by
Jaron Lanier
136
I'm no Marxist. I love competing in the market, and the last thing I'd want is to live under communism. My wife grew up with it in Minsk, Belarus, and I am absolutely, thoroughly convinced of the misery. But if you select the right passages, Marx can be read as being incredibly current.
right after his anecdote about accidentally listening to Das Kapital on the radio (he thought it was a story about a startup)
he loves competing in the market because it has worked out for him, not because it's universally better >_> his dislike for communism, mediated by his vicarious dislike for the Soviet Union, completely neglects 1) the extent to which any instance of Actually Existing Socialism is embedded in a larger world system; and 2) the level of technology present at the time (obviously we live in a very different technological landscape today)
I'm no Marxist. I love competing in the market, and the last thing I'd want is to live under communism. My wife grew up with it in Minsk, Belarus, and I am absolutely, thoroughly convinced of the misery. But if you select the right passages, Marx can be read as being incredibly current.
right after his anecdote about accidentally listening to Das Kapital on the radio (he thought it was a story about a startup)
he loves competing in the market because it has worked out for him, not because it's universally better >_> his dislike for communism, mediated by his vicarious dislike for the Soviet Union, completely neglects 1) the extent to which any instance of Actually Existing Socialism is embedded in a larger world system; and 2) the level of technology present at the time (obviously we live in a very different technological landscape today)
152
Keynes was an unapologetic financial elitist and had no interest in a quest for income equality or a planned economy. He simply sought a mechanism to get stuck markets unstuck. No one has proposed an alternative to his idea of a stimulus. The enduring nuisance is that someone has to guess about exactly how and when to aim a stimulus kick; this is just another way of saying you can't have science without scientists.
I ... don't know if I would agree, from having read Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren + various secondary sources on Keynes, but maybe Lanier's just trying to make him more palatable for the conservatives in his audience?
this passage is situated in a larger musing on local maximums and the complicated, risky ways we can get out of them and on to higher equilibrium points (which is relevant)
Keynes was an unapologetic financial elitist and had no interest in a quest for income equality or a planned economy. He simply sought a mechanism to get stuck markets unstuck. No one has proposed an alternative to his idea of a stimulus. The enduring nuisance is that someone has to guess about exactly how and when to aim a stimulus kick; this is just another way of saying you can't have science without scientists.
I ... don't know if I would agree, from having read Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren + various secondary sources on Keynes, but maybe Lanier's just trying to make him more palatable for the conservatives in his audience?
this passage is situated in a larger musing on local maximums and the complicated, risky ways we can get out of them and on to higher equilibrium points (which is relevant)
153
[...] A successful Siren Server no longer acts only as a player within a larger system. Instead it becomes a central planner. This makes it stupid, like a central planner in a communist regime.
ok buddy we get it
also, central planners can be good, actually
[...] A successful Siren Server no longer acts only as a player within a larger system. Instead it becomes a central planner. This makes it stupid, like a central planner in a communist regime.
ok buddy we get it
also, central planners can be good, actually
154
Facebook's mission statement commits the company "to make the world more open and connected." Google's official mission is to "organize the world's information." No high-frequency trading server has issued a public mission statement that I know of, but when I speak to the proprietors, they claim they are optimizing what is spent where in "the world." The conceit of optimizing the world is self-serving and deceptive. The optimizations approximated in the real world as a result of Siren Servers are optimal only from the points of view of those servers.
this is an extremely good point
Facebook's mission statement commits the company "to make the world more open and connected." Google's official mission is to "organize the world's information." No high-frequency trading server has issued a public mission statement that I know of, but when I speak to the proprietors, they claim they are optimizing what is spent where in "the world." The conceit of optimizing the world is self-serving and deceptive. The optimizations approximated in the real world as a result of Siren Servers are optimal only from the points of view of those servers.
this is an extremely good point
192
[...] In this approach, the contents of books would be atomized into bits of information to be aggregated, and the authors themselves, the feeling of their voices, their differing perspectives, would be lost. Needless to say, this approach would hide its tracks so that it would be hard to send a nanopayment to an author who had been aggregated.
