Comments on Chip Overclock: Why Free Markets Don't Work: Measurement Dysfuncti...

Hmmmmm... I may have been citing SF author Alexis ...

2008-09-16T20:24:00.000-06:00

Hmmmmm... I may have been citing SF author Alexis Gilliland, who suggested (fictionally) that AIs might achieve legal rights by incorporating. But otherwise I agree with your point.

Interesting to hear your statements about corporat...

2008-09-16T17:49:00.000-06:00

Interesting to hear your statements about corporations.
Since many years ago you discussed the possibility of corporations being citizens, you have just made one of the clearest arguments about
why that can never be true.
It is also why corporations cannot be tried for criminal offenses, but
their officers can.

Ken

Recently my friend Jim from back east visiting Col...

2008-09-05T08:50:00.000-06:00

Recently my friend Jim from back east visiting Colorado remarked that those that self-identify as Republicans in the West were markedly different from the same in the East. Western Republicans tended to be more what the East think of as Libertarians: less Government is good. (He was mentioning this in the context of him being gay, Western Republicans pretty muching thinking it wasn't any of their -- or the Government's business -- which is a departure how most think about the Republican platform.)

I self-identify as a pro-gun Liberal: I'm a member of the ACLU and the NRA. This is actually not that unusual in the Denver/Boulder area, one of the reasons I like living here. That means I'm lucky enough to frequently find myself sharing a lunch table with folks from all over the political spectrum. My Republican friends -- meaning, here in the west, Libertarian -- are always promoting free markets. Both my conservative and liberal friends are probably tired of hearing me go on and on about measurement dysfunction, but I couldn't resist finding yet one more application of it.

You're right, it's definitely a balancing act. Austin's thesis implies that government regulation actually won't solve the problem either, because not all metrics can be measured. So ultimately, regulation isn't the completely answer either; it can only be a stopgap. It has to be something driven into the corporate culture.

I'm intrigued with the idea of corporations being psychopathic. Yet behind every corporation are human beings, and those humans have a moral responsibility to do the right thing. I wish I saw more of that. Corporations moving toward "greening" is a step in the right direction (albeit usually justified by the bottom line).

Always good to hear from you, Paul. Thanks for the comment!

Since when have we had free markets? We have enou...

2008-09-05T07:47:00.000-06:00

Since when have we had free markets? We have enough laws to fill a football stadium and more coming every day. Given more human behavior, the goal is to surround the free market with regulation, setting its bounds.

The next alternative is having government tell industry what to make, how much to produce, etc. Given the fact that government is also humans and driven not by profit, but power, there ability to guide things is horrible.

The best alternative is to have all us humans be better people, and I believe there simply exists a balance between our morals (or lack thereof) and laws. If we had a perfectly moral society, how many laws would we have? Probably ten (yes, those ten written on those stone tablets). If we had the other extreme, we would have lots of very restrictive laws and shoot people for relatively minor offensives. Sound like any countries you can name?