It certainly means something, it means that every time we make a system at scale, someone games it to exploit the rest, it’s just a question of how gaming the system looks, and how much we preserve a fluid dynamic where that can change over time.
I think we can have pretty decent progressive economic principles in essentially pure form in tight knit communities where everyone has a decently nuanced understanding of what everyone is doing for everyone, but scaling up those concepts to extend that to more loose economic relationships has proven elusive…
"“Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite.”
It’s a pithy quote that doesn’t mean anything.
It certainly means something, it means that every time we make a system at scale, someone games it to exploit the rest, it’s just a question of how gaming the system looks, and how much we preserve a fluid dynamic where that can change over time.
I think we can have pretty decent progressive economic principles in essentially pure form in tight knit communities where everyone has a decently nuanced understanding of what everyone is doing for everyone, but scaling up those concepts to extend that to more loose economic relationships has proven elusive…