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Okay, so you've trivialized the response into a self defining cycle.
You can't say that anything good that should happen increases wealth
because we'll measure it in terms of wealth. It's begging the point,
and in the real world it's not the way things work.
In the same way I could say that decreasing the value of the company
I spoke of (was ERIM, became Veridian, now is GD-AIS, a subset of
General Dynamics), decreases wealth because you have to measure the
decreased happiness of the employees decreased efficiency of their
research and decreased synergy of their research group because so
many of them left to go elsewhere. The stock market, which paid the
CEO (Peter Banks) through the nose for doing so failed to correctly
assign value for this process and gave away a ton of money because of
it. Sure, it may correct itself in the long run, over 5-10 years as
GD stock goes down, but that's too late, the damage is done.
You also cannot properly measure benefit to society by what people
are willing and able to pay. I know it's the American way to ignore
what's good for poor people and only focus on what's good for rich
people, but the poor people in the DC area benefit quite a bit
(increased social welfare) for having access to top quality museums
and exhibits such as are there, and the rest of us rich people who
have enough money to throw around benefit also because we live in a
more educated society as a result. If you charged full cost for
admission to cover the facilities, those people would stop going. The
same thing is true of education at most levels. The people who can't
afford it are the ones who need it the most. If you charged fair
market value for elementary school, most kids wouldn't go, and it
would destroy our society. In the long run obviously this increases
wealth, but only over a very long term in a very difficult to measure
way- which is why noone in our country is willing to pay as much as
they should be for education. You can't show increased wealth
resulting on a balance sheet, you can't easily prove how it's
benefiting society. So people claim to be in favor of it but won't
actually pay for it and it's suffering as a result- because we're too
focused on only the creation of wealth. We're too dumb to figure it
out. What a pretty cycle that is.
With slavery, again, you're self defining yourself to be right. Now
you're creating this new element of freedom- how is that not a subset
of social welfare? How is that not a perfect example of how losing
money is better than making money, if it's made the wrong way? If it
hurts more people than it helps in the process. Clearly we agree
there's good profit and bad profit. Good profit is where both people
benefit and feel happier in the tradeoff made. Bad profit is where
people don't realizing they're getting hurt as a consequence. Yet it
happens all the time. Capitalism does not respect basic human rights.
You and I do, and the socialist laws of our country do, to keep
Capitalism in check. We have to continue to evolve such laws as
capitalism evolves in order to keep pace and keep the appropriate
balance. People are definitely continuing to optimize the capitalist
component of our society, so we must continue to optimize the
socialist component as well. I suggest that perhaps we could
identify ways in which the stock market enables and encourages bad
profit and find ways to check that without removing it's capability
of enabling and supporting good profit. I think the answer lies
somewhere in the time scale of things, that you could probably
conclude that most forms of good profit take a fair bit of time,
while most forms of bad profit happen very quickly. There would be
exceptions to both of course, and therefore costs, but perhaps a
solution could be found where the aggregate good is significantly
increased?
The stock market shares the blame because of what it enables. No
profit could have been made from the destruction of ERIM. Or much
less. Or maybe not- that's part of why I bring this discussion to
this group. Obviously I haven't found a way to modify the stock
market to prevent this problem, and I challenge you to do so. Maybe
this particular example was an example of something different,
unrelated to the stock market really. I'm not sure.
And an extreme version of what you're saying would be if it doesn't
make money we shouldn't do it- like the mental hospital for the poor
which got closed down because it wasn't profitable, to the point
where the company running it threatened to arrest the doctors who
were in there cleaning it up after the storms trying to re-open it,
because if it was wrecked they had an excuse to not have to run it
anymore. Because all they cared about was creation of wealth. I like
to think we'd both agree that this was a bad thing. Fortunately we'll
neither of us take our positions to the extreme and only judge them
on that, but rather look for actual reasonable implementations in the
real world.
Aiming for not outlawing any consensual crime is a good goal, but
overly simplistic. In reality for a functioning society you have to
make one set of laws for everyone in the spheres in which they
interact. This necessitates that you will have regulations which
prevent some people from doing what they want to do in order to
prevent other people from not having done to them what they don't
want to have done to them. As fun as it would be to eliminate all
the speed limits and guard rails in the country, most people want
them, so those of us that don't have to suffer through it. Perhaps
those who make their living studying and trading on the stock market
might have to accept that they are not able to buy and sell to each
other exactly how they want if it means that the majority of people
who do so casually, or only with their retirement accounts or
otherwise at levels of large distraction, can do so more safely and
reliably. I don't know, that's not really the right analogy, but if I
had the right solution I would have started this thread with it.
