dusan
@ds8
passive income is an incentive for looking for system inefficiencies people are driven by incentives nothing inherently wrong with that
8 replies
1 recast
17 reactions
PhiMarHal
@phimarhal
I think I agree with OP. It is parasitic no matter what. If everyone looked for system inefficiencies, then the system would not work. You could argue there's a level of parasitic action that is positive in highlighting system flaws, but that level is pretty easily reached - and surpassed many times over - by the nature of incentives, indeed. So it seems like a fair assessment to say parasitic=wrong (OP didn't say it, I am).
3 replies
0 recast
1 reaction
dusan
@ds8
i disagree with the premise. incentives with inefficiencies decrease as more people are finding them thus lowering the motivation to look for them. if the system is easily broken, then it's only good it gets replaced. i think it's what evolution teaches us anyway.
1 reply
0 recast
1 reaction
PhiMarHal
@phimarhal
I was waiting for that retort (last sentence). 😄 "The system gets replaced" is IMO handwavey. People do not live in centuries or millenias, they exist (and suffer) in years, decades, a century tops. Something as complex and abstract as civilization does not get replaced efficiently within a lifetime. Capitalism, or whatever one wants to call what we have now, is not perfect. It is the best, in that it is the least worst system we have managed, for coordination at scale; and shortterm coordination, that is (imagine we end up destroying the Earth in ~50 years, nonexistant historians might have some thoughts on whether the system was best). It serves as a convenience excuse for the parasite to continue parasitic behavior and avoid looking at their moral responsibility. It's not a pragmatic or realistic approach.
1 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
PhiMarHal
@phimarhal
In the spirit of doing what I preach, lest I sound like I consider "the parasite" as "someone who is not me" and "me" as "someone on a very high horse"... I have parasitic behaviors and attitudes, like everyone. What I prefer to do is to make a honest assessment of the balance. What good am I doing for the world? What bad am I doing to the world? The goal is to improve the ratio. If we get locked into (understandable, but imo misguided) kneejerk reactions to the idea anything we do is bad, then we build increasingly destructive mental constructions to avoid looking at the net effect of our actions.
1 reply
0 recast
1 reaction
