Re:Capitalism is a paperclip maximizer
by ArkyBeagle on Friday September 11, 2015 @01:39PM
(#10205054)
I get the point - it's necessary to reanimate the mouldering bones of Malthus now and again. I just disagree with that because the emiprics of the case are pretty lopsided against him. He could not have known about engines. Which now appear to cause one whale of an externality.
The only thing Capitalism did was replace Mercantilism at scale. You had production before.
What's weird is that economists talk about ways to actually price things like externalities, equality, sustainability and/or risk. That might be madness or it might be reason.
If we can't price them, then are we not dropping the checkbook and reaching for the sword?
It's not that any one product is being produced. "Capital" (or profit or wealth) here is the combined market aggregate of all production. The problem is that this too, as with any single optima process, leads to madness.
In the case of capitalism, ecternalities, equity/equality, sustainability, and systemic global risk are all undervalued, and simple short-term profit maximisation tends strongly to "underproduce" these.