Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions

Ah, just as I thought would happen It's been assumed I'm some
kind of state communist. Oh well.


On Tue, 03 May 2005 10:34:19 -0700, Don Geddis wrote:

> Robert Marlow <bobstopper@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote on Tue, 03 May 2005:
>> What pisses me off is that such provision to society isn't considered
>> something which justifies survival in our society.
>
> Who is to determine which contributions are worth what rewards?

I don't condone a system of state control. I just think value can be set
by simply adding the cost of production to the cost of labour - generally
assumed to be static. It's called the labour theory of value and there's
any number of stateless, democratic systems which can be used to decide
such values. The problem with the subjective theory of value is it skews
value in favour of what's better marketed (what I called brainwashing
before in my rather cynical way). When something is produced cheaply but
damage 3rd parties like the environment or other people it is often still
preferred to an equivalent product which doesn't have these externalities.
Simply because it's cheaper. And I've talked to a lot of people who
continue to buy such products. They know the harmful effects but the pull
of price forces them to reluctantly continue with the inferior product,
especially if they're lacking money. Or brand names. Many if not most of
the biggest brand names in clothes are run off the backs of child labour
verging on slavery. Or cigarettes or fast food products which do the
consumer more harm than good. These items aren't even cheap. But
successful marketing has convinced huge numbers of people to buy it just
to be cool. You don't have to call it brainwashing if you don't want, but
I'm not sure how you distinguish it.

How do you avoid these problems? "Government control!" the free marketers
scream. Yay. In the claimed effort to avoid government control they just
bring in more of it in an attempt to fix their system's flaws. Wayda go
guys.


>> But does the holy "invisible hand" of the market give it the provisions
>> it needs? No. Because a market, despite the propaganda, isn't a good
>> yardstick on what's valuable in society.
>
> That's controversial, to say the least. It's far from obvious that the
> free market is undervaluing the job of caring for sick kids. You're going
> to have to make a stronger argument than that to be convincing.

I'm sure if we got the annual turnover of a typical "underprivileged kids"
charity and compared it to the annual turnover of a typical cigarette
company it'd be pretty easy to see which is valued more in a
market. And most people wouldn't find it too hard to figure out that the
charity has considerable more value to society than the production of
cigarettes. Except maybe die-hard nicotine addicts and free market
advocates who swear that if the market says that's the value then it must
be against anyone's sensibilities. But they'd be a minority of people. So
why *does* the valuing system get it backwards?


>> To the market, things aren't valued according to utility or human
>> expense, they're valued according to how well people are brainwashed
>> into paying the highest price for garbage they don't need.
>
> And you're also very confused about how prices really get set in a free
> market.

I know very well how prices are set. And marketing is a big part of
any real market as the name implies. Lower bound prices are set by supply
and then you try to get demand as high as possible so you can force prices
up. It's not difficult to see how values get skewed by successful
brainwa uh... marketing.


>> Stallman, regardless of his personal vices, is contributing something
>> good to society.
>
> Kent's argument is that Stallman is making a change in society, a change
> which has both positive and negative effects. The change is not a
> universal "good".

And my argument is that the negative effects are a result of how the
market system works, and is not a direct consequence of Stallman's
efforts. And my suggestion is that if you have a problem with it, blame
the market and leave Stallman to continue giving us free software. Or if
you're utterly convinced that the market is the end all be all of divine
social systems, then quit whinging and put up with it.

In effect I'm doing pretty well what everyone else is doing, only I'm
less content to slump and say "oh well" and more inclined to be menacing
when I point my finger at the market as the cause.


>> Why can't we all just do what needs to be done and have everyone share
>> the wealth?
>
> Ah! At last we get to _your_ economic model.
>
> This socialist/Marxist/communist approach to economics ("each contributes
> according to their ability; each takes according to their need") has been
> thought of, and tried before.

I doubt you really have any idea of my model from that one sentence. But
perhaps this tangent may help with that a bit.


> The basic failures of your model, when put into practice, include:
>
> 1. Free riders. Turns out lots of people wind up not working very hard
> (because they have little incentive), yet still taking a lot (their
> "needs" may even grow). So the overall society is both less wealthy,
> and also has greater expenses, then in a capitalist model.

I'm not a bleeding heart. It's my opinion that if they can work and don't
then they don't eat. When people don't cooperate with society I see no
reason for the rest of society to cooperate with them so they can go and
try to survive alone. But... I advocate such decisions to be made by some
democratic or consensus style arrangement, so if that's not how everyone
else felt then I'd be happy with whatever else was decided so long as
everyone had a say. If people in general decide they don't mind free
loaders (though I doubt many people would be happy with that) then I won't
complain too loudly.


> 2. Somebody still has to decide the relative worth of various jobs.
> Without
> a market, this is usually an "enlightened" person. Evidence suggests
> that no person can evaluate the hugely complex tradeoffs among human
> activities better than (most) markets.

(+ production-costs
(* price-of-labour average-hours-of-labour-in-production))
With price-of-labour set to constant or close to a constant, that gives a
pretty simple template without much room for interference by subjective
persons in positions of privilege. Much less so if positions of privilege
are removed by replacing government with something more democratic.


> 3. Generally society with these structures result in huge concentrations
> of
> political power in a few individuals, who often turn tyrannical. It's
> not a logical consequence of the theory that the leaders become
> tyrants, but in practice it turns out to be very, very difficult to
> avoid political tyrants with such an economic model.

Ah. Here's your assumption I'm some sort of statist. Far from it. I'd
advocate a democratic system where power is as decentralised as possible.
If the people decided they needed representatives to serve administrative
duties then such representatives should be delegated in such a way that
they are immediately recallable by the people (rather than during periodic
voting spouts) and are mandated in their powers by the people.
Overstepping of boundaries results in immediate removal. Essentially I'd
advocate that delegates have almost no decision making power.

You could I guess argue that "the majority" might become tyrannical but
that's a different debate. Suffice to say I'm confident that "tyranny of
the majority" is in large part a myth and in its worse case no worse
and usually far better than the tyranny of the minority we see when the
minority is in a position of privilege.


.

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