Oceans Yet to Burn

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

@remedialaction

Like how the birth of farm machines meant the excess former farmers were unemployed forever, huh?

A sector largely requiring large amounts of unskilled labor is replaced by a sector largely requiring large amounts of unskilled labor.  In what ways might the current situation be different from that?

Horses’ power and speed were their primary economic interest.  Once machines were able to do this better and cheaper, with horses limited to niche applications, what happened to the horses?  

Humans’ intelligence is unique in the economy, but machines are now becoming more and more intelligent and adaptable.  In one sector this might just displace workers, but what happens when it applies to all sectors simultaneously?  Why would you hire a human worker, who cannot work below a certain minimum due to resource requirements to survive, rather than just use a machine that does the same thing for less money?

Is there any law of economics that requires that someone’s maximum feasible production be enough for them to survive?  Remember to account for opportunity cost of the necessary resources in your answer, such as real estate being purchased by those with orders of magnitude higher productivity.

It seems there rather clearly isn’t such a law since economically non-viable people already exist.

This position of yours appears to stem from an ideological pre-commitment to Capitalism, and I say this as someone that argues against Communists.  The ability of Capitalism to outperform Stalin on human suffering is conditional, and those conditions have held for a long time, but that is slowly changing.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[mitigatedchaos]

@bambamramfan

Regarding my disdain for talking about “Contradictions in Capitalism”:

My choice of animals as an example was quite deliberate.  The idea that “contradictions” within a system will collapse it is in contrast to how systems are physically realized.  This world is chock full of animals that are slowly destroyed by the very same chemical processes that enable them to live and grow in the first place.  Some aspects of aging, particularly ones aimed at preventing unregulated cell multiplication, are most likely anti-cancer mechanisms.  Cancer itself could be read similarly - the same mechanisms of cell replication we depend on to exist will almost inevitably become corrupted through prolonged use and environmental damage and eventually turn on us.

Other things that are contradictory on the surface may be, at deeper levels, attempts to adapt to physical constraints.

So, to me, talking about “contradictions in capitalism” feels a lot like saying “hah, that elephant is a product of cell replication, but cell replication will eventually destroy him!”  It doesn’t feel like any sort of deep insight, and despite the inevitable destruction of the original elephant, elephants continue on anyway.

One might as well talk about “Contradictions in Communism” as applied to mere human beings at that rate.  If systems are actually destroyed through internal systematic/philosophical contradictions, then surely it must have them.

(Someone actually ideologically committed to Capitalism on a moral level, rather than someone who considers it an amoral (not immoral) resource allocation algorithm to be cynically used, would be better-suited to fishing out “Contradictions in Communism”.  I don’t think in a “Contradictions in X” way about systems generally, so I never bothered to cache such things.)

Any replacement system will still require profit of some kind, since circumstances inevitably vary, and without net profit you’ll have to eventually eat into your capital during tough years, until it is finally depleted.

[bambamramfan]

I think my main response to this, and I do not mean this in a dismissive way, is… okay?

Like if you’re okay with your system being contradictory, I can’t prove you wrong, and I don’t aim to change your opinion. I don’t even know how one could prove someone wrong who was already acknowledged in a state of contradiction. If you’re cool with the system, good, have fun.

I guess my only addition would be that the state of contradiction (and its collapse) is not evenly spread out over everyone. Some people are effected by those impossible demands in two directions much more than other people in the system. My perennial example is the unemployed person who is both unable to find a job, and called lazy for not having a job. But there’s also the mother who runs herself ragged trying to “have it all”. And there’s the Republican who has to explain how we’re “keeping the government’s hands off medicare.” And the early career woman who worries about being too bossy for the sexists in her office, but also not assertive enough to live up to her feminist idols.

A lot of individual people have to deal with contradictory demands, sometimes so hard they break. I have enormous compassion for them, and I really want to tell those people “It’s okay. The contradictory demands you face are impossible and I don’t blame you for failing to meet them.”

The other thought is just an empirical one: liberal capitalism is meeting unprecedented challenges. Not from the communism-outside, but from its own polities kicking the outhouse over. You can say some level of contradiction is tolerable for a while, but what do you do when the elephant seems to be finally dying? That again, is an empirical observation and it may be wrong, but you should probably respect that’s how some people feel about the radical polarization of this country and the collapse of trusted liberal institutions.

[mitigatedchaos]

Like if you’re okay with your system being contradictory, I can’t prove you wrong, and I don’t aim to change your opinion. I don’t even know how one could prove someone wrong who was already acknowledged in a state of contradiction. If you’re cool with the system, good, have fun.

