We're talking total output times quality, here. For intellectual work, 1 good idea crushes 10 mediocre ones.
Quantity is severely overrated in a lot of professions.
E.g. most of my work is spent correcting bad design documents that could have been done much better, slower.
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Good ideas have to be implemented and implementation is about quantity of output not just elegance or efficiency or lack of mistakes.
Efficiency and productivity is absolutely fundamental don’t get me wrong but you can’t isolate that as the single dime is up to optimise on.
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Don’t know where you got the idea that capitalism is about productivity tho.
It’s about returns on capital. Not the same thing.
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I didn't?
The mythos of capitalism, that they sell you on every level of discourse, is that it makes the most productive, efficient & prosperous society.
The reality, as I already stated, is that it's about the bottom line only. We'll happily hamstring ourselves to increase it.
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I don’t hear that mythos being pushed where I am at least.
Naked capitalism is very bad at capturing externalities. Hybrid forms can be much better.
And far from obvious that there is a better workable system - the right variant of capitalism is the question IMO.
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Sure. I am from a hypercapitalistic country that everyone seems to think is at least part socialist.
All it is is a different distribution of spoils. Fewer billionaires, fewer poor & homeless...
Yeah, it's a pretty specifically neoliberal fiction I think. Chicago magick.
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The specific fiction that deregulated (or really, WTO-regulated) markets represent the peak in efficient solutions (and economic activity).
Social democracy is pretty different, but it's a postcolonial system. Norway without oil profits is not Norway.
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Oh I see. Ayn Rand has a lot to answer for.
But Norway isnt only soc dem in the world and most of the others are not propped up by oil etc.
There is no utopia. No system without winners and losers. Soc dem capitalism is the best (least bad) we’ve found works it seems to me.
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I agree. The problem is we're still going to accelerate our own destruction with this approach.
Soc dem countries are good places to live, but I'm more concerned about half the globe burning towards uninhabitability.
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The tragedy of the global commons.
Genuinely not sure how to it can be solved short of a world government, or some radical tech like fusion power.
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Big problems society can’t answer sensibly:
How do we stop ruining our future for our present?
Will we ever deem ourselves rich enough to sacrifice the pittance needed to eliminate poverty and hunger? And if yes why not now?
Endless growth has another name: cancer.
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