Zooko on externalities
Zooko read my comment on externalities and said
I strongly feel that there is a single consistent moral position on externalities.I think that all externalities that can be internalized without too much social cost should be and that society as a whole benefits thereby.
I feel so strongly about it because I suspect that successful internalizations are the root of almost all progress, historically. People might not notice because successful internalizations are "normal property" if you were born in a culture that had already internalized it.
This sounds good, but how do we know what "too much social cost" is? In a sense the idea is almost tautologically true if you accept a kind of cost-benefit analysis with regard to externalities.
It seems to me that Zooko's position is kind of like saying that virtue consists in behaving virtuously, or that rational behavior is a matter of doing what's reasonable. It's more interesting than those kinds of assertions, but it still seems to have an element of circularity.
At the Noe Venable concert (mentioned below), I was thinking that every human activity may have some externality -- a frightening thought, a terrifying thought.
