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by scythe 4450 days ago
Not everything is the prisoner's dilemma. There's no reason -- at least not in your post -- that self-motivated individualism can't be efficient; such ideas were advocated by e.g. Hayek and Friedman (to say nothing of real macroeconomics). If my time is better spent somewhere else because they offer me more money, maybe that's because the work I do there will produce more value for the world overall.

In other words your argument is circular: you assume that individualism is bad, and you conclude that capitalism (which starts and ends with individualism) is bad.

Furthermore have workers and corporations always competed cf. unionization in the 1920s and so forth; in general this has been considered an overall benefit (working fewer hours --> quality of life and education).
1 comments
tormeh 4450 days ago
You assume that your wage is proportional to the value you deliver to the world. Bad. Not correct. Try again. There is a positive correlation on the population level, but on the individual level the relationship is tenuous at best.
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scythe 4450 days ago
It's not relevant to my argument. The point was that in some cases, individualism can be efficient. A didactic example is meant to be recognized as such and not attacked for technicalities in its formulation; rigor was not here the goal. Note, for example, the use of "maybe". But congratulations for irrelevant nitpicking, I guess.
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tormeh 4450 days ago
Sorry about that. I thought the "maybe" was sarcastic.

Anyway, the parent's point seems to be that individualism is a strategy that is optimal for a single person, but suboptimal for society. The reason is that what activity maximizes your financial return does not generally maximize the return for society as a whole. Individualism is therefore not optimal. A specific example would be a world that had no crime and therefore no need for security, law enforcement etc. Obviously a lot more efficient than a world with crime. However, since stealing would be free of consequence, individualism dictates that you should steal in this hypothetical world. Everything may not be a prisoner's dilemma, but most is. I don't see how that's nitpicking.

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