On Twitter, Freyja wrote:

Things capitalism is trash at:

• Valuing preferences of anything other than adults who earn money (i.e. future people, non-humans)
• Pricing non-standardisable goods (i.e. information)
• Playing nicely with non-quantifiable values + objectives (i.e. love, ritual)

Things capitalism is good at:

• Incentivising the production of novel goods and services
• Coordinating large groups of people to produce complex bundles of goods
• The obvious: making value fungible

Anyone know of work on -

a) integrating the former into existing economic systems, or
b) developing new systems to provide those things while including capitalism's existing benefits?

This intersected well enough with my current interests and those of the people I've been discoursing with most closely that I figured I'd try my hand at a quick explanation of what we're doing, which I've lightly edited into blog post form below. This is only a loose sketch, I think it does reasonably precisely outline the argument, but many readers may find that there are substantial inferential leaps. Questions in the comments are strongly encouraged.

Any serious attempt at (b) will first have to unwind the disinformation that claims that the thing we have now is capitalism, or remotely efficient.

The short version of the project: learning to talk honestly within a small group about how power works, both systemically and as it applies to us, without trying to hold onto information asymmetries. (There's pervasive temptation to withhold political information as part of a zero-sum privilege game, like Plato's philosopher-kings.) Continue reading →