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There are different kinds of scarcity. I remember a time when people would "charge what it's worth" instead of "what they could get". Decency imposed self-restr

There are different kinds of scarcity. I remember a time when people would "charge what it's worth" instead of "what they could get". Decency imposed self-restraint on those who were in a position to take advantage of a buyer. It was also the tail-end of the American era of employer-employee loyalty that went both ways. Those who famously violated those norms were looked down on, not admired. The American medical industry has been most visibly effected by this cultural shift, but it's everywhere. Scarcity isn't always about the availability of material goods. By that measure, we're doing better than ever!

1270018080 1y ago
Were you born pre-industrial revolution?
doctorpangloss 1y ago
[flagged]
- simpaticoder 1y ago
  I associate the Hacker News forum with authentic, reasoned debate and sharing of personal experience and perspective. Your comment wants to engage in a kind of rhetorical pugilism that is very common in other forums, but is uncommon here. It is a style I personally dislike and find counter-productive for every topic, inflaming emotions and driving division rather than synthesizing a variety of perspectives into an interesting whole.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- viridian 1y ago
  Speaking of vibe checks, the vibes in this post are worse than what you've replied to. "something something", "I'll meet you at your level", "Do you see?", "you got it 200% wrong.", are all very dismissive and hostile. There are better ways to get your message across.
nostrademons 1y ago
There's a line in one of my kids' Bluey books that says "Do you want to win, or do you want the game to continue? Because sometimes you can't have both." I feel like that's sorta where we are in America. In the glory days of the 50s-70s, people wanted the game to continue - they were willing to sacrifice a little bit of winning for the sake of keeping the system intact. Then starting in the 80s, people gradually started sacrificing the game for the win, doing things that they knew would eventually lead to the collapse of everything so that they could come out on top. This is corrosive. Once it starts becoming apparent, everybody will start sacrificing the system as a whole for their own personal gain, because the system is dead anyway. I think we're right on the brink of everyone realizing that the system is now dead, and bad things will likely come of it.
- simpaticoder 1y ago
  I like this framing. There is an analogy with industrialization and pollution, in that the side-effects of industrial production can be safely ignored, unless those effects are cumulative. Social norms function in the same way. There is little harm in a professor kindly giving a passing grade to one undeserving student; when this becomes common, the cumulative effect undermines the value of a college education itself. Perhaps a more mathematical framing looks to game theory, a la John Nash. In the prisoner's dilemma two equilibrium exist, the "good one" where the prisoners cooperate, and the "bad one" where they both defect. Good and bad is determined by summing the outcome value for both prisoners. Social norms help stay in the "good" equilibrium despite the occasional defection. Once the defectors learn how personally profitable it is to defect, it becomes common practice, the norm changes, and the society as a whole has switched from one equilibrium to the other, and society is, overall, much worse off. The path from good to bad equilibrium is incremental, cumulative, just like pollution. It's less clear to me what the incremental, cumulative path is going the opposite direction.
  - nostrademons 1y ago
    Game theory is exactly it. A bunch of simulations have shown that in a repeated prisoner's dilemma, the optimal strategy is tit-for-tat, sometimes adding forgiveness. The fact that you will play again incentivizes players to cooperate. But as soon as the game becomes finite (i.e. you can see the end in sight), the optimal strategy becomes "defect", because your opponent also has the same incentives and whoever defects first gets the payoff. Incidentally this also points to the path from a bad to good equilibrium. You have to throw away the big system and start with a system small enough that the participants will interact repeatedly. This rebuilds trust. Then you have to defend that system from outside influences, or at least carefully control them so they play by the same rules as existing participants. The act of defending your local community also builds trust - arguably [1] post-WW2 U.S. social cohesion was actually generated by the experience of defeating the Axis powers and then getting enmeshed in the Cold War. Finally you can gradually expand the system through carefully controlled immigration and naturalization. Unfortunately, this probably means that the Internet, globalization, and likely large states like the US/China/Russia are all toast. And as Terence Tao's post here points out, large organizations are usually more efficient than small organizations. That means that as large organizations have outcompeted small organizations, the transition as those large organizations themselves become dysfunctional and disintegrate is going to be wrenching. We're going to lose access to several material conveniences that we take for granted. [1] https://www.paulgraham.com/re.html https://www.paulgraham.com/re.html

