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wedrifid comments on Smart, (young), ambitious and clueless -- what to do to maximize goodness? - Less Wrong
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I'm sorry me message didn't come across clearly. I can see it's not phrased well.
I'm immensely skeptical of the notion that clever people are needed to tell dumb people what to do to achieve what they want; to "harness the capitalist system". Mostly because so-called smart people have multiple other flaws that mainly stem from their not participating in or acknowledging the marketplace.
Many (public/social) intellectuals have such poor understanding of basic issues of economics, psychology and evolution that their prescribed cures worsen the ailment.
Which is why I mentioned Europe, a moribound continent which doesn't seem to understand that it has to produce stuff to consume stuff and which appears to value appearances and 'ethical policies' over facing economic reality.
Save for problems regarding the tragedy of the commons, I see little hope for centralized harnessing by clever people. I see socialism as the economic variant of creationism: the notion that good, complex things cannot arise without central planning.
Caveat lector: I'm reading Atlas Shrugged right now.
You 'harness the capitalist system' by participating in it, selling stuff, acquiring resources and exchanging those resources to achieve your goals. (And those goals can be selfish, altruistic or as arbitrary and nonsensical as you please.)
That is the position that I was "sure was not mine".
I say the marketplace and the economic engine behind it are out there, ready and waiting to be exploited by anyone with the ambition and competence to do so. It is a tool which can be used to translate whatever comparative advantage you have into the most efficient goal-maximisation that you can manage.
Sorry for jumping to conclusions.
I took "harness the capitalist system and the dumb people's desires in such a way that they can achieve their own desires" as a paternalistic statement.
Nope, just Machiavellian. ;)