The situation with complicated topics is that people who doesn’t understand what’s going on (most people) ally with people who have sometimes honest and often half-fake critiques of the position most people who did read the book have. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleggers_and_Baptists …
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I’ll be more clear. I think almost all politicians missed the “click” that any ancap has experienced regarding prices. The ancap stuff is also an oversimplified model. Intelligent critiques of ancap exist. Politicians aren’t making them. See also: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ATMWK3O/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_rG7GEbXJAPEFB …
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And to muddy the waters again, they aren’t 0/10 making the intelligent critique...they are 2/10 making it. Because you can miss object-level reality while still being really perceptive about modeling social gradients and the values of the people making arguments.
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Replying to @diviacaroline
so your point is "steelmanning is kind of pointless; the people who disagree with you don't actually hold the steelman view, they hold a much dumber and more naive view, and you're not even really being kind to them by ascribing views they don't hold"?
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @diviacaroline
like "it's pointless to argue about the academic/theoretical versions of political opinions, because ~nobody holds them, they hold simpler and dumber positions; people hold dumb positions because of real concerns plus misunderstandings/ignorance/internal limits"
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Replying to @s_r_constantin
I think it can be fun and you can maybe find your people by doing it. And maybe you. Sn even fund a think tank and influence policy on the margin or whatever. But today I’m more interested in the thing that prevents people from understanding the basic argument.
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Replying to @diviacaroline
like, what is *actually* going on with people who don't get prices?
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @diviacaroline
I usually explain it like...most people do not "do business" even if they work in the private sector. Most people don't sell a thing and decide how much to charge for it. Most Americans (I think?) have never haggled.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @diviacaroline
I know someone whose reaction to "this makes it harder to open a factory or office" was a sarcastic "oh my heart bleeds for you" (implicitly: "if you employ people or rent a working space you are so rich/powerful you can't have any real problems.")
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @diviacaroline
for the record, LOTS of people who are not rich or powerful have at least one employee or are self-employed or have had to find and pay for their own working space.
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But like...if making business decisions is not a thing you have done or a thing your culture sees as aspirational, then you probably see "businessmen" as people who have large boxes of goods and are willfully/greedily refusing to give them away for free.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @diviacaroline
It is true that the *very* poorest people are usually not "doing business", but I'm not sure the correlation holds above about $50,000 a year? Lots of well-paid employees who never set prices or sell things or negotiate, lots of not-super-rich people who own auto repair shops
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @diviacaroline
Like, a lot of people think "Why can't you just pay workers more/treat workers nicer/charge less for your products/give away all your money? You *can*, you're just selfish."
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