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(1/8) What is #misalignedmarkets? My political economy begins by taking F.A. Hayek seriously. He saw markets (and minds) as a form of decentralized processing a logical “spontaneous order” that aggregates knowledge. (I'm sure like Dawkins he'd have been one-shotted by Claude).

misaligned.marketsAI hype is a mirror of market fundamentalismBoth AI enthusiasts and market fundamentalists gloss over the context needed to understand complex systems.

21/5/26, 6:37 pm1 repost6 likes

Mike

@misaligned.markets

21 May

(2/8) Where I diverge from market fundamentalists, like Hayek, is that solving for “distribution” is incidental to market capitalism. Profit, not allocation, is the goal. Knowledge is useful insofar as it serves that end. Many profitable opportunities deliberately result in suboptimal distribution.

misaligned.marketsWhat do AI alignment fears reveal about market capitalism?Capitalism's misincentives won't create Skynet but resemble optimization problems AI programmers face.

Mike

@misaligned.markets

21 May

(3/8) Naive market fundamentalists miss something critical. Distributed knowledge isn't just about information in markets, but the rules of the game. The rules that create property rights interfere with "free" markets. Capitalism is a political governance structure imposing values onto markets.

misaligned.marketsThe tension at the heart of market capitalismCapitalism promises competition, but its biggest winners avoid it. Separating markets from capitalism explains this paradox.

Mike

@misaligned.markets

21 May

(4/8) Computers actually are a good analogy for market capitalism. Not because markets “compute” how to allocate resources but because they are a distributed system (like a computer network) whose implicit and explicit rules affect throughput and user experience.

misaligned.marketsCapitalism runs like a computer (and it's being hacked)Like computer networks, market capitalism rewards actors that exploit gaps created by system and user behavior.

Mike

@misaligned.markets

21 May

(5/8) Digital assets are non-rivalrous; one person's use doesn't deplete another's, and the marginal cost of production is near zero. Yet, the tech industry has produced the most profitable companies in history. Why? They've found ways to capture value that have nothing to do with distribution.

misaligned.marketsModern conflicts over property rights and commodificationIssues like right to repair and privacy are extensions of age-old battles over property rights, which are inherent to capitalism.