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[Bauglir]

Okay, this post is going to spiral around into a big theoretical rant in a paragraph or two. To save you the trouble of reading all of it, you don't need to assume a conspiracy to assert that the people we're pissed at knowingly fucked the system for their own gain. You can quit reading now, unless you want to listen to me ramble.

The very short version here, is "greedy algorithm". It's a buzzphrase, unfortunately, but one that's been bouncing around my head for the last week or so. A lot. It's very difficult for a corporation to take any action but what generates the most profit right now - even if there might be something that's better overall. The situation we've got right now can be pretty accurately described as a lot of people independently deciding to take the optimal short-term strategy, because anything else is risky. After all, if you profit now, you can use that profit to survive later on - but if you take a long view, things may change to make your plan less valuable. The people at the top of the system haven't known any other financial system than the one we have right now, and they got there either purely through birth, or more likely through a combination of birth and playing the system. As Aqizzar has mentioned, the safest bet is always that the status quo will continue*, and these people know this.

EDIT: Very important point I forgot to make. This is important because it makes it very hard for them to think about the collapse of that system as a possibility - actions for which that's a potential consequence tend not to have that counted against them, in the same way that as a teenager many people don't devote a lot of thought to the water bill when they take a shower. It's not something you think of as something you need to worry about, even if you understand on some level that it exists. Examples may need to be adjusted by culture but hopefully what I mean is clear. END EDIT.

You can't sacrifice profits in the short term. If you do, your stockholders or your competition or even your fellow employees will eat you alive. Sure, you'll still get a giant severance package - but as I'm sure we're all aware at this point, survival is not a problem for any of these people. It's not actually much of a consolation to get a big pile of money if you're still being deprived of whatever it is that actually drives you. And in the meantime, the company suffers, somebody changes your plan once you're out (so there was never any benefit), and you're out of a job. It's just not rational to pursue long-term gains.

That's why nobody had to conspire to do this. Nobody has to have a master plan to ruin the middle class or crush the economy. That's just what was optimal, for everybody who got to make decisions, when those decisions were made. They all knew that if everybody did the same, things would go to shit, but I doubt any of them particularly wanted to get rid of the middle class. But they all knew that they couldn't be the ones to do things ethically, and they aren't members of the middle class anyway.

And here's where I start ranting about capitalism as a system, because when you get to the bottom of it, the whole thing is basically economic evolution. What's successful, as defined by making money, is going to perpetuate itself simply by virtue of being successful. No matter what its other consequences may be, it's going to keep on perpetuating itself until it dies, and the economy that depended on it crashes. And that's a problem, because as should be obvious, evolution is a terrible fucking way to run a society, in pretty much any respect. This is what happens when you let it run your economy. More importantly, though, it's going to home in on the nearest maximum and never, ever, ever budge. No matter how much better things might be somewhere just past that next dip in productivity, it's too risky to leave until you're forced to.

And that's ultimately what I think this is about. Government intervention is supposed to curb these problems and keep the economy flowing when it would otherwise jam itself into a clusterfuck, but I am starting to suspect that we've reached a point where that isn't feasible any longer. At least not the way we're currently doing things. I don't want a planned economy - as everyone reading this post who disagrees with me has no doubt already started to type, that's sure to fail. We, as a species, simply don't have the ability to actually do that yet. But a designed economy? We need to move toward that, I think. Not one where some public body dictates production and everybody scrambles to meet it, but one where some public body (or, hell, whatever better form of government you can think of) at least dictates how the system is going to work for each type of production, instead of letting things assemble themselves. The fundamental assumptions of the Invisible Hand aren't true, and I'm not sure they ever were outside of their own tiny, local maximum.

Maybe the system already works more like this than I think. I don't know. Maybe I'm not actually talking about anything even slightly new to the world, or maybe the distinctions I'm trying to draw aren't real and I'm just imagining them based on the words. But I hope not.

*Cleverness, as it regards to this whole spiel, is the ability to tell when the status quo is going to fail.

[SalmonGod]

Your so-called "inactive agent" is, in fact, active in the economy. Ultimately, a large fraction of what they buy is going to come from the "active agent". This leads to the "active agent" gaining money, which obviously leads to power. While the blame isn't equal, it's not exclusively on the "active agent".

What exactly would you expect me to do?  If there is no course of action that doesn't result in me being guilty, then it's a pretty silly definition of guilt.

You breathe O2 and exhale CO2.  Are you equally guilty for global warming as the Koch Brothers?

Nobody except maybe Siquo is saying that you are equally guilty.  I'm saying that we've been exploited, and we need to be aware of that.  We've been leveraged into doing something without being educated or taking a critical glance ourselves at the nature of what we're doing and it's long-term, broad-scope implications.  And we are suffering those implications now.

While I reserve all my scorn for the 1%, I do agree that we need to acknowledge that none of this could have happened without our collective participation.  We can't just slap the 1% on the hand, however hard that slap may be, and go back to life the same as before and expect the same thing not to happen again.  If that's what we end up doing, we may not be guilty, but we sure as hell would be stupid.

