The economy is a collective intelligence, and in some respects it is vastly smarter than any human being, able to coordinate incredibly complex production and allocation activities over billions of people, thousands of miles, and tens of years.
What about thinking of the "dominance hierarchy" that Jordan Peterson talks about as one of potentially many other higher level systems that coordinate us. So it's basically a shared group model directing attention and resources to some people and away from others. It dictates what values who can or can't afford to have, who you can or can't be around etc. It doesn't require explicit prices, but they exist in terms of time and attention and access to resources.
I was reflecting on our soon-to-be-released discussion where you talk about how it would be better if there were prices in more places than there are now, gjven how effective they are. However, we do have a lot of rituals and practices to make up for a lack of prices. Is bumping into someone in the street a failure due to lack of prices that would allow you to pay to coordinate properly? Or is it an opportunity to talk to a neighbour and ask them how they are, which facilititates further exchanges and relationship with them?
Social orders are kind of like cognitive glues, but also kind of not: https://interestingessays.substack.com/p/morality-as-a-quasi-cognitive-glue. A system of complete markets just obviates other forms of interaction, though people are pretty good at turning lemons into lemonade in many contexts. We need better technology!
What do you think about people who buy things that are bad for them, like as in how to scientifically explain. So I guess naively you might say that the existence of a market is causing them a problem. However, you need to think of what would have happened if there was no market for the bad thing, so probably they are optimising in some sense...hmm maybe I answered my own question
I view these problems as technological in nature. I think there are a lot of ways you could use markets to tie people's decisions to information about what the effects of their choices are. For example, insurance markets could help a lot: if you make bad decisions, your insurance premiums go up.
What about thinking of the "dominance hierarchy" that Jordan Peterson talks about as one of potentially many other higher level systems that coordinate us. So it's basically a shared group model directing attention and resources to some people and away from others. It dictates what values who can or can't afford to have, who you can or can't be around etc. It doesn't require explicit prices, but they exist in terms of time and attention and access to resources.
I was reflecting on our soon-to-be-released discussion where you talk about how it would be better if there were prices in more places than there are now, gjven how effective they are. However, we do have a lot of rituals and practices to make up for a lack of prices. Is bumping into someone in the street a failure due to lack of prices that would allow you to pay to coordinate properly? Or is it an opportunity to talk to a neighbour and ask them how they are, which facilititates further exchanges and relationship with them?
Social orders are kind of like cognitive glues, but also kind of not: https://interestingessays.substack.com/p/morality-as-a-quasi-cognitive-glue. A system of complete markets just obviates other forms of interaction, though people are pretty good at turning lemons into lemonade in many contexts. We need better technology!
What do you think about people who buy things that are bad for them, like as in how to scientifically explain. So I guess naively you might say that the existence of a market is causing them a problem. However, you need to think of what would have happened if there was no market for the bad thing, so probably they are optimising in some sense...hmm maybe I answered my own question
I view these problems as technological in nature. I think there are a lot of ways you could use markets to tie people's decisions to information about what the effects of their choices are. For example, insurance markets could help a lot: if you make bad decisions, your insurance premiums go up.