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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24099 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026

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(Trigger warnings: another AI post; Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

I want to talk about the economy in the face of the AI revolution, but let's go back to the basics first.

What is the purpose of a company? Not the stated one, the original one.

To provide value to its shareholders? Of course not, that's a very narrow view! It's like saying armies exist to kill people.

Do companies and markets provide a decentralized way to coordinate the efforts of large groups of people (choreography vs orchestration)? Yes, but what for?

Do companies and markets exist to maximize the economic output? Many would say yes, but the idea is wrong and will become more obviously wrong the more AI we inject into the economy.

Companies and markets exist to maximize the consumption! They exist so that more people consume more goods and services! The fact that these companies have to pay their workers is not an unwanted side effect, it's a feature! Companies exist to create and distribute goods and services to humans, and markets exist to ensure that each human gets a share that is sufficiently fair.

Both the industrial revolution and the transition to a service-based economy created millions, if not billions of new jobs, but is this an inevitable consequence of free markets? Will AI-fication of the modern economy do the same?

The correct answer is not "yes" or "no". It's "mu". If the economy reinvents itself again and people of the Global North find themselves new jobs, that's fine.

But if we suddenly start running out of jobs, accepting it as the inevitability of the market forces is the wrong way out. The right way out is retiring the market forces, not submitting to them. Creating shareholder value has always been the real side effect.

It's like saying armies exist to kill people.

Of course armies exist to kill people. Any other statement of their purpose (e.g. "to secure a nation's borders") is just a euphemistic rephrasing thereof.

I have always found "fleet in being" an interesting way to look at this question: a bunch of ships can have strategic value even without leaving port, just to tie down enemy resources to use against them because of the implication.

Of course, if nobody ever sails their fleet, the hypothetical threat isn't quite as credible.

If nobody ever sails their fleet, the hypothetical threat is working as intended. Two fleets sit in port glaring at each other across the ocean until the end of time.

To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the height of excellence. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the height of excellence.

Armies exist to further the interests of their employers, killing people is a common byproduct of pursuing that goal. To say armies exist to kill people is akin to saying that slaughterhouses exist to produce runoff, or that the purpose of driving is to wear down your tires.

The only reason an army exists is so that their employers (typically, the government of the nation they represent) can credibly claim that lethal violence will ensue if the need should arise. Thus, the purpose of an army is to kill people.

That's nuclear weapons. The army has a separate though overlapping purpose.

No, absolutely not. A primary reason that Country A doesn't invade Country B is because Country B has an army i.e. a group of soldiers who will attack Country A's soldiers should they cross Country B's borders.

Then why are there people still? Are armies so bad at their job?

Do screwdrivers exist to drive screws? Then why are there undriven screws still? Are screwdrivers so bad at their job?

No, they don't exist to drive screws.

Wow. You're telling me for the first time.

What are screwdrivers for?

To increase the production of goods.

Well just the other day I used a screwdriver to tighten a loose cabinet door. That didn't increase production of anything, in fact, it decreased the demand for new cabinetry.

Am I misusing my screwdriver?

You're right, it's to increase the consumption of goods. Without it you would've stopped consuming your cabinet sooner.

More comments

I think you’re agreeing with @ortherox. Screwdrivers exist to screw screws for a purpose. Screwing is their function.

Likewise armies exist in order to achieve certain things - border protection, having lots of gold, etc. This involves killing people.

Screwdrivers exist to screw screws for a purpose.

Is there anything that exists to do X for no purpose?

Some artists say art, though I don’t agree.

Armies have a purpose the way a tool has a purpose, and like a tool they don't decide when and where they are used or whether it's a good idea to use them as that type of purpose is decided by the state.

They can take on more functions like disaster relief, and they can threaten the state and overthrow it, but though a kitchen knife can be used as a screwdriver or a weapon it's still a kitchen knife.

Wait - is this distinction where Task and Purpose got its name?

Yes, and the purpose of a kitchen knife isn't cutting food, it's nourishment.

I don't think so. In the event that an army has a choice between securing the nation's borders non-lethally with 100% effectiveness, or killing people, we should expect the army to pick the former strategy over the latter. Therefore "the army exists to secure the nation's borders" has information value as more than a euphemism.

The means by which armies secure the borders of their respective nations is by killing people or by providing a credible threat that lethal violence will ensue if their demands are not met. Any purpose an army might conceivably have therefore ultimately boils down to killing people.

This is the means by which armies secure their borders given the current state of technology. But if an army had technology that was more effective than lethal force at protecting the nation's borders (eg, for the sake of argument, foolproof mind-control rays), it would use that instead of killing people. The tails eventually come apart. The better definition of the army's purpose is the one which correctly predicts their actions in all hypothetical situations, rather than the one which only works in the current context but breaks down outside of it, even if both definitions correctly predict armies' actions in the real world.

For example, you might think that an airline's purpose is to make money by conveying passengers from A to B as fast as possible, or you might think that an airline's purpose is to make money by burning jet fuel. In the real world, given the current state of aviation technology, conveying passengers from A to B is going to be done by burning jet fuel. But "conveying passengers from A to B" is a better statement of the airline's purpose than "burning jet fuel", not a euphemism for it, because if a technological breakthrough suddenly gave us a better, cheaper way of powering airplanes than traditional jet fuel, we would expect the companies to switch over in pursuit of more effectively conveying passengers, rather than giving up on conveying now-reluctant passengers and finding other reasons to set fire to jet fuel.

I think you should spend less time inventing pedantic counterfactual hypotheticals.

Is the purpose of nuclear weapons to use them?

The purpose is to use them in certain hypothetical situations. If there are no hypothetical situations in which they are to be used, then they are entirely useless.

Armies exist to provide deterrence at the geopolitical level through the threat of killing people, not to kill people. Auschwitz guards exist to kill people. There's a difference.

I agree that providing deterrence at the geopolitical level is a purpose that armies serve, but not the sole one (e.g. when an army invades a foreign country). But in any case, it's a distinction without a difference. The only reason armies are an effective deterrent is because they are willing and able to do lethal violence on their masters' behalf. Functionally, there's no difference between training someone to do lethal violence and training someone to be willing and able to do lethal violence should the need arise.

Lots of wars don't have much to do with deterrence. The purpose of armies has as much to do with potential gain (more geopolitical and ideological than resource related in the modern day) as it does with defence.

I know some offensive wars can legitimately be justified by the logic of self-defence, but if you want to spread democracy, or communism, or set up some colonies, or intervene in some far away atrocity, you need a bigger army than if your sole concern was defence.

Both gain and deterrence rest on the ability to kill your enemies, and the more credibly you can show your ability there the better you'll do at both. Armies don't go on killing endlessly because it's generally a stupid idea and they ultimately exist to achieve the goals of the state.

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