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Re:More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production by jstanley on Monday May 08, 2017 @12:00PM (#14292754)
"The economy" shouldn't have a goal. The economy consists of individuals, who all have individual goals, which may or may not align with each other. But "the economy" as a whole should have no goal.

It's like asking what the goal of "nature" should be. Nature consists of individuals who have their own goals, but nature has no goals of its own.

Re:More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production by djschnei on Monday May 08, 2017 @12:08PM (#14292849)
Economic systems and theories are absolutely devised with goals. Entirely agree the economy is nothing but individuals, that's why capitalism is so ingenious, but that doesn't mean the system doesn't have a goal.
Re:More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production by thesagan on Monday May 08, 2017 @02:46PM (#14294380)
The goal is diffused and spread out among ~8 billion people. Theorizing goals is fun, but it doesn't make it a goal anymore than Darwin made "survival" a goal for nature (or life, more narrowly); which isn't always true. (Some species self-sacrifice for reasons outside of self/individual preservation.)

There may be a prevailing ideology, I'll admit. In the west, and now most of the world, it seems to be material wealth, as measured in exchange tokens. In the future, in some places, maybe other forms of well-being will come to dominate, perhaps measured in stranger tokens.

Re:More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production by djschnei on Monday May 08, 2017 @02:58PM (#14294476)
We're getting caught up in pretty meaningless semantics here... but maybe your conflating natural individual self interest with the goal of an economic system? They are different things. Capitalism (the economic system) looks to channel individual self interest towards it's most mutually beneficial ends. It looks to maximize productive output of the overall system by channeling natural individual tendencies.
Re:More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production by thesagan on Monday May 08, 2017 @04:15PM (#14295186)
Econ and politics is rife with semantics, and they're very important, and sometimes central to the conversation.

Either way, I think you're the one making the claims that need substantiation. Years of studying econ hasn't provided me clear evidence that upholds the idea that "economies have goals" other than "economies tend to grow in material wealth" – and even that has subtleties too many to thoroughly discuss on an internet forum.

Re:More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production by djschnei on Monday May 08, 2017 @04:29PM (#14295305)
Economic systems have goals. They're systems devised by men. They don't just throw spaghetti against the wall and call it an economic system. Socialism was designed to accomplish some set of goals, capitalism was designed to accomplish some set of goals. Not really sure how this is an argument...
Re:More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production by zxcmx on Tuesday May 09, 2017 @04:13AM (#14298445)
We totally do throw spaghetti at the wall and call the results an "economic system".

Neither "capitalism", "communism" nor "socialism" exist except as ill described definitions and abstractions that are misused and abused by academics, politicians and the general public alike.

The actual systems we have are a patchwork of contradictory laws, policies and actions by a ton of different parties.

Re:More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production by djschnei on Tuesday May 09, 2017 @09:55AM (#14299994)
ok, guys. You win. Individuals don't look at public economic policy through ideological lenses and these ideological lenses certainly don't have loosely definable goals. A capitalist and a socialist ideologue, while advocating for public policy, definitely don't have a desired state they are shooting for.
Re:More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production by zxcmx on Tuesday May 09, 2017 @10:37AM (#14300356)
I apologise, I think I ended up talking past you.

When you wrote "economic systems" I read that as a statement about actual economies instead of what you actually wrote.

Re:More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production by djschnei on Tuesday May 09, 2017 @10:56AM (#14300537)
No worries, don't think I said "system" in my original comment, enough blame to go around :)