@icedquinn @aven oh these modern standards lmao. The reason why prostitution was (and still frowned upon) and why the word whore is an insult is because sex was and still is deemed sacred and only shared with people special to you. Meaning, promiscuity in itself is morally wrong. This has nothing to do with monetary exchange.
@icedquinn @aven then I still don’t understand the source of your moral judgment
@icedquinn @aven but they’re not equal. You can’t just compare something that has been frowned upon for millennia to something that has been equally encouraged and celebrated.
@icedquinn @aven I am a child of my judeo-christian society, and so are you. Prostitution being morally wrong is implied, otherwise you should’ve mentioned that from the beginning.
@icedquinn @aven look, the distinction is simple. I would deem it an honour to have the greatest artist of my city among my friends, whether we talk about the quality of his art or the sheer number of commissions. Unlike the most popular hooker. The latter is the kind of people I would rather avoid.
@icedquinn @newt
>they're all contorting themselves to the market for money.
markets are a natural phenomenon that exist whether anyone likes it or not.
Lets say the artist does not "contort" to the market:
If an artist charges above market, which many do for things that they don't actually want to sell (sentimental reasons), they sell less. Maybe they don't sell at all, and they can't get income from it as a profession.
If an artist charges below market price, they are in some senses cheating themselves with low pay, but some do it anyway to start getting their name out there and getting experience and work to build their network and reputation. Most artists hate on them for "cheapening the craft" and lowering the market price, but they are snobby.
>they're all contorting themselves to the market for money.
markets are a natural phenomenon that exist whether anyone likes it or not.
Lets say the artist does not "contort" to the market:
If an artist charges above market, which many do for things that they don't actually want to sell (sentimental reasons), they sell less. Maybe they don't sell at all, and they can't get income from it as a profession.
If an artist charges below market price, they are in some senses cheating themselves with low pay, but some do it anyway to start getting their name out there and getting experience and work to build their network and reputation. Most artists hate on them for "cheapening the craft" and lowering the market price, but they are snobby.
@icedquinn @newt oh, the other downside of selling below market prices is that the artist can end up in exploitative relationships where people expect to get things cheap from them. They may have difficulty in advocating for themselves and raising their rates. I know this from personal experience.
@icedquinn @newt they're natural, neither good nor evil.
Using them wisely as a price discovery mechanism can help you make sales and money without getting exploited.
Choosing to hate them or pretend they don't exist leads to poverty and exploitation.
Using them wisely as a price discovery mechanism can help you make sales and money without getting exploited.
Choosing to hate them or pretend they don't exist leads to poverty and exploitation.
@icedquinn @newt it's like gravity. It's neither good nor evil.
Understanding and using gravity can lead to good through engineering.
Choosing to hate gravity or pretend it doesn't exist leads to injury and collapse.
Understanding and using gravity can lead to good through engineering.
Choosing to hate gravity or pretend it doesn't exist leads to injury and collapse.
@aven @newt its the best system that has been tried, and one that self-asserts without active management.
it is not a *good* system. https://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-sell-a-con/
it is not a *good* system. https://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-sell-a-con/
@icedquinn @newt it's not even a system, or something that can be tried, in any social-construct sense. I wasn't talking about capitalism, just markets.
Corruption and scamming is different.
Corruption and scamming is different.
@icedquinn @newt and I remember jwz blog, there's some cool stuff there, even if I disagree with some of it.
But what he's describing is VC's scamming naive young programmers to work for below market rates. I've experienced this, too. They'll appeal to altruism and lofty visions without any down-payment.
It's the *lack* of business acumen and adherence to business sense and markets that's the cause of the evil, in that use case.
But what he's describing is VC's scamming naive young programmers to work for below market rates. I've experienced this, too. They'll appeal to altruism and lofty visions without any down-payment.
It's the *lack* of business acumen and adherence to business sense and markets that's the cause of the evil, in that use case.
@aven @newt the disagreement i have is that a small privileged group of billionaires have no qualifications to be telling the rest of society how they are allowed to live or what they are allowed to try doing.
unfortunately these kind of things have become hypernormalized, so people have to be over here knife fighting for table scraps or dancing for the rich.
there have been non-marxist attempts to bring this shit in to line, although they always end up getting terminated as soon as they actually start to harm the rich.
unfortunately these kind of things have become hypernormalized, so people have to be over here knife fighting for table scraps or dancing for the rich.
there have been non-marxist attempts to bring this shit in to line, although they always end up getting terminated as soon as they actually start to harm the rich.
@icedquinn @newt ...and there have never been marxist attempts at all, right? because it's never been attempted?
Marx was rich, and all marxists are lead and funded by the super-rich. But I'm sure they'll show those rich what-for.
Marx was rich, and all marxists are lead and funded by the super-rich. But I'm sure they'll show those rich what-for.
@aven @icedquinn Marx was poor. Not because he didn’t have access to money — he had rather handsome inheritance and was also generously funded by his friends, mostly by Engels — but because he spent all his money on hookers and card games. He is exactly the kind of person I would never take a financial advice from.
