Meditations on Moloch

[TokenLiberal]

Meditations on Moloch is a blog post by Scott Alexander on one of humanity's most fundamental issues. While I won't pretend that this is truly orginal thought (this is AKA the collective action problem), I find his reframing helpful. The post is a well written, thought provoking, eye opening essay about an important issue that is for some reason never mentioned in political discourse, and you should read it.

Because you probably won't, a quick summary: Moloch in ancient mythology is a god of child sacrifice. In this framing, he's a game theory monster of unhealthy competition, where the competition for some prize incentivizes the participants to sacrifice values in order to optimize for winning, triggering a race to the bottom where all participants have to sacrifice all value to optimize for winning or face being outcompeted. Some examples are mentioned in the post, I will repeat two here. First, to illustrate the problem, a society of rats:

Suppose you are one of the first rats introduced onto a pristine island. It is full of yummy plants and you live an idyllic life lounging about, eating, and composing great works of art (you’re one of those rats from The Rats of NIMH).

You live a long life, mate, and have a dozen children. All of them have a dozen children, and so on. In a couple generations, the island has ten thousand rats and has reached its carrying capacity. Now there’s not enough food and space to go around, and a certain percent of each new generation dies in order to keep the population steady at ten thousand.

A certain sect of rats abandons art in order to devote more of their time to scrounging for survival. Each generation, a bit less of this sect dies than members of the mainstream, until after a while, no rat composes any art at all, and any sect of rats who try to bring it back will go extinct within a few generations.

In fact, it’s not just art. Any sect at all that is leaner, meaner, and more survivalist than the mainstream will eventually take over. If one sect of rats altruistically decides to limit its offspring to two per couple in order to decrease overpopulation, that sect will die out, swarmed out of existence by its more numerous enemies. If one sect of rats starts practicing cannibalism, and finds it gives them an advantage over their fellows, it will eventually take over and reach fixation.

If some rat scientists predict that depletion of the island’s nut stores is accelerating at a dangerous rate and they will soon be exhausted completely, a few sects of rats might try to limit their nut consumption to a sustainable level. Those rats will be outcompeted by their more selfish cousins. Eventually the nuts will be exhausted, most of the rats will die off, and the cycle will begin again. Any sect of rats advocating some action to stop the cycle will be outcompeted by their cousins for whom advocating anything is a waste of time that could be used to compete and consume.

The point is that a group of morally upstanding, artistic rats eventually devolves into a society of rats optimized for survival, and there is no way to prevent this unless the entire group cooperates.

Then a second, real world example, which I believe is one of the biggest geopolitical challenges as we face AI replacing humans in the workforce (this time quoting wiki):

[A race to the bottom describes] government deregulation of the business environment or reduction in corporate tax rates, in order to attract or retain economic activity in their jurisdictions. While this phenomenon can happen between countries as a result of globalization and free trade, it also can occur within individual countries between their sub-jurisdictions (states, localities, cities). It may occur when competition increases between geographic areas over a particular sector of trade and production. The effect and intent of these actions is to lower labor rates, cost of business, or other factors (pensions, environmental protection and other externalities) over which governments can exert control.

This deregulation lowers the cost of production for businesses. Countries/localities with higher labor, environmental standards, or taxes can lose business to countries/localities with less regulation, which in turn makes them want to lower regulations in order to keep firms' production in their jurisdiction, hence driving the race to the lowest regulatory standards.

What does this have to do with AI? Well, if humans have nothing to offer the economy, how are they going to have any money? Major tax overhaul and UBI will be needed, but then the problem is that business will just move to the country offering them the best tax rates, triggering the race to the lowest regulatory standards.

Taken as a premise, Moloch is a great discussion starter in the realm of political ideology. For one, I think it's a strong argument against libertarianism. I'm not sure if there are any libertarians here but if so, I'm interested to see how you'd respond.

[Theatreboy]

I can't get behind UBI at all.

First, I don't think laziness should be rewarded.

Second, how long will it be before UBI is taken away? If a company doesn't employee humans, why should it pay them? UBI will last only a generation or two at best.

As far as libertarianism goes, imo, it actually stands against your scenario. You can't believe in the principles of individual freedom, if you have to live a certain way to get UBI. Libertarians , the ones I know, are about earning what you have. And after you have earned it, no one can tell you what to do with it.

With UBI, there will be lists of things you can and can't do to qualify for the money, and how you can and can't spend it...because they gave it to you.

[TokenLiberal]

I can't get behind UBI at all.

First, I don't think laziness should be rewarded.

Second, how long will it be before UBI is taken away? If a company doesn't employee humans, why should it pay them? UBI will last only a generation or two at best.

Did you understand that we are talking about a scenario where human labor is worthless? How, if not by UBI, will humans have an income?

