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Viliam_Bur comments on Open thread for December 9 - 16, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: NancyLebovitz 09 December 2013 04:35PM

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Comment author: Viliam_Bur 11 December 2013 10:25:41AM 4 points [-]

A bureaucracy, or even a thoroughly democratic polity of which one is a citizen, can feel, can be, just as much of a cold monster as the market.

This is a great way to express it. I was thinking about something similar, but could not express it like this.

The essence of the problem is, all "systems of human interaction" are not humans. A market is not a human. An election is not a human. An organization is not a human. Etc. Complaining that we are governed by non-humans is essentially complaining that there is more than one human, and that the interaction between humans is not itself a human. Yes, it is true. Yes, it can (and probably will) have horrible consequences. It just does not depend on any specific school of economics, or anything like this.