[scriver]

Nobody except maybe Siquo is saying that you are equally guilty.  I'm saying that we've been exploited, and we need to be aware of that.  We've been leveraged into doing something without being educated or taking a critical glance ourselves at the nature of what we're doing and it's long-term, broad-scope implications.  And we are suffering those implications now.

While I reserve all my scorn for the 1%, I do agree that we need to acknowledge that none of this could have happened without our collective participation.  We can't just slap the 1% on the hand, however hard that slap may be, and go back to life the same as before and expect the same thing not to happen again.  If that's what we end up doing, we may not be guilty, but we sure as hell would be stupid.

My point. You have it.

[mainiac]

I don't really disagree with that, but I find what Siquo is saying to be downright infuriating.

[SalmonGod]

And here's where I start ranting about capitalism as a system, because when you get to the bottom of it, the whole thing is basically economic evolution. What's successful, as defined by making money, is going to perpetuate itself simply by virtue of being successful. No matter what its other consequences may be, it's going to keep on perpetuating itself until it dies, and the economy that depended on it crashes. And that's a problem, because as should be obvious, evolution is a terrible fucking way to run a society, in pretty much any respect. This is what happens when you let it run your economy. More importantly, though, it's going to home in on the nearest maximum and never, ever, ever budge. No matter how much better things might be somewhere just past that next dip in productivity, it's too risky to leave until you're forced to.

And that's ultimately what I think this is about. Government intervention is supposed to curb these problems and keep the economy flowing when it would otherwise jam itself into a clusterfuck, but I am starting to suspect that we've reached a point where that isn't feasible any longer. At least not the way we're currently doing things. I don't want a planned economy - as everyone reading this post who disagrees with me has no doubt already started to type, that's sure to fail. We, as a species, simply don't have the ability to actually do that yet. But a designed economy? We need to move toward that, I think. Not one where some public body dictates production and everybody scrambles to meet it, but one where some public body (or, hell, whatever better form of government you can think of) at least dictates how the system is going to work for each type of production, instead of letting things assemble themselves. The fundamental assumptions of the Invisible Hand aren't true, and I'm not sure they ever were outside of their own tiny, local maximum.

I see it all as a product of historical limitations in our ability to communicate.  Once upon a time, we didn't have mass communications.  We had shouting or hand-delivered letters or smoke signals.  So it was most efficient for organization to occur around a central point, according to the way information was capable of flowing outwards from the making of a decision.  I thank the centralization of power for getting us where we are today.

Edit:  I should have specified that I think capitalism is a specific evolution of this need for centralized social structures.  It was an abstract algorithm for society that acted as a mechanism by which (ideally) a person with a good idea that benefited lots of people could be rewarded for it, partly with personal luxury but also with the material ability to gather people together for help in case they had another good idea.  As we're all aware, it did sort of work in this fashion once upon a time and still occasionally does, but as time goes on there are more and more unintended consequences.

But now it's holding us back.  The world has grown too large for overly centralized social structures to be accommodating for an acceptable portion of the population.  Technologies today threaten centralized power structures, and they are actively fighting against them.  The mechanisms by which power consolidates keep pushing themselves to greater extremes that are more destructive than anything else.

On the other hand, a large portion of people have most of humanity's collected knowledge at their fingertips, and the ability to get in contact with almost any person on the planet in a matter of seconds.  We have collective forms of communication capable of gathering input from millions of people in a short period of time.  We're capable of organizing from the bottom up instead of the top down.  There is no practical excuse anymore for institutionalized social hierarchy.

The only problem is we're so damn used to it.  Our culture has evolved to train us for the lifestyles we'll be expected to lead, which means encouraging uniformity, obedience, dependence, and in general styles of thinking that devalue the individual.  Anarchy is a word that conjures mental images for most people of crowded shoot-outs in the streets and burning buildings, and this betrays our mental conditioning.  I've been confronted with that notion literally thousands of times over the last 13 years.  When pressed on it, very few people actually believe that the world is made up of terrible people who will turn into crazed psychopaths the second there isn't a monolithic authority structure keeping them in line.    What kind of projection would that be, right?  People are simply terrified of the thought of having to actually be involved in problem-solving with their community.  It's a kind of responsibility that we're conditioned into being incapable of comprehending.

[Bauglir]

The problem with that is that I see anarchy as self-defeating in a lot of areas, in that it gives rise to systems that aren't anarchic. You need something to correct the amassing of power (whether that's measured in wealth or whatever) in the system, or you end up with anarchy being the unstable equilibrium that something else arises from. It's the same reason wealth can accumulate in families, for instance. Unfortunately, such a mechanism would (by definition, almost) make the system not anarchic.

I don't predict shoot-outs in the street. I just predict what's going on in the streets right now, since I think I know you well enough to know that you aren't suggesting that all regulatory bodies be dissolved or anything like that.

