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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  3160 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Articulate, intelligent Presidential candidates with a proven track record?

    Good for us. So, what stops me from feeding the homeless or hiring a foreigner? What stops the poor from finding affordable housing or making money braiding hair?

I'd still need to be convinced these are ethical rather than economic questions. Anyway, what if the answer is: scaling? Often seemingly-good ad hoc solutions accumulate until in toto they no longer make sense. Humans tend toward systems for a reason, though I remember you disagree with that line of argument.





wasoxygen  ·  3160 days ago  ·  link  ·  

All four examples appear to be both economic and ethical disasters.

On being the right size: maybe these examples could be excused if they were the exceptional blemishes of large programs which are on balance beneficial. Is that your argument?

I think people revere authority figures for the same reason they fear foreigners. These instincts gave better results among bands of a few dozen members whose interaction with other bands was mostly violent.

user-inactivated  ·  3160 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Is it better for human systems to exist than not? Probably, maybe. But asking whether they're beneficial is a sidestep from the question 'are they necessary', which is just a silly way of saying 'will they exist no matter what we do'. It seems so. We should figure out why, at minimum, before we undo a millennia-old pattern.