Shamar @Shamar@qoto.org

@freemo

Probably I've not been clear enough: I argued that people _are_ "in charge", but "mad" (irrational) in their choice.

And while Capitalism assume a #FreeMarket where #rational people trading to pursue their own interests, #advertising assumes people behaviour can be programmed through their irrational bias (and trade such #BehaviouralFutures, as Shoshana Zuboff call them).

Since the two model of the same people are in direct logical contradiction, they cannot be both correct.

Pick one:
- people are rational
- people are irrational

The first is a prerequisite of Capitalism model, it's the only way it could work to describe and predict its evolution, but it means that advertising does NOT work.

The second is a prerequisite for Advertising to work, but it means that Capitalism cannot work (at least as usually described by capitalists).

Now, afaik Advertising works so much that the most powerful multinational corporations in the world bid in behavioural futures.

Thus, Capitalism can NOT work as one of its main pre-requisite are not met in real world.

Having said that, I'm surprised to see that you have no objections about the irrational behaviour of corporations due to the maximization of a single scalar value (profit).

@design_RG

@freakazoid

> AIUI 9p has no concept similar to CGI.

It has `cpu` that let you execute a remote program on the server.

@grainloom

@freemo

<WARNING>
I'm enjoining this conversation as I see we look at these things from very different perspectives. I hope it's the same for you. I'm sorry if I misunderstood your statements, so if I go back to them it's not (always) to confute them, but to clarify them better.
</WARNING>

The term "irresponsible" is, by itself, quite blaming.

It means they cannot explain ("responsibility" is from Latin "responsum abilem" that means "able to answer" to any question about an act).

Let's put aside the fact that, infact, Capitalism avoid to clearly define such "responsibility" because it would mean to choose someone who has the authority to ask and clearly defined rules to judge the answers as appropriate or not. To most champions of Capitalism, even the State should avoid to design rules that restrict free market, and you can easily see how its ideology is often very well expressed by people who actually workaround (if not break) the #Law (see Holmes' #Theranos for an example).

People can be irresponsible because they are not in charge, because they are "mad" (unable to intend and will) or because they are evil.

The ideology of #Capitalism assumes rational agents that can freely act in the market for their own interest: so they are in charge of the use they do of their own resources.

So, according to such model, if their behaviour is irresponsible it can only be because they are "mad" (irrational) or evil.

In fact, most of consumers are #irrational: otherwise advertising would just describe the experimentally verified qualities of a product.
Please, tell me any verifiable property of the product advertised here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwzzvEcYA6k

On the production/competition side, instead, Capitalism push for an extreme rationality but optimize a single dimension: #profit. So it inherently favour #greed and corruption.

Yeah, greed and corruption exist in all economical systems, but afaik #Capitalism is the only one that looks designed (or "evolved", if you prefer) to favour and _maximize_ them.

@design_RG

@freemo

> irresponsible buyer who
> buys things they dont need

This is victim blaming. 😉

In the age of #SurveillanceCapitalism, arguing that #Ads exist to merely inform people about products they might ignore sounds very naive.

As for the rest, there are tons of model that justify pretty much anything. All wrong.

Adam Smith's model of liberal market become one of fundamental building blocks of #Capitalism as an ideology (but not the only one, as #Webber shown).

Sure, we have plenty of options if we want a model to justify the growing inequality or blame the victims for it.

But still these models do not account for obvious "externalities" (as economist dismiss them) that basically throw costs and risks out of the balance sheets.

#Inequality IS one of this overlooked externalities. #Pollution is another.

Still such externalities are not the point of my argument. It's not because of the damage they do to most of people that I cannot accept the models that link Wealth to Capitalism.

It's just that such models do not explain so many observations (those externalities, ads, addictions, workers' exploitations, political lobbying...) that they are easy to dismiss to anybody that is open to their discussion.

A more interesting issue is: what are the alternatives?

Here's one: https://www.nomadelfia.it

@design_RG

@freemo

Unfortunately it's not that "obvious". Nor actually true.

For example, if you define wealth generation that way, you should ban marketing and ads, since they nudge people to buy things they don't really need.

The model of #Capitalism of #AdamSmith (that you are mis-quoting) has been designed in an economy of small villages and had a prerequisite that is _always_ overlooked: #trust due to very short #feedback loops and near perfect #information.

If I remember correctly (it has been a while from my studies) Smith gave an example: your #brewer won't put too much water in your beer, because otherwise you would make your own beer instead of buying his own. He needs your trust, that's why you can trust him despite both of you pursue your self-interest in each trade.

