You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

DeVliegendeHollander comments on Why capitalism? - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: Algon 03 May 2015 06:16PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (163)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 May 2015 12:35:54PM 1 point [-]

Look, the fact that a given group of people can do X in a given situation is not a solution to other people doing Y in another situation. Just because you or I would not litter anyway, it does not mean no-littering signs are unnecessary nor that there is not a difficulty with enforcing them. It is different people, probably in different situations, circumstances, even with different litter.

This is a common problem IMHO and generally I think the best conceptual model is to think that the good part and bad parts of human nature don't cancel each other out, they exist side by side. So for example power-hunger or aggression and charitability are both being parts of human nature, but not canceling each other out, but operating side by side.

Comment author: Algon 04 May 2015 01:21:42PM 0 points [-]

I think this lecture and paper might better get across what I mean: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2009/ostrom_lecture.pdf http://www.kuhlen.name/MATERIALIEN/eDok/governing_the_commons1.pdf That is, I am advocating a certain type of management rather than just hand waving it away and saying 'social guidelines will make it work',