by
Jaron Lanier
View all notes
Markets are an information technology. A technology is useless if it can't be tweaked. If market technology can't be fully automatic and needs some "buttons", then there's no use in trying to pretend otherwise. You don't stay attached to poorly performing quests for perfection. You fix bugs.
And there are bugs! We just went through taxpayer-funded bailouts of networked finance in much of the world, and no amount of austerity seems enough to fully pay for that. So the technology needs to be tweaked. Wanting to tweak a technology shows a commitment to it, not a rejection of it.
So, let us continue with the project at hand, which is to see if network technology can make capitalism better instead of worse. Please don't pretend there's some "pure" form of capitalism we should be faithful to. There isnt.
at least he does accept that markets need regulation and that austerity is bad, props for that
Copying a musician's music ruins economic dignity. It doesn't necessarily deny the musician any form of income, but it does mean that the musician is restricted to a real-time economic life. That means one gets paid to perform, perhaps, but not paid for music one has recorded in the past. It is one thing to sing for your supper occasionally, but to have to do so for every meal forces you into a peasant's dilemma.
how can you see a phrase like "economic dignity" and not roll your eyes? what does it even mean? what does its usage say about capitalism realism and the extent to which this author has bought into it?
the main problem here is that he foresees musicians not getting paid (enough) for their music in the future, but is apparently incapable of imagining a world where you don't need to "get paid" in order to survive ... his projections for tech are spot-on, but his projections for the political sphere are extremely reactionary and naive
[...] If network technology is supposed to be so good for everyone, why has the developed world suffered so much just as the technology has become widespread? Why was there so much economic pain at once all over the developed world just as computer networking dug in to every aspect of human activity, in the early 21st century? Was it a coincidence?
ohhhhh boy, someone needs to give this guy a book on neoliberalism
[...] a Siren Server might allow only those who would be cheap to insure through doorway (to become insured) in order to make a supernaturally ideal, low-risk insurance company. Such a scheme would let high-risk people pass one way, and low-risk ones pass the other way, in order to implement a phony perpetual motion machine out of a human society. However, the uninsured would not cease to exist; rather, they would instead add to the cost of the whole system, which includes the people who run the Siren Server. A short-term illusion of risk reduction would actually lead to increased risk in the longer term.
this is actually a good analogy. he explains that the reason this wouldn't work is because of entropy
This is documented in Martin Ford's book The Lights in the Tunnel (2009). He sees jobs going away, and proposes that people in the future be paid only for consuming wisely, since they eventually won't be needed for producing anything. I find that idea inadequately human-centric and overly dismal, but it is an interesting contrast to my proposal.
in a footnote. this is literally how i feel about Lanier's proposal
"Disruption" by the use of digital network technology undermines the very idea of markets and capitalism. Instead of economics being about a bunch of players with unique positions in a market, we devolve toward a small number of spying operations in omniscient positions, which means that eventually markets of all kinds will shrink.
YES AND WHY CAN'T YOU JUST ACCEPT THAT AND TAKE THAT PREMISE TO ITS FULL CONCLUSION WHY
WHY
It's certainly reasonable to expect that making economic activities more efficient ought to increase opportunity for everyone in the longer term. However, you can't really compare the two sides of the equation, of lower prices and lowered job prospects.
This is so obviously the case that it seems strange to point it out, but I have found that it is a hard truth to convey to people who have not experienced anything other than affluence. So: If you already have enough to live on, saving some money on a purchase is a nice perk. But if you haven't reached that threshold, or if you had been there but lost your perch, then saving is not the equivalent of making; it instead becomes part of a day-to-day calculus of just getting by. You can never save enough to get ahead if you don't have adequate career prospects.
very true and also very sad that he has to devote space to something so obvious
[...] Undoing the Siren Server pattern is the only way back to a truer form of capitalism.
Let's unpack (or maybe deconstruct this) because it's a really fascinating point. What does he mean by a truer form of capitalism? One in which workers are still exploited and corporations still make gigantic profits, but we expand the definition of "workers" to include basically anyone who generates data?
To me, it sounds like he wants to go back to the Golden Ages (which he didn't live through) or maybe the pre-crash years. But what if there is no truer form of capitalism to go back to? What if the capitalism he thinks of as "good" only exists in his head, an as idyllic paradise whose real costs are borne by outsiders he never has to think about?
Like him, I'm also very much against high-frequency trading and other manifestations of financialisation in this era of late-stage capitalism. Unlike him, I recognise that there are factors other than this "Siren Server" pattern: there are structural forces endogenous to capitalism that will prevent us moving toward the better, more human-driven world he takes as his telos. We can't simply "undo" this pattern. We have to understand how this pattern came to be, and what that tells us about the existence of a "truer" form of capitalism. After all, perhaps the "Siren Server" is the logical consequence of developing particular technologies within our current economic system. And if that's the case, how can we undo it without completely changing the way we perceive the economy?
[...] self-driving cars will depend on cloud data about streets, pedestrians, and everything else that can affect a trip. That information will be renewed constantly, with every single ride. Will the rider be compensated beyond a free ride for helping to generate this information? To do otherwise would be considered accounting fraud in a humanistic information economy.
the entire economy has been built on accounting fraud, buddy
[...] If everything will be free, why are we trying to corner anything? Are our fortunes only temporary? Will they become moot when we're done?
indeed, buddy ... money doesn't go with you when you die