"Economic efficiency often undermines sociopolitical autonomy" by Richard_Ngo

Many people in my intellectual circles use economic abstractions as one of their main tools for reasoning about the world. However, this often leads them to overlook how interventions which promote economic efficiency undermine people's ability to maintain sociopolitical autonomy. By “autonomy” I roughly mean a lack of reliance on others—which we might operationalize as the ability to survive and pursue your plans even when others behave adversarially towards you. By “sociopolitical” I mean that I’m thinking not just about individuals, but also groups formed by those individuals: families, communities, nations, cultures, etc.[1]

The short-term benefits of economic...