What do you mean by "system"?
If you look at the history of retail, transparently priced stores, with price tags on items, having been winning out convincingly over the previous system of "always haggle" in most domains. Is that outside the scope of your claim, or have I misunderstood you?
In the first world people haggle by cutting coupons out of the newspaper. This is a form of price discrimination. It is also non-transparent pricing. Coupons also add to the asymmetry of information, ect,ect.
I would argue just the opposite, that we are way past our peak of transparent pricing and as time passes you will see a more byzantine maze develop.
As far as retail goes JC Penney recently failed in such a strategy be transparent.
Highlighted by MR
P.S. "You are trying to submit too fast. try again in 3 minutes." - Is this really needed?
What do you mean by "system"?
If you look at the history of retail, transparently priced stores, with price tags on items, having been winning out convincingly over the previous system of "always haggle" in most domains. Is that outside the scope of your claim, or have I misunderstood you?
All systems: A cities zoning board. The network of mortgage back securities. A large firm.
In all individual agents have incentive to shroud and prefer subscribing to a shrouded systems so as to extract rents.
I think "fragile" is a poor choice of a word.
Thanks for the comment. I use fragile because I am rifting off, and a bit against, what I expect is Taleb's idea for his new book antifragility.
The problem is not including a link to said arguments.
Google negative income tax and read the article...
Naz I think you are a little off though. the negative income tax is an implementation of a few possible implementations of a basic income system. Friedman liked it because it was better then normal welfair or the progressive tax we have. He wanted a flat tax. He did not particuly want the NIT, he wanted less welfair overhead and a flat tax.
If you do not have an income tax you can not use a negative income tax to implement a basic income.
Falkvinge is coming from the other direction. He is saying we will be forced to have a flat tax (VAT) because of bitcoin and that in order to still have wellfair we will need to implement a basic income, his citizens income.
It is all crazy talk though.
On readability when I say the below what do you think? "I thought that coercion may be one of the mechanisms that have enabled humans to engage and execute long term plans."
This particular sentence was easy to read. The next one was not.
To say it a different way. People often don't engage in long-term action that are good for them because they are unable to overcome their resistance to paying the short term costs. Leaders, those in a group able to exercise coercion, are no different but have the ability to coerce members into paying the short-term costs leading them to engage in more long-term action.
And this is much better than the original. In particular, the role of leaders was not originally clear.
"families patriarch"......"sacrifice for the greater good of the family that she would be coerced into making"
Is it not clear I am talking about group level dynamics?
"I'm also not sure that "short-term" and "long-term" are a good way of classifying things into near and far. For instance, ideals about improving and ennobling yourself in school are "far" and part of what motivates one to go to school, and this is a long-term objective. But the actual task of going to school in the present and actually attending the lectures and doing the exercises is "near". (And effectively studying is difficult because the near and far modes don't necessarily pull in the same direction.)"
umm yes that is what this is all predicated on.... and I am saying "coercion may be one of the mechanisms that have enabled humans to engage and execute long term plans."
I think that by the time you get to asking "is coercion near or far", you have already gone astray; it seems like a type error. There is no particular reason for coercion, which is a broad category of actions, to be connected to the near/far distinction, which is a fuzzy classification of modes of thought. It's also a very particular, familiar type error - it's Robin Hanson's trademark confusion. I can't downvote when he does it, since Overcoming Bias doesn't have that feature, but I would.
Can you give me an example of short term coercion being of benefit at the group level?
This post is written in a stream-of-consciousness style which is hard to read. It could use a paragraph break or two. I'm still not entirely sure of exactly what "if the immediate short-term costs are what most often repress long-term action then those not saddled with the short-term costs of their long-term actions will be prone to engage in more long-term action" is trying to say in the context of this post, despite reading it multiple times.
The style makes it seem not particularly well thought-out, especially since little evidence is provided in support of the conclusions. It seems like a transcript of the way you jumped from one thought to another, without really pausing to subject those thoughts to criticism. One could just as well construct an equally flimsy explanation with the opposite conclusion: "I thought about the cliche of a school kid being forced to give up his lunch money to bullies. I thought about how he'd need to go hungry while the bullies had a good time with his cash, and thought how it is easier to force others to sacrifice then to sacrifice yourself. I thought about the visceral way in which the threat of coercion is always be present in the lives of some people, and how they have to take into account in everything they do. I also thought of the way the bullies get constant sadistic pleasure out of it and a regular infusion of extra money. Coercion is near."
Even if we were to accept the chain of reasoning, it doesn't really provide much useful information. Okay, coercion is near or it's far. So what? What should this make us anticipate that we didn't anticipate before?
"I thought about the cliche of a school kid being forced to give up his lunch money to bullies. I thought about how he'd need to go hungry while the bullies had a good time with his cash, and thought how it is easier to force others to sacrifice then to sacrifice yourself. I thought about the visceral way in which the threat of coercion is always be present in the lives of some people, and how they have to take into account in everything they do. I also thought of the way the bullies get constant sadistic pleasure out of it and a regular infusion of extra money. Coercion is near."
I like this, it was what I was looking for in a discussion board.
Question, do you think this short-term coercion is a common mechanistic used in our society? I would argue that most of the coercion you see in organized societies is used to force coordination (aka long-term)
(guess I have to wait 6 minutes to submit this..)
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d){kind=logo}
= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
I think "fragile" is a poor choice of a word.
For the record I did not down vote that question. I think it is sad what is down voted. People wonder why LW is dying out.