> If others know exactly what resources we have, they can and will take all of them.
Implication: the bad guys won; we have rule by gangsters, who aren’t concerned with sustainable production, and just take as much stuff as possible in the short term.
To me this feels like Zvi is talking about some impersonal universal law of economics (whether such law really exists or not, we may debate), and you are making it about people (“the bad guys”, “gangsters”) and their intentions, like we could get a better outcome instead by simply replacing the government or something.
I see it as something similar to Moloch. If you have resources, it creates a temptation for others to try taking it. Nice people will resist the temptation… but in a prisoners’ dilemma with sufficient number of players, sooner or later someone will choose to defect, and it only takes one such person for you to get hurt. You can defend against an attempt to steal your resources, but the defense also costs you some resources. And perhaps… in the hypothetical state of perfect information… the only stable equilibrium is when you spend so much on defense that there is almost nothing left to steal from you.
And there is nothing special about the “bad guys” other than the fact that, statistically, they exist. Actually, if the hypothesis is correct, then… in the hypothetical state of perfect information… the bad guys would themselves end up in the very same situation, having to spend almost all successfully stolen resources to defend themselves against theft by other bad guys.
To defend yourself from the ordinary thieves, you need police. The police needs some money to be able to do their job. But what prevents them from abusing their power to take more from you? So you have the government to protect you from the police, but the government also needs money to do their job, and it is also tempted to take more. In the democratic government, politicians compete against each other… and the good guy who doesn’t want to take more of your money than he actually needs to do his job, may be outcompeted by a bad guy who takes more of your resources and uses the surplus to defeat the good guy. Also, different countries expend resources on defending against each other. And you have corruption inside all organizations, including the government, the police, the army. The corruption costs resources, and so does fighting against it. It is a fractal of burning resources.
So… perhaps there is an economical law saying that this process continues until the available resources are exhausted (because otherwise, someone would be tempted to take some of the remaining resources, and then more resources would have to be spent to stop them). Unless there is some kind of “friction”, such as people not knowing exactly how much money you have, or how exactly would you react if pushed further (where exactly is your “now I have nothing to lose anymore” point, when instead of providing the requested resources you start doing something undesired, even if doing so is likely to hurt you more); or when it becomes too difficult for the government to coordinate to take each available penny (because their oversight and money extraction also have a cost). And making the situation more transparent reduces this “friction”.
It this model, the difference between the “good guy” and the “bad guy” becomes smaller than you might expect, simply because the good guy still needs (your) resources to fight against the bad guy, so he can’t leave you alone either.
To me this feels like Zvi is talking about some impersonal universal law of economics (whether such law really exists or not, we may debate), and you are making it about people (“the bad guys”, “gangsters”) and their intentions, like we could get a better outcome instead by simply replacing the government or something.
I see it as something similar to Moloch. If you have resources, it creates a temptation for others to try taking it. Nice people will resist the temptation… but in a prisoners’ dilemma with sufficient number of players, sooner or later someone will choose to defect, and it only takes one such person for you to get hurt. You can defend against an attempt to steal your resources, but the defense also costs you some resources. And perhaps… in the hypothetical state of perfect information… the only stable equilibrium is when you spend so much on defense that there is almost nothing left to steal from you.
And there is nothing special about the “bad guys” other than the fact that, statistically, they exist. Actually, if the hypothesis is correct, then… in the hypothetical state of perfect information… the bad guys would themselves end up in the very same situation, having to spend almost all successfully stolen resources to defend themselves against theft by other bad guys.
To defend yourself from the ordinary thieves, you need police. The police needs some money to be able to do their job. But what prevents them from abusing their power to take more from you? So you have the government to protect you from the police, but the government also needs money to do their job, and it is also tempted to take more. In the democratic government, politicians compete against each other… and the good guy who doesn’t want to take more of your money than he actually needs to do his job, may be outcompeted by a bad guy who takes more of your resources and uses the surplus to defeat the good guy. Also, different countries expend resources on defending against each other. And you have corruption inside all organizations, including the government, the police, the army. The corruption costs resources, and so does fighting against it. It is a fractal of burning resources.
So… perhaps there is an economical law saying that this process continues until the available resources are exhausted (because otherwise, someone would be tempted to take some of the remaining resources, and then more resources would have to be spent to stop them). Unless there is some kind of “friction”, such as people not knowing exactly how much money you have, or how exactly would you react if pushed further (where exactly is your “now I have nothing to lose anymore” point, when instead of providing the requested resources you start doing something undesired, even if doing so is likely to hurt you more); or when it becomes too difficult for the government to coordinate to take each available penny (because their oversight and money extraction also have a cost). And making the situation more transparent reduces this “friction”.
It this model, the difference between the “good guy” and the “bad guy” becomes smaller than you might expect, simply because the good guy still needs (your) resources to fight against the bad guy, so he can’t leave you alone either.