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Jul 3, 2023Liked by Ethan

A relevant sci-fi story comparing a capitalist and a socialist society moving into the age of AI https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

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>Capitalism is an economic system which is based, fundamentally, on private actors blindly chasing profit while largely ignoring the consequences that their decisions impose on humanity as a whole. The capitalist’s prime directive can be captured by a very simple formula: capitalists want to incur as much revenue as possible while incurring as little cost as possible.

That's how businesses die, not how they grow. Businesses are grown by Steve Jobs type visionaries, who have a sense of mission, to change the world. Then they retire or die, and businesses are taken over by bean counter type managers who indeed only actually care about the quarterly profit. That is when businesses begin to die. These people cannot grow the revenue, because that requires vision. So they cut costs, and the brainless cost-cutting works for a number of record quarterly profits in a process of self-cannibalization but ultimately undermines the company. The best people will leave, because they cannot do a stellar job with a much smaller project, and there is a slow decline.

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Should be an apostrophe after the s in the subtitle!

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It’s true

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