Libertarianism vs Pragmatarianism

[Senkaku]

Right now the discussion is free. You're saying I should pay to participate. You're adding a barrier to entry. What do I gain by paying to participate?

i'm saying that you should have the option to pay to promote your favorite discussions, fruits, books, movies, restaurants, and so on

I can’t believe you’re still nursing this chestnut after all these long years, Xero. I hope they put copies of your brain on the first probes we send to scout nearby stars so they’ll have the singleminded endurance to complete their missions. It’s genuinely unbelievable, so unbelievable that I had to post about it again.

[Fractalnavel]

Thinking about that for a moment, it seems that the marginal value of time available is so discounted for those folks that it's effectively worthless. Seems somewhat reasonable.

Just to be clear, you're saying the Karenocracy hypothesis is reasonable as in "seems likely to be true"? As opposed to saying the existence of Karenocracy is reasonable?

Correct.

[Sordhau]

Sure, but I've been spending a lot of time reading Sordhau's posts lately and she probably says she's a communist once every twenty posts.

In my defense I wouldn't have to do that if people would bake it into their heads that when I argue in favor/against something I'm speaking in the context of a Communist society. Like I've made it very clear that the status quo displeases me and I'd like to see the entire system scrapped several times before--Hell, my ideology literally requires it--so I really shouldn't have to remind people that when I say currency should be abolished I don't care about the ramifications of that in the current system because I'm not talking about the current system because I don't care about and actively wish to see the end of the current system.

If this important bit of context could be understood then I'd probably not have to say I'm a Communist every twenty posts. Yet NSG seems afflicted with amnesia for some God forsaken reason.

[Kerwa]

People already pay to promote brands. It just makes them look dumb.

And fruit doesn’t work that way: there are good banan and bad banan etc.

[Forsher]

It's good to know that some things can be counted on in this world. The sky is blue, the snow is white, and "Pragmatarianism" continues to be an idiotic half-baked idea championed by a single person that will never gain traction.

Elon Musk would definitely be interested. Making Twitter pay to win by implementing Pragmatarianism? He's wondering where he signs up.

[Xerographica]

the option to spend your money on something that you want or need isn't a barrier to entry, it's literally a market

Transforming something that is currently free into a market where investment is required to participate introduces barriers to entry in terms of the scarcity of resources.

Those resources are more scarce for people lower down the income scale (particularly in the sense of disposable income) and so the cost barrier for such people to participate in each discussion is relatively much higher. The only way that your system would be more efficient rather than substantially less in signalling preferences would be if you believe that the preferences of wealthy people are qualitatively superior than those of everybody else and therefore worthy of being given this extra weight.

In the examples you provide that would be relatively trivial because the outcomes are not particularly important. But given that you seemingly think this is a genius idea that should be rolled out by society as a method for determining resource allocation and social policy, tilting the field so that the wealthy are given disproportionate say would have rather important social impacts.

The justifications you provide are frankly a total nonsense and appear to be an attempt to smuggle a subjective preference for the opinions of wealthy people past us as "objective" or "efficient".

there's no point in staying in school, listening to so many lectures, reading so many books, pulling so many all-nighters cramming for exams, if doing so didn't significantly boost your income. it should be entirely reasonable to assume that there will absolutely be a strong correlation between education and income. we should reasonably expect donation rankings to be far more educated than democratic rankings.

in terms of books, if a donation ranking was not far more educated than a democratic ranking then yikes. it would be the strongest possible indictment of our educational system.

and obviously we can debate this until the cows come home. but it's something that can be, and should be, tested. even bootleg testing is better than nothing. it would behoove us to figure out sooner rather than later whether there truly is a correlation between income and education.

all of us are on a ship and we need to decide how to steer it. a fair way would be to draw straws to pick who should be at the helm. but if the shortest straw gets drawn by a blind person, we'd all be screwed.

democracy is certainly a fair way to decide who should be in charge. but if this system puts idiots in charge, then we're all screwed. it's imperative to discern the difference between democratic rankings and donation rankings.

on youtube one relatively popular type of content is gratuitous live feedings of animals. a guy i follow on youtube recently posted a critique of such videos. live feeding content obviously does quite well in youtube's current system of ranking content democratically... views and votes (thumbs up). but would it do so well in a system where content was ranked by donations? i sincerely doubt it.

the democratization of the internet is certainly fair, but it creates a vicious cycle of stupidity. something's gotta stop the flow.

