(off topic, but there are something relevant for AGI) My fears about economical libertarianism could be illustrated with a "fish pond analogy". If there is a small pond with a large number of small fish of some predatory species, after an amount of time they will cannibalize and eat each other until at the end there will just remain one very very fat fish. The instability occurs because a fish that already has managed to eat a peer, becomes slightly larger than the rest of the fish, and therefore has a better position in continuing to eat more fish, thus its progress can accelerate. Maybe if the pond is big enough, a handful of very big fish would remain.
This is of course just an illustration and by no means a proof that the same thing would occur in a laissez-faire/libertarianism economy. Libertarians commonly put blame for monopolies on government involvement, and I guess some would object that I unfairly compares fish that eat each other with a non-violent economy. But lets just say I do not share their relaxed attitude towards the potential threat of monopoly, and a bigger fish eating a smaller fish do have some similarity to a bigger company acquiring a smaller one. First of all, the consequence of monopoly is so serious that even if the chance is very slight, there is a strong incentive to try to prevent it from ever happening. But there are also a lot of details to suggest that a laissez-faire economy would collapse into monopoly/oligopoly. Effects of synergy and mass production benefits would be one strong reason why a completely free market would benefit those companies that are already large, which could make them grow larger. *Especially when considering AGI and intelligence enhancement I believe a libertarian market could be even more unstable. In such a setting, the rich could literally invest in more intelligence, that would make them even more rich, creating a positive economic feedback loop. A dangerous accelerating scenario where the intelligence explosion could co-occur with the rise of world monopoly. We could call it an "AGI induced monopoly explosion". Unless democracy could challenge such a libertarian market, only a few oligarchs might have the position to decide the fate of mankind, if they could control their AGI that is. Although it is just one possible scenario.* A documentary I saw claimed that Russia was converted to something very close to a laissez-faire market in the years after the Soviet Union collapse. However I don't have any specific details about it, such as exactly how free the market of that period was. But apparently it caused chaos and gave rise to a brutal economy with oligarchs controlling the society. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_(television_documentary_series)]. Studying what happened in Russia after the fall of communism could give some insight on the topic. /R 2007/10/8, Bob Mottram <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > Economic libertarianism would be nice if it were to occur. However, > in practice companies and governments put in place all sorts of > anti-competitive structures to lock people into certain modes of > economic activity. I think economic activity in general is heavily > influenced by cognitive biases of various kinds. > > > On 06/10/2007, BillK < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On 10/6/07, a wrote: > > A free market is just a nice intellectual theory that is of no use in > > the real world. > > ----- > This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email > To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: > http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&; > ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=51384923-1d1de1
