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What if our fundamentals are exactly backwards?
New to The Motte, looking for constructive, critical discussion.
Here's an example of what I mean by a "fundamental":
Every economic system that has seemed credible to most people since the dawn of civilization has revolved around the legal establishment and safeguarding of property through the concept of ownership.
But what is ownership? I have my own ideas, but I asked ChatGPT and was surprised that it pretty much hit the nail on the head: the definitional characteristic of ownership is the legal right to deprive others.
This has been such a consistently universal view that very few people question it. Even fewer have thought through a cogent alternative. Most people go slack-jawed at the suggestion that an alternative is possible.
Here's something from years back, before I'd zeroed in on the perverse nature of ownership:
Anyone want to brainstorm a viable alternative to "ownership"?
/images/17459352527399495.webp
Ownership greatly predates humanity, much less civilization. Stick a bunch of GPS collars on wolves and you can see which territory each pack "owns". Establishing a Schelling point of "this is ours, that is theirs" is what naturally evolves to reduce negative-sum conflicts over rivalrous goods as soon as you have a species whose minds can handle such a distinction, which is much earlier than you get a species whose minds can handle (much less invent - Schelling was writing less than a century ago!) the underlying game theory.
If anything, civilization started out with a step backwards in the conception of ownership. The early "palace economy" city-states, where you gave your production to the ruler(s) and hopefully enough of it was eventually doled back out to you, are much more accurately described as a way to "Usurp rights over resources ... by fiat and, if necessary, by fraud and/or force" than anything capitalists typically do. It took a very long time before the study of economics (famously named "the dismal science" in a pro-slavery screed, because it "finds the secret of this Universe in 'supply and demand', and reducing the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone") managed to successfully convince most economists that individual ownership can be more fruitful than collective ownership, not just more moral, and I'm afraid it still hasn't managed to become convincing to most non-economists.
The above wiki link is one place to look to see why this is positively wrong, but here it's normatively wrong as well.
I don't disagree much with your points per se. My criticism of thinking like yours relates to contextual bias. Game theory is a prime (but not the only) example. It applies only to human affairs in which actors are predominately self-interested and operate from self-interest. The predication of the theory tacitly asserts that self-interest is fundamental in all human interactions among all humans. What if that premise actually applies only to people suffering from psychopathologies? At any rate, the idea that it covers the whole of human experience is ribald. No, it doesn't, as any loving parent can tell you.
That was just one example of contextual bias. There are more we could talk about.
"Ownership greatly predates humanity, much less civilization." Your data, evidence, serious empirical research for that claim? I've seen none, and I've been looking for it most my life -- let's just call it more than 50 years. If you've got some, I'm all ears -- produce it.
Ownership is a LEGAL concept. Wanting, using, belonging, possessing, protecting, depriving (and a lot more) are reflections of different kinds and degrees of attachment to desirables. Only ownership is legalized, which means ownership exists only in societies where laws rule -- even if just the "law" of a family patriarch. So, no, ownership does not predate humanity, unless laws predate humanity. I know of no laws among wolves. On the other hand, any human or animal attachment can easily and incorrectly (or at least baselessly) be characterized as "ownership". Characterizing something does not make it what it is. More often, when people resort to characterizations, it's precisely because the thing is not what they want it to be.
"The above wiki link is one place to look to see why this is positively wrong, but here it's normatively wrong as well."
I'm well-capable of researching. It's how I got to where I'm at. I didn't come to The Motte for unsolicited help on improving my research capabilities -- although I do appreciate the link and I'll look at it. I came here for discussion. If you think that "paranoid who don't understand the concept of sharing" is positively and "normatively" wrong, explain. If you can't explain, then you can understand that it casts a shadow on the credibility of your ipse dixit claim. How do you know it's wrong? How is it wrong? What parts? I register that you are one person, a stranger to me, who thinks it's wrong. Your opinion has weight with me. But I didn't come here to sift through opinions. If your opinion has merit, show it.
On top of that, what someone else said in something you link to says nothing about your thinking about the material. That's what's interesting to me. What's primary or important in your grasp of the material? What parts apply here, and to what degree, and to what result? I'm glad to make my thinking clear. I expect you to do the same.
Hardly. Evolutionary stable strategies (like mating strategies) are aptly modeled by game theory.
Not really. The selfish move in the prisoner's dilemma is to defect, yet the people studying games are not idiots and have noticed strategies that lead to cooperation and therefore greater payoffs.
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