I mean geez, why do you so much want the terrorists to win? ;-)
On Aug 29, 2007, at 6:59 PM, Daniel Reeves wrote:
> I consider my challenge unanswered! Read on...
>
>> How about establishing the environmental protection agency?
>
> The value of saving a forest or preventing x tons of pollution can
> and must be valued in dollars. Refusing to quantify it leads to
> more environmental damage.
>
> So the EPA, if done right (levying pollution taxes!), always
> increases wealth by incentivizing the right trade-offs. [See also
> Kevin's response]
>
>> All the national museums in downtown DC?
>
> If a museum can't cover its costs through donations and admissions
> (or admissions that people would have been willing to pay even if
> you choose not to actually charge admission) then is it good for
> society to have that museum? Not at all clear. If the answer is
> yes then where do you draw the line between what's worth it for the
> good of society and what isn't?
>
> But perhaps a museum that we expect future generations to have a
> lot of value for could be an example. The real point of my
> challenge was to assert that wealth and welfare are the same thing
> (as far as public policy is concerned). This museum example
> doesn't refute that but may be an example of when we should take a
> leap of faith and do something for the sake of future wealth that
> there is no way to measure yet. But in fact, it's not so hard to
> measure. How much do we currently value museums our ancestors
> maintained?
>
>> Abolishing slavery?
>
> Ah, good one. But this doesn't count because the principle of
> freedom trumps both wealth and welfare. (Kevin's point was that
> abolishing slavery doesn't necessarily increase net welfare --
> maybe the utility of the slave owners increased more than the
> slaves' utility decreased.)
> Slavery is just intrinsically immoral. Let's stick to the universe
> of policies that respect basic human rights.
>
>> The CEO who got rich destroying the non-profit research company
>> was a snake oil salesman at every step of the way. [...] got rich
>> while the illusion lasted, and now is in California on the beach
>> and people here are looking for new jobs. [...] Encouraged
>> supported and enabled by the way the stock market works.
>
> We agreed that swindling is stealing and should be illegal. I
> still don't follow your argument that the stock market shares any
> blame. I second Kevin's request for the name of this company.
>
> An extreme form of your position would seem to be "no selling
> things because sometimes it might be snake oil" or perhaps "no
> selling oils because they might be from snakes". To restate my
> point from before: laws that limit the consensual behavior of
> individuals do more harm than good.
>
> Also, it's unamerican!
>
>
>
>> On Aug 28, 2007, at 12:46 AM, Daniel Reeves wrote:
>>
>>> I challenge you to name a public policy that increases net
>>> welfare (ie, utility) while decreasing total wealth.
>>> PS: The snake oil case is simple: no swindling -- it's the same
>>> as stealing. I see no analogy with short-sighted stock trading
>>> or overcompensating CEOs. Also, outlawing snake oil increases
>>> total wealth. (The snake oil salesperson gets richer by $50, the
>>> sucker gets poorer by $50, sucker gets 0 benefit, both parties
>>> lose $5 of time: total wealth - 50 + 0 - 5 - 5 = -10. If
>>> that 0 were more than 10 then wealth would have been created.)
>>> --- \/ FROM Dave Morris AT 07.08.27 14:54 (Today) \/ ---
>>>> I do agree that one should err on the side of less government
>>>> and less regulation as a general rule, as a goal to be aimed
>>>> for. But that shouldn't paralyze us from action if we don't have
>>>> a perfect or perfectly known solution but we know we have real
>>>> problems. No, the free market is not an engineered system. But
>>>> it is one we can influence, and one that many are trying to
>>>> influence all the time. The default is that people will try to
>>>> influence our system to maximize their ability to profit, which
>>>> is not always in line with maximizing social good. So we have
>>>> many good regulations on capitalism in place and should continue
>>>> to. Even though they hurt people sometimes, on the whole they're
>>>> worth it. We don't allow snake oil salesman to peddle their
>>>> trade anymore (selling products claiming to have one effect and
>>>> really having none), even though it's consensual and profitable.
