[FRIAM] capitalism vs. individualism

[glen∈ℂ]

Re: leaving the interstitial space unmodeled being motivated reasoning -- I struggled with that, mostly because I lamely qualified it twice: 1) only sometimes and 2) only if you *cannot* multi-model it. My emotional (?, intuitive maybe?) motivation is that I too often see people slap together something that kindasorta works, then the begin believing their slapped together thing because it kindasorta works (80/20 rule) and it's too inconvenient to pay back that technical debt. If your team is ready to systematically maintain a skeptical stance, then go ahead and model the environment/economy and be willing to dump/iterate on it when it's falsified. But otherwise, maybe it's best to leave it unmodeled.

Re: the extension of ownership to larger meaning (stewardship, systemic consequences, etc.) -- I agree completely. I wanted to say "Well said." But I'm not sure you've said it well.  Nor have I. Nor has anyone I've read. The tragedy of the commons is difficult to grok and even more difficult to explain, say, to the dog walkers who leave their dog shit in the school yard behind our house ... or worse yet, to the teenager with fantastic math skills who would prefer to spend her time categorizing fashion choices.

On 11/6/19 4:08 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> To the extent that  such "isms" are made up of "beliefs" as much as
> "acts",  the full embedding space would need to include *all possible
> beliefs* to be complete, but in fact, it is the subspace that we happen
> to be exploring at any given time which is relevant.  On the other hand,
> there does appear to be a place for "most dangerous ideas" which
> represent a "seed" of organization which might introduce/find/create a
> "path" between these subspaces (isms) as well as yet others yet
> unknown.     Glen's idea that we not try to interpolate between the
> existing spaces (smooth the space-between with our own assumptions?)
> lest we miss some kind of interesting/useful structure in the
> intervening landscape seems motivated (if I'm even beginning to
> characterize what he said correctly).
> 
> As a reform(ing)ed Capitalist, I am very interested in how the reality
> of private property (in the sense of "possession is 9/10 of the law")
> competes with those elements of the physical (and social?) multiverse
> which might be "best" (whatever best means?) left in "the Commons".   I
> have a strong sense that among my "possessions" there are many which
> require too much of the "force of law" to maintain as my own...   for
> example, anything I cannot keep on my person or in my sight is at risk
> of being absconded with.  A piece of real property which I do not reside
> or work significantly at (weekly if not daily) would seem to be at-risk
> of re-appropriation by others, and in the sense of stewardship, anything
> I "can't take care of" might not really be mine?  For example, in the
> plantations-operated-by-chattel-slavery, might be said to have belonged
> to those who cleared, plowed, sowed, and harvested the fields and those
> who built, maintained, and repaired the buildings more than the
> individual or family whose claim to "ownership" of the real property and
> it's improvements were well beyond their own ability to have created,
> much less maintained it.