[areyouseriousxx]

And historically, this is how societies eventually collapse. When the participants no longer act in the greater good and instead revert to the primal instinct of pure self interest.

So I would suggest that it is a "scummy thing to do", since if done by the majority of actors, it results in the collapse of a society.

[jaabe]

Which society has collapsed because of this? I minored in history, and I can’t think of a single one.

Even modern America was largely born out of giants of industry serving their own self interest and fucking everyone else including the climate over.

Governments are build by people who serve a greater good, and they typically get replaced once they become too corrupt, but they become corrupt exactly because society as a whole is typically very self-serving.

[lotsofpulp]

A society doesn’t have to be perfectly honest, but being able to trust one another, especially in minor interactions, is a massive economic benefit. Societies with lower levels of trust waste significant resources compared to those with higher levels of trust, and it shows in the product. Unfortunately, once the trust starts to decrease, it can be almost impossible to reverse course again.

[imtringued]

The Roman Empire with it's hundreds of self proclaimed emperors fighting each other for the throne.

[Balgair]

The fall/decline of Rome is an incredibly complicated, long, and confusing event. Though the many instances of Imperial infighting is one answer, there are many others.

If anything, the 'take-away' idea from Rome and her history is that you can 'take away' anything you want. Rome was many things at many times. The thesis is that there is no thesis.

[jaabe]

Are you saying that the Roman Empire, was at any point, lead by someone self-sacrificing and honest who was focusing on the greater good?

Because that’s really not what I took away from classical history.

[barry-cotter]

[flagged]

[pjc50]

Modern America was built on inter alia the acquisition of huge areas of land for nothing, the business practices of companies like Standard Oil, and the exploitation of immigrant workers in conditions only slighly above slavery.

> wealth of Britain in 1900

Similarly this was at peak Empire time period, when a vast British Army was marching across South Africa herding colonists into concentration camps. What part of the wealth of the Empire was really freely acquired in a mutually beneficial way?

[barry-cotter]

America was indeed unusual among first world nations in the relative positions of labour and capital, but not much out of the ordinary in its growth rates. There were many other New World nations with similarly devastated native populations and land for the taking. The US has grown faster than any comparable country, not because of the abundance of natural resources but because of its political, legal and economic systems. Canada, Argentina and Chile all had similar benefits and none are as rich.

I’m going to pass on the labour practices of Standard Oil just because living standards in the US were on an unbroken upward trend during the entire period between its establishment and break up. This, combined with the US tradition of labour unrest make the idea that working conditions were slightly above slavery ridiculous. In a tight labour market you can’t treat free labour like slaves. They’ll leave. People who are willing to cross an ocean are not going to hesitate to move states for work, especially in an era of unprecedentedly cheap transport due to the railways. This is a myth, like the myth that the trusts gained their market shares corruptly. They gained it by increasing production and quality and driving down prices.

> University of Chicago economics professor Lester Telser, in his 1987 book, A Theory of Efficient Cooperation and Competition,4 points out that between 1880 and 1890, the output of petroleum products rose 393 percent, while the price fell 61 percent. Telser writes: “The oil trust did not charge high prices because it had 90 percent of the market. It got 90 percent of the refined oil market by charging low prices.” Some monopoly!

https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2013/Hendersonbaron...

Lester Telser, A Theory of Efficient Cooperation and Competition. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Regarding Britain power was partially built on its colonies but its prosperity was not. If it had been we should be able to see it clearly in the growth rate of its economy after the conquest of Bengal or after the loss of India. Invisible in both cases. Economic progress in Western Europe was built on trade and industry, not plunder. If it hadn’t been the U.K. would have been vastly richer than Sweden and France richer than Germany. Despite the enormous disparity in colonial holdings they were roughly as rich. Colonies were everywhere a boon to the scions of the ruling classes, providing military and civil service posts but the economic impacts were nugatory. British wealth was as much a product of its empire as Italy’s, somewhere between trivial and non-existent.

[dajohnson89]

The advancements of industry were accelerated by a limitless supply of cheap slave labor. And of course, the natural resources that were plundered from the colonies.

[barry-cotter]

Slave labour was never cheap. Buying slaves was always very expensive because being able to keep the fruits of someone else’s labour was always a great way to make money. And natural resources are nice to have but if you don’t have them but you have money (perhaps gotten from productive industry) you can just buy them. Singapore and Hong Kong went from poverty to the first world in a generation based on good institutions and sound economic policy. And again colonies were never a big deal for the metropole economically. The Nordic countries didn’t have any colonies of note and they did just fine economically over the 19th and 20th centuries. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was doing worse economically than the German in 1912, but not much, and it wasn’t because of the lack of colonies. The Netherlands’ economy basically didn’t notice the loss of Indonesia, ditto Belgium for the Congo. Natural resources just aren’t that important. Equatorial Guinea is swimming in oil and its people are poor as dirt because their government because it’s governed by a kleptocrat. South Korea was a bombed out hellscape in 1954 and now it’s a first world country. That’s not because of natural resources, it’s because of export led growth, same as Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong. None of them are particularly blessed with oil or minerals. Switzerland’s natural resources are hydropower and beautiful scenery. The beautiful scenery is a bigger deal economically. Saudi Arabia is sitting on the biggest oil fields in the world and once people stop caring about oil the country will go to hell. Norway is also sitting on loads of oil and will be just fine because their economy isn’t all natural resources.

