This is crazy because people need to work to survive and what if their only options are people who are trying to take advantage? I get that. It’s not a practical proposal.
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But all the actual productive capacity of the economy is in people who are making positive-sum contributions. The “nation” of positive-sum builders and helpers is, by necessity, richer than the “nation” of zero-sum takers. In actual resources if not dollars.
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Imagine if everyone went on a sort of “strike” all at once: don’t work with or for anyone you think is sleazy or unfair. Don’t do any job you think is pointless or immoral. Just actually listen to your personal judgment. Would everyone starve?
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Replying to @s_r_constantin
Yes, this experiment was run many times as communism. People's intuitions about what's "bad" and "unfair" are an exceptionally poor way of organising society; personal morality just doesn't scale.
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Replying to @RokoMijicUK
Communism was not self-organized. It was led by revolutionary leaders who told the peasants what to do.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin
Which is because it's hard to get anything done without leadership, people realize this & leadership emerges. Most actual progress IMO comes from good ideas that scale well, like rule of law, the scientific method, markets, peaceful and orderly transition of power etc.
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Replying to @RokoMijicUK @s_r_constantin
Most anti-progress doesn't come from too many bad people, but from bad ideas like communism, superstition, acceptance of feelings as more worthy than facts, promotion of incestuous procreation, promotion of the extended family over the state & other corruption, etc.
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Replying to @RokoMijicUK
This is the main obvious alternative to my intuition. (Apart from the extended-family thing? Never heard of that.)
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @RokoMijicUK
Like, this is conservatism, what you’re saying, and it isn’t unreasonable!
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @RokoMijicUK
But the “hippie” or “Quaker” or “Randian” intuition is like “look. We have no real shortage of positive-sum contributors in the world. They tolerate assholes because they’re *confused* and think “maybe it’s just me, maybe that guy isn’t an asshole and I’m just missing something.”
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“Non-assholes have all the *real* power except the power to confuse people into second-guessing their own judgments of character or convincing people that character doesn’t matter.”
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @RokoMijicUK
Institutions and incentives matter, but they are tools made by people. Good incentive design is a type of work and like all work it is only done well by “productive contributors” who are trying to create value even if they can’t capture it all.
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