On Oct 9, 2007, at 4:27 AM, Robert Wensman wrote:
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.
The only solution to this problem I ever see suggested is to intentionally create a Really Big Fish called the government that can effortlessly eat every fish in the pond but promises not to -- to prevent the creation of Really Big Fish. That is quite the Faustian bargain to protect yourself from the lesser demons.
Generally though, the point that you fail to see is that an AGI can just as easily subvert *any* power structure, whether the environment is a libertarian free market or an autocratic communist state. The problem has nothing to do with the governance of the economy but the fact that the AGI is the single most intelligent actor in the economy however you may arrange it. You can rearrange and change the rules as you wish, but any economy where transactions are something other than completely random is an economy that can be completely dominated by AGI in short order. The game is exactly the same either way, and more rigid economies have much simpler patterns that make them easier to manipulate.
Regulating economies to prevent super-intelligent actors from doing bad things is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Cheers, J. Andrew Rogers ----- 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=51651108-c1aa2b
