In Defense of Anagorism

political economy in the non-market, non-state sector

Category: Uncategorized

  • Effective altruism

    I’ve largely reached the conclusion that the agenda of the effective altruism movement has a phase one which consists of gradually adding effectiveness to altruism, at some point to be followed by a phase two which will consist of gradually subtracting altruism from effective altruism. Basically, effectiveness is to effective altruism as efficiency is to neoliberalism as paper clip is to paper clip maximizer.

    If effective altruism is actually a program of gradually replacing altruism with effectiveness, it would seem to be a similar strategy to the one that the think tank machinery of free market ideology has used, first to phase out political economy as a subject of study, then to phase in so-called public choice theory. Basically their agenda is to frame political science as a branch of economics. I don’t doubt they plan to enclose sociology and anthropology much as they have political science. Basically, in their view there is economics, and then there are bullshit “disciplines” pretending to be social sciences. But the economists at the think tanks are hired guns. There will always be paying gigs for those willing to speak power to truth.

    As everyone who knows anything knows, the efficiency of free markets is unassailable, but can the incomprehensibly superior ability of the market mechanism to calculate maximum resource allocation, be harnessed in service to criteria of efficiency that are person-weighted, rather than dollar-weighted? I’ve seen no evidence that it can, but happily, as of yet, no conclusive reason it can’t. Whether I’m a soft anagorist (advocate of building the new allocation mechanism within the shell of the old) or a hard anagorist (basically, market abolitionist) hinges on the question of whether it turns out market calculation can also optimize person-weighted criteria of efficiency.

    When it comes to EA’s, it seems their highest priority goal is reduction of extreme poverty. I can think of no more appropriate goal, as that is also the primary goal of the school I’m rooting for, which is negative utilitarianism. Where things maybe go off the rails, is that at least some EA’s conclude that the thing they can do personally that best serves EA goals is to earn as much money as possible. Maybe my life would be more comfortable if I were capable of believing that. Then again, maybe at some point I will decide to become a true believer in wealth being the only answer to poverty, and fail to thrive in the market economy anyway. I would sure as hell feel used if I were to dedicate myself to the money grubbing process out of a conviction that filling my own cup is a prerequisite for helping fill others’, only to find that my new-found conviction and dedication does not in itself add enough competitiveness to my job search that I actually start landing impressive job offers.

    Likewise, there’s a certain horror at the prospect of maybe the economists being right about economics being on a sound empirical basis (in ways the other social sciences are not). After all, if economics is really a science, my rejection of the body of economic theory constitutes a form of science denialism. Maybe I’m no better than the global warming denialists. But observe how many economics non-denialists are global warming denialists. The money backing much economic research appears to be partisan (in Newspeak, nonpartisan) money. For now, I stand by anagorism. Whether hard or soft remains to be seen, for a little while.

  • 1920090_765534100124237_209491492_n

    That’s the real reason there’s no viable business model for journalism. All this talk of ad blocker blockers and micropayments and DRM misses the point. To work for money is to work for money.

  • Autonomy, Diversity, Society

  • “America is a Christian nation”

    It is a nation without an official religion. That’s precisely why it’s home to the (unfortunately, in my opinion) least secular society in the free world. The absence of an official religion is why America became a magnet for those members of European sects that actually believed in their theology, as well as becoming a laboratory for new extra-strength forms of (and perhaps variants on) Christian theology, such as Assemblies of God, Church of LDS, Missouri Synod Lutheranism, KJV-only Christians, etc.

    It’s about in-group vs. out-group, and it’s also a numbers game. Today, to come up with a Christian majority, you have to include a lot of people who would have been classified as non-Christian in previous generations, including a whole lotta Cafeteria Catholics, Mainline Protestants, etc. But the people most loudly proclaiming the Christian majority are the ones who in the pulpits of their own places of worship most narrowly define what it means to be a true believer (and therefore saved, according to their beliefs).

