[FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent

[Marcus Daniels]

My intuition is that folks Thiel are perfectly happy to iterate our economic system (or whatever is left of it after Trump) to its natural conclusion, which is essentially extinction of democracy and a calamitous collapse of the population.  Afterward, there will few rich people standing around to, what.. cut each other's throats for a few cups of blood?   What will the predators do without prey?  Keeping an open mind -- at some cosmic level -- it could be necessary from time to time to `right size' the population or to do some specific culling.    But does it really seem promising to leave that to the free market?

However alien some of the alternatives you outline are, they are no more disruptive than letting things go on their current trajectory.  There just have to be classes of losers as Glen illustrates -- it is built-in a structural way not just to benefit the 1% but through our pensions and other retirement investments.   It seems to be unsustainable.   It is not a `meaningful competition of ideas' just to own shares in an index fund.  Most people don't even know what equities they own.  And all those people doing blue collar jobs that can and will be automated aren't really making the world more interesting either.  Really, they're just marking time. 

An argument in defense of the deep state is that humans are so flawed, so selfish, that there is no choice for civil servants to protect the `stem cells'.   If they take some off the top, well, that's the cost of getting it done.  As Obama pointed out, without defenders the Constitution is just a piece of paper.

It's not clear inequality is all bad, but it certainly isn't all good either.   As I get older, it seems more and more rational and necessary to withhold tools I can provide, and doing so is certainly a learned behavior.   Things are set up to cause those that are inclined to cooperate to suffer.   I know I'm not the only one.

Marcus
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2017 3:39 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent


> "I *did* enjoy hearing Chomsky answer this question at a NAFTA talk in ABQ 15 years ago with the simple statement "Socially Responsible
> Investing is a contradiction in terms".   There was a loud titter among
> the roughly 50% students and a deafening silence among the other 50% Yuppie/Academic/Retireds."

>
> What exactly is the claim?
I've been contemplating that question myself.  Here's my closest thing to answers:
>    That property is theft?
I wouldn't have said so at that time, but in some extreme, I believe 
this to be true.   Or is always true by some increments.   At some 
point, private property becomes hoarding.  Those whose rhetoric is against the 1%'s or promote graduated income tax, etc. are saying that *at some point*, accumulation of private property is wrong/disallowed by 
the collective.   As a private property owner (of many kinds) I have the 
habit of imagining that *my* level isn't hoarding and *my* ownership doesn't undermine the quality of anyone else's life, *even* if I judge 
that to be the case in others.   That doesn't make it true... just my 
habit and apprehension!

> That all investments ought to be public investments?
If there is no private hoards of wealth, then there is no other mode of 
investment than "public".   This of course, begs other issues such as 
WHO is the collective?  What is it's scope?  A family, a clan, a tribe, a region, a culture, a nation, a "world"?
>    Or is it a weaker claim that, say, people or organizations should not be able to float along living off `earnings' from interest?
I have heard a lot of rhetoric to this effect of late.   "Unearned 
Income".   I'm not a deep scholar of Socialism or Communism, but I think 
all of this has been explored and documented.

I have developed gedankenexperiments for my own edification and I *do* think there is a fundamental concept of private investment. If, for example, I invest my time in building a really good lever, then when I
*use* that lever, I can do twice or ten times the work of anyone else... 
I now *own* an investment that gives me leverage, literally and figuratively.  In principle I can loan it out for others to use, or use my arcane knowledge to make more and trade them to others for things 
*they* have acquired through skill or luck or might?    For some, this 
game falls down with people like Trump and his new Cabinet of multi-millionaires, for others, it falls down much earlier.

My mythology about the Australian Indigenous (formerly know as
Aboriginal) peoples is that they have always chosen to "own" only what they could carry in their hands, or in their "dilly bag". But most of us don't want to live in the primitive conditions they chose, accepted, or 
found themselves in.   Most of us want one or two (or more) cars we can 
drive across the continent at the drop of a hat, a house big enough for
4 or 5 refugee families,  a pile of consumer electronics and other items that are as much fetish objects as they are actually the "tools" we claim them to be!

I think the more interesting question is the question of "the 
commons".   In our new economy based significantly on non-physical 
assets, on intellectual property, how do we manage a "commons" to the benefit of all, not just the *already wealthy and powerful*?. Most of my own "intellectual property" is nothing more than secret sauce, tricks of the trade that I have one or another angle on (or not), but if I *did* own some trademarks, patents, copyrights of value, I would be a bit conflicted.  *I* sure hate it when other's IP claims limit my own ability to do interesting work.  I have even spent time in the devils camp helping clients defend their IP. Fortunately it felt a little like Robin Hood since they were defending against the likes of Google and 
Disney.   But if I asked the collective (clan, tribe) to enforce my 
*ownership* of the design of the lever I invented (discovered) to prevent anyone else in the group to use my design without compensating me to my  satisfaction, I somehow think that is not good for anyone (except vaguely me?).

>    I think it is good if candidates just come right out with that as part of their platform.   Likewise, salary caps for doctors, lawyers, and so on.    It would take decades for it to gain much support, I think -- people have too much investment in American Dream type fantasies -- but it is worth proposing.
Along with neoConservatives and neoLiberals, are you suggesting it is time to coin neoSocialists or neoCommunists?

My extreme view is that *anarchy* is the natural state but that with enough careful thought and practice an idealized *community* is possible.  The latter would be an effective full up communistic society (and would need "government" as much as *anarchy* needs government, it would be self-organizing based on principles not unlike the golden rule or the ten commandments) but then that IS very utopian and inside every utopia is a dystopia (recursively) hiding a utopia... etc.

- Steve

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