Don't Worry About the Vase Podcast From the Archives - Immoral Mazes
Leaving The Retreat Sparked The Series
- Zvi Moshowitz left a six-day meditation retreat early after realizing it wasn't a fit for him and returned refreshed.
- He used the retreat experience to kickstart drafting a sequence of posts called the Immoral Mazes series.
Perfect Competition Destroys Value
- Perfect competition, if truly realized, destroys all producer surplus and many forms of value by forcing optimization on a single axis.
- Yet real-world markets remain imperfect, which explains why value persists despite Moloch-style predictions.
Super-Perfect Competition Harms Producers
- Super-perfect competition removes exit options and drives profits below zero, destroying producer slack and freedom.
- It often benefits consumers short-term but undermines long-term differentiation and quality.
A “From the Archives” episode, the full Immoral Mazes sequence.
* 00:00:00 - Introduction
* 00:07:07 - Moloch Hasn’t Won, By Zvi Mowshowitz, December 28th, 2019
* 00:07:23 - Meditations on Moloch
* 00:12:50 - That’s Not How This Works, That’s Not How Any of This Works
* 00:15:15 - Moloch’s Army: An As-Yet Unjustified But Important Note
* 00:16:53 - Meditations on Elua
* 00:21:41 - Perfect Competition, By Zvi Mowshowitz, December 29th, 2019
* 00:21:51 - Perfect Competition
* 00:24:03 - Remind Me: What Exactly is Perfect Competition?
* 00:25:52 - Super-Perfect Competition
* 00:29:39 - Universal Perfect Competition
* 00:34:38 - Shocks are Inevitable
* 00:37:24 - Imperfect Competition, By Zvi Mowshowitz, December 30th, 2019
* 00:38:22 - 1. The Local Farmer’s Market
* 00:44:51 - 2. Supermarkets
* 00:48:57 - 3. Restaurants (in brief)
* 00:50:25 - 4. Buying a Car
* 00:56:55 - Does Big Business Hate Your Family?, By Zvi Mowshowitz, December 31st, 2019
* 00:57:53 - Reminder: Sufficiently Powerful Optimization Of Any Known Target Destroys All Value
* 00:58:41 - Does Big Business Hate Your Family?
* 01:03:30 - Do The Managers of Big Businesses Hate Your Family?
* 01:05:05 - Lacking all Preferences
* 01:07:04 - What is Life in an Immoral Maze?, By Zvi Mowshowitz, January 5th, 2020
* 01:08:41 - The Lifestyle of a Middle Manager
* 01:16:31 - Stripping Away the Protections, By Zvi Mowshowitz, January 8th, 2020
* 01:29:38 - The Opt-Out Clause
* 01:31:40 - Is This Missing Something?
* 01:32:31 - Mazes Everywhere
* 01:34:01 - The Next Questions
* 01:34:52 - What is Success in an Immoral Maze?, By Zvi Mowshowitz, January 10th, 2020
* 01:39:24 - How to Identify an Immoral Maze, By Zvi Mowshowitz, January 12th, 2020
* 01:41:16 - 1. How many levels of hierarchy exist?
* 01:44:05 - 2. Do people have skin in the game?
* 01:45:28 - 3. Do people have soul in the game?
* 01:46:12 - 4. How do people describe their job when you ask?
* 01:46:48 - 5. Is there diversity of skill levels? Is excellence possible and rewarded?
* 01:47:25 - 6. Is there slack?
* 01:47:45 - 7. Pay Attention
* 01:48:05 - Other Notes
* 01:48:55 - How Escape From Immoral Mazes, By Zvi Mowshowitz, January 16th, 2020
* 01:49:53 - To reiterate the main personal-level takeaway
* 01:50:14 - Problem statement
* 01:51:06 - How do we avoid immoral mazes?
* 01:52:24 - What do you do if you find yourself inside a maze?
* 01:52:51 - How do we justify our choice to others?
* 01:54:42 - How do you go about telling your new story? (Justification continued)
* 01:58:37 - What if my family or culture won’t accept my justifications?
* 02:02:21 - What if you’ve already self-modified too much?
* 02:04:27 - What if mazes are where our human and - or social capital pays off?