Natural resources just aren’t that important.

[m00x]

> Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Under competition, acting like this is the best way to raise to the top. If Amazon started penalizing fake reviews heavily, it would disincentivise its users to leave fake reviews. If they let companies get away with it, it'll be the only way to survive in their marketplace.

[erikpukinskis]

> Under competition, acting like this is the best way to raise to the top

Do you have evidence for that, or is it your guess?

The study I am aware of on the subject concluded the best strategy in a competitive environment is to act fairly and assume fair play on everyone's behalf, but if someone crosses you, respond with all out force.

I think it's called "Generous Tit-for-tat". I don't think "be shitty when you have something to gain" is recognized as a good strategy in Game Theory.

[michaelt]

If you want academic support for "if everyone else cheats and gets away with it, you'll have to cheat too" you might enjoy The Market for Lemons [1]

This argues that, if 50% of used cars are good and worth $8000, and 50% are bad and worth $4000, and customers can't tell them apart on the lot, the buyers' expected value is $6000 so the sellers of good cars will make a loss and go out of business. That in turn will reduce the buyers' expected value to $4000.

Obviously, that issue is specific to markets without seller reputations, reliable independent reviews, useful warranties, or effective consumer protection laws. Is Amazon Marketplace that way? You be the judge!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

[DFHippie]

Generous Tit-for-Tat was the winning algorithm in a very particular scenario: repeated prisoner's dilemma. Each player knew the full history of its opponent's participation in the game and knew therefore that there would be consequences for its behavior in the current game. In this scenario your identity and reputation are perfectly known. This is a very different game.

[FakeComments]

Do you actually need more than the previous round or two of actions to utilize the be-kind-until-crossed strategy?

I’m not sure it requires perfect information, just accurate recent information.

[philipov]

For iterated prisoner's dilemma, you need the game to be infinitely long, meaning neither player knows when it will end. The moment either player realizes when the game is going to end, the game reverts to a regular prisoner's dilemma, and the first player to betray the other will win. The last round has no benefit for playing a Nice strategy, so you need to stab before the other player also realizes the game is going to end.

[FakeComments]

That doesn’t require infinite length, just indeterminate length and more than a single round (on average, or with certain rate).

And I’m not sure that it doesn’t apply to the case where:

A) You can’t determine when the game will end, and

B) There’s very often several rounds.

That seems to cover “society”, in a broad sense.

[MadWombat]

> but if someone crosses you, respond with all out force

How do you do that with Amazon? Stop buying from this one seller? Report them? But chances are you were not going to buy anything else from them anyway and I am not sure how much of a problem a report is. And you are not doing anything about the other bajillion bad sellers, so your next buying experience is like ly to turn out just the same.

[undreren]

Link to that study?

[erikpukinskis]

I think the first time I heard about it might have been on this Planet Money episode: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...

But I'm not really sure. This Google search links to a bunch of papers on the subject. It's a well explored area of research:

https://www.google.com/search?q=repeated+prisoner%27s+dilemm...

[RGS1811]

True, and penalizing misbehavior is a big part of the solution here, but it's also true that there are practical social limits on behavior (including competitive behavior), and these can wax and wane culturally, giving rise to greater or lesser degrees of trust and good faith in commerce. ("What can I count on from people in general?")

[FakeComments]

Isn’t penalizing players who breach etiquette what separates games from fights?

I’ve literally never understood that idea, because it’s antithetical to what separates games from genuine conflict: adherence to social norms during contests.

Lying to make a sale is known as fraud, and “against the rules”, so to speak: enforcing that isn’t “hating the player”, it’s “protecting the game”.

[lowpro]

I would say societal collapse happens when regulating bodies no longer align participant self-interest with the greater good. Everyone is self-interested, which is why central authorities must step in for things that benefit individuals but hurt society such as tax evasion, pollution, and (maybe one day) fraudulent reviews.

Note I'm not saying this is practical to implement or easy to do, just that central authorities exist for this very purpose.

[areyouseriousxx]

> Everyone is self-interested

Is there a citation I can refer to about this statement?

I would argue that laws and regulations are to prevent the very impactful minority of actors that would willfully harm others to benefit themselves.