@newt @aven the england case would have been interesting to see pan out. the whole thing is a bizzare case study.
housing the poor was inconvenient so they just stuffed them all in a single building with cots. and then you got the usual "but muh tax moneh, why should anyone be allowed to sleep in a bed while i go to work" crowd. but by decree they couldn't just go close the poor house. so they were forced to actually address it, which lead to .. putting job boards there, because people were asking how you expected them to work if there were no opportunities.
eventually lead to the foremen of some of the workhouses turning the place in to a sweat shop. they tried to do it on the social permission of "well they're poors so who cares, get a job if you want anything better." but then it came out they were treating them *really* badly, and being britons they could gripe and people heard about it. this lead to some fuckery where people who get a ton of money exploiting outsourcing started to get protested for hiring outside the country while people inside had no jobs, while the sweat shops were being protested for poor treating of britons, a lot of economic machinery was about to get blown out.
there were no super taxes. no mass reposession of wealth from elites. they just said, you are not allowed to use homelessness as level zero anymore. and modern society almost fucking detonated itself.
its wild as hell.
housing the poor was inconvenient so they just stuffed them all in a single building with cots. and then you got the usual "but muh tax moneh, why should anyone be allowed to sleep in a bed while i go to work" crowd. but by decree they couldn't just go close the poor house. so they were forced to actually address it, which lead to .. putting job boards there, because people were asking how you expected them to work if there were no opportunities.
eventually lead to the foremen of some of the workhouses turning the place in to a sweat shop. they tried to do it on the social permission of "well they're poors so who cares, get a job if you want anything better." but then it came out they were treating them *really* badly, and being britons they could gripe and people heard about it. this lead to some fuckery where people who get a ton of money exploiting outsourcing started to get protested for hiring outside the country while people inside had no jobs, while the sweat shops were being protested for poor treating of britons, a lot of economic machinery was about to get blown out.
there were no super taxes. no mass reposession of wealth from elites. they just said, you are not allowed to use homelessness as level zero anymore. and modern society almost fucking detonated itself.
its wild as hell.
@icedquinn @aven europe in general was wild as hell during the Industrial Revolution. Populations skyrocketed, cities became crammed, etc. For one, Switzerland is today one of the richest countries (per capita), but mere 200 years ago it suffered from borderline famine for decades, up to the point when a third of its entire population fucked off to Americas. There is a reason why Uruguay has a place called Nuevo Helvetica that makes Swiss cheese.
@newt @aven i'm wondering if the brain damage has reached the stage where people honestly can't process cause effect chains, or they are just so miserably diseducated that they don't know to do it.
there's a growing amount of these problems where people show complete ineptitude with complex planning.
"we want everything to cost more, but we don't want the price of everything to change."
there's a growing amount of these problems where people show complete ineptitude with complex planning.
"we want everything to cost more, but we don't want the price of everything to change."
@icedquinn @aven it’s just the human condition and living in the cities. For many people, croissants come from Starbucks and there is nothing more to this.
@newt @aven i guess the major issue of marx economies is they don't heed that people on the small scale are unpredictable. Hayek writes about socialism becomes fascism because everyone wants to control all the money, and control abhors uncertainties like art and activities that serve no purpose.
libertarian economies let you do whatever, but unfortunately "completely take over society and replace it with crony capitalism" is the most common outcome of "do whatever."
it looks like most of the nice things come from a healthy dose of controlled chaos, which is abhorrent to crony capitalism (it threatens the power structure) and marxism (it can't handle it)
libertarian economies let you do whatever, but unfortunately "completely take over society and replace it with crony capitalism" is the most common outcome of "do whatever."
it looks like most of the nice things come from a healthy dose of controlled chaos, which is abhorrent to crony capitalism (it threatens the power structure) and marxism (it can't handle it)
@icedquinn @aven jokes on you, marxist economies are perfect examples of cronie capitalism. With the sole difference that the main currency is social status and connections, not money per se.
@icedquinn @newt what do you mean by "chaos"?
@aven @newt there is a natural relationship between the amount of energy in a system and the instability / unpredictable nature of the system.
taleb talks about how capitalism works because it privatizes losses (the person taking on the risk pays to take the risk) and socializes successes (the patents eventually expire.)
this does require the opportunity to take risks to exist in the first place. which is something beurocracy always tries to destroy--c.f. why i don't support the EU mandating phone charging cables. governments are a low, typically eternally outdated and out of touch process, compared to STEM which will have gone through six revisions by the time a lawyer finishes starting up Word.
if you look at hyper competitive folk and super winners, they absolutely *abhor* randomness. everything about them is control. go look at fighting games with randomness--the tourneys do everything they can to rip it out.
taleb talks about how capitalism works because it privatizes losses (the person taking on the risk pays to take the risk) and socializes successes (the patents eventually expire.)
this does require the opportunity to take risks to exist in the first place. which is something beurocracy always tries to destroy--c.f. why i don't support the EU mandating phone charging cables. governments are a low, typically eternally outdated and out of touch process, compared to STEM which will have gone through six revisions by the time a lawyer finishes starting up Word.
if you look at hyper competitive folk and super winners, they absolutely *abhor* randomness. everything about them is control. go look at fighting games with randomness--the tourneys do everything they can to rip it out.
