Book: 20260910 to 20260923, "The Utopia of Rules" by David Graeber

 

20260910 - Introduction 3

Von Mises argued that as a result, the social welfare states then emerging in places like France or England, let alone Denmark or Sweden, would, within a generation or two, inevitably lead to fascism. p8

What is the root cause of bureaucracy?

Elon Musk once said that if you give yourself three hours to clean your room, it will take three hours. If you only give yourself ten minutes, then ten minutes will be enough.

This can be considered a form of personal bureaucracy.

Do corporate employees care about the fate of the company? They do not. They care more about their salaries and bonuses. Managers have one more concern: how much power they possess.
Do corporate shareholders care about the fate of the company? They do not. They care more about whether they can secure lucrative returns.
Do customers care about the fate of the company? They do not.
Does the government care about the fate of the company? It does not.

Thanks to the Wealth of Nations . Even though everyone harbours their own hidden motives, enterprises can still deliver products and services efficiently.

However, when profits become abundant enough, various factions begin to make "unreasonable" demands, seeking self-interest at the expense of organizational efficiency. Other factions, in turn, are often willing to compromise.

This is the root cause of bureaucracy.

Market reforms only reinforce this tendency (of increasing bureaucracy). p41
No. I think that bureaucracy comes from abundance.

Bureaucracy is mainly about objective evaluation, so we don't need to rely on subjective(arbitrary) evaluation.
Can ASI solve this problem? Most likely, yes.
ASI can make decisions based on "common sense". They have all information, and can communicate with each other at lightning speed.

20260915 - 1 Dead Zones of the Imagination 45

Everyone knows that servants tend to know a great deal about their employees' families, but the opposite almost never occurs. p72
That's why people are quite surprised if some big guy know their name or even their birthday.
Big guys normally focus on big things, and laypeople focus more on daily trivial things.

The people at the bottom of the society need to spend a lot of time to understand/handle bureaucracy. AI will change that completely.
People in power will lose this advantage, and then what?

Imagination is the key of emergence, from individual to society. It's also the key of science and technology development.

Does this mean that Zen masters don't have the capability of imagining?

While those in situations of power and privilege often feel it as a terrible burden of responsibility, in most ways, most of the time, power is all about what you don't have to worry about, don't have to know about, and don't have to do. p101

The most effective strategy of political liberation yet discovered lies precisely in avoiding them - but at the same time, it is only at our peril that we simply pretend that they're not there. p103

We should say no to many things in daily life. Then, where should we settle our attention?

20260918 - 2 Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit 105

But airline speed has not only failed to increase since (1971, Concorde) - it has actually decreased since the Concorde's abandonment in 2003. p116
Speed is not the only indicator. The cost of airline travel dropped a lot. Volume, safety and comfortability also improved a lot. All important.

The Industrial Revolution solved the energy problem.
What problem did the Information Revolution solve? It accelerated the operating speed of society.
What does high speed mean?

1. Faster single-threading.
2. Concurrent coordination across multiple threads.
   Without the Information Revolution, it would take weeks for a research paper to travel from Europe to the United States. Even within the same city, it could take days to send information from one corner to another. Inventing airplanes and computer chips would become extraordinarily difficult, as would outsourcing assembly lines to other countries.

AI is becoming smarter, cheaper, and faster.
What does high-speed AI mean?

1. Smarter. AI can perform more reasoning and retrieve more information within the same amount of time.
2. Large-scale collaboration among AI agents. Something is bound to "emerge."

Humans were able to invent computer chips and airplanes through high-speed communication; what will AI agents achieve through high-speed communication?

Only to discover that human gene sequences are nearly identical to those of chimpanzees, distinctly less complicated than the gene sequences of, say, rice, and that there would appear to be very little to be learned from them that's of immediate practical application. p133

David Graeber got some misunderstanding here about scientifical progress. It's not linear progress, but more like exponential progress.
Electromagnetic induction was found in 1831, and it took 70 years to use street lamps broadly.
Computer chips were invented around 60 years ago. It's not surprising that need 60 years to invent AI.

20260922 - 3 The Utopia of Rules, or Why We Really Love Bureaucracy After All 149

Yet in real world, all these departures from bureaucratic principle are experienced as abuses. In fantasy worlds, they are experienced as virtues. p186
Human's IO bandwidth is limited, and our memory and information processing speed is limited. For a group, if it's more than 20 people, it needs some bureaucracy(structure and procedure) that everyone understand and follow, so people in the group can cooperate with each other.

Bureaucracy should be like dam. It's necessary in some cases, but we should keep it minimum.

Everyone need to understand that the world is full of ambiguity, unfairness and surprises. We need to sacrifice the feeling of fully under control, for efficiency.

20260923 - Appendix 207

Revolutions are acts of law-breaking. p214
In superhero movies, heroes are always boring. They don't have anything to do but react.
Villains are always creative. They have goals and act.
"People" don't exist.