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Comment by ericjang | Hacker News Reader

Interesting ideas. If I understand what you are saying, it's that we don't have a great way of attributing cause/effect, and therefore it's difficult to assign merits or demerits in society?

1) "Reality is always multicausal" i.e. the "responsible causes" of an event are a myriad of factors and 2) the law / insurance system have to assume that there is just 1-2 causes, so that blame and deserts can be meted out?

I'm curious what you think about alternate "unified theories of modernity's problems", such as Georgism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism) or racial inequity / colonialism, and how might you attempt to convince a believer of these alternate views that your theory is more correct.

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Georgism seems obviously helpful. Another, simpler (and therefore potentially attracting the wrong kind of response) way of getting at the crux: There's a reason much (maybe even most) anger on the left revolves around a perceived denial of the existence of privilege, and perhaps most of the anger on the right ultimately boiling down to a perceived denial of the existence of responsibility.

> There's a reason much (maybe even most) anger on the left revolves around a perceived denial of the existence of privilege, and perhaps most of the anger on the right ultimately boiling down to a perceived denial of the existence of responsibility.

Interesting. How do you use this "unified" framework then, to come up with your own political opinions? (as opposed to, say, post-modernism variants like critical race theory)

Thinking about how groups of people avoid liability by creating a diffusion of responsibility and leaving others with the cost of cleanup is one way. Including the long term effect that people are conditioned to think that is normal and the desirable thing is not to undermine the system but to reach the top of it so you get to be the one exploiting. Kind of like a slave empire such as the Romans where the highest ambition of a slave might be to become a slave owner themselves.

Georgism's ideals of free markets and efficient taxation are good, and supported by modern orthodox economists.

But Georgism's explanation of eg business cycles is rubbish.

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