As a class, they steer things through emergent behavior and overlapping self interest in certain areas. As individuals, they can’t afford to trust each other without leverage.
As a class, they have a set of similar incentives (grow/retain resources and power networks) that lead to similar actions (avoid taxation, buy influence, weaken regulators, etc). They may cooperate at times, but they are not a coherent organization with a roster, votes, and leadership.
As individuals, they are dangerous competitors, and they can’t afford to trust each other too much without some kind of mutual leverage. This could be in the form of mutual equity holdings, blackmail, complex arrangements where each party has exposure, whatever. But even then, trust has limits.
There’s no cabal that runs things with rules and elections at this level. It’s all individuals who are immersed in the systems that made them wealthy. Those systems tend to lead to certain behaviors. That’s it.
> You could make this statement about any group at all.
Yes, that's the point
> And then once you realize people are in multiple groups, the whole thing devolves into chaos.
You have bad priors. That would only happen if groups could only have singular and simple goals. It requires those goals to be mutually exclusive. Because as soon as they overlap, even just a little, cooperation becomes an effective strategy.
Hell, history shows us enemies often cooperate. Mostly to defeat a mutual enemy, so they can go back to fighting each other, but that's still cooperation
Nobody is suggesting nobody or group cooperates on anything ever. This comment could go in the definition section of "strawman". My comment was in response to the idea that there is "a conspiracy of the elite". It's just an absurd idea to anyone who has spent time in the world working with people, both "elite" and non "elite".
In the bay area you'll find thousands and thousands of people who have worked at a company run by a billionaire founder. They will tell you said billionaire founder can't even get everyone in the company to conspire to row in the same direction.
But the comment above wasn't about an explicit conspiracy, with billionaires meeting in dark rooms colluding. It was about implicit, uncoordinated conspiracy, where objectives align. My comment is defending the latter
Exactly, there is no conspiracy, there’s just multiple actors moving predictably in the same direction, and sometimes coordinating weakly. I don’t know how my comments could have been read otherwise.
True, but these are generally limited agreements among a few individuals (at most a small handful at the top). Pulling off a big conspiracy between many powerful competing actors carries too much risk of defection. It may be possible but it’s certainly rare.
I do think that these limited agreements may be copied by other people in similar contexts, for instance there were other tech firms who made similar agreements with their own competitors. And the big tech anti-poaching agreements may have themselves been copied from similar agreements made in other industries, such as finance and fast food. The illegal conduct probably spread organically through word of mouth, as execs and board members informally exchange this sort of “best practice” with each other.
It’s likely that big shareholders or board members could hold private meetings to advise the CEOs of their companies on how to pull off this sort of trick, if they think it would help the stock price. Given how many people sit on multiple boards, this could be seen as a sort of conspiracy. It’s still very informal and of course it’s nearly impossible to prove.
Maybe I'm overindexing on "they steer" and "effective strategy" - it still reads that this group has way more control and deliberate planning than they do.
And, "implicit, uncoordinated conspiracy" is an oxymoron. The word "conspiracy" has a definition.
If all you are saying is "sometimes billionaires are aligned" - sure. Sometimes politicians are aligned. Sometimes teammates are aligned. If one wants a platitude with some predictive power "people are self interested" is going to work more often.
“People are self interested” works fine as long as you extend the analysis to include the class dimension. People in a specific class are generally going to advocate on behalf of that class, because it benefits them to do so. No conspiracy needed.
To a degree, yes, it’s why looking at people on the level of groups is not that useful for predicting individual behavior and beliefs, only aggregate behavior and beliefs.
However, some groups do have identifiable leadership, rules, membership rosters, etc. Political parties for instance, or governmental bodies. Decisions from groups like this often have an identifiable lineage (from proposal to vote) and are considered binding. This contrasts with the sort of emergent decisions I was discussing in the context of the very wealthy. There was no vote, there was no formal coordination, and the “decision” is not binding, yet everyone can see its effects. Opposing something like this is like boxing with a shadow.
Or, someone who knows the books and hot takes on "systems thinking" are pop-science, and the actual good ideas have been around for a long time and taught in operations research, control theory etc.
