…or, why would anybody do anything if there were nothing to be gained by it?

Most people deep down think Benjamin Franklin was right when he wrote:

Finally, there seem to be but three Ways for a Nation to acquire Wealth. The first is by War as the Romans did in plundering their conquered Neighbours. This is Robbery. The second by Commerce which is generally Cheating. The third by Agriculture the only honest Way; wherein Man receives a real Increase of the Seed thrown into the Ground, in a kind of continual Miracle wrought by the Hand of God in his Favour, as a Reward for his innocent Life, and virtuous Industry.

[Positions to be Examined, April 4, 1769]

Most people also think commerce works, even if it’s “cheating”. Profit creates incentives, which make people behave in pro-social ways (trying to meet one another’s needs).

Franklin was wrong about commerce being “generally cheating”, but the belief goes back to our ancestors. Evolutionary psychology gives us the zero-sum idea that trade can’t be mutually beneficial. Ideas of “just price”, “true value”, the labor theory of value, profit-seeking as a base motive – all come from there. Per Claude.ai:

Confucian China placed merchants at the bottom of the four occupations (士農工商 — scholar, farmer, artisan, merchant) for two millennia. Tokugawa Japan inherited this and made it formal social policy: merchants couldn’t own land, couldn’t carry swords, couldn’t wear silk. Hindu varna placed Vaishyas (merchants) below Brahmins and Kshatriyas; Manusmriti has detailed strictures on commercial conduct that frame profit as morally suspect. Islamic jurisprudence prohibited riba (interest) and developed elaborate doctrines distinguishing legitimate trade from exploitation. Medieval Christianity condemned usury and developed just-price theory. Pre-contact African societies, pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, Polynesian chiefdoms — gift exchange and reciprocity are honored while market exchange with strangers is suspect or actively low-status.

Franklin was a businessman with a famous reputation for honesty, and should have known better from experience. Perhaps he felt guilt about engaging in base commerce.

It’s blindingly obvious that most trade can’t be cheating. People trade when both think they have something to gain from the trade – if trade is at “equal value” to each side, there’s no reason to bother with the trade. People value the same things differently – an employee values his earnings more than the leisure forgone; the employer values the labor more than the wages paid. I buy beans at the grocery store when I want the beans more than I want the price the store charges.

We trade when we expect to get more utility out of our holdings after the trade.

The economist Étienne Bonnot de Condillac may have been the first to formalize this:

“It is not true that on an exchange of commodities we give value for value. On the contrary, each of the two contracting parties in every case, gives a less for a greater value. … If we really exchanged equal values, neither party could make a profit. And yet, they both gain, or ought to gain.”

[Le Commerce et le Gouvernement Considérés Relativement l’un à l’autre (1776), Part I, Chapter 6, published the same year as Wealth of Nations. Marx quotes and attacks it explicitly in Capital Vol. I — he had to, because it’s a direct refutation of his labor-equivalence-in-exchange premise.]

I saw the above on r/ExplainTheJoke. It’s HP Lovecraft, Neil Gaiman, Ayn Rand, and George Lucas.

I just want to talk about Rand and a reaction on Reddit.

JesusIsMyZoloft said “Bottom Left is Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged. Far-right libertarian who believes that not only should it be legal to do immoral things (the fundamental tenet of libertarianism) but that therefore you should actually do immoral things.”

It’s an interesting take on libertarianism, and maybe explains a lot of the hostility toward it.

I’m more classical liberal than libertarian these days. A commonality is the idea that freedom means being allowed to make decisions that society thinks are poor ones (yes, including re morality), provided the equal rights of others are respected. (If it doesn’t mean that, whatever does it mean?)

In practice much of this is about opposing paternalism – laws that are for “your own good”. For example libertarians think it should be legal to use an unlicensed vet to care for pets, as long as the vet doesn’t fraudulently claim qualifications they don’t have. Or buy non-FDA approved drugs. Neither has anything to do with morality.

Rand herself hated libertarians with a passion, but that hasn’t prevented her from being the patron saint of a certain subset of them.

Personally I think Rand was a pretty good fiction writer (The Fountainhead is quite good), and a terrible non-fiction writer.

Happy Valentine’s Day 2024! Scott Alexander has a great post today proposing Valentine’s Day as a libertarian holiday.

Love and sex seem to me two different things. (Admittedly related things, like life and food.) Not everyone agrees. In the comments “Alephwyr” and I traded thoughts that I think capture some fundamental differences:

Alephwyr (The Dragonsphere Examiner):

Dave (The Mugwumpery):

Alephwyr (The Dragonsphere Examiner):

Dave (The Mugwumpery):

Alephwyr (The Dragonsphere Examiner):

Democracy is popular, despite leading to public policy that doesn’t generally seem to be better (or worse) than that produced by other systems.

