> respond with something I interpret as "don't bother, it can't be perfect"
That was not my intention. I simply had to point this out because your comment implied that a well functioning free market could somehow solve the issue. My take is that it can't, because there's no such thing.
Whether or not we should bother with improving it, is a matter for another debate. My take is that we've tried it for long enough, and small improvements simply don't work anymore. Millions of people need/want something and a small handful of powerful rich folks can deny that with no real recourse.
> The counter to the invisible hand working against society instead of in tandem or for it is freely available information.
I mostly agree! But that's, once again, an utopia. Key information is still kept from the public eyes and the trend is to get more restricted to the rich and powerful as time goes on.
As an example, a few key players like Google and Meta have information on virtually every single citizen in the world, while the public has absolutely no control over it or oversight on how that's used.
I don't fully agree because of another problem that we can see almost every day: even with information, the system is unable to make any meaningful change.
We have backroom deals exposed, corruption, quid-pro-quo everywhere, and yet the majority of the responsible people/companies remain free to keep doing those. At best we get a few scapegoats or slaps on the wrist. Information alone is useless if you either have nobody that can act on it (think unregulated markets, industries, etc), or the ones that are able to, can't or won't because of the existing power structures, like the example in the article.
> The only person here who said that is you
I was obviously alluding to the ever-present "communism/socialism is an utopia" argument. I never implied you said that specifically. It's just such a common argument that I assumed could be raised since I mentioned the word and I expanded on it.
> Whether or not we should bother with improving it, is a matter for another debate. My take is that we've tried it for long enough, and small improvements simply don't work anymore. Millions of people need/want something and a small handful of powerful rich folks can deny that with no real recourse.
I'm not sure that's true, or if that's just a prevailing emotion. Being true and feeling that way aren't the same thing. Presumably, if it's true, we can point towards examples of it, and try to quantify it.
If the answer is "no, we can't quantify it because the same people that cause it prevent us from knowing about it", well, that's an untestable assertion and very close to conspiracy theory territory, so I would push back on that, as I think anyone should. So hopefully there are some examples we can discuss.
> I mostly agree! But that's, once again, an utopia. Key information is still kept from the public eyes and the trend is to get more restricted to the rich and powerful as time goes on.
Except we're seeing the counter case right here, right now? Here we have what appears to be a case of Meta with their thumb on the scale, and then with their thumb on the scale again when they're investigated. Either soemthing comes about from this, or from similar stuff later on, or I'd be tempted to say most people just don't care.
To be clear, just because you and I care doesn't mean the average person does, and if the average person doesn't and that means nothing happens, that's not a failure of the system, that's it working as expected, as our minority opinion shouldn't necessarily override theirs, no matter how much we think we're right.
> As an example, a few key players like Google and Meta have information on virtually every single citizen in the world, while the public has absolutely no control over it or oversight on how that's used.
No, the public has absolute control, through petitioning for legislature and holding their representatives to account for acting, or not. Failure to exercise power is not the same as lack of power, even if it appears the same.
> even with information, the system is unable to make any meaningful change.
There are many changes that happen all the time, but the system is also slow, which in some ways is a feature and some ways a problem. Being slow to change means that rapidly changing events can take a while to be dealt with, but it also means that usually there's limited damage that a change in a detrimental direction can do before it's recognized and dealt with, because the changes often come in small steps.
> At best we get a few scapegoats or slaps on the wrist. Information alone is useless if you either have nobody that can act on it (think unregulated markets, industries, etc), or the ones that are able to, can't or won't because of the existing power structures, like the example in the article.
This article is the response to this problem. Harvard is ultimately responsible to the students that want to go there, the donors that donate, and the state and federal governments in which it resides and operates. Whether this results in a small loss in confidence in Harvard being able to carry out research objectively by those that pay attention, a large loss in confidence for the general public the public that Harvard can carry out research objectively and that affecting other research they do, or the federal government calling people in to investigate, we'll have to see. The latter seems unlikely, but I'm looking forward to there maybe being some increased scrutiny and coverage. It seems it's being covered by major outlets now, so congress getting interested isn't out of the question, given they've been fairly interested in this fairly recently.
> I was obviously alluding to the ever-present "communism/socialism is an utopia" argument.
I wouldn't claim a free market to be a utopia, and I wouldn't think someone espousing communism or socialism would in a discussion where they are expected to support their assertions, so I don't think it's particularly useful to introduce it to the conversation here. Without someone actually calling for it, it's just a straw man argument, whether against a person or a position, and whether against me or against the traditional counter to what I presented, I don't think it serves a useful purpose. I was confused enough by it's introduction that I honestly wasn't sure what the point was.
> Presumably, if it's true, we can point towards examples of it, and try to quantify it.