>>>> I think perhaps we should look at some stock deals and some CEOs
>>>> that way as well, perhaps requiring more openness about who
>>>> makes how much, etc., so that motivations are more clear when
>>>> people take charge of companies and start changing them around.
>>>> I'd agree with reducing the level of corporate welfare and
>>>> protection, which starts with reducing the lobbying influence on
>>>> our government. That would be great, and I'm far more confident
>>>> in the value/safety of this action than any change to the stock
>>>> market.
>>>> But simultaneously, when a small number of people like those who
>>>> took charge of the not-for-profit research company I spoke of,
>>>> are able to for personal profit, manipulate the lives of a great
>>>> number of people without their consent or control- that needs to
>>>> be regulated. To do this, like the war on drugs which I agree
>>>> has problems, you need to take a multi-pronged approach to the
>>>> sticky and difficult to resolve situation. Mostly you target
>>>> prosecution of the actual crimes (theft, by drug users or CEOs),
>>>> but also you increase awareness of the issue via education and
>>>> email chains like this one, and also you try to reduce the
>>>> motivation for the crimes to break the chain from the other
>>>> side. (thus my proposal to look at the stock market and maybe
>>>> place some controls there- I don't have a good war on drugs
>>>> analogy here :-))
>>>> Sure there are some companies that benefit from selling out. But
>>>> I think there are also many that are hurt by it. We could argue
>>>> without resolution for days because there are so many examples
>>>> in both directions. But specifically with YouTube, I'd argue
>>>> that college students would put together sites like that for
>>>> free because they're sweet, without any motivation of profit.
>>>> The open source software movement is great proof of this. And
>>>> I'd further argue that while yes, venture capital and Google
>>>> have provided the site with the resources to handle the load it
>>>> currently has, I personally would guess that it would not be as
>>>> good of a product if it had started off as a corporate profit
>>>> driven venture. There would probably be registrations and more
>>>> advertisements and more limitations to guarantee profits, and
>>>> less just free functionality.
>>>> There will never be a perfect solution. The balance between
>>>> capitalism and socialism will always lead to individual cases
>>>> where something is being over or under regulated. The real
>>>> target is to reach a point where we have just as many problems
>>>> pointing towards a need to go more capitalist as more socialist,
>>>> and then we're at a pretty good point. So don't be too afraid of
>>>> a solution that might slow down profit, slow down corporate
>>>> growth, or slow down creation of wealth from time to time and in
>>>> some cases. Those things are not the end of the world. Sure,
>>>> creating wealth is good, and we should maximize that. But we
>>>> should prioritize maximizing the creation of social welfare more.
>>>> So I think it would be worth the risk to look into ways to tone
>>>> down the stock market a bit.
>>>> Dave
>>>> On Aug 24, 2007, at 11:51 PM, Daniel Reeves wrote:
>>>>> You're thinking in terms of more government interference. I
>>>>> think the answer is less. Telling people how much they can pay
>>>>> each other or what they can buy from who when is dangerous
>>>>> territory. Even if you don't have a philosophical problem with
>>>>> it (I kind of do) it simply tends to backfire. Getting rid of
>>>>> corporate welfare and legal privileges for corporations is a
>>>>> better place to start.
>>>>> And I just don't buy the point of your not-for-profit company
>>>>> example, Dave. Not that I deny that something went awry in
>>>>> that instance.
>>>>> The prospect of getting bought out is what motivates many
>>>>> brilliant startups. That's why we have flickr and youtube.
>>>>> Certainly it motivated them to add the polish and scale to
>>>>> support millions of users.
>>>>> I feel there is a fallacy implicit in proposals along the lines
>>>>> of Dave's and Trixie's: thinking of the economy as an
>>>>> engineered system to be tweaked (or in Trixie's case
>>>>> reengineered altogether). Trying to conceptualize it that way
>>>>> leads to the dark side! :)
>>>>> Consider the fundamental difference between a law like "no
>>>>> stealing" and a law prohibiting/limiting consensual behavior,
>>>>> in Dave's case buying and selling stocks from each other or
>>>>> paying each other to run companies. Laws like that require a
>>>>> very careful argument. For example, "no buying drugs because
>>>>> you'll become an addict and turn to crime." And of course even
>>>>> that turns out to be an incredibly bad idea. Focusing our
>>>>> enforcement effort on actual crime (as opposed to behavior that
>>>>> may or may not cause indirect harm to society) would be far
>>>>> more effective.
