Capitalism: the cause of and solution to all life's problems

[rotting bones]

Economics is not a hard science. It is a branch of the humanities. As such, there is serious scholarly disagreement on how to represent the facts in a mathematical framework. I am bound by by opinions of mainstream economists only slightly more than I am by the opinions of mainstream literary theorists. By contrast, people who deny the existence of gravity belong in a loony bin.

In economics, one great source of disagreement is how much weight to accord subjective desires versus the objective facts of the material world. The subjectivists tend to support capitalism. I am more persuaded by the arguments put forward by the materialists. I believe that the mind is causally subordinated to material reality. In this context, that means I do not believe it is a rational allocation of resources to hire a small number of people and overwork them as opposed to hiring a larger number of people and making them work reasonable amounts, etc.

[mèþru]

Mainstream economics seems very much philosophically materialist to me. It's a mathematised, rigorous study. Economics may not be a hard science yet, but it is not only not a humanities - it is arguably the hardest of all social sciences.

Subjective desire is a measure because what is useful is situational. If you are in a desert, your primary concerns are food and water. If you are at home with a stocked fridge and hydrated, more food and water would be pretty useless. Culture plays a big role too - for instance, what use is high quality meat from a labour intensive hunt if you are a practicing Jain? Utility drives distribution and drives consumption. This is like how in biology, natural selection favours those mutations which maximise efficiency in an area actually relevant to how the organism lives. There is no mutation universally beneficial for all species, and the same mutation in different environments has a different marginal utility to the organism.

People's desires are not just assumed by economists, but measured in real time using prices. There's an empirical basis to all of this.

[zompist]

I was pretty influenced as a teenager by the whole restructure article, and still pretty am. I would love to see a new version updated for 2020.

Tempting! Though it's hard to get back into the mindset of "let's make big changes to improve America" when these days, it's a struggle to sell the idea of "let's maybe not let millions of Americans die to a pandemic."

One thing I see as really needing an update is the "lose the South bit". In the wake of stringent anti-abortion laws, tough voter ID and the ongoing political persecution of black people it's not just no longer applicable, but with hindisght seems like it was never applicable - these were issues in the 90s too, just people were less woke about them (although to be fair in the 90s the police were less infiltrated by the far-right than they are today).

I hear you. I was underestimating how much Southern governments are based on throttling the Black vote. Georgia has shown this year what can happen when the community is organized and voting.

[rotting bones]

mèþru: I obviously believe in the existence of subjective desires. That's why I proposed an elaborate system to measure demand.

Subjectivist economics treats subjective desire as its territory. People own units of value and they want to spend them or not.

Materialist economics treats desire as a map, not the ultimate domain of factual reality. People want things, and the purpose of economics is to build a system that will deliver it to them.

Just having something be mathematical doesn't automatically make it accurate. For example, say fnargs and burbles are both sneeks. I have 2 fnargs and 3 burbles. It is mathematically correct to say that I have 5 sneeks as a result. However, since I do not even have a vague mental image of what these words represent, this mathematical truism is nevertheless disconnected from the facts of material reality.

[mèþru]

That only works if one assumes all desires are rooted in material conditions. Are desires for kinky handcuffs caused by certain material conditions? Preference between two flavours of soda?

Modern economists mainly deal with value because the rise of the financial sector, of capitalism and of industiralisation means that most events both positive and negative are caused by variations in demand. There are studies of the actual material conditions too. Just because physical conditions are a territory doesn't make value a map. Both can be territory. And one reason value cannot be a map is that price approximates value, but does not perfectly reflect it - and if there is a smudge on a map it doesn't mean someone took the Earth and stretched, it means the map is only accurate to a certain degree.

[zompist]

so like, why do we not treat economic democracy the same way? like, broadly speaking capitalism is in some ways a lot more economically democratic than, say, palace command economies where coordination occurs by decree of a military leader. it is more socialist than the ancien regime, cause the stuff the liberals say is not totally wrong: consumers have some power in the "free market". They just have not that much of it.

Some time ago I read an interview with a socialist (I don't remember his name) that made essentially this point: socialism is a continnuum, also a continual aspiration. We're already far more "socialist" than the world of Adam Smith or Charles Dickens, and to solve 21st century problems like climate change, health care, the hollowing of the middle class, and pandemics, we need to be more so.

