Moloch

Moloch is many things:

• In religion, Moloch is an ancient god of child sacrifice, one who would trade power and triumph for your child.
• In Allen Ginsberg's poem, Moloch is an entity of sorts, an all-encompassing force that perpetuates chaos and misery in our world.
• In a famous essay by Scott Alexander, Meditations on Moloch, Moloch is used as a metaphor for both of the above: a god-like, intangible force that upholds faulty systems by making us sacrifice what we love most for a bit of competitive advantage. An invisible hand that prevents us from improving certain systems.

Everyone can recognize that a system is faulty. The education system prioritizes all but education. We spend billions on the military that could be spent on healthcare. Why?

Not because we wouldn't notice that these things are broken, but because of an invisible force - Moloch - that prevents us from improving them.

People ask why we can’t reform the education system. But right now students’ incentive is to go to the most prestigious college they can get into so employers will hire them – whether or not they learn anything. Employers’ incentive is to get students from the most prestigious college they can so that they can defend their decision to their boss if it goes wrong – whether or not the college provides value added. And colleges’ incentive is to do whatever it takes to get more prestige, as measured in US News and World Report rankings – whether or not it helps students.

If only there was an entity so powerful that it could change the incentives, all at once. But we don't have one, so every individual is better off playing by the system, even if everyone hated it. Moloch is a coordination problem: Everyone acting rationally in their own self-interest leads to a bad outcome for everyone involved.

Moloch is also the reason why people can easily seem hypocritical when they're not. One can criticize and loathe the capitalist system, yet live by its rules and even pursue success in that system. Yes, it would be more honest and virtuous to try to exit the system - but how would that be rewarded? Does that feed the kids? You swear you'll never start posting cringey LinkedIn posts about your half-marathon and 5 lessons learned, but your co-workers that did are now your managers, so you let go of your values and start twerking for the dollar, even if it kills you inside.

The more you look at the systems around you (education, healthcare, workplace, modern dating, social media algorithms...), the more you see Moloch.

• The famous post by Scott Alexander: Meditations on Moloch. One of those that instantly makes things click in your head.
• Zugzwang