My fiance Aunt works with troubled youth in a relatively at risk community. In her decades long career, she has met a single clinical sociopath (many psychopaths but those are not as interesting, primarily characterized as a lack of empathy and a high need for stimulation). The sociopath was best characterized as chronically violent (history of physical abuse to pets, siblings, partners, parents and police) and disturbed every professional they came into contact with on the basis of their ability to transcend and violate your emotional boundaries with ease (and seeming satisfaction). 10x more charming, manipulative and sadistic than most people could conceive of being. Ie. A sociopath.
The organization of the world economy is not sociopathic. The orgnization of the world economy involves money, people and resources numberated in values not easily comprehended by our relatively linear cognitive abilities. It is comprised of a very large number of primarily good people making a primarily well intentioned effort to be successful for themselves, get respect, live well and if they can do useful things for other people. There are many reasons why people might still be in the gene pool but depending on the conditions of the environment they (and their ancestors) were raised in, the ability to be zero-sum competitive and hyper focused on what your competition does, could have been useful at one time and still may be.
HN nerds appreciate and give status to activities that try to create positive sum wealth for people, but the markets we work in can be just as zero-sum and unpleasant as winning an election or becoming CEO of a bank. It is not bad to win zero sum contests, we just need to create status incentives to make new things and create new wealth in favour of ruthlessly battling for old resources and zero sum opportunities to have power but do little good.
People think they are mad about capitalism but really they are mad about how hard it is to topple the faceless natural oligopolies that have taken over as default economic institutions as a result of the complexity and regulation in our globalized world. Instead of villainizing "capitalism" or giving up on trade and growing vegetables on your apartment balcony, I think we should do things that create new value and opportunities for people. It is a leadership bottleneck, to value creativity and give it status over role-based power, and an ongoing battle between people oriented towards different things.
The organization of the world economy is not sociopathic. The orgnization of the world economy involves money, people and resources numberated in values not easily comprehended by our relatively linear cognitive abilities. It is comprised of a very large number of primarily good people making a primarily well intentioned effort to be successful for themselves, get respect, live well and if they can do useful things for other people. There are many reasons why people might still be in the gene pool but depending on the conditions of the environment they (and their ancestors) were raised in, the ability to be zero-sum competitive and hyper focused on what your competition does, could have been useful at one time and still may be.
HN nerds appreciate and give status to activities that try to create positive sum wealth for people, but the markets we work in can be just as zero-sum and unpleasant as winning an election or becoming CEO of a bank. It is not bad to win zero sum contests, we just need to create status incentives to make new things and create new wealth in favour of ruthlessly battling for old resources and zero sum opportunities to have power but do little good.
People think they are mad about capitalism but really they are mad about how hard it is to topple the faceless natural oligopolies that have taken over as default economic institutions as a result of the complexity and regulation in our globalized world. Instead of villainizing "capitalism" or giving up on trade and growing vegetables on your apartment balcony, I think we should do things that create new value and opportunities for people. It is a leadership bottleneck, to value creativity and give it status over role-based power, and an ongoing battle between people oriented towards different things.