this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2025
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I don't even think it's that we're optimizing for the wrong value. Optimizing for maximum profit is probably fine -- everyone gets the best utility possible. The problem is in the algorithm being a greedy approach where every individual personally chooses the best option for themselves. Greedy algorithm settles on a local maximum but drastically overshoots the global maximum.
Maximizing profits is why America still has slavery. Ever heard of prisoner leasing? It’s also why we exploit other nations and pay them 1/100th of what we would Americans. It’s also why countless other tragedies happen.
Optimizing for profit IS the evil.
No, being greedy is why America still has slavery, technically. As a whole they could get a ton more profit and save on costs if the system cared to develop prisoners, reduce prison populations and make them more productive members of society.
Individual and short-term profits are gained through this exploitation. The fix isn't to eliminate profit "waste money" then everybody loses. The solution is to address the externality in the market, thereby making it so that everyone can profit.
I assume you're making the argument that a motivated worker does better work and if they do better work they're more productive and thus make more profit. However, a motivated worker also costs more so really the profit maximum is somewhere between worker production and how much you're paying for the worker. Now imagine how little the prison worker is paid. Different sources give different numbers but all of it ends up in the ballpark of $1/h. The federal minimum wage is $7.5/h. That means a minimum wage worker would have to be at least 7 times more productive than the prison laborer and that's just the floor of what you're legally supposed to pay. If we talk about the average american we're talking about needing to be around 10-11 times for efficient than a prison worker.
Slave labor is the most efficient way to make a profit. because you're effectively paying nothing to produce something that you could sell at market value.
Optimizing for max profit is always the wrong answer, because it can only lead to this state. Eventually, capital takes over government to get even more profit, at the expense of everything else.
it might be worth mentioning here that the reason greedy algorithms don’t generally find local maximums is because they’re “too short-sighted”, and are always focused on making the best possible short term decision, while failing to consider any long term implications.
so in that way the greedy algorithm is a pretty good description of many of our current problems
People seem to think that you're saying "just like now, but tweaked"
As I see it to aim at max global profit we would need a whole different economic system, or at least a new way to direct capital at businesses toward the global max