1270018080 1y ago

Were you born pre-industrial revolution?

doctorpangloss 1y ago

[flagged]

simpaticoder 1y ago
I associate the Hacker News forum with authentic, reasoned debate and sharing of personal experience and perspective. Your comment wants to engage in a kind of rhetorical pugilism that is very common in other forums, but is uncommon here. It is a style I personally dislike and find counter-productive for every topic, inflaming emotions and driving division rather than synthesizing a variety of perspectives into an interesting whole.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
viridian 1y ago
Speaking of vibe checks, the vibes in this post are worse than what you've replied to. "something something", "I'll meet you at your level", "Do you see?", "you got it 200% wrong.", are all very dismissive and hostile. There are better ways to get your message across.

nostrademons 1y ago

There's a line in one of my kids' Bluey books that says "Do you want to win, or do you want the game to continue? Because sometimes you can't have both." I feel like that's sorta where we are in America. In the glory days of the 50s-70s, people wanted the game to continue - they were willing to sacrifice a little bit of winning for the sake of keeping the system intact. Then starting in the 80s, people gradually started sacrificing the game for the win, doing things that they knew would eventually lead to the collapse of everything so that they could come out on top. This is corrosive. Once it starts becoming apparent, everybody will start sacrificing the system as a whole for their own personal gain, because the system is dead anyway. I think we're right on the brink of everyone realizing that the system is now dead, and bad things will likely come of it.

simpaticoder 1y ago
I like this framing. There is an analogy with industrialization and pollution, in that the side-effects of industrial production can be safely ignored, unless those effects are cumulative. Social norms function in the same way. There is little harm in a professor kindly giving a passing grade to one undeserving student; when this becomes common, the cumulative effect undermines the value of a college education itself. Perhaps a more mathematical framing looks to game theory, a la John Nash. In the prisoner's dilemma two equilibrium exist, the "good one" where the prisoners cooperate, and the "bad one" where they both defect. Good and bad is determined by summing the outcome value for both prisoners. Social norms help stay in the "good" equilibrium despite the occasional defection. Once the defectors learn how personally profitable it is to defect, it becomes common practice, the norm changes, and the society as a whole has switched from one equilibrium to the other, and society is, overall, much worse off. The path from good to bad equilibrium is incremental, cumulative, just like pollution. It's less clear to me what the incremental, cumulative path is going the opposite direction.
- nostrademons 1y ago
  Game theory is exactly it. A bunch of simulations have shown that in a repeated prisoner's dilemma, the optimal strategy is tit-for-tat, sometimes adding forgiveness. The fact that you will play again incentivizes players to cooperate. But as soon as the game becomes finite (i.e. you can see the end in sight), the optimal strategy becomes "defect", because your opponent also has the same incentives and whoever defects first gets the payoff. Incidentally this also points to the path from a bad to good equilibrium. You have to throw away the big system and start with a system small enough that the participants will interact repeatedly. This rebuilds trust. Then you have to defend that system from outside influences, or at least carefully control them so they play by the same rules as existing participants. The act of defending your local community also builds trust - arguably [1] post-WW2 U.S. social cohesion was actually generated by the experience of defeating the Axis powers and then getting enmeshed in the Cold War. Finally you can gradually expand the system through carefully controlled immigration and naturalization. Unfortunately, this probably means that the Internet, globalization, and likely large states like the US/China/Russia are all toast. And as Terence Tao's post here points out, large organizations are usually more efficient than small organizations. That means that as large organizations have outcompeted small organizations, the transition as those large organizations themselves become dysfunctional and disintegrate is going to be wrenching. We're going to lose access to several material conveniences that we take for granted. [1] https://www.paulgraham.com/re.html https://www.paulgraham.com/re.html