Dias comments on The Unfriendly Superintelligence next door - Less Wrong

48 Post author: jacob_cannell 02 July 2015 06:46PM

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Comment author: Dias 27 June 2015 09:15:33PM 0 points [-]

The government is incentivised to keep people alive and paying tax, and disincentivised to treat people unnecessarily.

Unfortunately I don't think that's true:

Many Californians - most Californians - are assets. That is: productive citizens, or children who will grow up and become productive citizens. Their place is the left side of the balance sheet. Their presence in California increases California's productive power, and thus its value as a financial asset.

As the King begins the transition from democracy, however, he sees at once that many Californians - certainly millions - are financial liabilities. These are unproductive citizens. Their place on the balance sheet is on the right. To put it crudely, a ten-cent bullet in the nape of each neck would send California's market capitalization soaring - often by a cool million per neck.

And we are just getting started. The ex-subject can then be dissected for his organs. Do you know what organs are worth? This is profit!

If we claim to derive the responsibility of government from mere financial prudence, we must explain why the business strategy of culling unwanted subjects for their organs is not viable. Most would not find this profitable strategy consistent with responsibility. Yet, since a sovereign is sovereign, no higher sovereign can exist to outlaw or preclude it. The design must solve this problem on its own.

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Comment author: TheAncientGeek 28 June 2015 04:15:12PM 2 points [-]

I can see that private health insurance companies wouldn't want to take in bad risks. They don't in some US states, and are forced to by the federal government in others, I can also see that a profit driven GovCo would behave like a giant private insurer. But actual in-GovCo governments are incentivised to provide universally access to healthcare as they do to the law and education. I can vouch that where you have public healthcare, any hint that some group is excluded creates a stink. Health insurance provides better incentives than piecemeal provision, but public healthcare has better incentives than both.

Comment author: VAuroch 20 July 2015 08:39:54AM 0 points [-]

in-GovCo

un-GovCo, I believe?

Comment author: 27chaos 28 June 2015 11:22:47PM 0 points [-]

I appreciate the point and agree with it, but in fairness to the financial prudence folks if the government were to start executing citizens that would have major costs down the line. I would not expect a government concerned with financial prudence to do such executions if they were at all intelligent. It's cheaper to give unproductive people welfare than to round them all up and kill them, once you take matters of political economy into consideration on the accounting sheet.

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