Regardless, the point is not about UBI, more about the problem of the race to the bottom wrt regulatory standards which is already a problem in today's world. It will just become a much bigger problem when UBI, and by extension taxation overhaul, becomes necessary.

As far as libertarianism goes, imo, it actually stands against your scenario. You can't believe in the principles of individual freedom, if you have to live a certain way to get UBI. Libertarians , the ones I know, are about earning what you have. And after you have earned it, no one can tell you what to do with it.

With UBI, there will be lists of things you can and can't do to qualify for the money, and how you can and can't spend it...because they gave it to you.

Ah, just to clarify, I meant the existence of this problem called Moloch is a strong argument against libertarianism. This is a separate point from the one about the AI transition.

Moloch (unhealthy incentives from competition) is everywhere in our economic system. The way we keep him in check is by laws made and enforced by the state, to "force" players in this competition to cooperate which leads to a better state for everyone involved. An example is laws against overfishing. In a libertarian society it is almost impossible that fishermen would find a way to cooperate enough to solve the problem, and the oceans would be emptied, which is ultimately a bad outcome for everyone involved. The blog post mentions an example that is sort of similar to this, and is a good illustration as to why we need the government to step in sometimes:

As a thought experiment, let’s consider aquaculture (fish farming) in a lake. Imagine a lake with a thousand identical fish farms owned by a thousand competing companies. Each fish farm earns a profit of $1000/month. For a while, all is well.

But each fish farm produces waste, which fouls the water in the lake. Let’s say each fish farm produces enough pollution to lower productivity in the lake by $1/month.

A thousand fish farms produce enough waste to lower productivity by $1000/month, meaning none of the fish farms are making any money. Capitalism to the rescue: someone invents a complex filtering system that removes waste products. It costs $300/month to operate. All fish farms voluntarily install it, the pollution ends, and the fish farms are now making a profit of $700/month – still a respectable sum.

But one farmer (let’s call him Steve) gets tired of spending the money to operate his filter. Now one fish farm worth of waste is polluting the lake, lowering productivity by $1. Steve earns $999 profit, and everyone else earns $699 profit.

Everyone else sees Steve is much more profitable than they are, because he’s not spending the maintenance costs on his filter. They disconnect their filters too.

Once four hundred people disconnect their filters, Steve is earning $600/month – less than he would be if he and everyone else had kept their filters on! And the poor virtuous filter users are only making $300. Steve goes around to everyone, saying “Wait! We all need to make a voluntary pact to use filters! Otherwise, everyone’s productivity goes down.”

Everyone agrees with him, and they all sign the Filter Pact, except one person who is sort of a jerk. Let’s call him Mike. Now everyone is back using filters again, except Mike. Mike earns $999/month, and everyone else earns $699/month. Slowly, people start thinking they too should be getting big bucks like Mike, and disconnect their filter for $300 extra profit…

A self-interested person never has any incentive to use a filter. A self-interested person has some incentive to sign a pact to make everyone use a filter, but in many cases has a stronger incentive to wait for everyone else to sign such a pact but opt out himself. This can lead to an undesirable equilibrium in which no one will sign such a pact.

The solution, of course, is a law requiring the installation of a filter, which could realistically only be enforced by a centralized power structure.

[Ksihkehe]

Because you probably won't

I read a bunch and skimmed a bunch more. It's way too sprawling for me to bother reading it all and to respond to any individual point. None of it appears novel. FYI it appears more replies have been added since I open this reply and I haven't read them, so whatever it is it's outside the context of my post. I just noticed when I previewed my post that there were additional comments.

I can't get behind UBI at all.

First, I don't think laziness should be rewarded.

Second, how long will it be before UBI is taken away? If a company doesn't employee humans, why should it pay them? UBI will last only a generation or two at best.

As far as libertarianism goes, imo, it actually stands against your scenario. You can't believe in the principles of individual freedom, if you have to live a certain way to get UBI. Libertarians , the ones I know, are about earning what you have. And after you have earned it, no one can tell you what to do with it.

With UBI, there will be lists of things you can and can't do to qualify for the money, and how you can and can't spend it...because they gave it to you.

A few charts. I'm not married to the sources and am just using them to illustrate. These are close enough to illustrate and aren't really disputed, rather they're just not discussed because it's inconvenient for the BlackRock adjacent clique and the others that are sucking up a disproportionate share of the global wealth.
   
Source that I didn't read

   
Again, the rest of the source isn't important

I didn't bother to find one for CEO versus wagies, but I think most people know what that graph looks like. If we extend all of this to the global population it would be far more dramatic. It's fairly routine that CEOs are given golden parachutes after their poor management (including lots of crime) destroys the wealth of retail investors. It's a bigger deal than just some day trader getting liquidated because pensions and retirements are also destroyed. Hedge funds and banks that violate laws and are given penalties that don't even put a dent in their profits, while the population provides a backstop when they fail. I guess they aren't lazy. Crime does require work.