It doesn't need any intelligence at all. There's mutually beneficial things to any group of people. So it doesn't require explicit coordination. Even fairly unintelligent animals have symbiotic relationships with other species. So your argument is what, that billionaires are less intelligent than an ant?
In the real world it's hard enough to get 5 people on the same page about anything. The idea that dozens/hundreds of people with billions of dollars who are in business against each other in many cases are secretly colluding with any effectiveness is a joke. If they were, zuckerberg, larry and sergey would have been squashed in the 90's/00's by the elite of the time. Sam Altman would have been crushed years ago. Obama or Trump would have been put in their place, probably both. Look at all the billionaires all of a sudden kowtowing to Trump. The billionaires just got beat real bad in NYC.
Billionaires just don't have much power. This isn't a movie.
This seems to contradict itself. You first claim that there's no organization but then you claim billionaires have no power because of the more powerful above them. Hierarchy is organization, so which is it
It really sounds like you're trying hard to define a square circle. Your argument isn't even self consistent because what you described sure sounds like someone has power...
Nope. It's perfectly consistent. No one has much power at all. No one is in charge, there is no greater power sitting above us all calling all (or even most) the shots. To use someone else's term, there is no cabal.
You seem to conflate "no one is powerful" with "no one has any power in any situation at all".
I never said nobody hoped to be powerful, or increase the level of power they have. They just don't have much, and they can't/don't coordinate like some conspiracy theorists believe.
As a class, they steer things through emergent behavior and overlapping self interest in certain areas. As individuals, they can’t afford to trust each other without leverage.
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As a class, they have a set of similar incentives (grow/retain resources and power networks) that lead to similar actions (avoid taxation, buy influence, weaken regulators, etc). They may cooperate at times, but they are not a coherent organization with a roster, votes, and leadership.
As individuals, they are dangerous competitors, and they can’t afford to trust each other too much without some kind of mutual leverage. This could be in the form of mutual equity holdings, blackmail, complex arrangements where each party has exposure, whatever. But even then, trust has limits.
There’s no cabal that runs things with rules and elections at this level. It’s all individuals who are immersed in the systems that made them wealthy. Those systems tend to lead to certain behaviors. That’s it.
You could make this statement about any group at all. And then once you realize people are in multiple groups, the whole thing devolves into chaos.
Hell, history shows us enemies often cooperate. Mostly to defeat a mutual enemy, so they can go back to fighting each other, but that's still cooperation
Nobody is suggesting nobody or group cooperates on anything ever. This comment could go in the definition section of "strawman". My comment was in response to the idea that there is "a conspiracy of the elite". It's just an absurd idea to anyone who has spent time in the world working with people, both "elite" and non "elite".
In the bay area you'll find thousands and thousands of people who have worked at a company run by a billionaire founder. They will tell you said billionaire founder can't even get everyone in the company to conspire to row in the same direction.
But the comment above wasn't about an explicit conspiracy, with billionaires meeting in dark rooms colluding. It was about implicit, uncoordinated conspiracy, where objectives align. My comment is defending the latter
Exactly, there is no conspiracy, there’s just multiple actors moving predictably in the same direction, and sometimes coordinating weakly. I don’t know how my comments could have been read otherwise.
Except there are also explicit conspiracies like Jobs calling around to stop "poaching" or Zuck leaning over to Trump and asking how much.
True, but these are generally limited agreements among a few individuals (at most a small handful at the top). Pulling off a big conspiracy between many powerful competing actors carries too much risk of defection. It may be possible but it’s certainly rare.
I do think that these limited agreements may be copied by other people in similar contexts, for instance there were other tech firms who made similar agreements with their own competitors. And the big tech anti-poaching agreements may have themselves been copied from similar agreements made in other industries, such as finance and fast food. The illegal conduct probably spread organically through word of mouth, as execs and board members informally exchange this sort of “best practice” with each other.