At the same time, not every socialist idea is a great one. There really are big, gaping problems with centralism, and when you throw in authoritarianism you really do get a worse dystopia. Socialists need to address these concerns, not just assume that everyone will be nicer this time around.

Yes, it's kinda unfair that everyone always says "Last time you killed millions of people!" Or it would be, if the same people don't bring up (say) slavery or the British Empire to condemn capitalism. Sorry, but killing millions of people should put your ideology on the defensive.

(Speaking of historical lapses of memory... the USSR only had one economic downtime? Come on, are you forgetting the Ukrainian famine, or the crisis that led to the New Economic Policy? The USSR had a chronic problem with, y'know, feeding people. To finance the industrialization you speak so glowingly of, they had to destroy the peasants. They were rescued briefly by the oil boom, but that didn't last.)

[rotting bones]

That only works if one assumes all desires are rooted in material conditions. Are desires for kinky handcuffs caused by certain material conditions? Preference between two flavours of soda?

Could you explain this in more detail? If you take a look at my proposal, I'm measuring people's actual demands.

Modern economists mainly deal with value because the rise of the financial sector, of capitalism and of industiralisation means that most events both positive and negative are caused by variations in demand. There are studies of the actual material conditions too.

Sure, just as there are serious scholars of economics who disagree with the mainstream theory.

Just because physical conditions are a territory doesn't make value a map. Both can be territory. And one reason value cannot be a map is that price approximates value, but does not perfectly reflect it - and if there is a smudge on a map it doesn't mean someone took the Earth and stretched, it means the map is only accurate to a certain degree.

I don't see the problem. Price is part of the territory, being a component of the delivery mechanism. Demand is part of the map, being rooted in subjective desire. Could you expand on this argument?

[mèþru]

Measuring stated demands is not measuring utility, because utility is based on aggregate demand as observed not through speech but through action. Desire cannot be a map of a material reality if desire is not solely dependant on physical conditions. A map's only purpose is to represent the territory. Price is a map of value, because it is the measurement of value. Delivery mechanism is not related, because we're going to first principles in which you can simplify all exchanges as being an agent gives away a widget in return for something representing the value of the widget. The agents could be people, could be organisations. The widget could be a commodity, a service or even an idea. The idea of what an exchange even is does not rely on delivery mechanisms.

[zompist]

I'm not sure why you're getting hung up on the specific examples. The point here is strategic voting, something that comes up in most electoral systems. To an extent, this could even be a feature of the system: a group of voters can ensure that their favorite product is favored, even if the electorate as a whole doesn't care. But it's also a bug, because that group is also forcing basic goods to be underproduced.

I'm only trying to envision a realistic scenario where this would happen.

Look at every voting system ever, and every political scientist ever? People game systems all the time. People also abuse things owned by the commons. And what the system enables them to ignore, they ignore.

I don't want to be merely snarky, but I've pointed out two major problems and your response is just "I don't think that would happen!" But.... not wanting to recognize the problem is not addressing the problem. You improve your model by looking at hard cases, and you're not even looking at them.

If you were an actual political movement, believe me, I'd be more demanding. Nobody gets to run a country based on the strategy of "in my perfect system everyone will be nicer." I would expect small-scale tests and proofs that millions of voters can reliably manage an economic system.

No it doesn't, because to increase production of a good in the market, you have to increase prices, and that automatically decreases demand.

Under this theory, how did the oil industry corner the market through low gas prices? The way I see it, the market doesn't just satisfy demand. It generates the specific demands that maximize the profit of capitalists.

And this is the other response— "capitalism is worse!" But the alternatives are not "rotting bones' voting system" vs. "robber baron capitalism." There are all sorts of non-capitalist alternatives, including non-centralized ones. Or even centralized ones that don't rely on your voting scheme.

Nonetheless, I think you can't design a better system without understanding the current one, and the problems it's trying to solve. Petroleum is not the invention of capitalists; it's just a natural resource. Communists exploited it too— and just as badly. Petroleum happens to be a highly efficient, but also limited resource, so it enabled a huge productivity bubble. The competing sources (wood, coal, charcoal) were even worse for the environment.