[Stellar Colonies]

This rabbit hole of donation-ranked voting extends far beyond the small puddle of NationStates.

Look up “pragmatarianism” on a search engine to see how far this guy has taken it.

[Nlarhyalo]

all of us are on a ship and we need to decide how to steer it. a fair way would be to draw straws to pick who should be at the helm. but if the shortest straw gets drawn by a blind person, we'd all be screwed.

What if the blind person is extremely wealthy and donates to amplify their vote so they can be the one to steer the ship?

[Nora Xent]

This rabbit hole of donation-ranked voting extends far beyond the small puddle of NationStates.

Look up “pragmatarianism” on a search engine to see how far this guy (or copycats who knows) has taken it.

a blog, a reddit post, something on less wrong, a youtube video, and some weird drawings.

[Stellar Colonies]

This rabbit hole of donation-ranked voting extends far beyond the small puddle of NationStates.

Look up “pragmatarianism” on a search engine to see how far this guy (or copycats who knows) has taken it.

a blog, a reddit post, something on less wrong, a youtube video, and some weird drawings.

I may have slightly exaggerated.

But Xero certainly has a history.

[Nora Xent]

a blog, a reddit post, something on less wrong, a youtube video, and some weird drawings.

I may have slightly exaggerated.

But Xero certainly has a history.

Didn't he get banned from wikipedia at one point?

[The Two Jerseys]

all of us are on a ship and we need to decide how to steer it. a fair way would be to draw straws to pick who should be at the helm. but if the shortest straw gets drawn by a blind person, we'd all be screwed.

Or we can ask if anyone has nautical experience and choose them based on merit, because we're rational human beings.

[Shermania]

all of us are on a ship and we need to decide how to steer it. a fair way would be to draw straws to pick who should be at the helm. but if the shortest straw gets drawn by a blind person, we'd all be screwed.

Or we can ask if anyone has nautical experience and choose them based on merit, because we're rational human beings.

You will note that actual, real-world ships do exactly this.

[Dumb Ideologies]

Or we can ask if anyone has nautical experience and choose them based on merit, because we're rational human beings.

You will note that actual, real-world ships do exactly this.

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear. We'll have to relabel large bodies of water as "inefficient-seas".

[Bombadil]

on youtube one relatively popular type of content is gratuitous live feedings of animals. a guy i follow on youtube. live feeding content obviously does quite well in youtube's current system of ranking content democratically... views and votes (thumbs up). but would it do so well in a system where content was ranked by donations? i sincerely doubt it.

Why do you doubt it?

[Alcala-Cordel]

Right now the discussion is free. You're saying I should pay to participate. You're adding a barrier to entry. What do I gain by paying to participate?

i'm saying that you should have the option to pay to promote your favorite discussions, fruits, books, movies, restaurants, and so on

They do that with politicians already and it's an elitist nightmare where the only viable options are promoted by the ultrawealthy. Spending money to promote stuff is also an obnoxious waste for many of us.

[Neutraligon]

i'm saying that you should have the option to pay to promote your favorite discussions, fruits, books, movies, restaurants, and so on

They do that with politicians already and it's an elitist nightmare where the only viable options are promoted by the ultrawealthy. Spending money to promote stuff is also an obnoxious waste for many of us.

Not sure why exactly I should do a companies job for them, and pay for it. I am not going to pay to advertise for a company.

[The H Corporation]

Right now the discussion is free. You're saying I should pay to participate. You're adding a barrier to entry. What do I gain by paying to participate?

i'm saying that you should have the option to pay to promote your favorite discussions, fruits, books, movies, restaurants, and so on

You say that but you didn't answer the question of Therns. What do we the 'public' gain from it?

[The Blaatschapen]

Sure, but I've been spending a lot of time reading Sordhau's posts lately and she probably says she's a communist once every twenty posts.