UBI would replace SSI, SSDI, SS, and unemployment, making the bureaucratic infrastructure administering it superfluous. This would (or should) fall onto those who have benefited the most and will continue to benefit from the productivity boosts "AI" can provide rather than being yet another tax on the lowest wage earners. AI is only possible because of what individual humans have contributed to over time, as were all the advancements that have fueled efficiency gains. That also means no massive bureaucracy for the constant monitoring of disability programs, years of denials for the disabled, and that also goes for the millions of downstream NGO/charity programs that are in place to fill the gaps in safety nets (and to cover up that safety nets never really cover the cost of living). They outsourced labor for cheaper wages and converting everything to AI will just be the next wave out outsourcing. Barring significant changes, these graphs will continue to go in the wrong direction.

Laziness is just a derogatory description for the same thing capitalists would call efficiency in the second graph. Why is it a virtue for corporations increasing the profits, but a horrible vice for people that barely scrape by?

It's simply marketing. The idea that X or Tesla or BlackRock or Coca-Cola or any other corporation is somehow more virtuous than a person on welfare doesn't pan out in the real world. From a pure harm standpoint, total embedded costs versus benefits, social welfare via UBI wouldn't even be a blip on the chart. It reduces overhead to gut the 6 middlemen between your payroll company, DC agencies, congress, the state, NGOs, and contractors, that are involved in the processes. Every time your money moves, even when it's just ones and zeros on a database, somebody is getting a cut.

Eliminate income tax for wagies and shift to a sales/consumption tax where the more one consumes the more one pays. UBI will require companies to pay a wage that makes it worth leaving the house. Eliminate laws that create loopholes for the wealthiest. Sales tax exemptions for minimally processed foods would swing incentives from cheap junk to whole foods that more directly benefit the immediate producers of foods, with taxes making each step in further processing more expensive (which will rapidly help eliminate the addition of poisons and non-food by-products to our food supply). That also helps keep the manufactured food industry in check, so Billy Gates can pound sand with his frankenfoods that no oversight body is able or willing to properly assess for safety.

As somebody that is effectively excised from the workforce through politicization of workplaces, personal ethics, and physical impairments, I see enormous waste in the programs set up to ensure I don't die from lack of resources. I don't see anywhere in my life where "they" don't already control what you spend your money on, how you earn it, and who gets the most benefits from it. Government picks winners and losers, defacto monopolies create closed industries, and a gauntlet of state/local laws confound all but the most diligent efforts to engage in small scale commerce. Ten years ago I'd have said there's another way, but since the fields I entered have both become political movements that go against the primary purpose of their existence I see no way to prevent further subversion except to remove power from those subverting it. I will gladly exist at a sustenance level rather than living high off the hog if it means I don't have to contribute to political hegemony, specific ideological beliefs, or dog eat dog games. I live a spartan lifestyle, but it's not practical for most people and I sacrifice a "normal" lifestyle for it. I still live far better than billions of others do right now and better than a long line of my ancestors.

I refuse to believe that the optimal state of society is one where I am born beholden to government and corporations, unable to live freely on the land. Instead I am forced to engage in labor that is disproportionately beneficial to people that underwrite all the rules I have to live by and those that write those rules do so by merit of their disproportionate earning of wealth, so I am not free. I consider my right to exist much more fundamental than my right to bear arms or express my opinion on social media. Existence depends on food, water, and basic shelter, which are currently only available if you pay the government or a corporation for the pleasure of having access to them. The Bill of Rights gives you things that are already free, but left out that it's all irrelevant unless you jump through sufficient hoops to exist.
Unfortunately, none of this is really possible because the systems are rife with corruption and no system will work when corruption is codified. Opaque government, pay-per-view science, and 99% of the population being born into slavery (no matter how convoluted the system to obfuscate it is), will always benefit those that are unethical. The OP premise works fine in small groups where anti-social traits are recognized as toxic rather than a competitive advantage, but not in any large system. People also can't be free if they are denied sufficient knowledge to recognize whether or not they're slaves, not really.

The one thing that almost every political ideology and activist collective ignores is biology. Biological organisms follow certain patterns of growth that are moderated via environmental factors. It doesn't matter how smart the architects of society are when they ignore biological laws. It doesn't matter how complex our constructs of governance become. Until proven otherwise excess food and adequate space to survive will result in increased populations. That is barring environmental checks like disease or similar, it's a biological law. Until humans are advanced enough to escape the constraints of biological law, either through rejection of gonzo materialism or entering some transhumanist dystopian nightmare (which is currently poised to only continue the hegemony of the wealthiest), ignoring it will mean we fail to produce a sustainable society.