>>>>> Dave, I do concede the meta argument about falsifiability.
>>>>> Well said.
>>>>> --- \/ FROM Dave Morris AT 07.08.24 13:58 (Today) \/ ---
>>>>>> I guess disagreement with that would be my whole point. The
>>>>>> CEOs benefit hugely, but the company is less effective than it
>>>>>> was before at providing valuable research to society, and the
>>>>>> individuals involved are less well off too, so how does
>>>>>> society benefit by the company getting screwed? The example I
>>>>>> speak of was a small research company that was doing its job
>>>>>> very well as a not-for-profit entity, not a failing company or
>>>>>> one that was getting left behind by the changing times. It was
>>>>>> a valuable entity that no-one was getting rich off of, that
>>>>>> one person saw the opportunity to get rich off of because of
>>>>>> how the stock market works, and so they did so, without
>>>>>> thought for long term benefit to the company or society. The
>>>>>> stock market enabled this.
>>>>>> In support of capitalist society, ways to regulate this such
>>>>>> as controlling CEO salaries or stock deals could benefit long
>>>>>> term shareholder value, and thus benefit society in the long
>>>>>> run by optimizing value/wealth creation over time. (the ideas
>>>>>> created by this company ended up being used by government
>>>>>> programs, DoD, and others, so the value was getting out to
>>>>>> society when it was being created, even if no one individual
>>>>>> was getting rich because of it)
>>>>>> Extended point- the maximization of profit and shareholder
>>>>>> value is not synonymous with the maximization of benefit to
>>>>>> society, and in fact is often quiet opposite. But I guess we'd
>>>>>> be doomed in coming to any useful conclusions if I expand this
>>>>>> thread into that other conversation as well. :-)
>>>>>> I don't have a solution- I haven't come up with specific
>>>>>> suggestions that would improve the stock market really, and
>>>>>> I'd readily acknowledge that our system works better than any
>>>>>> that anyone else is using at the moment. I just see a
>>>>>> potential for improvement to occur. Figuring out how to do it
>>>>>> is the whole point of this list, yes? :-)
>>>>>> Dave
>>>>>> On Aug 23, 2007, at 12:16 PM, Kevin Lochner wrote:
>>>>>>> but you're forgetting my point, which was that even if some
>>>>>>> companies are getting "screwed over", said screwing may
>>>>>>> benefit society on the whole.
>>> --
>>> http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/dreeves - - search://"Daniel
>>> Reeves"
>>> "As far as I know, this computer has never had an undetected error."
>>
>> Dave Morris
>> cell: 734-476-8769
>> http://www-personal.umich.edu/~thecat/
>>
>>
>
> --
> http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/dreeves - - search://"Daniel Reeves"
>
> Absurdity, n.:
> A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own
> opinion.
> -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
>
>
>
Dave Morris
cell: 734-476-8769
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~thecat/
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Okay, so you've trivialized the response into a self defining cycle. You
can't say that anything good that should happen increases wealth because we'll
measure it in terms of wealth . It's begging the point, and in the real world
it's not the way things work. In the same way I could say that decreasing
the value of the company I spoke of (was ERIM , became Veridian, now is GD-AIS,
a subset of General Dynamics), decreases wealth because you have to measure
the decreased happiness of the employees decreased efficiency of their
research and decreased synergy of their research group because so many of them
left to go elsewhere . The stock market, which paid the CEO (Peter Banks)
through the nose for doing so failed to correctly assign value for this
process and gave away a ton of money because of it. Sure, it may correct
itself in the long run, over 5-10 years as GD stock goes down, but that's too
late , the damage is done. You also cannot properly measure benefit to
society by what people are willing and able to pay. I know it's the American
way to ignore what's good for poor people and only focus on what's good for
rich people, but the poor people in the DC area benefit quite a bit (increased
social welfare) for having access to top quality museums and exhibits such as
are there, and the rest of us rich people who have enough money to throw
around benefit also because we live in a more educated society as a result. If
you charged full cost for admission to cover the facilities, those people
would stop going. The same thing is true of education at most levels. The
people who can't afford it are the ones who need it the most. If you charged
fair market value for elementary school, most kids wouldn't go, and it would
destroy our society. In the long run obviously this increases wealth, but only
over a very long term in a very difficult to measure way- which is why noone
in our country is willing to pay as much as they should be for education . You
can't show increased wealth resulting on a balance sheet, you can't easily
prove how it's benefiting society. So people claim to be in favor of it but
won't actually pay for it and it's suffering as a result - because we're too
