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wedrifid comments on [Link] Why don't people like markets? - Less Wrong Discussion
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This is highly relevant to lesswrong - markets are one of the best information aggregation mechanisms available and so understanding why people oppose markets is useful.
Understanding why people oppose markets is very useful, but I've already got many redundant sources of information helping me at that task. Having a forum where discussion isn't infected by "Why do all those wrong-thinking people oppose our truth?" would also be very useful, but there I'm mostly out of luck. I can split my time between the liberal (conservatives and libertarians are so heartless!) and conservative (liberals and libertarians are so evil!) and libertarian (liberals and conservatives are so stupid!) sites instead, but a diverse selection of people talking past each other is much less valuable than a diverse selection talking to each other.
For example, many of those sites that should otherwise know better are incapable of discussing futurist ideas without pigeonholing them politically. For a recent example: "There is a rottenness at the heart of the transhuman project ... mythology of the smugly self-satisfied hypercapitalists who have unintentionally done so much to destroy so many of the moral and interpersonal values of post-Englightenment civilization." If Charlie Freaking Stross can no longer discuss the singularity without digressing into anti-free-market ranting, that suggests it might be particularly valuable to maintain futurist discussion forums in which economic liberals can participate without being treated like ignorant specimens in need of re-education.
Oppose markets is useful if your are proposing some kind of institutional reform, and the traditional dynamics are not optimal. The author of the article apparently assumes less disagreement only because some groups, like intellectuals, are not sufficient rewarded.
Do people "oppose markets" in a way that this classification is useful? If not, a priveleged hypothesis could lead down a blind alley.
If not then it is even less political.
Walk me through that.
If it isn't even useful to describe markets being opposed then there isn't much of a political battle happening, is there?
The label can still have political use even if it doesn't have practical use.
For an example, let's go with Wiggins, people with green eyes and black hair. Wiggins are untrustworthy, and put too much ketchup on their fries, everyone knows that. A minor political party could even sprout up in Australia on a Wiggin-centric platform. But then some statisticians raise the point that we don't have strong evidence differentiating Wiggins from other people. What does the political party in Australia do? "If you're not with us, you're with the Wiggins! How can they say there's no difference between you and a Wiggin, when we can so clearly see the difference? Remember to vote to protect Australia from the Wiggins!"
Sure, at some point reality will become inconvenient. But it takes more than mere evidential neutrality to stop the Australian Anti-Wiggin Party - all it means is people have to use their intuitions.