Petroleum is an opportunity and a problem... in fact I'm facing this in my Almea+400 project, where as it happens it's a way more limited resource. A society built on the idea of cheap energy is going to face big problems if that energy starts not being cheap any more. And that's any society, capitalist or socialist or run by elves.

I made a big deal of people wanting beef because, well, that's what humans do. Not so much in India, where powerful religious scruples restrict (but do not eliminate) meat-eating. When people have some more money, as they did in the postwar boom in the First World, they eat more meat. And this has huge ecological effects.

Overall I think you're making the same error that Orwell pointed out in his review of Wilde: you think the the world is infinitely prosperous, so by redistributing the wealth, everyone could have anything they wanted. Well, it's been tried: you can eliminate the rich, but it doesn't make the population well-off.

The good news, as I said in the blog post: we're no longer in Orwell's world. Just redistributing, if we could manage it, would give us a comfortable enough life. But we still couldn't get everything we want, and your voting system that pretends we can would only cause trouble.

[rotting bones]

Measuring stated demands is not measuring utility, because utility is based on aggregate demand as observed not through speech but through action.

Demand is not utility. I claim that the system I proposed maximizes utility. Measuring demand is a part of it. I do not believe that the market maximizes utility.

Desire cannot be a map of a material reality if desire is not solely dependant on physical conditions.

I could spin this analogy out to infinity by calling desire a part of the legend on maps of realities like production and distribution, but the point is that the axioms of mainstream economics are unscientifically subjective in nature, like so:

A map's only purpose is to represent the territory. Price is a map of value, because it is the measurement of value.

Except for the empirical reality that nothing has ever had any value whatsoever. This "value" is an artifact of, in this case, the capitalist delivery mechanism, not material reality.

Delivery mechanism is not related, because we're going to first principles in which you can simplify all exchanges as being an agent gives away a widget in return for something representing the value of the widget.

On the contrary, the simple fact of the matter is that no two things have ever been exchanged. Rather, a physical system changes state by following the laws of physics. The idea of "exchange" is a subjective fantasy created after the fact by the overall economic machine that keeps society running.

The agents could be people, could be organisations. The widget could be a commodity, a service or even an idea. The idea of what an exchange even is does not rely on delivery mechanisms.

Sorry to sound like a broken record, but "agents" and "commodities" are functions of delivery mechanisms. If you don't believe me, consider that in practice, the agency of slaves change based on whether they live in a slave society or not. Reality consists of fundamental particles like quarks and electrons that have no agency.

[rotting bones]

Look at every voting system ever, and every political scientist ever? People game systems all the time. People also abuse things owned by the commons. And what the system enables them to ignore, they ignore.

I understand that people will game the system. The current system is gamed too. I'm asking what problems you are envisioning that the current system doesn't already have. I am asking this because I am not trying to build a system that cannot be gamed. I am trying to solve specific problems with the current system, and "being able to be gamed" is not one of those problems.

And this is the other response— "capitalism is worse!" But the alternatives are not "rotting bones' voting system" vs. "robber baron capitalism." There are all sorts of non-capitalist alternatives, including non-centralized ones. Or even centralized ones that don't rely on your voting scheme.

Decentralized production is expensive, etc.

Petroleum is not the invention of capitalists; it's just a natural resource.

I agree completely.

Communists exploited it too— and just as badly.

Communism was state capitalism that reproduced the dynamics of artificial scarcity, etc.

Petroleum happens to be a highly efficient, but also limited resource, so it enabled a huge productivity bubble. The competing sources (wood, coal, charcoal) were even worse for the environment.

Petroleum is an opportunity and a problem... in fact I'm facing this in my Almea+400 project, where as it happens it's a way more limited resource. A society built on the idea of cheap energy is going to face big problems if that energy starts not being cheap any more. And that's any society, capitalist or socialist or run by elves.

I made a big deal of people wanting beef because, well, that's what humans do. Not so much in India, where powerful religious scruples restrict (but do not eliminate) meat-eating. When people have some more money, as they did in the postwar boom in the First World, they eat more meat. And this has huge ecological effects.

Overall I think you're making the same error that Orwell pointed out in his review of Wilde: you think the the world is infinitely prosperous, so by redistributing the wealth, everyone could have anything they wanted. Well, it's been tried: you can eliminate the rich, but it doesn't make the population well-off.