In my defense I wouldn't have to do that if people would bake it into their heads that when I argue in favor/against something I'm speaking in the context of a Communist society. Like I've made it very clear that the status quo displeases me and I'd like to see the entire system scrapped several times before--Hell, my ideology literally requires it--so I really shouldn't have to remind people that when I say currency should be abolished I don't care about the ramifications of that in the current system because I'm not talking about the current system because I don't care about and actively wish to see the end of the current system.

If this important bit of context could be understood then I'd probably not have to say I'm a Communist every twenty posts. Yet NSG seems afflicted with amnesia for some God forsaken reason.

I'm not keeping track of who holds what ideology.

That's a job for the CIA.

[The Blaatschapen]

:geek:

They do that with politicians already and it's an elitist nightmare where the only viable options are promoted by the ultrawealthy. Spending money to promote stuff is also an obnoxious waste for many of us.

Not sure why exactly I should do a companies job for them, and pay for it. I am not going to pay to advertise for a company.

I know several apple fanboys who do just that

[Xerographica]

i'm saying that you should have the option to pay to promote your favorite discussions, fruits, books, movies, restaurants, and so on

You say that but you didn't answer the question of Therns. What do we the 'public' gain from it?

let's use this example i shared earlier...

on youtube one relatively popular type of content is gratuitous live feedings of animals. a guy i follow on youtube recently posted a critique of such videos. live feeding content obviously does quite well in youtube's current system of ranking content democratically... views and votes (thumbs up). but would it do so well in a system where content was ranked by donations? i sincerely doubt it.

the democratization of the internet is certainly fair, but it creates a vicious cycle of stupidity. something's gotta stop the flow.

what would you gain by paying to promote awareness of animal cruelty? less animal cruelty

on youtube one relatively popular type of content is gratuitous live feedings of animals. a guy i follow on youtube. live feeding content obviously does quite well in youtube's current system of ranking content democratically... views and votes (thumbs up). but would it do so well in a system where content was ranked by donations? i sincerely doubt it.

Why do you doubt it?

i've always assumed that people are willing to pay a lot more to prevent harm than to cause it. remember my fav example of socrates trial?

[Shermania]

what would you gain by paying to promote awareness of animal cruelty? less animal cruelty

You've just signaled that there is demand for content depicting animal cruelty, and you expect the market to reduce supply?

What backwater, underfunded community college did you learn economics at?

[Worldly Philosophers]

what would you gain by paying to promote awareness of animal cruelty? less animal cruelty

You've just signaled that there is demand for content depicting animal cruelty, and you expect the market to reduce supply?

What backwater, underfunded community college did you learn economics at?

From Xero's perspective the application of his (his?/their) system would actually reveal that there is no demand for animal cruelty, because people aren't willing to pay to promote the content.

The underlying assumption of this is that people simply won't... pay to promote the content. That they like and enjoy.

I don't know

[Bombadil]

Why do you doubt it?

i've always assumed that people are willing to pay a lot more to prevent harm than to cause it. remember my fav example of socrates trial?

That's like assuming people will eat a healthy salad over a Big Mac meal. Your problem is the same as communism, in that it relies on a rational, well-informed population. In an ideal world people would pay to promote War & Peace over 50 Shades of Grey. In reality, they don't.

[Xerographica]

i've always assumed that people are willing to pay a lot more to prevent harm than to cause it. remember my fav example of socrates trial?

That's like assuming people will eat a healthy salad over a Big Mac meal. Your problem is the same as communism, in that it relies on a rational, well-informed population. In an ideal world people would pay to promote War & Peace over 50 Shades of Grey. In reality, they don't.

i assume that people aren't equally informed, that there's a correlation between education and income...

there's no point in staying in school, listening to so many lectures, reading so many books, pulling so many all-nighters cramming for exams, if doing so didn't significantly boost your income. it should be entirely reasonable to assume that there will absolutely be a strong correlation between education and income. we should reasonably expect donation rankings to be far more educated than democratic rankings.

in terms of books, if a donation ranking was not far more educated than a democratic ranking then yikes. it would be the strongest possible indictment of our educational system.