I never went after concrete examples because, like I said, that's a matter for another discussion. But we do have very easy to find examples with a very prevalent topic: climate change.
Protests, complaints, endless coverage of it and yet... no real change. Companies now paying "carbon offsets" that have been multiple times proven to be complete bullshit, targets for emission reduction keep getting postponed and so much more that we can absolutely quantify if we want to. But it simply won't happen because it's not profitable.
> Except we're seeing the counter case right here, right now?
I suppose you're hopeful this will actually result in something. I'm not so sure, unfortunately. Now it's news, in a week nobody will remember. In the end, let's no forget Meta got what they wanted: the research was stifled and now other researchers know: here lie dragons.
We have another gigantic example: Snowden literally imploded his life to get all that information out. We know so much more thanks to his sacrifice and yet what has changed? Do we now not worry that we're all spied on because this was exposed? Are we convinced the tech giants don't have backdoors to the government anymore?
Information is meaningless if we cannot act on it.
> if the average person doesn't and that means nothing happens, that's not a failure of the system, that's it working as expected
If the system is designed to allow corporations and governments to control the average person, ensuring they don't care about anything meaningful, that's a very, very bad system in my book.
Socrates had issues with how democracy was built exactly because it relies on the population being educated to work. If we simply ignore that - like we do today - we end up with our current situation: the majority of people don't care and the rich and powerful get to fuck them over for profit.
You keep everyone poor and dumb, and they'll worry about surviving. Never about climate change, corruption, privacy, etc.
I simply cannot comprehend how we as a society can look at this and say: that's working as expected and I'm fine with it. [insert "this is fine" dog picture]
> No, the public has absolute control, through petitioning for legislature and holding their representatives to account for acting, or not. Failure to exercise power is not the same as lack of power, even if it appears the same.
Sorry but I have to call bullshit here. The public cannot purchase lobbyists to legally bribe legislators to do whatever they want (including introducing legislation they provide to them). I can send thousands of emails to my representatives (or whatever other legal way of pressuring them) and it won't change anything. We've seen plenty of cases where even when the public does not agree with legislature, a few companies can still get what they want because they simply have much more power.
You are right in the sense that, if we did rebel, we could actually exercise our only real power. But voting and trying to convince politicians to "do the right thing" simply does not work. The system is not designed to work for the people, it's designed to work for whoever has power. At some point, the imbalance wasn't this great and we did use our power. But it was always through bloodshed and revolt that we got real change.
How many more outrageous bills have to pass despite public outcry to convince us that the system is broken?
> There are many changes that happen all the time, but the system is also slow, which in some ways is a feature and some ways a problem.
I can partially agree here. By nature of being slow it does in fact prevent some very bad decisions from happening over night. However we've seen with COVID and other recent events how that slowness can be literally the death of us.
There has to be flexibility when we require drastic changes and there simply isn't. As a result people keep dying - and many more will die - because it's simply not profitable to do what's necessary.
Ultimately it's not really the speed that's the issue though (although it worsens crises), but a complete misalignment on the objective. The system is built to increase profits, not to improve human life. Changes that improve human life are merely coincidences in pursuit of profit. So even if the system is slowly working, it's working towards a goal that's almost always orthogonal to what society needs.
Lastly, even though we clearly have very different views, I appreciate your thoughts and keeping it civil. I've had many of these conversations here where it devolved into personal attacks or worse, so: thank you.
That was not my intention. I simply had to point this out because your comment implied that a well functioning free market could somehow solve the issue. My take is that it can't, because there's no such thing.
Whether or not we should bother with improving it, is a matter for another debate. My take is that we've tried it for long enough, and small improvements simply don't work anymore. Millions of people need/want something and a small handful of powerful rich folks can deny that with no real recourse.
> The counter to the invisible hand working against society instead of in tandem or for it is freely available information.
I mostly agree! But that's, once again, an utopia. Key information is still kept from the public eyes and the trend is to get more restricted to the rich and powerful as time goes on.
As an example, a few key players like Google and Meta have information on virtually every single citizen in the world, while the public has absolutely no control over it or oversight on how that's used.
I don't fully agree because of another problem that we can see almost every day: even with information, the system is unable to make any meaningful change.
We have backroom deals exposed, corruption, quid-pro-quo everywhere, and yet the majority of the responsible people/companies remain free to keep doing those. At best we get a few scapegoats or slaps on the wrist. Information alone is useless if you either have nobody that can act on it (think unregulated markets, industries, etc), or the ones that are able to, can't or won't because of the existing power structures, like the example in the article.
> The only person here who said that is you
I was obviously alluding to the ever-present "communism/socialism is an utopia" argument. I never implied you said that specifically. It's just such a common argument that I assumed could be raised since I mentioned the word and I expanded on it.