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Journal by khallow
I was trying to put together some musings I had about experimentation at the society level with an eye to eventually making society better, but suffered from serious writer's block. So here's what I have.
First, the observation that we can look at a society as a bunch of humans with infrastructure. This infrastructure appears at many levels: individual biology/psychology, culture, rules and trade, the traditional sort of infrastructure (energy generation, roads, emergency services, telecomms, internet), and education/knowledge.
Today, we bring a lot of interesting tools to the table for improving society. First, we have a better understanding and knowledge of the workings of society. Second, advancing technology allows us to do things that weren't possible before. A key one is things are becoming less scarce. We may even be on the verge of the post-scarcity society where basic human needs are "too cheap to meter".
Second, it seems a fine environmental for experimenting with a variety of possibilities that would be legally and culturally acceptable to a degree.
For example, we're already trying out non-traditional relationships like same sex marriage and internet discourse with considerable success.
I wish society was more open to economic/trade experimentation (like gig economy, high frequency trade (and other automated trade mechanisms), and cryptocurrency).
Finally, not much point to experimenting, if one doesn't pay attention to the results. For example, we have vast improvement in the human condition due to the present economic system (global trade, capitalism, plus widespread democracy), but I still see people pushing old narratives that ignore that. Similarly, the economic experiments I mentioned above all have resistance from sources that usually can't be bothered to find an actual problem (gig workers are "exploited", HFT is stealing pennies from grandma every time she trades, and cryptocurrencies are for tax evasion).
On that last point, it doesn't make sense to do experiments, if you can't perceive what works or not in those experiments.
First, the observation that we can look at a society as a bunch of humans with infrastructure. This infrastructure appears at many levels: individual biology/psychology, culture, rules and trade, the traditional sort of infrastructure (energy generation, roads, emergency services, telecomms, internet), and education/knowledge.
Today, we bring a lot of interesting tools to the table for improving society. First, we have a better understanding and knowledge of the workings of society. Second, advancing technology allows us to do things that weren't possible before. A key one is things are becoming less scarce. We may even be on the verge of the post-scarcity society where basic human needs are "too cheap to meter".
Second, it seems a fine environmental for experimenting with a variety of possibilities that would be legally and culturally acceptable to a degree.
For example, we're already trying out non-traditional relationships like same sex marriage and internet discourse with considerable success.
I wish society was more open to economic/trade experimentation (like gig economy, high frequency trade (and other automated trade mechanisms), and cryptocurrency).
Finally, not much point to experimenting, if one doesn't pay attention to the results. For example, we have vast improvement in the human condition due to the present economic system (global trade, capitalism, plus widespread democracy), but I still see people pushing old narratives that ignore that. Similarly, the economic experiments I mentioned above all have resistance from sources that usually can't be bothered to find an actual problem (gig workers are "exploited", HFT is stealing pennies from grandma every time she trades, and cryptocurrencies are for tax evasion).
On that last point, it doesn't make sense to do experiments, if you can't perceive what works or not in those experiments.
Reply to: Re:Present economic system
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Do not use if foil seal is broken.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 24 2022, @01:30PM
Except when they don't. You can get a lot of anti-democratic and anti-trade regulation then. For example, the US back in the 1930s created an agency, the Raisin Administrative Committee (RAC) to buy excess raisins [reason.com] in order to support farmers who grew raisins. In the linked story, this had devolved to the point that the RAC took 30% of the raisin crop without compensation.
"Private capitalism" is capitalism. The other things that are labeled similarly, like "state capitalism" aren't capitalism. Much like "real diamonds" are diamonds; "fake diamonds" are not.