grinnbearit

I don't know about a lot of other countries but India's economic boom started after liberalisation[1] in the 90s, before that India was far poorer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalisation_in_Ind...

Aesthetic preferences exist for a reason, they've also been selected for and would often correlate with health indicators.

In the end reproductive success is all that's selected for, even at the expense of the host for the gene, like in the case of the peacock where their long tail makes them easy prey but also makes them easier to identify for a peahen.

Chris Stucchio wrote an interesting blog post which changed my mind on this. Instead of exacerbating it, a Machine Learning model can actively correct for bias.

https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/alien_intelligences_...

A progressive consumption tax is less distortive (favours productivity over consumption) than a progressive income tax, its just harder to implement.

You'd always prefer $100 today vs $100 in a year. In order to convince someone to invest you need to offer them more than that in the future.

If the discount rate is 10% (not bank interest, just how much I personally value time) then unless you offer me more than $ 110, I'd rather spend the money now.

For people to invest, discounted_expected_return[1] - capital_gains should be higher than the money in their wallets.

You can play around in excel to understand this better, with a 5% return, a 20% tax on both income and capital gains and a 10% discount rate, $ 100 in income is either $ 80 today or $ 76 in a year.

[1] Discounted for Time, Expected for Risk.

You tax capital gains differently than earned income to incentivise investment over consumption.

This is because consumption today is always more valuable than consumption in the future (the discount rate).

The Sino Indian war is more complicated than that,

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/It-wasnt-China-but-...

One man's "crap" is another's fine dining.

I believe values are subjective and we choose what we value with our wallets.

> teaches them to have low expectations from what they buy

Do you not think that this is a paternalistic view of the world? What makes your opinion on what's "good" better than mine or anyone else's?

> So like van Gogh who died penniless?

I'd bet that there are several artists who died penniless who aren't as well remembered, skepticism is not the same as condemnation.

Profits come from satisfying people's values [1], if more "higher quality" doesn't lead to more profits, it isn't valued.

As an aside, I'd be skeptical of Artists who produce "Inspiring work" which refuse to find any takers.

[1] negative externalities aside

That doesn't makes sense, the only reason race would matter is if we're not using all other available information

For example, imagine if income perfectly explained default rates. Then in that case, the race of the person wouldn't matter at all given income.

P(default | race, income) = P(default | income)

The only time this equality would be false is if race was being used as a proxy for another variable that isn't being collected.

Imagine If incomes were lower for certain races, in that case the algorithm would be biased in favour of those discriminated people, not against them.

P(default | discriminated race, income = X) < P(default | ~discriminated race, income = X)

this article goes into more detail https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/alien_intelligences_...

It also incentivises the google engineer to be as productive as they possibly can, assuming that salaries are indicative of marginal utility.

Otherwise the engineer could spend his brain power on his own hobby projects while mowing grass for income.

Valuable for satisfying human desires

The theory is that people spend money on what they desire, and so companies that generate more money satisfy more human values.

You will always find outliers and exceptions (caused by negative externalities usually), but this is true in general.

Finance isn't evil; day trading, investment banking, venture capital are all sharing information with the world and trying to move money to places where its more valuable.

There is a case to be made about "negative externalities"[1] but talking about the whole of finance as unnecessary is throwing out the baby with the bath water.

[1] costs that aren't borne by the producer

The reason we (as a society) inflate currencies is because of "sticky wages". People are loss averse and react much worse to a 5% pay cut than positively to a 5% pay rise.

Because of this, businesses needing to adjust downwards because of competition/technology/market changes can't.

Inflation is a solution to this problem

People get value out of a society by consuming goods and services, income is how we as a society measure the value a person provides.

Income Tax taxes value provided, Consumption Tax taxes value consumed.

-- Consumption taxes can also be scaled/slabbed with the amount consumed, they don't have to be regressive.

Here's an interesting video that takes that into account.

Twins, even those that grow up separately, are remarkably similar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDFh74eENuw

How about a progressive consumption tax?

Proportional representation makes sense because morality & values are subjective. Its implementation leaves a lot to be desired (see futarchy).

I disagree, take India and China, both developing nations with populations that are significantly better off after adopting some form of Capitalism.

