Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

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Even more grossly significant than this is the fact that "logical and/or beneficial at small / individual / short-term scale" need not equate to a best solution or alternative for a population at large or long-term timescale.

A classic case in economics is explained very clearly in Mancur Olsen's Logic of Collective Action, which explains why group-based decisions are often at odds with the interests of the group as a whole.

Another is Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, which hods that there is no method for constructing social preferences from arbitrary individual preferences. In other words, there is no rule, majority voting or otherwise, for establishing social preferences from arbitrary individual preferences -- so long as you also require unrestricted domain, non-dictatorship, Pareto efficiency, and independence of irrelevant alternatives. In other words: democracy not only may not, but cannot deliver an optimum outcome.

There are many other such paradoxes and conflicts, many of which I'm becoming increasingly convinced undermine key and manadatory assumptions of a properly functioning free market economy.

What changes might fix these is of course a rather longer discussion....

Winston Churchill was clear in his writing that America could not be trusted as an ally in anything that required steadfast determination over longer timelines. The winds of democracy make America a fickle ally. See 'The Gathering Storm.' Public schools don't often teach any of the shortcomings of a democratic society.

The US has often turned to dictatorships for its "friends indeed", though this doesn't always pay out particularly well.

While there's a limit to the amount of pain a democracy will shoulder, there's also a pretty strong tenacity to its true friendships. Such as, say, the "special relationship" much heralded between the United States and Britain. Once we got over some initial sore feelings, by the late 19th century, economic and cultural ties had pretty solidly cemented the two countries together.

By comparison, the USA' s dictatorial allies have been steadfast ... for roughly the duration of the dictatorship, if that. And the fall of same can leave a very long period of mistrust and poor relations: Iran, and much of Latin America are testament to this.

Public schools are indeed a fairly mediocre source, but fortunately we're not limited to the knowledge spooned out in them. I found university to be rather interesting in this regard, and have made some study of related matters since.

So: I'd take odds with Mr. Churchill's assessment.

Churchill was not speaking in regard to feelings and a relationship with another nation, but rather dependability in mutual long term pursuits. I think what he says remains true and a useful filter at times.

another problem is we might not be judging this companies by the correct metric. maybe the best outcome a company can hope for is dying and making a ton of money while dying but we will often see this as a failure of management. so instead we get companies that fight tooth and nail to stay alive but don't end up creating as much value than if they went gracefully into the night.

Is giving up the independence of irrelevant alternatives that bad?

It's not that irrelevant alternatives are improperly ranked.

It's that introducing irrelevant alternatives changes the ranking of relevant alternatives: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_of_irrelevant_alte...

E.g.: in an election between La Roge and Grebe Sough, if Handle Parr's decision to run changes the outcome between Roge and Sough, you have a dependence on an irrelevant alternative.

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