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| ▲ | ben_w 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > People pay the mafia protection money because it's cheaper than fighting the mob and it makes the mob go away for awhile, and in the long run, we're all dead. Most mafia-like entities don't have an inexorable existential drive to take it all, they just charge what the market will bear. If I had to guess, the Mafia will have professional economists on payroll telling the bosses about the Laffer curve and emigration. But in this context, Apple's clearly on the low end of the Laffer curve* because they don't need a million apps, so who cares if the store fees are 15% or 85%, the supply is still there?**; while for emigration, being the least bad of the Apple/Google duopoly is all that is necessary. * if you take literally that the App store fee is the "Apple tax" ** Answer: Judges in market abuse/monopoly cases because Apple is not actually sovereign; on paper neither is the Mafia, but this is where "monopoly on violence" is a useful definition of a state, in that where anything like the Mafia can exist, the state is de facto not sovereign no matter what it says on paper. | |
| ▲ | coldtea 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >And if you think there's a definitional difference between a government, a corporation and a mafia that stands up to any objective measure and isn't based entirely on social cues and special pleading, If we're speaking of democratic governments you usually get to vote (whatever ineffective). And if we're speaking for non monopolistic corporations you also get to buy from another. With mafia there's a single, non-negotiable, option: the one running your area. And both for goverments and corporations, there are other parties (e.g. courts) limiting what they can do. | |
| ▲ | rightbyte 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That seems rather reductionist. | | |
| ▲ | fasbiner 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | How so? In china, app stores are open to market competition as an eventual consequence of a maoist insurgency. It's fine if you're personally a coward or you just don't think it's worth it. But not only does it work, it is so far, the only thing that has ever been proven to work. | | |
| ▲ | rightbyte 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | I am not a maoist. I meant that this is reductionist: > definitional difference between a government, a corporation and a mafia that stands up to any objective measure and isn't based entirely on social cues and special pleading Thinking about it. Your post now is also reductionist. Maybe that is your thing? |
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| ▲ | bigyabai 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > and in the long run, we're all dead. Well gee, when you put it like that all morality is relative huh? | | |
| ▲ | rcMgD2BwE72F 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Of course morality is relative. But still, there's no point to compare something to nothing and say "why bother". Comparisons can be useful. | | |
| ▲ | b112 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Only a left or right, one or the other world view would think such. As with almost everything, it's both. Some morality is relative, some is absolute. | | |
| ▲ | coldtea 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | What morality is absolute? Morality being absolute means just that you subjectively consider some moral rules absolute. Doesn't make them so, the way the law of gravity is absolute. And it doesn't mean that every human society agrees to what you consider "absolute". All things you consider "absolute", there are whole societies which found them to be just fine, and you'd do too if you were raised in them, including incest, murder of innocents, slavery, torture... | | |
| ▲ | somenameforme 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Many things are naturally repulsive, but are indulged out of necessity or gain. For instance Aristotle wasn't opposed to slavery, yet nonetheless in his writings, now some 2400+ years ago, he found himself obligated to lay out an extensive and lengthy defense and rationalization of such, and he even predicted what would eventually end it: "For if every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus, which, says the poet, 'Of their own accord entered the assembly of the Gods.' If, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves." [1] There were millennia of efforts to end slavery, but it's only the technological and industrial revolution that finally succeeded in doing so. But the point is that even though Aristotle was ostensibly not opposed to slavery, he nonetheless knew it was a decision that needed justification because it was fundamentally repulsive, even in a society where it was ubiquitous and relatively non-controversial, thousands of years ago. This 'natural repulsion' is, I think, some degree of evidence for persistent, if not absolute, morality throughout at least thousands of years of humanity's existence, and I see no reason to assume it would not trend back long further than that. [1] - https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.mb.txt | | |
| ▲ | coldtea 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | >Many things are naturally repulsive, but are indulged out of necessity or gain Most "naturally repulsive" things were accepted just fine in one society or another. Aristole spent time to defend and rationalize slavery because that was just job, to spend time rationalizing things. Other societies practiced it with no such worries, and found it perfectly natural. But even if we grant you your "naturally repulsive" actions existing, it doesn't mean they are objectively morally wrong. Just that their moral judgement is not just based on culture and historical period, but also on evolutionary adaptations. These could very well be considered fine in an earlier/later evolutionary stage (in an earlier one, for sure: animals don't have such qualms). | | |
| ▲ | somenameforme 23 minutes ago | parent [-] | | His arguments were generally driven by logic and reason, not rationalization. Rationalization is generally only necessary for adopting views that seem ostensibly inappropriate, which would certainly include these sort of 'naturally repulsive' acts. And indeed his arguments for slavery were some of his weakest precisely because they were uncharacteristic rationalizations. I completely agree that if you go back far enough in the evolutionary pipeline then my claim becomes invalid. I also think it would not apply to people of a sufficiently reduced IQ. You need to have a minimum of intelligence to understand what you're doing, alternatives, and its consequences on others. But once you have that baseline of IQ then I think morality, and a natural repulsion to certain behaviors, comes as naturally as communication. |
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| ▲ | coldtea 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Morality is all relative any way you put it. There's no God-given objective morality, it's human made and changes. |
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