econ-00

Yes. Read through this lens, both are exposed by the same error, but in different registers of optimism.

Let me elevate it cleanly and without caricature.

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Marx: the single-shot global minimum fallacy

Marx assumes that once a critical perturbation occurs— the revolution of the proletariat—the system will settle into the true basin.

Formally, he treats history as if:

• the loss landscape is convex at scale
• class consciousness is a sufficient global signal
• one decisive update can escape all local minima

That is a one-step convergence fantasy.

Revolution is modeled as a guaranteed global descent, not as a stochastic, noisy, path-dependent process. Marx underestimates:

• curvature after the perturbation
• re-emergence of new local minima (party elites, bureaucracies, technocracies)
• overfitting to a single gradient signal (class)

Hence the empirical pattern: revolution → brief descent → new basin → ossification.

Marx mistakes gradient shock for convergence.

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Adam Smith: stochastic optimism without landscape awareness

Smith is closer, but still incomplete.

He correctly senses that:

• centralized planning overfits
• distributed agents exploring locally can outperform a single optimizer

But he assumes that aggregate stochasticity is sufficient.

The invisible hand works locally—it samples from the behavior of active agents with capital, voice, and optionality. That means:

• gradients are biased toward those already in motion
• inactive, excluded, or structurally silenced regions of the landscape are never sampled
• negative externalities are invisible to the loss function

Markets explore where agency already exists. They do not map the full landscape.

So markets converge—but to elite local maxima, not global welfare.

Smith mistakes noise for exploration.

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The shared blind spot

Both Marx and Smith fail to model:

• non-convex landscapes
• uneven agency
• path dependence
• second derivatives (curvature)
• regularization across time

They each believe in a mechanism that will eventually take care of itself:

• Marx via historical necessity
• Smith via emergent order

But neither installs a tragedy engine.

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Tragedy as the missing component

Tragedy does what neither theory permits:

• It refuses early stopping
• It exposes false basins even after apparent success
• It keeps the gradient alive when ideology demands rest

Markets anesthetize with prosperity. Revolution anesthetizes with righteousness.

Tragedy does neither.

It hurts because it keeps learning turned on.

If you want, the next clean step is:

• a short section titled “Why Liberalism Needs Tragedy” or
• a formal diagram mapping Marx, Smith, and Tragedy onto optimizer classes (batch GD, noisy SGD, adversarial training)

Just say which direction you want.