focused on only the creation of wealth. We're too dumb to figure it out. What
a pretty cycle that is. With slavery, again, you're self defining
yourself to be right. Now you're creating this new element of freedom- how is
that not a subset of social welfare? How is that not a perfect example of how
losing money is better than making money, if it 's made the wrong way? If it
hurts more people than it helps in the process . Clearly we agree there's good
profit and bad profit. Good profit is where both people benefit and feel
happier in the tradeoff made . Bad profit is where people don't realizing
they're getting hurt as a consequence. Yet it happens all the
time.=A0Capitalism does not respect basic human rights. You and I do, and the
socialist laws of our country do, to keep Capitalism in check. We have to
continue to evolve such laws as capitalism evolves in order to keep pace and
keep the appropriate balance. People are definitely continuing to optimize the
capitalist component of our society, so we must continue to optimize the
socialist component as well.=A0 =A0 =A0I suggest that perhaps we could
identify ways in which the stock market enables and encourages bad profit and
find ways to check that without removing it's capability of enabling and
supporting good profit. I think the answer lies somewhere in the time scale of
things, that you could probably conclude that most forms of good profit take a
fair bit of time, while most forms of bad profit happen very quickly. There
would be exceptions to both of course, and therefore costs, but perhaps a
solution could be found where the aggregate good is significantly increased?
The stock market shares the blame because of what it enables. No profit
could have been made from the destruction of ERIM. Or much less. Or maybe not-
that's part of why I bring this discussion to this group. Obviously I haven't
found a way to modify the stock market to prevent this problem, and I
challenge you to do so. Maybe this particular example was an example of
something different , unrelated to the stock market really. I'm not sure .
And an extreme version of what you're saying would be if it doesn't make
money we shouldn't do it- like the mental hospital for the poor which got
closed down because it wasn 't profitable, to the point where the company
running it threatened to arrest the doctors who were in there cleaning it up
after the storms trying to re-open it, because if it was wrecked they had an
excuse to not have to run it anymore. Because all they cared about was
creation of wealth . I like to think we'd both agree that this was a bad thing.
Fortunately we'll neither of us take our positions to the extreme and only
judge them on that, but rather look for actual reasonable implementations in
the real world. Aiming for not outlawing any consensual crime is a good
goal, but overly simplistic. In reality for a functioning society you have to
make one set of laws for everyone in the spheres in which they interact. This
necessitates that you will have regulations which prevent some people from
doing what they want to do in order to prevent other people from not having
done to them what they don't want to have done to them. =A0 =A0As fun as it
would be to eliminate all the speed limits and guard rails in the country,
most people want them, so those of us that don't have to suffer through it.=A0
=A0Perhaps those who make their living studying and trading on the stock
market might have to accept that they are not able to buy and sell to each
other exactly how they want if it means that the majority of people who do so
casually, or only with their retirement accounts or otherwise at levels of
large distraction, can do so more safely and reliably. I don 't know, that's
not really the right analogy, but if I had the right solution I would have
started this thread with it. I mean geez, why do you so much want
the terrorists to win? ;-) On Aug 29, 07, at 6:59 PM, Daniel Reeves
wrote: I consider my challenge unanswered! =A0 Read on... How about
establishing the environmental protection agency? The value of saving a
forest or preventing x tons of pollution can and must be valued in dollars.
=A0 Refusing to quantify it leads to more environmental damage . So the
EPA, if done right (levying pollution taxes !), always increases wealth by
incentivizing the right trade -offs. =A0 [See also Kevin 's response]
All the national museums in downtown DC? If a museum can't cover its
costs through donations and admissions (or admissions that people would have
been willing to pay even if you choose not to actually charge admission ) then
is it good for society to have that museum? =A0 Not at all clear. =A0 If the
answer is yes then where do you draw the line between what's worth it for the
good of society and what isn't? But perhaps a museum that we expect
future generations to have a lot of value for could be an example . =A0 The
real point of my challenge was to assert that wealth and welfare are the same
thing (as far as public policy is concerned). =A0 This museum example doesn't
refute that but may be an example of when we should take a leap of faith and
do something for the sake of future wealth that there is no way to measure
yet. =A0 But in fact , it's not so hard to measure. =A0 How much do we
currently value museums our ancestors maintained ? Abolishing slavery?
