Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

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I think even though 'Animats wrote this backwards, it doesn't really change the argument all that much. The way capitalism works may be "self-interested actions lead to socially beneficial outcomes", but as a society, we want to have capitalism precisely because of those socially beneficial outcomes. This "side effect" is the reason to employ capitalism in the first place.

Now it turns out (with-hindsight-20/20) that Adam Smith did not fully understand the "mind" behind the "invisible hand". It indeed does arrange for social benefits... except when it doesn't[0]. A good contemporary analysis of this mechanism is the article by Scott Alexander, "Meditations on Moloch".

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

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[0] - For instance, a lot of those social benefits are in fact signs of market inefficiency, and those eventually get "corrected" as more and more people compete in a given sector and the margins dwindle.

[0] - For instance, a lot of those social benefits are in fact signs of market inefficiency, and those eventually get "corrected" as more and more people compete in a given sector and the margins dwindle.

Except for when you can get the government to step in and grant you rental rights preferable exclusive rights. Land, property, spectrum, licenses, copyright, patents, trademarks.

Not all interventions are good, but that doesn't mean there are no good interventions.

Not sure you can think of it as good or bad. The government takes away rights from someone people and grants them to others. I have the right to own land and make it so you can't use it because "we the people say so." good for me, bad for you.

I guess there's a net win now that I think about it. I could have protected with a club. good for me, good for you because I didn't club you in the head.

your land is protected by a club.

instead of protecting it yourself, you delegated the job to the government.

libertarians will argue "why not delegate to a private company?"

because we all learned from past experience. it is better for one entity to have a monopoly on violence than multiple small organizations.

> I guess there's a net win now that I think about it. I could have protected with a club. good for me, good for you because I didn't club you in the head.

Yes, that's how it actually works. You have rights to some piece of land, I have rights to another, we don't step on each other's toes, and if we don't like the split, there are blood-free procedures to resolve disputes. More importantly, neither of us has to invest in clubs and constant vigilance, because we've outsourced that job. So we all save time, resources and effort.

It's not perfect, but it's a useful tool in our toolbox for building societies.

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