"positive sum" is necessary but not sufficient
we're looking for win-win / omniwin 💞
if I put in 5 units of value/work,
& you put in 5,
& 10 are generated
↳ that's positive sum! 💠
but
if I get to keep 19/20 units of output,
& you get 1…
↳ any ape knows that's bullshit 🤬
now, only *with* a positive sum can you have a win-win
zero sum means my profits are your losses, & vv
then there's negative sum
if I put in 5,
you put in 5,
and 2 are destroyed,
↳ …I might be able to exit with 6, but that leaves you with 2
no way to have a win-win
back to the original example:
we each put in 5, 10 are generated
↳ positive sum! 💠
but now
if I get to keep 14/20 units of output,
and you get 6…
↳ we both gained from our 5, but why did I get 180% gains and you got 20%? 🧐🤬
Note that there are also situations such as Stripe, where without them or an equivalent service, apps can't process payments at all. They play a vital role but it's in some sense tiny compared to me actually making something worth selling, so they only keep 3% of the payments.
The next tweets appear to dunk on capitalism but I want to be really clear that it's not personal, just the obvious example. Communism has the same issues.
No large-scale system has solved the problems I'm pointing at here. Nothing ending in "ism" (or starting with "anti").
twitter.com/Malcolm_Ocean/status/1170076505474551815Consider an entrepreneur, whose company employs thousands of people. Some of those people are more replaceable than others, in the sense that someone else could be trained to do the same job. If sufficiently replaceable & desperate for any deal, might be able to offer 5-in 4-out.
These simple "value units" have different types, & if you have no food, then you might trade grueling hours now & long-term health for food for you & kids this week, by doing a job that pays shit & exposes you to asbestos. Net negative, but if you've no better deal, you take it or die.
This means that an uncaring employer, whether a literal sociopath or an empathic person shielded emotionally &/ logistically from the details of what's happening, can set up a situation where people put in more than they get out and the company pockets their loss as well as whatever is generated.
More commonly than people literally net-losing from their jobs like the extreme example above, they put in 5 units, and the company is able to multiply the value into 20 units, and they get back like 6-10. Seems like a good deal, but why does management get to keep 10? Again, people don't have better deals.
Minimum wage laws, worker safety laws, etc, are an attempt to limit how bad the deals are allowed to get. As someone (@ESYudkowsky?) pointed out somewhere though, this can end up converting into other kinds of power, like being able to hire only employees who will tolerate abuse.
In negotiation, one of the most important factors is someone's "BATNA" or "Best Alternative To Negotiated Agreement". In other words, if no deal, how screwed are they?
#unfinished#todo QT "BATNAs are underrated"
I didn't start this thread intending to shill universal basic income, but it follows directly from what I've said so far, on 2 levels:
Adequate UBI would mean nobody needs to take a losing deal in order to survive the month. That solves the problem so much more deeply than trying to make losing deals illegal to offer.
Also, the resources exist to pay it.
#todo actually make the second "resources" point, above
#todo double check that the second point is true & relevant
*caveats:
🌞the negentropy has to come from somewhere, but the sun has plenty it's constantly giving away whether we use it or not
<something about externalities>