It’s likely that big shareholders or board members could hold private meetings to advise the CEOs of their companies on how to pull off this sort of trick, if they think it would help the stock price. Given how many people sit on multiple boards, this could be seen as a sort of conspiracy. It’s still very informal and of course it’s nearly impossible to prove.
Maybe I'm overindexing on "they steer" and "effective strategy" - it still reads that this group has way more control and deliberate planning than they do.
And, "implicit, uncoordinated conspiracy" is an oxymoron. The word "conspiracy" has a definition.
If all you are saying is "sometimes billionaires are aligned" - sure. Sometimes politicians are aligned. Sometimes teammates are aligned. If one wants a platitude with some predictive power "people are self interested" is going to work more often.
“People are self interested” works fine as long as you extend the analysis to include the class dimension. People in a specific class are generally going to advocate on behalf of that class, because it benefits them to do so. No conspiracy needed.
To a degree, yes, it’s why looking at people on the level of groups is not that useful for predicting individual behavior and beliefs, only aggregate behavior and beliefs.
However, some groups do have identifiable leadership, rules, membership rosters, etc. Political parties for instance, or governmental bodies. Decisions from groups like this often have an identifiable lineage (from proposal to vote) and are considered binding. This contrasts with the sort of emergent decisions I was discussing in the context of the very wealthy. There was no vote, there was no formal coordination, and the “decision” is not binding, yet everyone can see its effects. Opposing something like this is like boxing with a shadow.
Look into a class on systems thinking.
Systems thinking as applied to human systems is about as rigorous as psychology.
Sounds like the genius take of a VP of AI Strategy.
Or, someone who knows the books and hot takes on "systems thinking" are pop-science, and the actual good ideas have been around for a long time and taught in operations research, control theory etc.
It doesn't need any intelligence at all. There's mutually beneficial things to any group of people. So it doesn't require explicit coordination. Even fairly unintelligent animals have symbiotic relationships with other species. So your argument is what, that billionaires are less intelligent than an ant?
Any adult who has been paying attention has no doubt that enough of the elite do collude to call the duck a duck.
In the real world it's hard enough to get 5 people on the same page about anything. The idea that dozens/hundreds of people with billions of dollars who are in business against each other in many cases are secretly colluding with any effectiveness is a joke. If they were, zuckerberg, larry and sergey would have been squashed in the 90's/00's by the elite of the time. Sam Altman would have been crushed years ago. Obama or Trump would have been put in their place, probably both. Look at all the billionaires all of a sudden kowtowing to Trump. The billionaires just got beat real bad in NYC.
Billionaires just don't have much power. This isn't a movie.
This seems to contradict itself. You first claim that there's no organization but then you claim billionaires have no power because of the more powerful above them. Hierarchy is organization, so which is it
No, nothing above them. No power. That's the point. In a couple years Trump will be gone and he'll be kowtowing to others and so on.
There is no group in charge. No one is in charge.
If there's no power then why did so many line up to bring gifts and kiss the ring of a certain vindictive, convicted felon turned President?
Just because no one is in charge, it doesn't mean favors disappear and it doesn't mean no one can throw a wrench in your system.
It really sounds like you're trying hard to define a square circle. Your argument isn't even self consistent because what you described sure sounds like someone has power...
Nope. It's perfectly consistent. No one has much power at all. No one is in charge, there is no greater power sitting above us all calling all (or even most) the shots. To use someone else's term, there is no cabal.
You seem to conflate "no one is powerful" with "no one has any power in any situation at all".
Never said equal, just that no one has much. It's just not that hard of a claim to understand. No need to twist oneself into a pretzel.
If that is true then we all are in charge and it is up to all of us. As you agreed elsewhere, cooperation exists.
How many billionaires attended Biden's inauguration or donated to Biden's projects? How many for Trump 2?
I never said nobody hoped to be powerful, or increase the level of power they have. They just don't have much, and they can't/don't coordinate like some conspiracy theorists believe.
Nobody said anything about ALL billionaires. You are the only person suggesting that.
The idea that an aggressive handful of them can't, won't or don't work together is even more preposterous than your strawman that all of them do.
"the billionaire class".
Whether they meant all or most, those words certainly don't mean a handful.