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Dagon comments on Crazy Ideas Thread - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: James_Miller 18 June 2016 12:30AM

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Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 18 June 2016 07:16:47AM *  1 point [-]

A form of society that is based on a social contract where the rules (like the rules of e.g. democracy) are constructed in such a way that

  • individuals are (monetarily) rewarded if they take more responsibility (for other people basically) in a way that a doubled responsibility leads to a unit increase in reward (with a unit reward for taking responsibility for one self).
  • sub groups can make individual decisions and take local responsibility (and e.g. distribute the reward according to the rules)
  • there is an increase in power with group size but limited in a mathematically precise way
  • optional: Limitation of private property to that which you can actually regularly use.

Thus there is a limit to income in a mathematically precise way (logarithm of total social product).

ADDED: Construct this in a way that it can be embedded in existing society (via existing contracts) such that it can grow from a small set of members to all.

Comment author: Dagon 19 June 2016 04:05:09AM 1 point [-]

If you have precise operational definitions of "responsibility", "reward" , "power", and "social product" that are amenable to public calculation, please share them. Getting agreement on the formulas should be a piece of cake if you can get agreement on the linear measures.

If.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 19 June 2016 07:00:58AM 0 points [-]

The operational definitions that I used when I toyed around with this idea were:

  • reward is just monetarily income (or an equivalent thereof). I really should have made clear that this is imagined to be compatible with normal economics)
  • (amount of) responsibility is * a) the number of persons you make decisions on behalf of with respect to (a subset of) the rules of the society. This responsibility can be agreed on (e.g. if you have a job where your decisions affect other people) or implicit (e.g. responsibility for yourself of your children) * b) the monetary value of goods that you affect by your actions (again as agreed on or implicit), ** both can be fractional if responsibility is shared
  • social product is just gross national product ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_national_product )
  • yes, power is left vague. Choose any of (structural limit on) income or responsibility as above.

I'm not sure which So8res was using in his quest

This became my new goal: distill an ideal social structure for humans

but I assume that he also had operational definitions and also operational mechanics in mind.

Comment author: Dagon 19 June 2016 03:45:56PM 1 point [-]

Hmm. I don't think that works (or maybe you're just describing capitalism). If individuals have control over money, you can't have a societal design that contradicts their spending choices.

  • Currently, individuals are rewarded linearly for the amount*degree that they "take responsibility" (=sell products or provide service) for someone who has money to pay. This is a direct result of the operation of monetary transactions.
  • Currently, sub-groups can incorporate in order to make individual-like actions.
  • There is an increase in power with group size, but there's no simple definition of "power" that makes it feasible to calculate. I'm sure it is mathematically limited, though.
  • (optional) private property can be taken if powerful groups (governments usually) think they need it more than the owner.
Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 19 June 2016 10:17:02PM 0 points [-]

Capitalism allows unlimited private property with all the consequences for concentration of capital. If you don't want that you have to let go of something. Approaches that come to mind (and have been suggested) are

  • taxes on capital (which basically takes property away)
  • taxes on on income that approach 100% and thus limit income
  • limits for incorporation (anti-trust laws)
  • contracts that structure how income can be used (e.g. trusts are often highly structured in their spending)

Basically I'm suggesting very general contracts that effectively change the linear reward effect you mention first to a consistent sub-linear one.

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