This is were I think the “moral aspect” factor comes in.  It doesn’t really make sense, especially when a lot of the close alternatives will produce worse outcomes, to say “Capitalism is contradictory” unless it’s being used as a moral system.  

There are people such as Libertarians and Anarcho-Capitalists who do use it as a moral system, as well as various other right-wingers who don’t understand the true power of AI yet.  (The latter group I am having mixed success on winning over.)  “Your espoused moral system is contradictory” works as a critique for them, certainly.  (I’d go so far as to say that the Anarcho-Capitalists are unwitting enemies of humanity.)

But otherwise, it’s like saying “your elephant is mortal”, and like, I know my elephant is mortal, I’ve looked at a number of elephants and this one and its close relatives were the best ones I could find.  I’ve heard people claim immortal elephants exist, but I’ve never seen one.

A lot of individual people have to deal with contradictory demands, sometimes so hard they break. I have enormous compassion for them, and I really want to tell those people “It’s okay. The contradictory demands you face are impossible and I don’t blame you for failing to meet them.”

And it’s good to show these people compassion, but I think the presence of contradictory demands is going to be a thing so long as tradeoffs must be made - and thanks to opportunity cost, which still very much exists under Communism, there are always going to be tradeoffs.  In other words, I don’t think Capitalism is particularly special in this regard.  (Again, unless one is using it as a moral system.)

Certainly, attempts at Communism have resulted in collisions with reality, where someone is subjected to contradictory expectations, which are partially responsible for the black markets and corruption that resulted.  

The other thought is just an empirical one: liberal capitalism is meeting unprecedented challenges. Not from the communism-outside, but from its own polities kicking the outhouse over. You can say some level of contradiction is tolerable for a while, but what do you do when the elephant seems to be finally dying?

The problem is, aside from wage subsidies or basic share/income, which are still within the same species of elephant, I don’t really see a better elephant right now.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

@bambamramfan

Regarding my disdain for talking about “Contradictions in Capitalism”:

My choice of animals as an example was quite deliberate.  The idea that “contradictions” within a system will collapse it is in contrast to how systems are physically realized.  This world is chock full of animals that are slowly destroyed by the very same chemical processes that enable them to live and grow in the first place.  Some aspects of aging, particularly ones aimed at preventing unregulated cell multiplication, are most likely anti-cancer mechanisms.  Cancer itself could be read similarly - the same mechanisms of cell replication we depend on to exist will almost inevitably become corrupted through prolonged use and environmental damage and eventually turn on us.

Other things that are contradictory on the surface may be, at deeper levels, attempts to adapt to physical constraints.

So, to me, talking about “contradictions in capitalism” feels a lot like saying “hah, that elephant is a product of cell replication, but cell replication will eventually destroy him!”  It doesn’t feel like any sort of deep insight, and despite the inevitable destruction of the original elephant, elephants continue on anyway.

One might as well talk about “Contradictions in Communism” as applied to mere human beings at that rate.  If systems are actually destroyed through internal systematic/philosophical contradictions, then surely it must have them.

(Someone actually ideologically committed to Capitalism on a moral level, rather than someone who considers it an amoral (not immoral) resource allocation algorithm to be cynically used, would be better-suited to fishing out “Contradictions in Communism”.  I don’t think in a “Contradictions in X” way about systems generally, so I never bothered to cache such things.)

Any replacement system will still require profit of some kind, since circumstances inevitably vary, and without net profit you’ll have to eventually eat into your capital during tough years, until it is finally depleted.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[ranma-official]

Something I’ve been thinking towards lately is that the benefits of a free market economy are actually side effects.

For example, the general idea of “competition-driven constant innovation in the form of amazing new products” (ideal outcome) or “marginally improved products at the same prices or the same quality at lower prices”. It appears to me that it’s merely one of the many ways to get market leverage rather than the desired outcome, and at some point it hits diminishing returns pretty hard.

I have a lot of experience dealing with ISPs and saw the mechanism first hand. First we have the amazing benefits of a de facto monopoly who could get away with shit like $100 for dial up speeds in ADSL era being forced to offer cheap fast internet, fast forward a year and we descend into shit like shady under the table deals, dishonest marketing, and guys cutting our fiber to create an impression of unreliable service.

And that’s internet. You can take it or leave it. If you knew what goes on with food you’d never want to eat again.

[mitigatedchaos]

Try applying it to labor and it becomes obvious why politicians have so much trouble “creating jobs”.  Capitalism hates “creating jobs”.  Jobs are a cost.  “Job creators” do not want to “create jobs”.  They want to make money.  The jobs are, to them, an undesirable side effect.