[SalmonGod]

The thing about wealth, is it's the only accumulation of power I can imagine people being tricked into seeing as legitimate.  Barking orders under threat of consequence is plain violence, and will always earn resentment and as much resistance as people are capable of.  Barking orders under the promise of being able to eat that day isn't.  They amount to the same thing if you take your perspective a step back from the immediate circumstance, because that person who is promising you the ability to feed yourself is at the same time controlling your food supply and threatening you with the punishment of starvation.

It's all in the presentation of positive reinforcement vs negative punishment.  But only centralized control over resources gives a person (or class of people) the authority to offer that manner of reinforcement of a nature that isn't easily questionable, and with such leverage that it can convince a person to do things that are unethical or counter to their long-term self-interest.

This is why I'm always railing on the concept of property (the ability to own indirectly) being central to everything.

And no, I'm not suggesting the tearing down of all regulatory institutions... I just think we're capable of altering their nature to be less like teetering social Towers of Babel and more dynamic and tied directly to public will... something more like a mesh network than a server-based structure, where a little corruption in just the right place shuts down the functionality of the whole damn thing.

[Bauglir]

I'm not so sure. It sounds like it goes back to the thing Siquo implied, suggesting that everybody should be competent at everything and able to provide what they need to survive. Sooner or later, you need specialization, and at that point you have some people with power over others, even if it's just because one person can last longer without the other's product than vice versa. I'm not sure I disagree with you, exactly, either, but I feel like if you can provide an incentive for getting people to work for other people's good that isn't fundamentally selfish that they'll actually internalize (which you'll need to pull this off anyway), eliminating property as a concept is unnecessary, and it's not a step that helps in the progress toward that goal.

[Levi]

I just wanted to let you guys know that I've really been enjoying this thread.  Its given me quite a bit to think about, and I'm glad its gotten so much discussion here. 

[kaijyuu]

And no, I'm not suggesting the tearing down of all regulatory institutions... I just think we're capable of altering their nature to be less like teetering social Towers of Babel and more dynamic and tied directly to public will... something more like a mesh network than a server-based structure, where a little corruption in just the right place shuts down the functionality of the whole damn thing.

Is it really anarchy with regulatory institutions?

And I'm not sure what you mean by the "mesh" thing. Is your idea to break down the governing of these regulatory institutions into small independent jurisdictions?

[Vector]

I think what we need is a polity.

[Vester]

And no, I'm not suggesting the tearing down of all regulatory institutions... I just think we're capable of altering their nature to be less like teetering social Towers of Babel and more dynamic and tied directly to public will... something more like a mesh network than a server-based structure, where a little corruption in just the right place shuts down the functionality of the whole damn thing.

But corruption doesn't shut down anything. That's the insidious part about it.

[Truean]

How things really are:
Life is about greed, sloth, duty, and process.  We're all greedy--good for effort, bad to excess. The effort can personally pay off,  but sometimes we forget about how/if others make it and/or putting in the same level of effort.... Especially when you're paid to run a company, it's a duty to give a damn; sloth kills that... If too many people become the "other" people we don't care about, before long there are too many not to care about. Worse yet, we might become one of those "other" people.  We forget about the process, if it works and if it's fair....

One of the main problems is people saying, "The system works for me, if it doesn't work for them, then it's because they're lazy...." This at once lets us congratulate ourselves, insult others, and avoid really thinking if things are fair or not. Fact is those people screaming "get a job" at protestors wouldn't have the first clue how to get one if they had to now.... The system is broke.

To the extent that we all sat around watching TV, wasting our lives, and just not even caring about making things better, we are that much to blame. However, that's nothing compared to the reckless (knew of a very real risk and disregarded it) business and bank managers.

The issue is control. You're guilty to the extent you had it, could've used it to solve this crap, but didn't.  Thus, while we are pretty much all to blame; compared to the individuals in charge who could've... actually done something with relative ease....

 And the real question, no matter who's to blame, is how do we fix it? How do we come up with and effectively communicate this?

[Lagslayer]

If it's going to work at all, then it can't be done through legislation (societal systems don't work that way). If it's not able to change on it's own, then forcing a change would only be a temporary solution, because the previous power had already proved dominant.

[Truean]

If it's going to work at all, then it can't be done through legislation (societal systems don't work that way). If it's not able to change on it's own, then forcing a change would only be a temporary solution, because the previous power had already proved dominant.

Legislation and accounting can work. We had tons of people pretending they had children only for a tax deduction. Then the IRS started requiring everyone put their kid's Social Security Number for the child deduction.... "Magically" over 500,000 "children disappeared." Lies disappear when forced to be proven.... Of course, no one wants to pay the accountants/lawyers because "It should be free and corruption shouldn't exist...." Freedom isn't free....

I will agree with you that it would be incredibly difficult, given that money can now buy legislation.... Also your point about regression to the proven dominant (unfortunately corrupt) state is valid as well.