on Google's book-scanning project
he completely misses the point that this is exactly what he is proposing re: other algorithms T_T
[...] In this approach, the contents of books would be atomized into bits of information to be aggregated, and the authors themselves, the feeling of their voices, their differing perspectives, would be lost. Needless to say, this approach would hide its tracks so that it would be hard to send a nanopayment to an author who had been aggregated.
on Google's book-scanning project
he completely misses the point that this is exactly what he is proposing re: other algorithms T_T
208
To a libertarian or "austerian" I say: If we desire some form of markets or capitalism, we must live in a bell-shaped world, with a dominant middle class, for that is where customers come from. Neither a petro-fiefdom, a military dictatorship, nor a narco-state can support authentic internal market development, and neither does a winner-take-nearly-all network design.
I accept the implication though obvs not the condition lol
To a libertarian or "austerian" I say: If we desire some form of markets or capitalism, we must live in a bell-shaped world, with a dominant middle class, for that is where customers come from. Neither a petro-fiefdom, a military dictatorship, nor a narco-state can support authentic internal market development, and neither does a winner-take-nearly-all network design.
I accept the implication though obvs not the condition lol
210
This reminds me of the way some libertarians are convinced that lower taxes will always guarantee a wealthier society. The math is wrong; outcomes from complex systems are actually filled with peaks and valleys.
yeah no shit. he's making libertarians look pretty dumb here
This reminds me of the way some libertarians are convinced that lower taxes will always guarantee a wealthier society. The math is wrong; outcomes from complex systems are actually filled with peaks and valleys.
yeah no shit. he's making libertarians look pretty dumb here
226
[...] If the system remembers where information originally came from, then the people who are the sources of information can be paid for it.
yeah but can you pay them enough to preserve their middle class lifestyles without drastically compromising profit margins for these companies? it's a tricky balance--you have to substantially temper expectations on both ends. why even bother
[...] If the system remembers where information originally came from, then the people who are the sources of information can be paid for it.
yeah but can you pay them enough to preserve their middle class lifestyles without drastically compromising profit margins for these companies? it's a tricky balance--you have to substantially temper expectations on both ends. why even bother
234
We do have rules in place to charge commercial concerns for using the public airwaves. Maybe that model could be extended to information flows in general. The argument would be that every citizen contributes to the information space whether they want to or not. Everyone is measured and tracked in the network age. So why not have government collect compensation for the use of that value in order to fund social welfare?
his argument against this (on the next page) is that we should instead go "all the way" and treat information as genuinely valuable which, I would argue, is NOT going all the way
he also characterises such an endeavour (of granting licenses) as potentially limiting new ventures (putting a "political choke hold on expression") which is ofc bad
my response to this is: does he not realise that governments (or at least all governments with sovereign money) can print their own money or ...?
We do have rules in place to charge commercial concerns for using the public airwaves. Maybe that model could be extended to information flows in general. The argument would be that every citizen contributes to the information space whether they want to or not. Everyone is measured and tracked in the network age. So why not have government collect compensation for the use of that value in order to fund social welfare?
his argument against this (on the next page) is that we should instead go "all the way" and treat information as genuinely valuable which, I would argue, is NOT going all the way
he also characterises such an endeavour (of granting licenses) as potentially limiting new ventures (putting a "political choke hold on expression") which is ofc bad
my response to this is: does he not realise that governments (or at least all governments with sovereign money) can print their own money or ...?
235
A humanist approach to future digital economies might, on first sniff, smell redistributionist, but it is nothing of the kind. Some people would contribute and earn more than others. The point is not to create a fake contest where everybody is guaranteed to win, but rather to be honest about who contributed to successes, so as not to foster fake incentives.
in trying to water down his argument for conservatives, he strips it of any true audacity and makes it pointless. why have a contest that controls distribution at all?????
A humanist approach to future digital economies might, on first sniff, smell redistributionist, but it is nothing of the kind. Some people would contribute and earn more than others. The point is not to create a fake contest where everybody is guaranteed to win, but rather to be honest about who contributed to successes, so as not to foster fake incentives.
in trying to water down his argument for conservatives, he strips it of any true audacity and makes it pointless. why have a contest that controls distribution at all?????