Ah, good one. =A0 But this doesn't count because the principle of
freedom trumps both wealth and welfare. =A0 (Kevin's point was that
abolishing slavery doesn't necessarily increase net welfare -- maybe the
utility of the slave owners increased more than the slaves' utility
decreased.) Slavery is just intrinsically immoral. =A0 Let's stick to the
universe of policies that respect basic human rights . The CEO who got
rich destroying the non-profit research company was a snake oil salesman at
every step of the way. [...] got rich while the illusion lasted, and now is
in California on the beach and people here are looking for new jobs. [...]
Encouraged supported and enabled by the way the stock market works . We
agreed that swindling is stealing and should be illegal. =A0 I still don't
follow your argument that the stock market shares any blame. =A0 I second
Kevin 's request for the name of this company. An extreme form of your
position would seem to be "no selling things because sometimes it might be
snake oil" or perhaps "no selling oils because they might be from snakes". =A0
To restate my point from before: laws that limit the consensual behavior of
individuals do more harm than good. Also, it 's unamerican! On
Aug 28, 2007, at 12:46 AM, Daniel Reeves wrote : I challenge you to name
a public policy that increases net welfare (ie, utility) while decreasing
total wealth. PS: The snake oil case is simple : no swindling -- it's the
same as stealing. =A0 I see no analogy with short -sighted stock trading or
overcompensating CEOs. =A0 Also, outlawing snake oil increases total wealth.
(The snake oil salesperson gets richer by $50, the sucker gets poorer by $50,
sucker gets 0 benefit, both parties lose $5 of time: total wealth =3D 50 - 50
+ 0 - 5 - 5 =3D -10. =A0 If that 0 were more than 10 then wealth would have
been created.) --- \/ =A0 FROM Dave Morris AT .08.27 14:54 (Today) =A0
\/ --- I do agree that one should err on the side of less government and
less regulation as a general rule, as a goal to be aimed for. But that shouldn
't paralyze us from action if we don't have a perfect or perfectly known
solution but we know we have real problems. No, the free market is not an
engineered system. But it is one we can influence, and one that many are
trying to influence all the time. The default is that people will try to
influence our system to maximize their ability to profit , which is not always
in line with maximizing social good. So we have many good regulations on
capitalism in place and should continue to . Even though they hurt people
sometimes, on the whole they're worth it . =A0 We don't allow snake oil
salesman to peddle their trade anymore (selling products claiming to have one
effect and really having none), even though it's consensual and profitable . I
think perhaps we should look at some stock deals and some CEOs that way as
well, perhaps requiring more openness about who makes how much, etc., so that
motivations are more clear when people take charge of companies and start
changing them around. I'd agree with reducing the level of corporate welfare
and protection, which starts with reducing the lobbying influence on our
government. That would be great, and I'm far more confident in the
value/safety of this action than any change to the stock market. But
simultaneously, when a small number of people like those who took charge of
the not-for-profit research company I spoke of, are able to for personal
profit, manipulate the lives of a great number of people without their consent
or control- that needs to be regulated. =A0 To do this, like the war on
drugs which I agree has problems, you need to take a multi-pronged approach to
the sticky and difficult to resolve situation. Mostly you target prosecution
of the actual crimes (theft, by drug users or CEOs), but also you increase
awareness of the issue via education and email chains like this one, and also
you try to reduce the motivation for the crimes to break the chain from the
other side . (thus my proposal to look at the stock market and maybe place some
controls there- I don't have a good war on drugs analogy here :-)) Sure
there are some companies that benefit from selling out. But I think there are
also many that are hurt by it. We could argue without resolution for days
because there are so many examples in both directions. But specifically with
YouTube, I'd argue that college students would put together sites like that
for free because they're sweet, without any motivation of profit. The open
source software movement is great proof of this. And I'd further argue that
while yes, venture capital and Google have provided the site with the
resources to handle the load it currently has, I personally would guess that
it would not be as good of a product if it had started off as a corporate
profit driven venture. There would probably be registrations and more
advertisements and more limitations to guarantee profits, and less just free
functionality. There will never be a perfect solution. The balance between
capitalism and socialism will always lead to individual cases where something
