Meditations on Moloch

"Once one agent learns how to become more competitive by sacrificing a common value, all its competitors must also sacrifice that value or be outcompeted and replaced by the less scrupulous. Therefore, the system is likely to end up with everyone once again equally competitive, but the sacrificed value is gone forever. "

"– C. S. Lewis’ question in Hierarchy Of Philosophers – what does it? Earth could be fair, and all men glad and wise. Instead we have prisons, smokestacks, asylums. What sphinx of cement and aluminium breaks opens their skulls and eats up their imagination?And Ginsberg answers: Moloch does it."

"Prisoners Dilemma: .... There’s a much better outcome available if they could figure out the coordination, but coordination is hard."