Now, replace "beer" with "smartphone": can you build your own smartphone if you don't trust any vendor?

"By now" the #Smith idea that trading generates wealth is widespread, but it's actually totally misunderstood.

The invisible hand is possible in a very small, mostly autonomous, rural village where everybody knows everything about everybody else.

____

As for technology being "literally everything", it's not what I mean.

Technology is NOT everything.

Technology is what humans build: http://www.tesio.it/2018/10/11/math-science-and-technology.html

However, in this economical context, beyond technology (human artefacts) there are earth's raw resources, that are finite. That's why, ultimately, beyond technology advancement, economy is just a way to distribute such resources.

@design_RG

@freemo

Actually animal husbandry is (one of) the #technology that enabled the #Neolithic #Revolution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution

@design_RG

@freemo

Sure, the y-axis is the class wealth. That's why I said that, to be fair, one should also consider the cardinality of the underling sets.

As for the "failing in my logic": sure #wealth can be generated, but only through technological progress. There is no problem with this and it's a good thing that we can improve human quality of life through #technology.

But then, wealth is distributed.

Wealth distribution is where the inequality issues arise.

The rich class hooks the wealth distribution process to concentrate it in its own hand.
This happens for new wealth AND for existing one.

But even if we don't consider how the rich class drain resources from the poor (think of #Bezos and his employees, for an obvious example), and only focus on the flow of newly created wealth, hooking its distribution so that it can be concentrated by few people IS literally draining wealth from others.

Is like building a dam at the river head: you can argue that you are not going to each of the people down the river to take their water (and in fact, some would argue that it's not their water, after all) but you are taking the water they would have received if you had not built the dyke.

@design_RG

@freemo

Well, to be fair one should even observe both graphs lack at least one dimension.

The percentage of riches is a tiny fraction of the percentage of poor people. So the number of people that both fit the classification and die because of the system is very different. And this is something rich people know very well:

https://onezero.medium.com/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1?gi=f65c3188ea37

It should also be noted that most of times riches do not directly drain resources from the poor, but from the middle-class.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/

Furthermore, it's increasingly difficult to locate #China into this scheme.

@design_RG

@yojimbo

And with this one, you won a new annoying follower... 😉

Actually @freemo I think that @design_RG is much more accurate.

An even more accurate #infographic would show death by #famine, #starvation and #disease in the #poor histogram of "How #Capitalism actually works"

@filippodb

"obbligati"?

Direi proprio di no.

@void

Looking at this #Microsoft leak from 2000 I see where #Google learned its own tricks.

See slides on #developers' #MindControl from page 118 on

http://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/comes-3096.pdf

@Wolf480pl@niu.moe

Most importantly, they are ALWAYS a request for replies and objections (unless clearly and explicitly stating otherwise).

@ekaitz_zarraga

Actually I see a rational in his answer but I wonder how other scripting system address the issue.
(sorry if I take it from an historical perspective, but I think it's important to understand what Ashinn is saying)

He basically means you have (and should stick to) two ways of _distributing_ a piece of code:

- libraries
- programs

In a programming language that only supports statically linked binaries this appears quite obvious: you either distribute an executable or a library archive.
But if you distribute the executable, it's self-contained: it actually contains all the required code (except for the kernel, obviously, or any other program it invokes through `exec` which count as dependencies)

Dynamic linking complicates things. People can distribute a library that is linked _at_run_time_ to the executable, so that programs are not self-contained anymore. BUT at least all of the code from a certain team end in a single file (the binary executable) that can be installed in the system paths without name clashes.

Scripting languages further stretch this flexibility and let you distribute source files that can be executed actually.

BUT developers split code to ease development, not distribution.

So you might end with a `utils.smc` in your project, but I could have the same for my project: what if a user try to install both in /bin?
The name clashes cause the second installation to break the first.

So basically Ashinn says: do not distribute #Scheme programs split into different files.

If you want to build a library that people actually uses, distribute it separately. But each program (and script) should be distributed as a single-file.

I think this reasoning is quite correct (it's not by chance that #Jehanne only support statically linked binaries) but I wonder how other scripting languages solve the issues.

For example, #Python should have the same kind of issues.

Do they stick to this "one-file scripts" for programs that are going to be installed in /bin?

To be honest, I've never had to dwell into this issue as most of my python programs weren't distributed to run in a system path.

@grainloom

@ekaitz_zarraga

So basically #Chibi Scheme is not implementing this specification?

@grainloom