Comment by llamataboot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by llamataboot | Hacker News Reader

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It's always funny to see the upvote/downvote swings on comments like these.

I try to keep them more substantive overall, but what else can be said about this. Clearly there are still major ethical concerns with access to these facial recognition black boxes and clearly amazon shareholders are far more concerned with expanding into any legal market as quick as possible.

Amazon is /the/ poster child of late capitalism as far as I'm concerned. Ruthlessly efficient, impossible to escape even if you hate them (I mean, come on, like I'm gonna go to a store when I just grab it on Prime now), and literally run all the retail stuff as a revenue front to expand deep into subterranean territory (AWS, etc). No nod to "Don't Be Evil" here, just a gigantic black box that can pump out money for shareholders. Enough money and leverage to apply impossible pressure in almost any market they decide to want to dominate (Still waiting to see what they do to grocery with the WF buy).

And still mostly building the layers and connections for domination. They haven't even switched into eat-the-world mode yet, they are still just grinding and building resources...

> "Amazon is [...] ruthlessly efficient..."

this part is capitalism working as intended and (mostly) as desired. the challenge of course is that it has also led to highly undesirable power structures (corporations, oligopolies, cabals, cartels, etc.) that increasingly eclipses the individual as principal agent. that's a failure (by omission) of capitalism.

while governments, communities and other social structures can contain that consolidation of power to some extent, subservience to corporate power is a looming threat for common folk. it's crucial to further codify and protect the equivalence of the individual and the corporation.

for instance, contracts (like EULA's) shouldn't be one-sided ultimatums inflicted on the indivudual, but the beginning of a negotiation between two equal parties. corporations would argue that the administrative overhead of this would be prohibitive, but that's the price for access to a lucrative market (and that sweet, sweet revenue stream).

in addition, corporations naturally have asymmetrical information advantages that need to be leveled in the exchange of value contemplated by an economic transaction. we have financial disclosure laws, for example, but they don't go far enough. basic information like the actual prices paid by other customers and the reasons for differences should be made available to the counter-party.

>> "Amazon is [...] ruthlessly efficient..."

>this part is capitalism working as intended and (mostly) as desired.

I think we need to be careful to define what we mean by "efficient". Do we frame efficient as "churns out the highest revenue / spending ratio" (ironically evaluating capitalism by a metric created by capitalism)? Then yes, that may well be true. But what about the overworked and abused workers? What about the stifled competition? What about the 40% increase in fuel and emissions to reduce shipping from 3 to 2 days? Is it all worth it, to get your consumerist crap a few hours earlier in the post? This are not just rhetorical questions, these are actual questions we need to pose ourselves (e.g. is it worth an excess X million tons of CO2 per year to get prime deliveries Y hours faster).

Would that fit into a definition like "increases overall quality of life the most"? Food for thought, in my opinion.

>for instance, contracts (like EULA's) shouldn't be one-sided ultimatums inflicted on the indivudual, but the beginning of a negotiation between two equal parties.

Isn't this one of the classical critiques of capitalist (e.g. Marx), that it is impossible to have a negotiation between two equal parties when the two parties are so... well, unequal.

Maximum efficiency will occur when no humans are employed and all energy is produced and transmogrified for, and consumed by, retrofeudal neoaristocrats living lives of infinite leisure in their garden cloud paradise fortresses.

Free markets are neither entirely good nor entirely bad. Many things that we would consider to be intrinsic and inextricable parts of the human experience are things which cannot survive the relentless assault of unrestricted Darwinian competition.

A free market is a defect-defect equilibrium, and a defect-defect equilibrium is like fire. It's very powerful, and absolutely necessary; we wouldn't have what we have without fire, and we wouldn't even be human as we are without it, but we must be very careful that it doesn't escape the fireplace and burn the house down.

You ask what would "increase overall quality of life the most?" There are non-economic markets, as well. Mating, for instance. Until very recently it was highly monogamous and strictly regulated. And now it isn't. Winner-take-all.

I don't know where I'm going with this, except to say that our world is the direct product of decisions, our collective decisions... and the people who make them:

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."

— Edward Bernays, Propaganda.

> 'I think we need to be careful to define what we mean by "efficient".'

yes, efficiency has multiple definitions (e.g., productive, allocative, etc.), but i think the problems you raise (overwork, anti-competitiveness) are primarily regulatory. communities (governments) set the rules, and capital has to be allocated within the confines of thsoe rules, like 40-hour work weeks and antitrust laws (akin to out-of-bounds rules in sports). similarly, the costs of pollution should be internalized, as logically, it's a form of stealing (taking enjoyment, health and even lives from others).

> "Isn't this one of the classical critiques of capitalis[m]..."

i suppose marx made a similar argument about the tension between capital and labor, which could be further extended to the consumer-citizen as another economic stakeholder. we invented the fictional personhood of the corporation to resolve a legal conundrum (how to interact legally with businesses, separate from owners) and even gave them special privileges to foster innovation (e.g., the corporate veil). it's only fair to maintain equivalency in negotiations in exchange for those privileges.

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