The good news, as I said in the blog post: we're no longer in Orwell's world. Just redistributing, if we could manage it, would give us a comfortable enough life. But we still couldn't get everything we want, and your voting system that pretends we can would only cause trouble.

Look, I explained that I am trying to make the demand system less personal in order to allow people to vote their conscience. I understand if you aren't convinced by that. I just think that makes you undemocratic.

[zompist]

Look at every voting system ever, and every political scientist ever? People game systems all the time. People also abuse things owned by the commons. And what the system enables them to ignore, they ignore.

I understand that people will game the system. The current system is gamed too. I'm asking what problems you are envisioning that the current system doesn't already have. I am asking this because I am not trying to build a system that cannot be gamed.

I pointed out areas where you will make things worse. I thought you'd be interested in improving your system, but it appears not.

[rotting bones]

I pointed out areas where you will make things worse. I thought you'd be interested in improving your system, but it appears not.

Are you referring to the fact that my system can be gamed or something else? If you're talking about being gamed, could you explain how your proposal can't be gamed? If it's something else, I would appreciate being reminded of what you're thinking of. Thank you.

[zompist]

I pointed out areas where you will make things worse. I thought you'd be interested in improving your system, but it appears not.

Are you referring to the fact that my system can be gamed or something else? If you're talking about being gamed, could you explain how your proposal can't be gamed? If it's something else, I would appreciate being reminded of what you're thinking of. Thank you.

Er... what is "my proposal"? I'm not advocating a system.

But if you really can't figure out what I'm saying, perhaps I was unclear. Your voting system is designed to reward unreality and obliviousness. Nothing about it encourages the sort of informed, ethical decision-making you want. Complaining about other systems does not improve your system. I can think of improvements to your system, but why don't you spend some time on that?

The clearest problem is with externalities: your system encourages people to be far more careless than they can be in a market system. A market system is also a voting system, but one that dynamically changes to disincentivize overproduction and inefficiency.

The problem with gaming the system is part of the obliviousness: given an infinite buffet, people will always go for the tastiest stuff. Your system pretends that the buffer is infinite and greed doesn't have any consequences.

When I mention markets, you seem to go into full-ideologue CAPITALISM BAD BAD BAD mode. That's not helpful. The reflex CAPITALISM BAD seems to make you unable to acknowledge any problems that are not capitalism. Scarcity is not an evil foisted on us by capitalists. Pollution, climate change, pandemics, same thing. I agree with you that a more "socialist" system could handle things better, but "socialism" does not mean your voting system.

[Travis B.]

I pointed out areas where you will make things worse. I thought you'd be interested in improving your system, but it appears not.

Are you referring to the fact that my system can be gamed or something else? If you're talking about being gamed, could you explain how your proposal can't be gamed? If it's something else, I would appreciate being reminded of what you're thinking of. Thank you.

I agree here - one needs to show how the proposed issues with the alternatives to the current system do not occur in the current system. People game capitalism all the time - for all the supposed competition that is a supposed benefit of capitalism corporations are constantly trying to reduce it in their own favor, for instance. Likewise, to encourage executives to favor the interests of the capitalist enterprises they put clauses in their contract where they get a bonus based on the performance of their employers - only for executives to fire the R&D department to temporarily create a increase in profits, and thus secure their bonus, at the cost of the business's long-term viability.

[rotting bones]

Er... what is "my proposal"? I'm not advocating a system.

What about your decentralized socialism?

But if you really can't figure out what I'm saying, perhaps I was unclear.

Not necessarily. I'm on Skype with my mother while writing these posts. Sorry if that's too obvious.

Your voting system is designed to reward unreality and obliviousness. Nothing about it encourages the sort of informed, ethical decision-making you want. Complaining about other systems does not improve your system. I can think of improvements to your system, but why don't you spend some time on that? The clearest problem is with externalities: your system encourages people to be far more careless than they can be in a market system. A market system is also a voting system, but one that dynamically changes to disincentivize overproduction and inefficiency.

I will try to improve, but I'm focused on addressing your criticisms right now. The thing is, capitalist prudence is enforced carelessness. What you are calling the "carelessness" of my system is me giving people an opening to be prudent on the terms provided by physical reality rather than dictating what they should do.

The problem with gaming the system is part of the obliviousness: given an infinite buffet, people will always go for the tastiest stuff. Your system pretends that the buffer is infinite and greed doesn't have any consequences.