@aven @newt certainty *requires* the destruction of opportunity. you cannot collapse the wave function to know what is there, while also retaining the ability for every possible value to be there.
which leads to another error that elites always make in the end: they get so used to having lived in a static society they strangled to death, that when everything goes to full chaos (like the WEF flirts with wanting) they quickly realize that nobody controls that anymore and shit falls where it falls at that level of instability.
which leads to another error that elites always make in the end: they get so used to having lived in a static society they strangled to death, that when everything goes to full chaos (like the WEF flirts with wanting) they quickly realize that nobody controls that anymore and shit falls where it falls at that level of instability.
@icedquinn @newt that's a pretty complex and abstract discussion.
I don't think patents are very capitalist, because they are the government enforcing monopoly over math. They restrict free markets and voluntary transaction.
When a corporation biases toward certainty over opportunity, they have to be already dominant in the market, and in the long run they become dinosaurs. They get out-competed in the long-run and wither away (without anyone dying). Frequently this requires patents and copyright lawyer-mongering to pull off.
When a government biases toward certainty over opportunity (socialism and planned economy), they see competition as counter-productive, because the cooperative way is to
1) Decide the best way to make the widget
2) Only do it that one way, and create a huge economy of scale by having a single state-owned corporation make it
and they see competition and experimentation as a waste of resources.
The result is the entire country becoming a dinosaur, and when they choose a bad way as "the best and only way", starvation.
On a more personal/psychological level, it's not about chaos-good/chaos-bad. It's about skill in converting chaos to order. That's the value. Sitting around in the order you've created from chaos, is stagnation. I actually don't like those hyper-competitive MOBAs, because they punish creativity and exploration. Too much order.
Too much chaos is fatal, too, but now I'm just talking like Jordan Peterson.
I don't think patents are very capitalist, because they are the government enforcing monopoly over math. They restrict free markets and voluntary transaction.
When a corporation biases toward certainty over opportunity, they have to be already dominant in the market, and in the long run they become dinosaurs. They get out-competed in the long-run and wither away (without anyone dying). Frequently this requires patents and copyright lawyer-mongering to pull off.
When a government biases toward certainty over opportunity (socialism and planned economy), they see competition as counter-productive, because the cooperative way is to
1) Decide the best way to make the widget
2) Only do it that one way, and create a huge economy of scale by having a single state-owned corporation make it
and they see competition and experimentation as a waste of resources.
The result is the entire country becoming a dinosaur, and when they choose a bad way as "the best and only way", starvation.
On a more personal/psychological level, it's not about chaos-good/chaos-bad. It's about skill in converting chaos to order. That's the value. Sitting around in the order you've created from chaos, is stagnation. I actually don't like those hyper-competitive MOBAs, because they punish creativity and exploration. Too much order.
Too much chaos is fatal, too, but now I'm just talking like Jordan Peterson.
@icedquinn @newt yes they do. And when they don't, it's largely due to patents (government) and regulation (government) to create barrier to entry.
There's actually a market to create companies for the purpose of looking like a threat, so they can be bought up. Then the talented people in those companies leave and join newer companies, and the "stardust" fades.
The most fucked industries are the least competitive ones with the most regulation and government intervention: healthcare, education, defense contracting, insurance, banking. You practically cannot start a business in these industries to eat their lunch, because of the amount of lawyers you would need.
There's actually a market to create companies for the purpose of looking like a threat, so they can be bought up. Then the talented people in those companies leave and join newer companies, and the "stardust" fades.
The most fucked industries are the least competitive ones with the most regulation and government intervention: healthcare, education, defense contracting, insurance, banking. You practically cannot start a business in these industries to eat their lunch, because of the amount of lawyers you would need.
@icedquinn @newt yeah, but I mean that the strategy of buying out competitors in a free market has very diminishing returns, when people can just sell you potential competitors over and over again as a strategy, which lose most of their value after acquisition because it's the people, not the brand/company that were the real "stardust".
@aven @icedquinn @newt Which is why the giants start campaigning for the government to increase the costs of starting up a new business that could potentially compete, locking those potential competitors out of that option. Once regulations get complex enough, the existing players can afford shelling out 1 or 2% of their earnings on nonsense, whereas the startup can't afford to spend 20x their budget to hire a lawyer just to sort out the incomprehensible nonsense only the corp who wrote it will understand. It's a multifaceted issue.
@galena @aven @newt i think aven takes the position thats crony capitalism, though, and "real capitalism" they would .. get bored of buying startups or something.
i don't think that's true. MS doesn't benefit from government protecting them from startups. MS benefits from being excempted from anti-trust law.
i don't think that's true. MS doesn't benefit from government protecting them from startups. MS benefits from being excempted from anti-trust law.
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@icedquinn @galena @aven @newt Microsoft benefits from intellectual "property" laws.
