Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
What are your 'load-bearing beliefs?' The ones that, if they were disproven (to your epistemic satisfaction) would actually 'collapse' your worldview and force a reckoning with your understanding of reality.
I'm definitively talking about the "is" side of the is/ought distinction. Not your moral beliefs or 'hopes' for how things will turn out.
And not focused on such dry, mostly undisputed facts like "the earth's gravity pulls things towards it center" or "the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell."
Ideally beliefs that you consistently use to make predictions about actual events, despite not having sincere certainty about their accuracy.
One that I've been leaning on a lot lately: "Intelligence tends to be positively (if imperfectly) correlated with wisdom."
This is probably the one thing preserving my general optimism for humanity's future.
There are definitely high-IQ sociopaths running about, but I strongly believe that the world would be in a much worse place if the smartest apes amongst us were not also generally aware of their own limitations and were trying to make good decisions that considered more than just short term interests.
Capitalism tends to produce more efficient/powerful/good outcomes than Socialism.
I can imagine a world filled with rational and/or kind-hearted beings who were able to cooperate together efficiently under a socialist system and share things with a lot less deadweight loss than a capitalist system where people keep trying to exploit each other for profit. I just don't think that's the world we live in, I don't think that's the kind of species we are. Capitalism's greatest strength is its robustness. It can take selfishness and wastefulness and corruption and theft and stupidity, and it automatically pushes back and has individual pieces break without destroying the greater structure, so it can evolve and become stronger. Negative feedback loops instead of positive feedback. Socialism allows corruption to fester and grow like a cancer. At least, that's the world I think we live in. If that were to not be the case and whatever excuses socialists make about why it's always failed were actually true it would change a lot of my beliefs about economics, politics, and human nature.
This is true for me too, but I openly invite people to attack and disprove it. Every year that goes by without someone answering The Economic Calculation Problem I get more certainty that Socialism is impossible in a technical sense at any scale above, like, small village. Every solution they've brought up is either a massive special pleading ("human nature doesn't apply to THIS scenario") or they throw in the towel and accept some market-based solutions to make it work.
And yeah, I believe that EVEN IF you had that perfectly 'altruistic' species (assuming it could survive in the galaxy) because they'd still need inbuilt feedback mechanisms that work in a decentralized way to guide their distribution of resources.
The best objections to Capitalism as it is currently practiced are ones that point out the Molochian Nature of It where it can eat up things you genuinely care about either in the name of pure survival or of maximizing some value nobody really wants maximized but is easier for people to agree upon.
I would still consider a scenario that's like 90% socialist with 10% capitalist hack to be socialist, just like I'd consider a scenario that's 90% capitalist with 10% socialist hack (like universal healthcare) to be capitalist. I'd still consider a long-term successful example of that to be pretty surprising.
Unless it's like post-singularity with some genius AI overlord who can simultaneously solve the economy, efficiently produce tons of resources, and doesn't need much human labor so can just distribute them without much concern for proper incentive structures. But I'd expect such an AI to also be able to solve capitalism's problems and create libertarian capitalist utopia too. For now, when dealing with humans, you need the signalling mechanisms.
I think it's interesting that the last two decades have shown that you don't really need post-singularity AI. Because there has been a surprising explosion in vertical integration, all the most successful growth stories of the 21st century - both on the west and in China - don't really use market forces for their supply chains all that much. It's not quite a "cybernetic planned economy" just yet, but getting halfway there has looked pretty straight forward from the outside.
Tesla and Space X (both have more than 80% of the value creation inhouse) , Amazon (especially with the rise of Amazon Essentials), Apple, Netflix, BYD, Xiaomi, ect.
I think they all discovered that markets are very efficient, but only propagating price information is not enough for the next level of business/product execution. If you do the critical value ads inhouse, you can transmit so much addition information, resulting in significantly more control, you easily outcompete anybody just relying on competition eventually bringing prices down on commodities.
Also, this remarkable transition was mostly achieved with data networks, standard ERP software and hiring enough talent. I don't think anybody know yet how large you can make this vertically integrated blob (although Amazon and BYD are certainly trying) before you run afoul of the problems that brought down all other planned economies. If AI ever actually ends up with a reliable world model, it would certainly be extremely useful for this kind of planning, potentially pushing the size of the blob up another order of magnitude.
And sure, on actual commodity inputs and on final outputs, markets still rule supreme. Still, it's a surprising underperformance of markets vs planned economies in my book.
I don't think this list particularly works apart from the Musk companies. Amazon is a retailer - Amazon Essentials exist, but is <1% of my family's Amazon spend and I don't think I am an outlier. Apple use contract manufacturers. Most of what I streamed on Netflix when I had a subscription was not Netflix original content, which mostly sucks. I can't comment about BYD and Xiaomi specifically, but one thing everyone who writes about the Chinese manufacturing ecosystem says is how much of its edge comes from the ability to buy intermediate inputs in a friction-free way because someone else is making them just down the road, and is happy to take on a rush order.
That said, "big companies are internal planned economies and their existence partially refutes the socialist calculation argument" is old hat - Coase wrote The Nature of the Firm in 1937 and Galbraith wrote The New Industrial State in 1967.
Apparently it's one of the very few commodity products on there that actually has any margin. If this is true, I'll expect Amazon to eventually displace the competition, they are very experienced in the practice...
Then there's the publishing, their on demand book printing, the ebook business. And Amazon is highly vertically integrated even outside of those two, though. The data centers, the software in them, the warehouses, the trucks, ect. The market cannot offer them a competing product on any of those, although they are essentially commodities that other, similar business still get on the market.
Apple is similar. They use contractors on the low margin stuff and the things they absolutely cannot do themselves (SOTA chip fab), but keep the rest of the value add for themselves, and use the additional control that gets them to deliver a superior product directly to their own stores.
I don't understand Netflix either, but that might just be taste. Apparently their slop gets views - obligatory views at that, keeping their audience captive - and thus makes money. Make they are just lying about their metrics. But that would probably be fraud, I don't know. Maybe the average normie really forgets what he's subscribed to.
I know the idea is old, it's the only attack on efficient markets that makes sense. And there were vertically integrated business empires before, but never this many, this successful and seemingly this necessary to compete on product.
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One thing that actually blew my mind when I read it (I think it was in here?) was the idea that Amazon has essentially created "Universal Basic Employment" in the sense that virtually ANYONE can pick up a job in an Amazon Warehouse or as a delivery driver if they are otherwise out of work, anywhere in the country that Amazon exists... so virtually everywhere.
You don't need a degree to move boxes around, you don't need people skills, you probably don't even have to be completely literate. You can move to an area completely fresh and pick up the job while you search for something better.
I literally searched my local area just now and there's an opening for "Warehouse Associate" clearly stating "NO EXPERIENCE NEEDED, NO DEGREE, PART TIME OR FULL TIME, DENTAL AND HEALTH INSURANCE." Paying, allegedly $15-$18 an hour.
So there's pretty much zero excuse to ever be unemployed if you are able-bodied. Add on the Gig economy to fill in any cracks.
This is Problematic as a form of UBE since it’s physically ableist.
There’s also disparate impact implications in its mental ableism: the rugged individualism and Protestant work ethic in requiring people to work for pay; the focus on punctuality, rigid schedules, and the commoditization of time. As summarized by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, these are aspects and assumptions of white culture that oppress People of Color.
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