I did assume that people are capable of attaining to rationality. Is that the essence of your complaint?

When I mention markets, you seem to go into full-ideologue CAPITALISM BAD BAD BAD mode. That's not helpful. The reflex CAPITALISM BAD seems to make you unable to acknowledge any problems that are not capitalism. Scarcity is not an evil foisted on us by capitalists. Pollution, climate change, pandemics, same thing. I agree with you that a more "socialist" system could handle things better, but "socialism" does not mean your voting system.

But I support markets. I'm arguing that some scarcity is artificial, not that all scarcity is artificial. People from all political camps agree that artificial scarcity exists. Non-socialists can plainly see landlords letting their properties remain vacant instead of letting the homeless use it. Even that angry Scotsman Carlyle complains that despite having workers and implements ready, they couldn't go to work because the markets weren't right, whatever that means.

I suppose what I don't understand is which of my claims you find controversial.

[rotting bones]

I agree here - one needs to show how the proposed issues with the alternatives to the current system do not occur in the current system. People game capitalism all the time - for all the supposed competition that is a supposed benefit of capitalism corporations are constantly trying to reduce it in their own favor, for instance. Likewise, to encourage executives to favor the interests of the capitalist enterprises they put clauses in their contract where they get a bonus based on the performance of their employers - only for executives to fire the R&D department to temporarily creating a temporary increase in profits, and thus secure their bonus, at the cost of the business's long-term viability.

Yes, thank you!

[zompist]

I agree here - one needs to show how the proposed issues with the alternatives to the current system do not occur in the current system.

Wow. This just makes no sense at all. No problem with a system need be discussed if it occurs in any form in another system?

How about discussing a system without the goddamn defensiveness? You're talking about ordering the lives of millions of people. No criticisms are allowed, no problems will ever occur, anyone who disagrees must be an avid supporter of every evil of the current system.

I keep wanting to dial things down, but seriously, fuck that attitude. You believe in democratic socialism? Then fucking get used to criticism.

[rotting bones]

Wow. This just makes no sense at all. No problem with a system need be discussed if it occurs in any form in another system?

How about discussing a system without the goddamn defensiveness? You're talking about ordering the lives of millions of people. No criticisms are allowed, no problems will ever occur, anyone who disagrees must be an avid supporter of every evil of the current system.

I keep wanting to dial things down, but seriously, fuck that attitude. You believe in democratic socialism? Then fucking get used to criticism.

I welcome your criticism. All I'm saying is, if decentralized socialism can be gamed too, then what is the point of saying that democratic socialism can be gamed? To increase the contrast, if I objected that people will die under decentralized socialism, wouldn't you complain that people die under all political systems?

[mèþru]

If your argument really is that things that are not physically concrete don't exist, "mechanism", "delivery", "agency", "self", "you" "methru" all don't exist either. Most things are a construct of the mind. Even language doesn't have objective meaning. The perception of a constantly changing set of atoms as being a single set together is a construction with no actual basis in purely physical terms, and neither is there any basis in calling it a toothbrush.

Value is empirically observable by the way prices change by situation. For an example that doesn't deal with material concerns, advertisements create a desire through suggestion, which then changes the amount people are willing to pay for the item - the utility of the item has increased by power of suggestion, even if the item is just a decorative figurine with no practical use. This is not necessarily capitalist - this phenomenon can be observed in socialist economies with advertisements for entertainment such as theatrical posters for movies.

I did assume that people are capable of attaining to rationality

I think it is bold to assume anyone knows the truly rational, or that rationality is even a real conception rather than another form of bias. Macroeconomists often assume rational actors, but these are rational only in a self-serving way and also more a simplifying assumption for equations than something that is actually true.

I think the best way to stop gaming of capitalism is to build a more socialist system without abandoning capitalism. If the people can be convinced to take action against capitalism, then it should be even easier to convince them of reform. If people can't be convinced to end the status quo then we're all screwed anyway. I think the biggest problem is not convincing people that things are bad, it is convicing everyone to oppose the status quo for the same reasons as you do and working to the same solution. I've never encountered a single politically opinionated person, left, right or centre who ever said "things are fine the way they are now" for any given now. At worst they might get nostalgic for a period after it's already over, but not content while living in it.