I will step in for Ulysses in the mean time :)

Single player economies leads to bad things like Bolshevism and Stalin

It truly fascinates me how these super mega-brained silicon tech geniuses (in all their genius) just can’t seem to reckon with the fact that capitalism has left a trail of blood like no other. But what are the “bad things?” Worker autonomy? Redistribution? Oppressed people taking back power? Can’t you just admit that you’re arguing from a moral framework at this point? Odd how no one ever does. It just has to be the case that anything but capitalism is evil and bad as a consequence of simply challenging existing ideology.

Jesus fuck. Are we really going to pretend like it’s possible to quantify something as a complex as a monopoly? Economics is not a science no matter how hard you try to make it so, and economists will eventually cave to this if you dig deep enough. I think they’re renowned in the STEM world for the pretty remarkable feat of enrolling in graduate-level courses as a high school student, but they are very clearly not objective. How the fuck can you possibly make a claim about the veracity of something leading to a monopoly? As I’ve said on this site before, I’m the furthest thing from a philosopher, but how is that not an absurd claim?

All the proof you need to know that our collective understanding of intelligence means jack shit. I sometimes think “Yeah, I guess since there’s this general trend of certain people taking a test annd answering logically/computationally complex questions with ease, maybe IQ is somewhat valid.”

But then I think back to people like Hawking and Einstein who would’ve unquestionably performed well on those types of tests but had an entirely different worldview. And I really can’t help but think it all comes down to philosophy, namely ethics and what we ought to do as human beings.

These thoughts brought to you by a brain that just finished reading Bullshit Jobs so I would like to thank David Graeber for his help with this post.