This idea rhymes with Paul Graham's "Be Good" http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html . "Companies often claim to be benevolent, but it was surprising to realize there were purely benevolent projects that had to be embodied as companies to work." Google started out as almost a nonprofit.
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It's easier to *disguise* zero-sum exploitation as positive-sum contribution if you're professional-class -- there's not much doubt that most janitors are really cleaning, while it's more ambiguous whether most bankers are really trading.
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Nobody can know infallibly whether somebody is doing positive-sum contribution or zero-sum exploitation. People will have different opinions. This is fine.
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Or, at any rate, we have to accept it because it's inevitable. People aren't clones or oracles. Everybody acting on their best judgment (informed by communication with others) is the best humans can possibly do.
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I don't necessarily believe that there is a well-defined group called "exploiters", responsible for most social ills, that the majority of people can recognize and can coordinate to keep out.
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What I believe is that if a significant fraction of people -- including many of the most productive and morally idealistic -- are deluded into thinking that they shouldn't or can't judge people's character & incentivize them accordingly, we're underperforming.
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Paul Graham's idea of a "good person" may be quite different from Justin Murphy's. But both of them would be wrong to suppress their impulses to associate with good people and disassociate with bad people.
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To be clear, I don’t mean “cancel everyone who has flaws and give no second chances.” Not at all. I mean *proportional* incentives; be more willing to help people the more helpful/constructive you think they are on net.
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And “just say no” to extortion. Don’t help people because they threaten to harm you otherwise.
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In rigorous Marxism, all those people are workers, their beef is not with the bosses, it's with the capital owners. (Which of course one can argue, provide a valuable service) https://nintil.com/the-role-of-capitalists-in-capitalism/ …
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right, that's fair. I do think that productive capital allocation is useful as well!
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