* 02:11:41 - If mazes are where my social and - or human capital pays off, what should I do?
* 02:13:39 - Become a Loser
* 02:15:12 - Take Risks
* 02:17:09 - Can You Change Things From the Top?
* 02:18:23 - What about if you are doing object-level work without anyone who reports to you, but you have a maze above you?
* 02:22:11 - Do I have a moral obligation to work in mazes to maximize my charitable giving?
* 02:23:20 - The Road to Mazedom, By Zvi Mowshowitz, January 18th, 2020
* 02:38:00 - How Doomed are Large Organizations?, By Zvi Mowshowitz, January 21st, 2020
* 02:39:17 - Are these dynamics the inevitable result of large organizations?
* 02:40:12 - How can we forestall these dynamics within an organization?
* 02:43:27 - The Goodhart Trap
* 02:46:13 - To what extent should we avoid creating large organizations?
* 02:50:33 - Has this dynamic ever been different in the past in other places and times?
* 02:55:50 - Ten Causes of Mazedom, By Zvi Mowshowitz, January 25th, 2020
* 02:56:56 - Why was it different? Can we duplicate those causes?
* 02:57:52 - Cause 1: More Real Need For Large Organizations
* 02:59:45 - Cause 2: Laws and Regulations Favor Large Organizations
* 03:01:05 - Cause 3: Less Disruption of Existing Organizations
* 03:03:44 - Cause 4: Increased Demand for Illusion of Safety and Security
* 03:10:43 - How do these phenomena raise maze levels?
* 03:13:56 - Cause 5: Rent Seeking is More Widespread and Seen as Legitimate
* 03:14:41 - Cause 6: Big Data, Machine Learning and Internet Economics
* 03:17:26 - Cause 7: Ignorance
* 03:27:37 - Cause 8: Atomization and the Delegitimization of Human Social Needs
* 03:31:43 - Cause 9: Educational System
* 03:33:35 - Cause 10: Vicious Cycle
* 03:36:53 - More Mazes, More Problems
* 03:37:15 - Potential Ways to Fight Mazes, By Zvi Mowshowitz, January 28th, 2020
* 03:39:37 - Solution 1: Knowledge
* 03:43:00 - Solution 2: Regulatory Reform
* 03:45:02 - Solution 3: End Corporate Welfare, Too Big to Fail and Implicit Subsidies
* 03:49:25 - Solution 4: Tort Reform
* 03:52:46 - Solution 5: Health Care Reform
* 03:55:46 - Solution 6: Demand Less Illusion of Safety and Security
* 03:58:11 - Solution 7: Change Consumer Behavior
* 04:01:59 - Solution 8: End Maze Legitimacy and High Status, and - or Raise Real Work Legitimacy and Status
* 04:04:18 - Solution 9: Forcibly Break Up Large Companies
* 04:10:24 - Last Idea
* 04:10:42 - Create a Full Alternative Stack, By Zvi Mowshowitz, January 31st, 2020
* 04:11:23 - Solution 10: Create a Full Alternative Stack
* 04:21:54 - Protecting Large Projects Against Mazedom, By Zvi Mowshowitz, February 3rd, 2020
* 04:23:22 - Solution 1: Do Less Things and Be Smaller
* 04:25:33 - Solution 2: Minimize Levels of Hierarchy
* 04:25:56 - Solution 3: Skin in the Game
* 04:26:29 - Solution 4: Soul in the Game
* 04:27:05 - Solution 5: Hire and Fire Carefully
* 04:27:31 - Solution 6: Promote, Reward and Evaluate Carefully
* 04:28:15 - Solution 7: Fight for Culture
* 04:28:38 - Solution 8: Avoid Other Mazes
* 04:29:03 - Solution 9: Start Again
* 04:29:43 - Mazes Sequence Roundup: Final Thoughts and Paths Forward, By Zvi Mowshowitz, February 6th, 2020
* 04:29:59 - Moloch’s Army
* 04:31:13 - Moloch’s Puzzle
* 04:33:32 - Good News, Everyone!
* 04:35:41 - Conclusion
* 04:36:49 - Paths Forward
* 04:54:43 - Acknowledgements
The Don’t Worry About the Vase Podcast is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new posts and support the cost of creation, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe