Federalist No. 6

In fact, I only consider one thing important: that the simplest, most profitable contracts are concluded and executed. More precisely, of course, we're talking about tragedy of the commons and prisoners' dilemmas, but there won't be any technical explanations. For example, the rule "always pay artists and programmers for a day's worth of testing" is common courtesy. Judging by complaints online, it's almost never followed in our country. Of course, from a business perspective, the idea of ​​"always paying" for something you can get for free sounds strange. But almost all cooperative strategies only make sense if the situation is repeated systematically. Although, in fact, that's exactly the situation we're living in. Also, such a strategy doesn't require reshaping the entire market. It's just that if all counterparties know that Dark Corp Mafia always screws everyone, and Light Corp Alliance always pays its debts, then everyone who wants to cooperate rather than screw back will prefer Light Corp Alliance. Looking at the intellectual landscape, there are two types of good deals: those that exist right now, just elsewhere. Or those that are technically optimal in the eyes of anyone knowledgeable about the subject and not biased toward modern practices. Almost all such deals have existed before, but we've simply moved away from them. Take, for example, the indexed internet. Most content is now on non-indexed proprietary services, and this is a result of the convenience of such services, not because users care about anonymity. The problem with enforcing such contracts is that they initially require additional costs, and all other counterparties will be dishonest. Uber, for example, hasn't made taxis a fully functional equivalent of a personal car, one you can rely on anytime and anywhere. Due to the desire to keep prices low and compete with public transportation, taxi aggregators have become more of a sweatshop for taxi drivers than an environment where a person without a car can easily enter into a contract with someone behind the wheel. There's a principle: "worse is better" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better), and my principle is "better is better." In evolution, you can't create mechanisms B, C, D, E, F so that when adaptation A appears, it works incredibly well. If A doesn't provide an advantage, then further development won't occur. Civilization is surprisingly irrational, so those who acted on the idea that "worse is better" and only did A captured most of the markets. But some people are intelligent. Therefore, resources can be spent on B—the proper business infrastructure for the emerging institution. So that it can be improved and rebuilt without getting stuck in the mechanics of irrational evolution. I'm not asking for perfect intelligence; I demand one small step of intelligence, so that we differentiate ourselves from nature. You might think I'm talking about technology. Almost certainly not; I'm talking only about law; technology is just a nuance. Almost all questions about the technical architecture of the infrastructure are political and legal issues, not technical ones. Websites vs. social media pages, a boiler vs. central heating, a car vs. public transportation. These are mostly questions of law and its inertia, not technology. People swim across oceans and drown in puddles. UPD: Illustration of the "better is better" principle: https://www.paulgraham.com/icad.html If you look at these languages in order, Java, Perl, Python, you notice an interesting pattern. At least, you notice this pattern if you are a Lisp hacker. Each one is progressively more like Lisp. Python copies even features that many Lisp hackers consider to be mistakes. You could translate simple Lisp programs into Python line for line. It's 2002, and programming languages have almost caught up with 1958. Catching Up with Math What I mean is that Lisp was first discovered by John McCarthy in 1958, and popular programming languages are only now catching up with the ideas he developed then. Now, how could that be true? Isn't computer technology something that changes very rapidly? I mean, in 1958, computers were refrigerator-sized behemoths with the processing power of a wristwatch. How could any technology that old even be relevant, let alone superior to the latest developments? I'll tell you how. It's because Lisp was not really designed to be a programming language, at least not in the sense we mean today. What we mean by a programming language is something we use to tell a computer what to do. McCarthy did eventually intend to develop a programming language in this sense, but the Lisp that we actually ended up with was based on something separate that he did as a theoretical exercise-- an effort to define a more convenient alternative to the Turing Machine. Author: Light