Anti-Capitalist Sentiment (with some morality)

[CoccoBill]

This reminds me of something that always bugs me in debate with left-wing people.

One of the things that sucks so much about the state is that many of its tyrannies are necessary in light of its other tyrannies. It's the doctor that prescribes you one drug where the side effects are worse than the cure, then needs to give you more drugs to counter those side effects which contraindicate with the first drug, and on and on.

When you have a situation where wealth concentrates due to political influence (crony capitalism), it makes sense to have wealth distribution to the poor. When you have a system that gives money to the poor, it makes sense to make immigration difficult. When you have free government healthcare, it makes sense to meddle in people's business to make sure they don't do risky things with their own bodies. When you have a high minimum wage, it makes sense to give everyone free post-secondary education since there otherwise will be no jobs for them. When you give everyone free college, it makes sense to control who goes into what field so you don't waste billions of dollars on people who will be in the same predicament as having no education at all. It also makes sense to control the content in public universities when taxpayers are footing such a massive bill.

I agree with pretty much everything you say, the problems of regulation are obvious. My point is, and has been all along, that I find it hard to be convinced that the alternative you propose can work any better as long as its whole premise is based on rational choice theory, which I find flawed. Voting, for example, is a market activity, and people are disastrous with their choices. People act rationally in the economic sense as much as they only do +EV choices in poker.

https://msu.edu/course/aec/810/bond-rat.htm

[Renton]

I agree with pretty much everything you say, the problems of regulation are obvious. My point is, and has been all along, that I find it hard to be convinced that the alternative you propose can work any better as long as its whole premise is based on rational choice theory, which I find flawed. Voting, for example, is a market activity, and people are disastrous with their choices. People act rationally in the economic sense as much as they only do +EV choices in poker.

https://msu.edu/course/aec/810/bond-rat.htm

I think maybe yours (and rilla's) problem is that you're not interpreting rational choice theory correctly. Or maybe I'm not. My view of capitalism is that when people make their own decisions they are doing so based on subjective value. I don't believe anyone has a right to apply value judgments to the decisions of others as long as those decisions aren't hurting anyone. And how can you assess the correctness of another's choice without being aware of their value system which is entirely different from yours?

[CoccoBill]

I may totally be wrong, actually it wouldn't even surprise me much if I had something about the concept totally backwards. Still, what I meant with my criticism of it is that it assumes that people make the decisions that are best for them, to maximize their personal utility. If all humans were vulcans with godly intellect and complete information related to their decisions (that is, enough information and understanding to be able to not only weigh in all the factors, but also identify all false and deceitful information given to them) then yes, I'm sure free markets would work perfectly and all superficial regulation would only be a hindrance. This is hardly the case though, people have very incomplete and often misleading information available to them, limited capabilities to assess the data and a poor understanding of the effects of their choices. It's not (only) about the correctness of their values, but people regularly act against their values, either through ignorance or deceit.

[Renton]

I may totally be wrong, actually it wouldn't even surprise me much if I had something about the concept totally backwards. Still, what I meant with my criticism of it is that it assumes that people make the decisions that are best for them, to maximize their personal utility. If all humans were vulcans with godly intellect and complete information related to their decisions (that is, enough information and understanding to be able to not only weigh in all the factors, but also identify all false and deceitful information given to them) then yes, I'm sure free markets would work perfectly and all superficial regulation would only be a hindrance. This is hardly the case though, people have very incomplete and often misleading information available to them, limited capabilities to assess the data and a poor understanding of the effects of their choices. It's not (only) about the correctness of their values, but people regularly act against their values, either through ignorance or deceit.

I think you're using the traditional definition of rationality, and not the one used by rational choice theory, which is more of a subjective rationality. Either way, it is not vital to functioning capitalism that people make max-utility choices. Capitalism applies economic pressure to everyone in the system to TREND toward higher utility choices, and it does so much better than laws do.

[wufwugy]

I may totally be wrong, actually it wouldn't even surprise me much if I had something about the concept totally backwards. Still, what I meant with my criticism of it is that it assumes that people make the decisions that are best for them, to maximize their personal utility. If all humans were vulcans with godly intellect and complete information related to their decisions (that is, enough information and understanding to be able to not only weigh in all the factors, but also identify all false and deceitful information given to them)

This is how it is. Economists try to understand this.

then yes, I'm sure free markets would work perfectly and all superficial regulation would only be a hindrance. This is hardly the case though, people have very incomplete and often misleading information available to them, limited capabilities to assess the data and a poor understanding of the effects of their choices. It's not (only) about the correctness of their values, but people regularly act against their values, either through ignorance or deceit.

Keep in mind that regulation are every bit as much a facet of rationality/irrationality and economics as markets are. If you claim people act irrationally in markets, you also need to claim they act irrationally with regulations. Really, the underlying reason markets work is because they don't solidify irrational behavior like regulations do.


Outside of that, rationality has a ton of applicability that isn't seen from the lay. For example, financial markets react about as rationally as possible to behavior of central banks. None of this stuff makes sense on the individual level, and it's more related to the wisdom of the crowds type of thing.

[wufwugy]

I agree with pretty much everything you say, the problems of regulation are obvious. My point is, and has been all along, that I find it hard to be convinced that the alternative you propose can work any better as long as its whole premise is based on rational choice theory, which I find flawed. Voting, for example, is a market activity, and people are disastrous with their choices. People act rationally in the economic sense as much as they only do +EV choices in poker.

https://msu.edu/course/aec/810/bond-rat.htm

Rational choice theory is flawed. I'm not sure to what degree economists use it, but they spend a lot of time not using it. Rationality is intro-econ stuff. Irrationality is what they cover after they establish rationality. It's similar to how the physical sciences establish some things early in the education that are wrong with the purpose of giving a base to understand the more complex material and why the intro-models aren't perfect.