Economics Doesn’t Believe in Magic | Hacker News Reader

Economics Doesn’t Believe in Magic

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20 pointsFalcon98 comments

This is some seriously Marxist shit. Vast inequality underpinned by a monopoly on violence is the inevitable product of trade in commodities? Not disagreeing, just saying... Not everyone is on this page.

That's overstating the claim. Specifically it makes the point that nobody will let kids have something this valuable (which seems obvious) and the violence is specific to the setting:

> Getting talismans compounds how easy it is to get more talismans. In a low-tech low-institutional-trust world, this looks like warfare, religion, theft. No matter what, institutions and norms appear to justify and encode these practices.

Distribution of valuable commodities today is also highly inequitable, despite it being through less violent means.

Read your Chomsky.

The twenty-first century will be remembered as the time when the ideas that capital is power, and free exchange of capital inevitably leads to a power law distribution where the few control the bulk of resources, are no longer theoretical musings of "Marxist" intellectuals, but widely accepted as natural law. Laissez-faire economics will be obsoleted by the acknowledgement of these laws as surely as royalism was obsoleted by the Enlightenment.

I think the idea that capital is power is already widely accepted. The problem is that the alternatives to laissez-faire economics are corruption and cronyism.

Is there any society where the government can be trusted to regulate the economy without favoring the powerful and perpetuating inequality?

I have thought about this a fair bit, and it seems like the only real way to completely eliminate such risk would be a benevolent AI overlord, as the problem you mentioned is rooted in human nature. Realistically though, high transparency and strict regulation of money in politics to prevent tribalism is a good idea. An 'all campaign donations must be anonymous to the recipient' law would be unfeasible, so limiting contribution amounts severely is the only way. Unfortunately, even doing this would not change the fact that most politicians are in the same social group as the wealthy and powerful, so it is an imperfect solution. People inevitably show favoritism towards those they are friends with, so minimizing the effect any one person/group can have is key. This is why I agree with George Washington, political parties should not be a thing, they cause far more trouble than they are worth.

Hey, man, I've exchanged email with Chomsky. As I said, not disagreeing, just surprised to see this stated so glibly.

It ultimately comes down to the fine details for where the balance of power ends up (like always), and essentially acts as a mirror for how someone already sees their world.

If the super-talisman is in the wilderness and the requester must be alone with it, and part of a talisman's ability could be to make people invisible? It seems like there'd be a fighting chance for distributed power.

This was bad. Really bad. The word "economics" is used, but with such disdain for anyone who has ever picked up a book on the subject that was not Das Kapital.

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