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nicoburns 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Would you consider being a contract killer (i.e. a hitman) ethical? What about being a creator of CSAM? Because those are both examples making money by providing others with what they want. And if we followed free market principles to their logical extreme then both of those would be allowed.

I think most people would agree that this would not be even remotely ethical. Nor would it lead to higher living standards than a more restricted market economy.

	▲	WalterBright 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		A fundamental requirement for free markets is the absence of use of force or fraud. Another is that it applies only to legally consenting adults. Both of your examples are not free market examples.

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keiferski 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Sometimes I really don’t know how to reply to comments like these. Because they either seem to completely misunderstand the basic premise of my comment, or they deliberately focus on some tangential thing in order to make some trollish point. But I’ll reply here, and just assume my comment was somehow unclear.

Do you genuinely think that putting money above any other value is an ethical way to operate in the world? I certainly don’t, virtually no ethical theory does, and the vast majority of people don’t either.

This is not saying that making money is inherently a bad thing, but that placing it above every other value without question is definitely a bad thing, or at least a careless and thoughtless one.

To use your example: all sorts of things are in demand but unquestionably make the world worse. Does the fact that people are willing to pay for propaganda or chemical weapons or X other negative thing somehow mean that facilitating their sale is ethical? I really don’t understand the position.

I suppose there are some people out there who seriously have studied ethics and think making money is the ultimate good. It doesn’t seem like a serious position to me.

But I don’t think that’s become the default position because of serious analysis, but rather the total lack of it. Which is what my comment was about: when you refuse to engage in serious philosophical thought about something, you’re just going to revert to base values like the acquisition of money and power, or some variant of that which your local system is optimizing for.

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WalterBright 19 hours ago | parent [-]

> Do you genuinely think that putting money above any other value is an ethical way to operate in the world?

I don't see how that follows from what I wrote.

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keiferski 19 hours ago | parent [-]

Then I don’t understand the point of your initial comment or what you’re trying to say.

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pawkaman84 18 hours ago | parent [-]

He was trying to say that "making money in a free-market" is fundamentally linked to creating value for someone. It wasn't the 'money' word that you should have focused on, but the 'value'.

On average this way of creating value bottoms-up has undoubtedly produced the largest human flourishing in the history of our species. It has unlocked human creativity and has lifted millions of people from poverty. It is the best system we have been yet able to create. If you disagree - point me to an alternative (even if theoretical).

Of course, as in the case of averages, there is variance. Sure, greed, illegal money making is bad, but the total net benefit is overwhelmingly positive.

I think your blind spot is that you implicitly attribute no ethical value to 'money making'. For you they're disconnected. In fact, it's the oppositve - there is a lot of ethics in money making.

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keiferski 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Here’s what I don’t get, and why these comments irritate me. They are just opportunities for someone to inject their ideological arguments about something that has little to do with the actual comment.

I didn’t say anything about capitalism being a bad system, nor did I say making money is inherently bad.

I said in the absence of ethical study, making money is treated as a default good. It seems pretty obvious to me that it isn’t a default good.

I’m completely uninterested in arguing about whether the profit motive has led to good societal outcomes, because a) in general I agree with that and b) it has literally nothing to do with my comment.

My original comment was just lamenting that tech leaders don’t study ethics, and therefore they just default to thinking that making money is always a good thing, no matter the consequences, no matter what values get ignored. In many situations, making money does indeed lead to good ethical situations. But my comment is about them not even bothering to ask that question in the first place. That’s all.

	▲	WalterBright 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> no matter what values get ignored Free markets require no force or fraud, and legal consenting adults. What values being ignored are you referring to?

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shafyy 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

To add to keiferski's excellent comments: There is no such thing a truly free market. Neoliberalism is just an excuse to not care about things that stand in the way of people making more money or gaining more power.

This wealth we have built was not built on a totally free market (whatever that means), but much more social form of capitalism. The countries where there is the least povery and highest standards of living are countries that have a big social welfare state, such as the Norics.

	▲	WalterBright 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> There is no such thing a truly free market. Nothing human is perfect. However, history shows us that the more free market an economy is, the more prosperous it is. It doesn't have to be "truly free" to be effective. In contrast, whenever socialism is tried and it fails, socialists describe it as "not true socialism". Since there is also no such thing as true socialism, the more "true" a socialism is, the more it fails.