24 karma · joined May 15, 2014
If Bezos could find a way to automate himself, I'm pretty sure he would. And why not? He still owns the stock. Robot Bezos would do all the work and meaty Bezos would make all the money.
I couldn't agree more, and that analysis applies to all systems of human interaction, not just corporations. I wish people would use that framework to understand everything, specifically government.
If we begin with the assumption that politicians are selfless servants of the people who only want to do what's best for society at large in the long run, then you would conclude that politicians will carefully examine the theories and methods of the two economists' schools of thought. If we begin with the assumption that everyone, including politicians, is primarily self-interested, then you would conclude that a politician would just do what's popular with no regard for how the two economists arrived at their advice.
I believe people are primarily self-interested. From that perspective none of this discussion about economic theories matters because politicians are just going to do what's popular anyway.
The proposition that people are primarily self-interested is therefore in my opinion the only idea of value that's come out of the study of economics, which is the study of human behavior after all.
I occasionally watch the evening news and I am sick and tired of ads for drugs for old people. I'm not old and I don't need drugs. But the television stations can't target their ads at specific viewers (yet) so they target them at demographics. And old people tend to watch the evening news more than other demographics so that's what they show.
People act like Facebook (and every other company) is gathering data about people for some sort of nefarious plan for world domination. But all they're doing is improving the quality of connections between people making things (advertisers) and people who might want those things (consumers). Is that really so terrible?