AC scenario!!!

[foal]

that sounds kind of naive, but I'm sure I can't convince you otherwise.

[Phil153]

[ QUOTE ]
I am guessing that a private security firm would offer provide people the opportunity to buy a service to keep them imprisioned, and if it was worth it to pay them rather than be put in danger, people would do it. If enough people have an interest in something and want it done, a possible solution be developed.

[/ QUOTE ]
What if 60% of people really want black people sent out of the country? Will a solution be developed?

What if 80% of people want all Muslims imprisoned? Will a solution be developed?

[Phil153]

[ QUOTE ]
Everybody else doesn't need to know it. The fact that people can find out is enough incentive for a security firm to not risk disaster for the sake of one client's business. If it did get out that the firm knowingly imprisoned an innocent man (!!!) then that would be all she wrote for that firm.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, this reasoning was in full swing at Absolute Poker and Enron.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: you have to have a terrible understanding of both economics and human nature to assume that almost all people adequately assess risk and will be sufficiently bounded by purely financial concerns. There are many reasons for a security firm to do all kinds of horrible activities and there are many reasons why they could and would get away with it.

[ALawPoker]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Everybody else doesn't need to know it. The fact that people can find out is enough incentive for a security firm to not risk disaster for the sake of one client's business. If it did get out that the firm knowingly imprisoned an innocent man (!!!) then that would be all she wrote for that firm.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, this reasoning was in full swing at Absolute Poker and Enron.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: you have to have a terrible understanding of both economics and human nature to assume that almost all people adequately assess risk and will be sufficiently bounded by purely financial concerns. There are many reasons for a security firm to do all kinds of horrible activities and there are many reasons why they could and would get away with it.

[/ QUOTE ]

You have to have little to no abstract reasoning capacity to assume these mistakes, just because in some cases they may occur, would survive. Why would they not die out? The question isn't "will mistakes occur" it is "will the outcome be better when we centrally plan around possible mistakes or if we let mistakes weed themselves out?"

You can repeat yourself all you'd like, but it makes as little sense this time as it did the other times.

[ALawPoker]

[ QUOTE ]
that sounds kind of naive, but I'm sure I can't convince you otherwise.

[/ QUOTE ]

What's really naive is to be so bamboozled by the state that you believe this simple explanation must not apply. For some reason.

Not being able to convince me never stopped you before. Why don't you offer a counter-argument if you believe what I said to be naive.

Or if this is the vat of glue's way of letting a point go, then I guess let it go without insultingly dismissing the argument.

[Phil153]

[ QUOTE ]
You have to have little to no abstract reasoning capacity to assume these mistakes, just because in some cases they may occur, would survive.

[/ QUOTE ]
Backtrack a second, partner. You're the one claiming that companies won't imprison innocent people because of economic incentives. That's YOUR claim.

[ QUOTE ]
Why would they not die out?

[/ QUOTE ]
Because consumers are stupid, greedy, lazy and uninformed, because companies can hide things well, because the population might actually desire such injustices to occur (think black people vs the majority rednecks in certain US states).

[ QUOTE ]
The question isn't "will mistakes occur" it is "will the outcome be better when we centrally plan around possible mistakes or if we let mistakes weed themselves out?"

[/ QUOTE ]
Of course, but you're using freshman logic with a heap of assumptions to answer this very question. I offer a reasonable challenge to your argument and your offer no reasonable response.

[ QUOTE ]
You can repeat yourself all you'd like, but it makes as little sense this time as it did the other times.

[/ QUOTE ]
Ditto.

[Phil153]

[ QUOTE ]
Suppose that borodog & pvn manage to convince a huge amount of the population and we go AC, what happens to people already on jail?

[/ QUOTE ]
All the details of this depend on how the transition goes.

I wonder how many people would pony up the money to keep prisons running. Actually, I wonder if economic constraints wouldn't lead to far more executions?

Option 1: People pay millions of dollars to house a single offender for 20 years.
Option 2: People pay $10,000 to execute a convicted offender instead of giving him a 20 year prison sentence.

Perhaps rich offenders could pay for their own prison time and the poor ones would get executed?

[AlexM]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I am guessing that a private security firm would offer provide people the opportunity to buy a service to keep them imprisioned, and if it was worth it to pay them rather than be put in danger, people would do it. If enough people have an interest in something and want it done, a possible solution be developed.

[/ QUOTE ]
What if 60% of people really want black people sent out of the country? Will a solution be developed?

What if 80% of people want all Muslims imprisoned? Will a solution be developed?

[/ QUOTE ]

Shouldn't we focus more on the problems with AC that are different from Democracy?

[foal]

[ QUOTE ]

Not being able to convince me never stopped you before. Why don't you offer a counter-argument if you believe what I said to be naive.

[/ QUOTE ]
I can say "they could do a, b and c" and you can say "no they wouldn't! they'd lose business" and I can say "not necessarily" and you can say "it wouldn't be worth the risk" and I can say "'worth it' is a subjective value" and you could say "nah-uh, it's necessarily -EV" and I'd say "you can't define someone else's value for them and you'd say "but these practices would eventually weed them out of the market" and I'd say "nah-uh". I'm not sure we'd get anywhere, because we already had this debate in the Absolute Poker thread.

If you really want a counter argument though, I'll bring up the example of the US mafia. They engage in many practices which are immoral by most people's standards and have been around for a long time. And they don't just operate in black markets, yet many people have no problem doing business with them. So it seems your claims about "mistakes" (I disagree with calling things mistakes just because they're unpleasant or unjust) weeding themselves out do not hold up in the real world.

vat of glue ftw.

[ALawPoker]

[ QUOTE ]
Backtrack a second, partner. You're the one claiming that companies won't imprison innocent people because of economic incentives. That's YOUR claim.

[/ QUOTE ]

When did I say they'd never do such a thing, partner? People do all sorts of things. I'm merely claiming that the instance of "rich/powerful man gets innocent little man imprisoned" (which was someone else's example) is more plausible in the instance of a state than in the absence of one.

I'm not sure I even understand your line of reasoning. You have a habit of assuming the direction of someone's argument and tossing out a lot of (misguided) attacks on the general theory rather than any specific point. Do you disagree that private security firms who imprison innocent people would tend to die out in favor of firms that do not do this? Explain that reasoning please, because I really don't get it.

[ QUOTE ]
Of course, but you're using freshman logic with a heap of assumptions to answer this very question. I offer a reasonable challenge to your argument and your offer no reasonable response.

[/ QUOTE ]

What "reasonable challenge" are you referring to? All you did was point out that not everyone is capable of correctly assessing risk. My response was that this does not matter, since the mistakes will tend to die out and the result will be better than the average of all the people who try to enter.

Borodog posted this link a few days ago: http://karmatics.com/docs/evolution-...of-crowds.html

Give that a gander. Your reasoning here is the type of reasoning that would suggest wikipedia would not work. "Since people will contribute nonsense, it must add up to be nonsense" is the impression I get from your argument here.