Notices by Fabio G. (magitweeter@mastodon.social)

@TobiWanKenobi @aral

I believe part of the reason why voters stop protecting democracy from fascism is that democracy inherently sort of sucks.

How democracy works is it takes away people's self-management and hands it over to elected representatives. Even when those representatives do a perfect job, that loss of control eventually leads to unhappiness, which in turn leads to people no longer caring about the protection of democracy.

@aral (Governments are not for protecting people's human rights and they have never been. People protect people's human rights.)

A few days ago @pluralistic wrote on how the healthcare industry uses apps to screw workers. He talks about collective action problems and the role of government regulation in protecting workers from this abuse, and it got me thinking. 🧵

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/18/loose-flapping-ends/#luigi-has-a-point

@dalias

Let me see if i understand correctly.

You don't disagree that voting for the red team is worse than voting for the blue team.

You disagree that voting for the blue team is bad at all.

Am i getting that right?

@passenger

@dalias

Part of the problem is that blue team leaders systematically block more progressive candidates and policies (Jamaal Bowman is a prominent recent example). As a progressive voter, blue leaders are harming you by denying you the progressive candidate.

In a sense, this is something the blue team can afford to do only because they count on you voting blue anyway because the red team winning is even worse.

That's blackmail (or extortion, perhaps more accurately). And it's bad.

@passenger

@dalias

Voting for a party who will harm your loved ones is voting to harm your loved ones. That's true even if the other option on the ballot will harm your loved ones as well. I think anything beyond that is moral nitpicking.

@passenger

@freemo

That's where i disagree. You see a degree of inequality as a necessary condition for the sorts of incentives that drive your ideal system, while i see it as an inevitable consequence of there being a multitude of people appraising a multitude of goods in unequal ways. Which is why i emphasize the relativity of it all.

I'm heading off for the night. With apologies to @aeleoglyphic @Radical_EgoCom @Vincarsi whose notifications we've probably blasted full by now.

@freemo

Well, i never said anything about power vacuums. You must be mistaking me with another commenter.

Insofar as concentration of wealth leads to concentration of power, the ideal system leads to relative wealth equality in particular because it's good at preventing concentration of power in general.

@aeleoglyphic @Radical_EgoCom @Vincarsi

@freemo

“as close to 100% as reasonable” is very generous and arguably passed by any given system. Maybe someone considers **any** attempt at wealth redistribution unreasonable, and therefore complete laissez-faire is to them as close to 100% equality as it reasonably gets.

Rather, i believe that relative equality would be the outcome of the system doing other things well, rather than a goal to pursue in spite of other concerns.

@aeleoglyphic @Radical_EgoCom @Vincarsi

@freemo

It has nothing to do with what i want. Perfect wealth equality is unachievable even if inequality is undesirable.

Neither does one need to be committed to perfect wealth equality to agree that, for example, a billion dollars is too much wealth for anyone to have.

@aeleoglyphic @Radical_EgoCom @Vincarsi

@freemo

I should clarify that i'm not interested in achieving “a fair market”. I am, at best, agnostic about markets.

I should also emphasize that inequality is a spectrum. Taking a stand against inequality doesn't mean advocating perfect equality, it just means prefering less inequality rather than more. It means that inequality should be (perhaps ambiguously) undesirable on principle, rather than an unambiguously good outcome of “healthy capitalism”.

@aeleoglyphic @Radical_EgoCom @Vincarsi

@freemo

Also, please, don't mistake granting a statement with agreement.

I see plenty of problems with the ideas of free education, welfare in general, conditional welfare in particular, law in general, and anti-trust law in particular, both in the context of the “free market” and beyond.

I'm just not interested in discussing them right now because, like i said, my question is about something different.

@aeleoglyphic @Radical_EgoCom @Vincarsi

@freemo

No, i haven't posed an argument so far, i have only expressed my objections to your position. If i had to make an argument, it would look something like this:

Wealth affects agents' ability to pay for a resource, therefore their willingness to pay. Thus wealth inequality distorts demand, and so distorts prices, and so distorts profit. Thus someone commited that «utility should be the determiner of profit» should take a stand against inequality.

@aeleoglyphic @Radical_EgoCom @Vincarsi

@freemo

Those are all practical policy recommendations which may or may not help make utility the determiner of profit. I can even grant that they do. My question is about something different.

Is it wrong of me to assume that you're taking for granted that production and distribution are organized around markets as they're typically understood? Markets in goods and services, markets in labor and capital, supply and demand—that sort of context?

@aeleoglyphic @Radical_EgoCom @Vincarsi

@freemo

Given your stated willingness to answer my questions, let me rephrase my last few replies in the form of a question:

How does it come to be that utility is the determiner of profit in a “free market”, whatever that means?

@aeleoglyphic @Radical_EgoCom @Vincarsi

@freemo

Let me clarify what i meant. I didn't mean just that it would be difficult in practice. What i meant is that not even in theory is it clear how «a market where utility is the determiner of profit» could be made to work.

@aeleoglyphic @Radical_EgoCom @Vincarsi

@freemo

«a free market (a market where utility is the determiner of profit...)»

This sounds like an incredibly difficult, if not impossible, thing to achieve. I for one don't see a way to achieve it without outright abolishing private property as we know it.

@aeleoglyphic @Radical_EgoCom @Vincarsi

@freemo

You're making a very strong assumption that resources would get distributed to whoever can best turn them into utility.

Do you have a specific mechanism in mind through which this happens? Or is it just magic?

@aeleoglyphic @Radical_EgoCom @Vincarsi

@freemo

«In which case the person who owns the land is providing the utility of selecting/screening the most effective managerial service.»

Of course, but that work could be provided by anyone. The tenant. The government. A tenants' union. It takes no special skill and neither does it require ownership of the building.

The only reason it's the owner who gets to do that job is that they're legally entitled to. And somehow that entitles them to rent.

@aeleoglyphic @Radical_EgoCom @Vincarsi

@freemo

Yes, of course, a landlord does managerial work that should be compensated. But ownership of the building is not necessary for the ability to do that managerial work, nor is doing that work required for the legal entitlement of the collection of rent.

The landlord isn't even usually the person who built the building or repairs the fences.

@aeleoglyphic @Radical_EgoCom @Vincarsi