What succeeds at being stable and producing more of itself most efficiently is not necessarily what we consider to be most good or contain the most moral value. The market is a very powerful optimizer, but not an inherently friendly one.
For example, contrast two countries, one an idyllic paradise with happy citizens who pay very low taxes and a country with very high taxes, unhappy workers, but a much more powerful military. If there’s a conflict between them, the country with unhappy workers+high taxes has a large advantage, and will win, despite this being not in the interests of the average worker. A possible real life example is the Comache Indians, and more development of this idea (multipolar traps) can be found on SlateStarCodex’s Mediations on Molch.
What succeeds at being stable and producing more of itself most efficiently is not necessarily what we consider to be most good or contain the most moral value. The market is a very powerful optimizer, but not an inherently friendly one.
For example, contrast two countries, one an idyllic paradise with happy citizens who pay very low taxes and a country with very high taxes, unhappy workers, but a much more powerful military. If there’s a conflict between them, the country with unhappy workers+high taxes has a large advantage, and will win, despite this being not in the interests of the average worker. A possible real life example is the Comache Indians, and more development of this idea (multipolar traps) can be found on SlateStarCodex’s Mediations on Molch.