As is well known, pure democracy (majoritarianism) leads to tyranny at least as often as other forms of government. In a pure democracy, 51% of voters can, legitimately, torture and kill the other 49% of the population. That’s why every even moderately successful democracy has things like constitutions and “bills of rights” – there are many things even majorities should not be allowed to do, and these are necessary constraints. Some advocates of democracy don’t seem to understand that “human rights” and “democracy” are in tension – rights are things that even majorities may not infringe.

Regardless of the system of government, constitutions, or formal rights, sufficiently large majorities always get whatever they want. Because a sufficiently large majority will always win a civil war.

This unfortunate fact leads to the one really unarguable benefit of democracy – it provides a way for large majorities to get what they want peacefully via elections instead of via bloody civil war. If they’re such a large majority that they’re going to win anyway, far better for them to win peacefully.

Other than that (not inconsiderable!) benefit, I’m not sure there’s anything very good about democracy – it certainly hasn’t been shown to lead to wise governance, honest leaders, or respect for human rights.

I’m not saying citizen’s opinions shouldn’t be taken into account – only that voting directly for specific legislators and policies doesn’t seem to produce especially good outcomes. Other ways may be better.

There have been many proposals to limit or bias the franchise to improve democracy by giving extra weight to more-competent-than-average voters – for example extra votes for military service, avoidance of crime or debt, payment of taxes, marriage or child rearing, education, tests of intelligence, knowledge, or competence, etc. In the unlikely event of their adoption, these might improve the quality of elected officials and of legislation.

But if you take the point of view that democracy is mainly for keeping the peace, these attempts defeat that purpose – tax-paying university graduates with children and without criminal records are unlikely to start or participate in civil wars. Instead, there’s something to be said for limiting the franchise (or weighting votes) according to ability and propensity to make trouble. This is probably why, historically, only landowners and men were allowed to vote – penniless peasants and women didn’t make civil war very effectively. Nor children.

In a comment on SlateStarCodex today the author (“leoboiko”) advocates a programme of socialism under the assumption that intelligence and ability are inherited, rather than earned, by their possessors. She said,

For one thing, this means that the idea of “meritocracy” is inherently unfair. Giving people access to wealth and resources based on their IQ-related achievements is as unfair as making people richer when they’re born taller. We would want some sort of social program to guarantee everyone access to a decent life according to their needs, not according to their abilities.

And went on to illustrate the unfairness of a world in which wealth was allocated according to height.

I do think intelligence and ability is mostly genetic, and I agree that’s unfair. My response is,

What we are rewarding (and want to reward) is success in helping society progress – materially, culturally, etc. Helping other people. Making the world a better place to live.

Our society is not meritocratic in any sense. We don’t reward merit. Or intelligence. Being meritorious, well-intentioned, hard-working, intelligent, and capable gets you…nothing. What gets rewarded (imperfectly, of course) is actually delivering the result – benefits to other people, as evaluated by those people, by their willingness to voluntarily trade wealth for those benefits.

Intelligence is associated with wealth because we reward pro-social activity, and intelligence makes success in such activity more likely. Height doesn’t (except in basketball).

Steve Jobs wasn’t wealthy because he needed it, or because he was a nice guy (he seems to have been an unpleasant person in many ways). He was wealthy because he created great things that benefited billions of people.

That’s as it should be. It’s not, and never has been, about fairness. It’s about incentives.

Without such incentives, capable people wouldn’t try very hard. And wouldn’t control large amounts of capital for use in their projects. And we all would be far worse off.

Of course I’m not claiming our society does this perfectly or consistently. There are lots of ways to cheat the system, and lots of people who become wealthy in ways other than “making the world a better place” – most obviously, monopolists, tricksters, and power brokers. I advocate fixing that.

But the basic system works. Making the world a better place to live is more important than fairness.

It is traditionally held in the United States that there are two major political parties, which can fairly be described as the “Stupid” party and the “Evil” party.

Thoughtful partisans on each side are firmly convinced that their own party is the “Stupid” party, while the opposition is the “Evil” party.

(If you think the situation is less symmetrical than that,  I submit that this is an indicator of your partisanship.)

However, this is wrong.

Both parties, like the electorates that support them, and humanity in general, are about 80% stupid and 20% evil.

What is going on with the left and free speech?

Decades ago self-described liberals were consistently in the forefront of defending the right to free speech and the first amendment.

Lenny Bruce was the poster boy/martyr for this cause. Liberals defended pornography and communists. They consistently said “the answer to speech you don’t like is more speech” – not controls on speech.

The ACLU became famous for defending unpopular speech, even to the extent of defending the right of neo-Nazis to march though the largely Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie.

From George Orwell’s 1984 to the Berkeley Free Speech Movement to denunciations of Joe McCarthy, much of the left seemed to define itself as defending freedom of expression.

Mario Savio and FSM – UC Berkeley Sather Gate, 20 November 1964

But in recent years it seems the situation has turned 180 degrees. The #1 cause célèbre among all my left-of-center friends is reversing Citizens United. Campus protests demand censorship and “safe spaces”, and aim to drum professors advocating politically incorrect views out of the academy.