[sl1ck731]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_egoism

At this point it is philosophical either way, so you aren't going to get a citation confirming yours or his statements, but this isn't an unheard of belief.

[m00x]

Neither statement is wrong. Heavily penalizing malicious actions aligns societal, and self-interest.

People don't go out and murder people they don't like because it's both at the interest of themselves, and to society.

[bjterry]

> Is there a citation I can refer to about this statement?

I recently read The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life, which discusses this topic in great detail.

[baroffoos]

Businesses that do not fake reviews will be buried in the search results and they will be forced to shut down when their sales stop. Its essentially evolution for companies.

[porjo]

>> Everyone is self-interested

> Is there a citation I can refer to about this statement?

'The Book of Life', page 1

[isoskeles]

First, this is quite condescending.

Second, the "self-interest" argument doesn't excuse shitty behavior. It might be in my self-interest to steal my neighbor's wallet he forgot outside. It has money in it! Doesn't make it a good idea nor something I would consider as a "self-interested" person.

Plus, it's also in my self-interest not to contribute to lowering the bar of a review system. As someone who uses Amazon and other review sites, I don't like the idea of phony reviews, so even if I worked for a company that "depended" on these reviews, I wouldn't feel good about adding to the problem (nor would I feel good that my employer supposedly needs to rely on falsified reviews).

[TheOtherHobbes]

It doesn't excuse shitty behaviour.

But if you start from the realistic premise that some actors are bad, the market feedback loop immediately rewards them - which forces other actors to make a choice between acting in similarly unethical ways or being punished for non-compliance.

The real shitty behaviour is Amazon's. It has ultimate control over this fiasco but Bezos clearly has no interest in stopping it - and it can easily be argued that's an example of the same systemic problem with market fundamentalism, but at a higher level.

[tern]

Incidentally, 'The Book of Life', page 1: https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/how-to-love/

[elhudy]

I find that people who generally hold this opinion against others are actually projecting their own thoughts.

[andrei_says_]

One could say that if the Amazon’s ecosystem was a society, it’s in a late stage of collapse.

[endymi0n]

...only that Amazon, instead of taking this eroding of consumer trust anywhere as seriously as they should, are adding gas to the fire by introducing their own brands all over the place.

Looks like they‘re going down the LinkedIn route: If you have so many business models that they start cannibalizing each other, it‘s getting dangerous.

[User23]

I get where you're coming from, but I remember an all hands back in the mid 2000s and someone asked Jeff, what's up with Amazon MP3 isn't that going to cannibalize our CD sales? And Jeff said, absolutely, but if we don't cannibalize our CD sales someone else will. Controlled autophagy is healthy. Coincidentally, this principle applies generally, which is why intermittent fasting is a thing.

[Razengan]

Yes. The normalization of deviation.

After a point, anyone who points out the wrongs is seen as the deviant.

[jammygit]

Its funny to read this today. I'm working my way through Atlas Shrugged and the utopia in the book is the opposite: pure self interest > greater good, and there is a 'for the public good' apocalypse taking place.

It seems to take a weird stance that self interest has to go hand in hand with productivity and free trade though, or else the sentiment is labeled anti-life or looting (or murder in later chapters). Its a bit of a strange argument, I'm not certain its as coherent as it is romantic.

Anyway, the book would not be nice about how it described a company that posted fake reviews.

[mads_ravn]

I remember reading it years ago and thinking it was a large collection of straw man arguments (and this is perhaps too generous as it implies that there are actually reasoning present; in fact the story is more along the lines of: “heroes leave society, society collapses”).

Given this, it is beyond me how much attention and how large a following the book has gathered.

[pferde]

It's more of "honest people leave society, society collapses". The heroism was coincidental, I find it hard to blame anyone for celebrating honesty.

[notahacker]

One of the notional heroes is intentionally wiping out his investors (which is OK, because every single one of them is a Very Bad Person) and another is a pirate. Whilst Stadler joining the State Science Institute is singled out as a particularly egregious example of villainy.

Takes an odd definition of honesty to conclude that it's a book about celebrating honesty...

[michaelmrose]

The book is written by someone whose self professed philosophy is badly argued nonsense. See objectivism.

If she could at least write entertainingly she could at least have done one thing right. As it stands she could have contributed more to society by selling hats. Even badly made ugly hats keep your head dry. Her books neither inform nor entertain.

[woah]

Are you serious? Thank god Amazon is not our society. If Amazon collapses because they can't handle moderating their website, there are many contenders eager to take Amazon's place.

[scarface74]

To paraphrase an old saying....

The world can stay scummy longer than you can stay solvent.

[pojzon]

Im pretty sure you know you have just described the modern society.

Tho lets enjoy the ride while we still can.