Reposting here a recent comment of mine listing socialist-adjacent ideas that at least I personally am a lot more excited about than socialism itself. * * *
FYI, if you have not yet heard of “Georgism” (see this series of blog posts on Astral Codex Ten), you might be in for a really fun time! It’s a fascinating idea that aims to reform capitalism by reducing the amount of rent-seeking in the economy, thus making society fairer and more meritocratic (because we are doing a better job of rewarding real work, not just rewarding people who happen to be squatting on valuable assets) while also boosting economic dynamism (by directing investment towards building things and putting land to its most productive use, rather than just bidding up the price of land). Check it out; it might scratch an itch for “something like socialism, but that might actually work”.
A few other weird optimal-governance schemes that have socialist-like egalitarian aims but are actually (or at least partially) validated by our modern understanding of economics:
using prediction markets to inform institutional decision-making (see this entertaining video explainer), and the wider field of wondering if there are any good ways to improve institutions’ decisions
using quadratic funding to optimally* fund public goods without relying on governments or central planning. (*in theory, given certain assumptions, real life is more complicated, etc etc)
pigouvian taxes (like taxes on cigarrettes or carbon emissions). Like georgist land-value taxes, these attempt to raise funds (for providing public goods either through government services or perhaps quadratic funding) in a way that actually helps the economy (by properly pricing negative externalities) rather than disincentivizing work or investment.
various methods of trying to improve democratic mechanisms to allow people to give more useful, considered input to government processes—approval voting, sortition / citizen’s assemblies, etc
not exactly optimal governance, but this animated video explainer lays out GiveDirectly’s RCT-backed vision of how it’s actually pretty plausible that we could solve extreme poverty by just sending a ton of money to the poorest countries for a few years, which would probably actually work because 1. it turns out that most poor countries have a ton of “slack” in their economy (as if they’re in an economic depression all the time), so flooding them with stimulus-style cash mostly boosts employment and activity rather than just causing inflation, and 2. after just a few years, you’ll get enough “capital accumulation” (farmers buying tractors, etc) that we can taper off the payments and the countries won’t fall back into extreme poverty + economic depression
the dream (perhaps best articulated by Dario Amodei in sections 2, 3, and 4 of his essay “machines of loving grace”, but also frequently touched on by Carl Schulman) of future AI assistants that improve the world by actually making people saner and wiser, thereby making societies better able to coordinate and make win-win deals between different groups.
the concern (articulated in its negative form at https://gradual-disempowerment.ai/, and in its positive form at Sam Altman’s essay Moore’s Law for Everything), that some socialist-style ideas (like redistributing control of capital and providing UBI) might have to come back in style in a big way, if AI radically alters humanity’s economic situation such that the process of normal capitalism starts becoming increasingly unaligned from human flourishing.
Reposting here a recent comment of mine listing socialist-adjacent ideas that at least I personally am a lot more excited about than socialism itself.
* * *
FYI, if you have not yet heard of “Georgism” (see this series of blog posts on Astral Codex Ten), you might be in for a really fun time! It’s a fascinating idea that aims to reform capitalism by reducing the amount of rent-seeking in the economy, thus making society fairer and more meritocratic (because we are doing a better job of rewarding real work, not just rewarding people who happen to be squatting on valuable assets) while also boosting economic dynamism (by directing investment towards building things and putting land to its most productive use, rather than just bidding up the price of land). Check it out; it might scratch an itch for “something like socialism, but that might actually work”.
A few other weird optimal-governance schemes that have socialist-like egalitarian aims but are actually (or at least partially) validated by our modern understanding of economics:
using prediction markets to inform institutional decision-making (see this entertaining video explainer), and the wider field of wondering if there are any good ways to improve institutions’ decisions
using quadratic funding to optimally* fund public goods without relying on governments or central planning. (*in theory, given certain assumptions, real life is more complicated, etc etc)
pigouvian taxes (like taxes on cigarrettes or carbon emissions). Like georgist land-value taxes, these attempt to raise funds (for providing public goods either through government services or perhaps quadratic funding) in a way that actually helps the economy (by properly pricing negative externalities) rather than disincentivizing work or investment.
various methods of trying to improve democratic mechanisms to allow people to give more useful, considered input to government processes—approval voting, sortition / citizen’s assemblies, etc
conversation-mapping / consensus-building algorithms like pol.is & community notes
not exactly optimal governance, but this animated video explainer lays out GiveDirectly’s RCT-backed vision of how it’s actually pretty plausible that we could solve extreme poverty by just sending a ton of money to the poorest countries for a few years, which would probably actually work because 1. it turns out that most poor countries have a ton of “slack” in their economy (as if they’re in an economic depression all the time), so flooding them with stimulus-style cash mostly boosts employment and activity rather than just causing inflation, and 2. after just a few years, you’ll get enough “capital accumulation” (farmers buying tractors, etc) that we can taper off the payments and the countries won’t fall back into extreme poverty + economic depression
the dream (perhaps best articulated by Dario Amodei in sections 2, 3, and 4 of his essay “machines of loving grace”, but also frequently touched on by Carl Schulman) of future AI assistants that improve the world by actually making people saner and wiser, thereby making societies better able to coordinate and make win-win deals between different groups.
the concern (articulated in its negative form at https://gradual-disempowerment.ai/, and in its positive form at Sam Altman’s essay Moore’s Law for Everything), that some socialist-style ideas (like redistributing control of capital and providing UBI) might have to come back in style in a big way, if AI radically alters humanity’s economic situation such that the process of normal capitalism starts becoming increasingly unaligned from human flourishing.