is being over or under regulated. The real target is to reach a point where we
have just as many problems pointing towards a need to go more capitalist as
more socialist, and then we're at a pretty good point. So don't be too afraid
of a solution that might slow down profit, slow down corporate growth, or slow
down creation of wealth from time to time and in some cases. Those things are
not the end of the world. Sure, creating wealth is good, and we should
maximize that. But we should prioritize maximizing the creation of social
welfare more. So I think it would be worth the risk to look into ways to tone
down the stock market a bit. Dave On Aug 24, 2007, at 11:51 PM, Daniel
Reeves wrote: You're thinking in terms of more government interference . =A0
I think the answer is less. =A0 Telling people how much they can pay each
other or what they can buy from who when is dangerous territory. =A0 Even if
you don't have a philosophical problem with it (I kind of do) it simply tends
to backfire . Getting rid of corporate welfare and legal privileges for
corporations is a better place to start. And I just don't buy the point of
your not-for-profit company example, Dave . =A0 Not that I deny that
something went awry in that instance. The prospect of getting bought out is
what motivates many brilliant startups . =A0 That's why we have flickr and
youtube. =A0 Certainly it motivated them to add the polish and scale to
support millions of users. I feel there is a fallacy implicit in proposals
along the lines of Dave's and Trixie 's: =A0 thinking of the economy as an
engineered system to be tweaked (or in Trixie's case reengineered altogether).
=A0 Trying to conceptualize it that way leads to the dark side! :) Consider
the fundamental difference between a law like "no stealing" and a law
prohibiting/limiting consensual behavior , in Dave's case buying and selling
stocks from each other or paying each other to run companies. Laws like that
require a very careful argument. For example, "no buying drugs because you'll
become an addict and turn to crime." =A0 And of course even that turns out
to be an incredibly bad idea . =A0 Focusing our enforcement effort on actual
crime (as opposed to behavior that may or may not cause indirect harm to
society) would be far more effective . Dave, I do concede the meta argument
about falsifiability. =A0 Well said. --- \/ =A0 FROM Dave Morris AT
07.08.24 :58 (Today) =A0 \/ --- I guess disagreement with that would be
my whole point. The CEOs benefit hugely, but the company is less effective
than it was before at providing valuable research to society, and the
individuals involved are less well off too, so how does society benefit by the
company getting screwed? The example I speak of was a small research company
that was doing its job very well as a not-for-profit entity, not a failing
company or one that was getting left behind by the changing times. It was a
valuable entity that no-one was getting rich off of, that one person saw the
opportunity to get rich off of because of how the stock market works, and so
they did so, without thought for long term benefit to the company or society.
The stock market enabled this. In support of capitalist society, ways to
regulate this such as controlling CEO salaries or stock deals could benefit
long term shareholder value, and thus benefit society in the long run by
optimizing value/wealth creation over time. (the ideas created by this company
ended up being used by government programs, DoD, and others, so the value was
getting out to society when it was being created, even if no one individual
was getting rich because of it) Extended point- the maximization of profit
and shareholder value is not synonymous with the maximization of benefit to
society, and in fact is often quiet opposite. But I guess we'd be doomed in
coming to any useful conclusions if I expand this thread into that other
conversation as well. :-) I don't have a solution- I haven't come up with
specific suggestions that would improve the stock market really, and I'd
readily acknowledge that our system works better than any that anyone else is
using at the moment. I just see a potential for improvement to occur . =A0
Figuring out how to do it is the whole point of this list, yes? :-) Dave On
Aug 23, 07, at 12:16 PM, Kevin Lochner wrote: but you're forgetting my
point, which was that even if some companies are getting "screwed over", said
screwing may benefit society on the whole. -- =A0
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people /dreeves =A0 - - =A0 search://"Daniel
Reeves " "As far as I know, this computer has never had an undetected error."
Dave Morris cell: 734-476-8769 http://www-personal.umich.edu
/~thecat/ -- =A0 http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people /dreeves =A0
- - =A0 search://"Daniel Reeves " Absurdity, n.: =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 A
statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. =A0 =A0
=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Dave Morris cell: 734-476-8769 http://www-personal.umich.edu
/~thecat/
--Apple-Mail-5--277445570--
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