
Amazon Workers Are Denouncing Unions by Using Suspiciously Similar Tweets - smacktoward
https://slate.com/technology/2019/02/nyc-hq2-amazon-fulfillment-center-union-tweets.html
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CryptoPunk
Unions were terrible for the Big Three auto companies, and they will be
terrible for America's new rising commercial powers: Amazon and Tesla

~~~
yyyymmddhhmmss
This is the same strawman used to gut the US government of any commitment it
ever had to any of the people it claims to serve.

Terrible unions are terrible, just as terrible governments are terrible.
Terrible cars are terrible. Terrible houses are terrible. Terrible schools are
terrible.

By _maintaining_ these things instead of abandoning them, we can have good
unions, good governments, good cars, good houses, and good schools.

Repeat for everything in your life, if you want to keep it.

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CryptoPunk
Of course relatively speaking, all of these things exist in a spectrum from
good to bad. But at a higher level of analysis, some things are categorically
poor solutions to certain problems.

The problem of scarcity of rival, non-public goods is best addressed without
regimenting the productive forces of the economy with one-size-fits-all
solutions.

Even with a perfectly free market, the challenge of addressing the
complexities of the economy is daunting. We don't need to add restrictions on
private property and contracting rights to those challenges.

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EliRivers
_We don 't need to add restrictions on private property and contracting rights
to those challenges._

The axiom "reject improvements if we don't need to do them" (whatever "need"
means - we don't "need" to do anything) seems a poor guide. What if we _want_
improvements?

Or is this axiom just "reject restrictions"? What if those restictions make
things better? Is this a kind of religious axiom; that it's morally right at
some higher level to reject restrictions, even if they'd make things better?
Does that apply to everything, or just economics?

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CryptoPunk
Restrictions on voluntary interaction will not outperform unrestricted
voluntary coordination. The latter evolves toward more optimal configurations
as a result of the incentive each individual has to improve their station in
life. Interactions that don't make the circumstances of the two parties to the
interaction better than they otherwise would be are not sustainable in a free
market, while those that do, are selected for, and this is because both
parties have a right to choose the best option available to them.

A broad-based restriction is a one-size-fits-all-solution that will inevitably
lead to less optimal outcomes in numerous cases. Society and economy are too
complex to deal with based on broad over-simplifying generalizations about
entire classes of interaction.

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EliRivers
_The latter evolves toward more optimal configurations as a result of the
incentive each individual has to improve their station in life._

I understand that this economic axiom has been discredited. For example, by
the work of Nash.

 _Society and economy are too complex to deal with based on broad over-
simplifying generalizations about entire classes of interaction._

Yet you keep making them. If you think such broad, simplistic generalisations
don't apply, why keep making them?

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CryptoPunk
_I understand that this economic axiom has been discredited. For example, by
the work of Nash._

Can you elaborate? I'm not familiar with any Nash work that discredits it.

I know that game theory models show that the principle of First Possession
(which many animals exhibit and which is the foundation of free market
interaction) minimizes conflict, and moreover, that in a perfectly competitive
free market, all interactions lead to Pareto Improvements.

 _Yet you keep making them. If you think such broad, simplistic
generalisations don 't apply, why keep making them?_

It's not a generalization. It's a conclusion based on inductive reasoning
about the implications of the economic structure of reality, like people being
self-interested, and companies that earn less revenue contracting while those
that earn more expand.

It's no different than believing that all life is subject to evolutionary
forces.

