Re: Goodbye Ruby - Hello Earth

On 16 Apr 2009, at 21:58, Tom Cloyd wrote:
> Free market idealism...ah, yes. In the USA, and, as a consequence,  
> in world in general, we are presently enjoying the rewards of market  
> left entirely TOO free. Wild pigs with the social morality of your  
> average two year old took over, uprooted a lot of the garden and  
> many of the fruit trees, and as a result many of us are more than a  
> bit worried about how we're going to feed ourselves in the coming  
> months.

You haven't had a free market in the USA, any more than we have here  
in the UK. And because the market wasn't free, but a pro-monopoly  
model based upon the Chicago School belief that price is the  
determinant of market efficiency (it isn't) and that lowest price can  
be delivered only where there is a strong market monopoly (which is  
patently absurd), we're seeing another bubble go pop.

> I'm sad, Eleanor, since this is the first time anything you've  
> posted has evidenced anything but keen intelligence.

Well I guess that blows the conceit that I'm largely invisible on  
here :)

> Ever study economics...with an emphasis on data, rather than mere  
> theory? I suggest the investment of some time in that endeavor. Free  
> market idealism is a lovely thing, but the real world is  
> considerably more
> complex than such a simplistic representation as that. I'm puzzled  
> that you missed this.

I have a degree in physics and that leads me to believe that all  
phenomena can be reduced to a simplistic representation, if they can  
be reduced at all. That's a fundamental tenet of the scientific method  
which I apply to both the development of software and to analysis of  
everything else.

> I would have thought that your superb knowledge of both software  
> design concepts and the messiness of the working out of those  
> concepts in the real world might have given you a large hint about  
> all this.

Actually my belief in truly free markets is an outgrowth of the  
analytical skills mentioned above. When I was a teenager I thought  
that government could play a useful role in moderating the negative  
impacts of individual groups in society (in UK terms I was a Liberal)  
but the deeper I studied physics and the more familiar I became with  
both non-linear and quantum systems the more convinced I became that  
the only way to govern anything well is to embrace the chaos and  
decentralise/deregulate. That insight has served me very well in  
software development and I see no reason why it shouldn't apply  
equally well to economics or politics as well.

I also make no assumptions regarding the good will or rationality of  
any participant in a physical system, and that already puts me one  
step ahead of those economic theorists who insist on including the  
implicate calculus of human motivation into their models.

> Longing for the sea gets no boats built at all. Grounding that  
> longing in cooperative effort, governed by a measured degree of  
> altruism, just might.

However someone not only has to want to go to see in the first place,  
they also have to convince others that it's a good idea. Cooperative  
effort is not something that arises magically just because an idea is  
good, it is a consequence of the idea being sold: that's why bad  
technology so often predominates commercially, because it has been  
sold better. The same applies to politics, where in my experience the  
vast majority of legislation is bad because the key element isn't  
efficacy but marketability.

Thankfully the larger the market and the smaller the elements within  
it, the less overall effect individual bad decisions will have - which  
is why a key element of genuine free markets is that they abhor  
monopoly. Our ecosystem is a pretty good example of this principle in  
practice.

> "In a free market economy, technology will serve whatever is needed,  
> when it's needed."
>
> Not if the technology needed requires massive investment with  
> <correction>LITTLE OR NO</correction> hope of rapid profit. For that  
> sort of thing, history tends to show government gets the job far  
> quicker and better. The free market didn't defeat the Nazis, or  
> invent nuclear technology, and a great deal of the launch of modern  
> cybernetics was also government sponsored.

True, the free market didn't defeat the Nazis. Except of course that  
the economies which funded the defeat of the Nazis were all built on  
free market models. The USSR would not have triumphed in the war were  
it not for the huge investment of US resources and the war wouldn't  
even have lasted long enough for that to happen if it hadn't been for  
the huge investment of British resources. Of course that investment  
required political will as well, largely generated as a result of the  
incredible marketing skills of Winston Churchill.

As for nuclear technology, much of the point there is that government  
invested in weapons research because it was hungry for a super-weapon  
which lead to the development of the nuclear reactor as a necessary  
prerequisite. However the development of the reactor could just as  
easily have been achieved by private enterprise had there been a  
perceived need: there was an amusing incident a few years ago with a  
boy scout who built a nuclear pile in his garden shed using the radium  
from about 7000 old glow-in-the-dark watch-faces to prove that point.  
The relative investment of resources to develop nuclear power is also  
not dissimilar to the investment required to develop steam power in  
the 18th century, and that was largely privately funded because people  
saw the benefit it would provide their businesses.

Likewise if there was a perceived need for cybernetics you can bet  
that the money would appear to fund it. Look at the truly remarkable  
medical achievement of our era, the mapping of the human genome. The  
vast majority of that work was funded by private donation to the  
Sanger Institute which is a charitable trust. The Welcome Trust  
(another charity) is the largest conductor of medical research in the  
world.


Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net
----
raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason