[RedCondor]

1. Humans invented God (and HaShem and the Almighty). God has always been a human creation.

2. Having invented God, humans then assigned to Him their own powers of creation. […]

3. Having projected thought onto a non-human and invented entity, humans then subordinate themselves to it. Endowing their own creation with a specious authority, they take themselves to be lesser than it.

4. People make capital. Everything that counts as capital is a human creation. […]

5. Having created capital, people then assign to it the powers of creation. […]

6. Once the creative powers of work get misassigned to capital, actual workers are made subordinate to it. A created thing that lacks the powers to create is taken to be the all-creative thing and so allowed to lord it over the real creators.

[Zigurd]

Up to now, results have shown that private organizations allocate capital better than governments, at least in domains where parties to a deal are free to walk away from a deal - just to keep the discussion outside of contentious domains.

Let's stipulate that, like a lot of unoriginal "knowledge work" that AI is/becomes better at capital allocation than humans. If that turns out to be true, why then keep capital allocation in the hands of private organizations?

[pixl97]

Private companies crash and burn far more than governments. Your statement is just one of survivorship bias without stakes. If 99 out of 100 companies fail its generally pretty low stakes. If one government fails, it commonly results in a lot of deaths.

[RedCondor]

I don't agree with your first paragraph at all.

Capitalist countries were only able to edge out socialist economies by banking on their extant head-start and behaving socialistically (copying socialism in a light way—redistribution, worker advocacy, etc.).

As soon as they were able to claw it all back in the direction of pure capitalism all hell was set loose.

Socialism remains the way forward.

[Zigurd]

Please note that the paragraph you are disagreeing with is heavy qualified. The coercive faux-markets where the consumer is held hostage are not part of my argument.

I'm talking about markets with low barriers to entry, little or no regulatory capture, that are discretionary purchases. A government bicycle factory, for example, makes no sense and would fail. Whereas, say, postal banking, which would be pilloried as capital-C Communism in the US would work fine because banks hate their small retail customers and it shows.

However unsatisfactorily stated, my question comes down to: Does it make sense for capital allocation to remain in private hands in a possibly immanent age of AI outperforming humans in capital allocation?

[RedCondor]

Oh, as narrowly as you pose it, not at all! Whoever manages capital best should manage it. If it's a three-way competition between workers, owners, and machines… may the best decision-maker win!

[nico]

So the question is: how do we change it? How do we break out of that? What are the better alternatives?

[ativzzz]

People create a $BETTER_ALTERNATIVE

Having created a $BETTER_ALTERNATIVE, people then assign to it the powers of creation

Once the creative powers of $WHATEVER get misassigned to $BETTER_ALTERNATIVE, other people are made subordinate to it. A created $WHATEVER that lacks the powers to create is taken to be the all-creative thing and so allowed to lord it over the real creators.

The real issue is that anything that is given power, will ultimately use that power to amass more power and prevent others from gaining power. This is natural - as it powers the evolutionary process on our planet

To break the cycle, we must break from our chains of mortal humanity. What price are we willing to pay to do so?

Or another question - is it really a bad thing? Some version of $BETTER_ALTERNATIVE will balance out the problems created by $PREVIOUS_BETTER_ALTERNATIVE, but will create new unforseen problems. Like capitalism for instance. We cannot predict the future

[RedCondor]

The Hindus invented the "cycle of civilizations" and reincarnation to fatalistically resign themselves to their caste system.

(Some benefit from this more than others.)

[RedCondor]

The article I took that from discusses the communist answer to that question at length.

https://redsails.org/communist-self-confidence/

[nico]

That’s a very thoughtful and thought-provoking article, thank you

It sucks that communism and pretty much anything related to it is almost impossible to discuss in earnest

I doubted even clicking on that link for a while, dismissing it just because you mentioned it was “the communist answer”

[RedCondor]

Yeah, it's tough out there. But there are really good resources out there, in growing number. I'm kinda optimistic!

[somenameforme]

This sounds attractive at first reading, but it has a logical fault in that many things that are 'invented' are not just a creation of the inventor. Math is an obvious example. It is 100% a human 'invention.' Yet it's "real" enough that it will certainly be involved in the first dialogue with another intelligent species. It's a reality, even if it exists outside the material world.

Our economic system is dysfunctional and getting worse, but I don't think it's about capital so much as it is about endless interest requiring (and assuming) endless growth, as the article hits on. Another perverting issue is governments going infinitely into debt, the US in particular, really distorts economies, and consequently societies. Here [1] are a series of graphs across a practically endless series of data. It focuses on the inflection point of 1971, which is when the USD became a completely free floating currency, enabling infinite 'money printing.' It's not hard to see that things haven't really gone so well with that ability unlocked.

---

As one interesting aside, as I was typing 'wtfhapp..' into Brave Search to grab the URL, I found it telling that one of the autocompletes (likely due to large numbers of searches for it) was 'wtf happened in 1971 debunked.' The inflections following 1971 are so extreme people clearly just can't even believe it. But there's no trickery there. One can read more about the Bretton Woods System (which is what we pulled out of in 1971), here. [2]

[1] - https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system

[luxuryballs]

I am be curious to see the same exact breakdown but with number 1 starting as “God created humans” to see what the difference in the rest of the list would be, if anyone wants to take a stab at it.