Actually yes, Chris Stucchio's posts on the subject are pretty in depth starting with https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/hft_apology.html

You could also look at the book, Flash Boy's Not So Fast, which takes apart, page by page, all the arguments in the book, Flash Boys

http://www.amazon.in/Flash-Boys-Insiders-Perspective-High-Fr...

> The idea that women's liberation and the abolishment of slavery are "arbitrarily" positive things, and that we may like them exactly as likely as we may not via some senseless quirk of history, seems pretty asinine and lazy.

Its not exactly arbitrary, its more dependent on the current state of the world. Take the trolley problem, if killing one person would save billions does murder become moral?

Similarly, (and more contentiously) we might look at pre industrial agrarian societies as barbaric for favouring male children but when your society/family is absolutely dependent on human labour and men are capable of providing far more for roughly the same amount of resources consumed you can see how that moral position could emerge.

Were they fundamentally evil for holding it?

* http://robinhanson.typepad.com/files/three-worlds-collide.pd... is short story which also talks about this.

Thanks for the tips, r/AskPhilosophy has a lot of discussion on the topic. I am also interested to know why you seem to prefer Moral Realism.

> As such, to claim that "there is no objective morality" as axiomatic, is to end an argument before it has begun

I don't take that as axiomatic actually, unlike scientific research where we have an objective, consistent universe to compare against, moral objectivity seems to either come from group consensus (which doesn't guarantee correctness) or at an extreme moral naturalism which has fairly horrible implications[1]. Without an objective, consistent source, how would we get objective, consistent morals?

[1] slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

Moral realists have the upper hand? Are you willing to share some articles covering the topic?

For example, http://slatestarcodex.com/ and http://lesswrong.com/ have plenty of essays arguing for moral subjectivity.

Why do you think house prices and rents are very correlated?

People buy houses as an investment which can very quickly raise the price while rents depend on housing demand which depends on different factors.

I did this analysis for where I live (Pune, India) where the house prices are ridiculous and, after adjusting for inflation, found that house prices have doubled in 10 years while rents have stayed flat.

Hmm, thats a lot to respond to, I'm going to start with just a small part initially.

I'm not taking free markets to be a foundation for morality, I'm saying that I believe morality and values to be subjective. Markets are just one way to achieve consensus in a distributed system.

You mentioned earlier that you believe in moral realism, a definite objective moral code which ALL humans should follow and humans who do not are wrong/bad/broken. Do you believe the same about values? That there is an objective preference ordering all humans should have and those that do not are wrong/bad/broken?

I don't particularly favour capitalism or democracy as systems, but I do prefer them over central planning or dictatorship BECAUSE I believe values and morality to be subjective. Any alternate system should take that into account.

Is this where we disagree?

What I mean is that they're both consensus mechanisms to deal with subjectivity. For democracy, its subjective morality while for capitalism its subjective desires.

Its an interesting thought experiment to switch the mechanisms and predict the effects.

Oops, that wasn't clear, money is a distributed consensus system to figure out how to satisfy _their values_. You earn money from people when you satisfy their values, and spend money to get yours satisfied.

I do think that people are "value-maximisers", short or long term is irrelevant. Being rational isn't really important either, people do what they believe will satisfy their values, even if it doesn't end up helping.

Yes, those are some of the issues with 'Laissez Faire'. There are always winners and losers in any system and I feel that some redistribution to "take the edge of" is a good thing. (But perhaps not your specific policy suggestions).

Democracy isn't central planning. It has a similar basis to capitalism actually.

If you believe that morals are subjective then it makes sense to give everyone a say in what morals are codified as law. If on the other hand you believe in a single objective moral code, a dictator's for example' then you don't need to make any decisions.

Capitalism is the same but with morals switched with values/desires. It may not be the best "type 2" system, but in a subjective values universe any system that replaces it would need to be "type 2" as well.

Its not a fair comparison.

Businesses have a single, all important goal, to generate a profit so a top down plan can and does work.

People on the other hand have different and changing values. Money is a distributed consensus system to figure out how to satisfy them. Markets help to do this more efficiently.

I've had 2 discussions on this topic, I'd love to hear you thoughts on them.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9335125

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9510919

TLDR, If you believe values (desires) are subjective then any centrally planned system will be inefficient.

[edit: formatting]