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So Sorry for replying so late - I've been caught up with life/ exams.

Yes, sorry I did misrepresent you by thinking you relied heavily on r/neoliberal.

From digging around I totally understand and sympathise with why you chose to rely on partly on r/neoliberal - There are surprisingly few places where ecomonic discussion is occuring on the primary election where it is accessible to non-economists. But nonetheless they are a subreddit.

In a lot of your analysis though, you do seem to caricature Keynesian economics as non-mainstream. Is that ... true? I ... (read more)

kbog

In the old version of the report, in maybe a couple of sentences, I incorrectly conflated the status of Keynesianism in general with Post-Keynesian in particular. In reality, New Keynesianism is accepted whereas Post-Keynesian ideas are heterodox, as I describe in the above comment. I have already updated the language in revisions. But this error of mine didn't matter anyway because I wasn't yet judging politicians for their stances on economic stimulus bills (although it is something to be added in the future). If I had been judging politicians on Keynesian stimulus then I would have looked more carefully before judging anything. If Post-Keynesian ideas are correct, that could change a lot of things because it would mean that lots of government spending all the time will stimulate the economy. However, I am pretty sure this is not commonly accepted. I am glad you agree on Drive vs OneDrive.

X-risk dollars -> Andrew Yang?

Mohammad5y1

Hey Kbog,

Your analysis seems to rely heavily on the judgement of r/neoliberal.

Can you explain to a dummy like me, isn't this a serious weakpoint in your analysis.

I'm sure this is overly simplifying things, but I would have thought that actually it's the social democracies which follow very technocratic keynesian economics that produce better economic outcomes (idk, greater growth, less unemployment, more entrepreneurship, haha I have no idea how true any of this is tbh - I just presume). Espescially now considering that the US/globe is fa... (read more)

kbog

Very little, actually. Only time I actually cite the group is the one thread where people are discussing baby bonds. It's true that in many cases, we've arrived at similar points of view, but I have real citations in those cases. As I say in the beginning of the "evaluations of sources" sections, a group like that is more for "secondary tasks such as learning different perspectives and locating more reliable sources." The kind of thing that usually doesn't get mentioned at all in references. I'm just doing more work to make all of it explicit. And frankly I don't spend much time there anyway. I haven't gone to their page in months. Do you think that they are poor even by the standards of social media groups? Like, compared to r/irstudies or others? It seems like most economists approve of them in times of recession (New Keynesianism), but don't believe in blasting stimulus all the time (which would be post-Keynesianism). I'm a little unsure of the details here and may be oversimplifying. Frankly, it's beyond my credentials to get into the weeds of macroeconomic theory (though if someone has such credentials, they are welcome to become involved...). I'm more concerned about the judgment of specific policy choices - it's not like any of the candidates have expressed views on macroeconomic theory, they just talk about policies. I found research indicating that countries with more public spending have less economic growth: https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Govt-Size-and-Growth.pdf http://rcea.org/RePEc/pdf/wp18-01.pdf Perhaps the post-Keynesian economists have some reasons to disagree with this work, but I would need to see that they have some substantive critique or counterargument. In any case, if 90% of the field believes something and 10% disagrees, we must still go by the majority, unless somehow we discover that the minority really has all the best arguments and evidence. Of course, just because economic growth is lower, doesn't

Overview of Capitalism and Socialism for Effective Altruism

Mohammad5y2

Thanks again for the reply.

On socialism and internationalism:

Maybe in their theoretical goals or mantras, but in practice they generally oppose trade. At least towards poorer countries.

I'm not knowledgeable how true/false this is historically... but I don't suspect it is very true for modern socialist parties/ govt's. Something like Yanis Varoufakis's Diem25 project for example. I was very impressed by its effort to try and stop European left wing parties acting in their individual national interests and instead act in harmony.

And also ... (read more)

kbog

It's at the forefront of socialists in the USA who are categorically opposed to 'sweatshop labor'. Take it from Chomsky whose criticism of Mondragon is "it’s in a market system and they still exploit workers in South America." Socialist? It looks like they are just a political movement. Reform the EU to be more democratic. That's not socialism. Granted I am not familiar with this. Some of that is political moves which happen under any kind of government and are not about anyone being rich or poor. USSR put an embargo on West Berlin. Cuba used to refuse to buy food from the US because they didn't want to legitimize the embargo. Otherwise, capitalist countries also engage in protectionism per se. That hits wealthier countries too. Notice how Trump's main focus is China which is a middle income country. And there have been trade scuffles with the EU recently. I'm not sure because I haven't seen anyone really investigate this, but I don't think it hits the poorest countries very hard, because most industries in these countries are not competitors to US industries. The anti-globalization thing is an additional phenomenon on top of these things. In this context, it looks like 'international socialism' means spreading socialism throughout the entire world. Which is very different from openness to trade. Socialist states have traded with each other. E.g. the Soviets bought lots of sugar from Cuba and exported energy. They're not going to think it's exploitation if the other country is socialist. But if the other state is capitalist then it's not going to happen. It all depends on the context. Here I'm mainly talking about the US or UK going socialist while the developing world presumably doesn't change very much. It's one thing to talk about theoretical comparisons but a key issue for the short and medium term (and possibly long term) future is the existence of stable, credible institutions. Liberal capitalist states have a decent framework for international trade an

Overview of Capitalism and Socialism for Effective Altruism

Mohammad5y3

Thanks for the reply Kbog.

Of course withdrawing from international markets would be a economically backwards thing to do. But, I don't think that is what socialists are generally for. From what I've read socialism is all about greater economic cooperation, internationalism, abolishing the state and opposing nationalism & economic protectionism etc. These are some wikis that I think support this view: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalism_(politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletarian_internationalism

I am absolutely against co... (read more)

kbog

Maybe in their theoretical goals or mantras, but in practice they generally oppose trade. At least towards poorer countries. Would it? Why? Capitalist states can make agreements too. Well let's say a global worker collective can get different tax treatment by headquartering in a different state. Are the socialist countries going to do a better job of setting their policies in unison? I just don't see the mechanism by which coordination would be made easier. Meanwhile, if international trade shrinks, that might increase conflicts. In practice, socialist states (20th century) didn't do a particularly good job of coordinating with each other.

Overview of Capitalism and Socialism for Effective Altruism

Mohammad5y4

Great post by the OP. But one thing I wished it touched more upon was the need for internationalism.

Under our current liberal capitalist world economy, countries are incentivised to weaken labour laws, safety conditions, environmental standards, taxes etc to remain competitive.

Both socialism and capitalism do have remedies to prevent/ temper this "race to the bottom" phenomenon. But I think socialists have a good argument to make that a socialist system might be better able to do this by lifting international standards. And this would be of great consequence to Effective Altruists.

Does the OP have any thoughts on this?

kbog

Countries in a liberal capitalist world economy are free to institute strong labor laws, make their economy less competitive, and disengage from the global market. They don't need to wait for the rest of the world to be socialist in order to do this. The fact that they choose not to tells you something about how important economic growth is, compared to strong labor laws. Removing international markets to encourage countries to have better working conditions would like forbidding poor people from working more than 7 hours a day, in order to encourage them to have more recreation.

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