And then we have:

Arrest Climate-Change Deniers – Gawker

New Inquisition: Punish climate-change ‘deniers’ – WND.com

Al Gore at SXSW: We Need to ‘Punish Climate-Change Deniers’ and ..

Climate “Deniers” Must Be Jailed or Killed | – Acting Man

This all seems a very long way from the impassioned defense of free speech the left (in the US) used to stand for.

What happened? Why?

I asked an insightful slightly left-of-center friend, who said,

“Liberals will care about free speech if and as it fights harm and oppression and advances equality. There are a handful of people who care about free speech as an end in itself, but not many.”

I’m not sure if that’s correct. But if it is, what does that say about the contemporary left?

If the left of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s thought that free speech would advance its goals, helping to undermine the status quo, does it now oppose free speech because it sees itself in a position of power, able to dictate what are and aren’t acceptable ideas?

When and how did that change? Did the fall of the Soviet empire strengthen the left in the west, instead of discrediting it?

I’m confused. But as someone who really does care about free speech, it’s terribly disappointing.

Or, Why I Have No Use for Philosophers

This is my grandfather’s axe. My father replaced the handle, I replaced the head. This is my grandfather’s axe.

Every time I try to discuss anything of substance with a professional philosopher, and often even with someone trained in philosophy, I find myself in an argument over semantics – the meaning of words.

I think this is why philosophy is generally held in such low regard.

The Ship of Theseus is a more elaborate version of the Grandfather’s Axe story that has supposedly been the subject of much debate by classical and modern philosophers (the ship is maintained by replacing planks as they age, until none of the original planks are left – is it still the same ship?).

The thing I find incredibly frustrating is that these philosophers argue about nothing. There is no dispute whatsoever regarding what has actually happened – are any of the parts original? (No.) Is it the same design? (Yes.) We can answer any factual question about the ship unambiguously.

Yet the philosophers keep arguing about it – for millennia.

These people are far worse than useless – they are actively creating confusion and argument where none exist.

Or, as Mel Brooks put it:

From Techdirt, 2012-12-17:

China Tries To Block Encrypted Traffic
from the collapsing-the-tunnels dept

During the SOPA fight, at one point, we brought up the fact that increases in encryption were going to make most of the bill meaningless and ineffective in the long run, someone closely involved in trying to make SOPA a reality said that this wasn’t a problem because the next bill he was working on is one that would ban encryption. This, of course, was pure bluster and hyperbole from someone who was apparently both unfamiliar with the history of fights over encryption in the US, the value and importance of encryption for all sorts of important internet activities (hello online banking!), as well as the simple fact that “banning” encryption isn’t quite as easy as you might think. Still, for a guide on one attempt, that individual might want to take a look over at China, where VPN usage has become quite common to get around the Great Firewall. In response, it appears that some ISPs are now looking to block traffic that they believe is going through encrypted means.

A number of companies providing “virtual private network” (VPN) services to users in China say the new system is able to “learn, discover and block” the encrypted communications methods used by a number of different VPN systems.

China Unicom, one of the biggest telecoms providers in the country, is now killing connections where a VPN is detected, according to one company with a number of users in China.

This is the culmination of at least 35 years of official concern about the effects of personal computers.

I’m old enough to remember. As soon as computers became affordable to individuals in the late 1970s there was talk about “licensing” computer users. Talking Heads even wrote a song about it (Life During Wartime).

The good guys won, the bad guys lost.

Then, even before the Web, we had the Clipper chip. The EFF was created in response. And again the good guys won.

Then we had the CDA, and then CDA2. And again, the bad guys lost and the lovers of liberty won.

In the West, the war is mostly over (yet eternal vigilance remains the price of liberty).

Not so in the rest of the world, as last week’s ITU conference in Dubai demonstrated.

I say – let them try it. Let them lock down all the VPNs, shut off all the traffic they can’t parse. Let’s have the knock-down, drag-out fight between the hackers and the suits.

Stewart Brand was right. Information wants to be free. I know math. I know about steganography. I know about economics.

I know who will win.

I love when seemingly disparate things synchronize in unexpected ways.

According to The Legal Underground,  Nobel laureate Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992) “was exceedingly fond of t-shirts, especially those portraying images of Mick Jagger…”

Surprising enough; doesn’t fit our image of Hayek.

But it gets better.  Sir Mick is a fan of Hayek (see 3:35 in the clip below):

Before quitting to start the Rolling Stones, Jagger attended the London School of Economics, where Hayek had taught.

Supposedly, Jagger’s adviser at the LSE “said that Mick Jagger did a careful net present value analysis of the value in attending LSE as compared to the foregone revenue from playing rock and roll. When the dollars came out higher for music, Mick came by and apologized to the adviser, but said he couldn’t afford to continue in school; LSE was just costing him too much money.”

Did I mention that Jagger also owns an Enigma machine?  The rare 4-rotor type.

Now if I could just work Salma in there somehow, it would be perfect.