Everybody wants a good life for themselves and their families. No matter how good their lives are they all die and eventually the entire genetic line will be extinct. That goes for every biological organism on the planet. The OP is very clever, very smart, but is just a biological entity looking for convoluted ways to ignore the reality of biology. UBI will increase the population, inevitably, without a shift in basic human values. Unless, of course, people were provided an education and taught a different set of values. Alternatively, some global ruling collective could introduce something that broadly reduces fertility and maybe orchestrate the collapse of the means of food production. I'm sure nobody would do something that horrible though, even if they write about it all the time and have the support of most of the global elite.

I want humans to be happy, be given the opportunity to live good lives, and to reduce unnecessary suffering. Since happiness and a good life are subjective, the best way to reduce suffering is to shift the subjective beliefs of our civilization. The chicken and egg is that for people to shift their subjective beliefs they have to be raised in a society or culture that already has those subjective beliefs or they need sufficient time to explore their beliefs while being free from entanglements with materialist rat races.

Imagine how much the face of political participation would change if it wasn't just blue haired communists leeching off the system to pursue activism or trust fund nepo-babies running the show for conservatives activism, but anyone that wished and was willing to live at sustenance levels. Imagine what 10 million people that didn't have to work 60 hours a week just to survive could do with cheap AI that can help one person to audit entire federal agencies in the comfort of their home. The right and libertarians constantly complain that protesters and activists can only afford to do what they do because they don't work, but refuse to level the playing field so that people that aren't self-interested socialists/communists or wealthy enough not to wok can participate. Imagine if one parent could always stay home rather than sending the kids off to daycare (yet another massive entitlement program that could be eliminated through UBI).

Unfortunately, statists believe that only the state can be trusted. Individualists are trapped in a paradigm where they believe only slaves that prove their worth through labor and those who masterfully exploit that labor (or those that inherit it) can be worthy of trust. At this point I just want access to healthy foods that fit my genetic nutritional needs, water, the infrastructure that we have all worked to build, and to be left the fuck alone. I can't even volunteer my time without going through a bunch of bullshit at this point. Societies that can't carve out a place for altruistic polymaths not motivated by -or hamstrung with- financial considerations can get fucked... and they will get fucked until it changes.

I can hardly believe I wasted so much time typing that all out, but it seems like an even greater waste to delete it now. It isn't directed at you specifically, rather is just a general reply that benefitted from addressing one particular part of your comment.

[TokenLiberal]

I read a bunch and skimmed a bunch more. It's way too sprawling for me to bother reading it all and to respond to any individual point. None of it appears novel.

The novel thing about it is the reframing of the problem, which I think is a good idea. Framing the collective action problem as an agent of destruction speaks to our imaginations and it allows us to more elegantly refer to it in discussions. It makes the problem feel more real, less abstract. On the whole, I think the blog author achieves his goal, which is to bring the importance and universality of it to our attention. And I agree with him that this should be done; it's not talked about nearly enough. As a concept, it helps us understand why the world is the way that it is, and while everyone intuitively knows and understands it, giving it a name helps solidify it in our minds.

The OP premise works fine in small groups where anti-social traits are recognized as toxic rather than a competitive advantage, but not in any large system.

You hit on the main reason Moloch is such a problem for modern society. Cooperation is the way to keep him in check, but we live in large groups, and large-scale cooperation is hard to achieve. As far as our biology is concerned we are still hunter-gatherers, and hunter-gatherers have no need for global regulatory standards to prevent a geopolitical race to the bottom.

Was agriculture, which enabled us to live in large groups, the biggest mistake humanity ever made? Maybe. It might be where our problems with Moloch began, or at least got significantly worse. (It's also itself an example of Moloch at work, for hunter-gatherers had to adopt it or face being outcompeted). If Moloch ends up being our undoing, which could absolutely happen with the invention of nuclear weapons, our inability to act on climate change, or the relentless pursuit of AGI despite existential risks, with our final breath we can point to the nomadic civilizations in history and say "They should have cooperated to destroy all traces of the evil technology called farming."

As for the rest of your post, it seems willfully off topic but because Moloch is so omnipresent in our society's problems and that is mostly what you're talking about, I suppose we can give you a pass. You bring up a series of (mostly fair) complaints but propose no solutions. I imagine you have something in mind? You mention living free from state intervention. That sounds like a libertarian utopia, in which case we can bring it back to the OP: How do you account for Moloch?

[19Bones79]

How would you apply M.O.M. wrt Israel starting at 1948 up until present day?

[TokenLiberal]

I wouldn't, really. The issues around Israel don't seem to be Molochian.