining the degree of resemblance between the proposal and the actuality, and never examining alternative hypotheses? After all, it's not like anti-capitalists lack for proposed utopias (see list of citations at the bottom). In fact, our proposals nowadays tend to have worked in experiments far better than the proposal of "Implement the capitalist utopia of Austrianism/libertarianism" has actually worked in experiment -- starting with the triumphs of the social-democratic era and going from there! http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/apr/29/ill-fares-the-land/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/apr/29/ill-far... https://www.jacobinmag.com/2012/12/the-red-and-the-black/ https://www.jacobinmag.com/2012/12/the-red-and-the-black/ http://grist.org/article/upgrading-capitalisms-operating-system/ http://grist.org/article/upgrading-capitalisms-operating-sys... http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100238350 http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=8014010023835... And this is all, of course, before we start addressing techno-utopian or techno-socialist proposals that run off the basic concept of, "Well, resources aren't that scarce..."
  - grinnbearit 12y ago
    > Just because you are not currently a moral realist, doesn't mean there's no such thing as moral realism. This is very important, more in a bit > You're talking about an imagined capitalist utopia. I really don't think I am, all I've described is the basis for the allocation of resources, not even a mention of how it will eventually lead to a Utopia. But this basis depends on moral/value subjectivity (which as an aside is also the basis for democracy). If that is not the case, then a command and control system which allocates resources based on that set of values and enforces laws according to that set of morals will be objectively better than anything capitalism can come up with. > And this is all, of course, before we start addressing techno-utopian or techno-socialist proposals that run off the basic concept of, "Well, resources aren't that scarce" As far as I can tell they are, at least for the moment, once we start hitting whole numbers on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale we can talk about this practically. I do love Dyson Spheres. --- I will read this paper on moral realism and get back to you.