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Comment by benj111 | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. That's how you would like the world to be, not how the world is.

It's how the world could be. But first we need to stop using an economic belief system built around feedback loops that reward sociopathic behaviour.

A long time ago cannibalism was considered the norm. At some point the disadvantages became obvious.

We're about to go through an analogous transition with our economic belief systems.

It isn't clear to me how you would prevent sociopathic behaviour.

If current trade relies on trust, sociopaths could take advantage of that trust. If you replace it with a trustless system you take all the humanity out of it(?), which starts seeming a bit dystopian to me.

Plus to me marketing is very broad, and can basically be divorced from economics. Marketing (propaganda) still existed in the USSR.

Can you be more specific about this new economic belief system?

I disagree with this - the system we have is based on money and trust, which while gamed easily, is much less violent, brutal and inequal when compared to other systems that we've tried in the past - such as communism/socialism (the USSR still had a market, but it was based on how much political power you had, rather than pure money - a much more violent game), or feudal systems where it was all about how much land you were born into (or possibly conquered for yourself). Of all of the systems we've tried, this is probably the least sociopathic yet.

Which bit do you disagree with?

I said I cant imagine a system more hostile to sociopaths. You've provided historic examples that are less hostile.

I wonder if there is some evolutionary mechanism that rewards sociopathic behaviour in a small percentage of the population of any group.

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