  • Democracy is not Enough – Rip it up and Start Again

    Democracy is not Enough – Rip it up and Start Again

  • Free culture movement under attack

    The free culture movement and the pirate movement are two quite different things. The latter is fair game for ostracism by those who value Rule of Law. Free Culture, however, is not about expropriating things into the public domain but creating things that are born public domain, basically a (largely failed) effort to bring the (IMHO admirable) open source ethic to things other than software.

    David Newhoff, in This is no time to be devaluing creators, seems to be trying to conflate the free culture movement with the tragically unfortunate trend of employers who want to pay people in “exposure” or “experience.” That phenomenon harms most if not all workers, creative class or not. The former would benefit more from better labor law protections than from better IP protections.

    Another reason a middle level (or middle class) niche in cultural product is difficult to carve out is the “long tail” nature of audience share distribution. So it will probably always be the case that the nightclub acts vastly outnumber the rock stars, but also that the amateurs will always vastly outnumber the nightclub acts. Making assertion of IP rights the main strategy against the unpaid internship phenomenon looks from my outsider perspective like an attempt to guildify the creative professions by erecting entry barriers. I actually have nothing against this approach, as I’m pro-union. But should the high wall be between established professionals and semiprofessionals? Or between semiprofessionals and amateurs? Perhaps the creatives should go full trade unionist and adopt a formal apprentice/journeyperson/master hierarchy. I think paid apprenticeships are the only truly appropriate answer to unpaid internships.

  • Intentional economic calculation

    The market is remarkably good at allocating resources efficiently. The only problem is that the market magic doesn’t work on criteria of efficiency that aren’t dollar-weighted. I suppose it’s one of those normative vs. positive things. Since (1) it doesn’t seem possible to harness the market mechanism for solving person-weighted optimization problems and (2) I’m not ready to surrender some of my normative commitments (specifically, negative utilitarianism), it appears to me that an effort at intentional economic calculation is necessary, even though it will probably be inherently inferior to the market as an optimization algorithm.

  • Quotebag #116

    Richard Stallman:
    Any speech recognition running on a server that isn’t yours, you can’t trust.
    Emmi Bevensee and Kameron Fein
    Just because illicit activities are not included in the GDP of a nation does not mean that they are not a part of the national economy or that they are somehow subverting it.
    Charles:
    SMART = Surveillance Marketed as Revolutionary Technology
    donzelion:
    Sometimes, though, I think the ones who make the world better don’t do it for appreciation, but for the sheer pride of solving some puzzle others couldn’t solve. Many sorts of motivation exist, and not all are motivated by the same forces. But I see no reason to believe someone who wasn’t motivated by $50 million/year will suddenly become motivated by $500 million/year, nor do I believe their work will be 10x better than the “punitive” little $50/million paycheck.
    nihilistsocialist:
    In an actual revolutionary situation, presumably, because the workers have guns.
    What, too coercive? The NAP is a conservative principle — the violence of the present is affirmed insofar as it is invisible, while the violence necessary to change and progress is viewed with horror.
  • Why Anarchists and Voluntaryists Can Never Agree on Anything

    Why Anarchists and Voluntaryists Can Never Agree on Anything

  • Quotebag #113

    ackhuman:
    We know by now that hard work at poverty wages is not how those with good work ethic develop skills and experience to become wealthy capitalists. On the contrary, huge numbers of people working at poverty wages is how those willing to exploit the desperation of others become wealthy capitalists.
    Michael O. Church:
    We don’t need to persuade people or speak “truth to power”, because those in power already know what the truth is. We’ll probably have to fight them.
    Russell Keith-Magee:
    The idea that all the world’s communication is stored in a single company’s database — be it Twitter, Google, or Facebook — scares me no end.
    Frank Moraes:
    We aren’t a world of nations anymore; we are a world of corporations. We are living in a William Gibson dystopia, but no one is willing to admit it for what it is.