Topic: A Resource Based Economy - page 104. (Read 288375 times)

1. Actually, this one is kind of easy. Market prices are based on supply/demand. Destroying things reduces it's supply. The more of something is destroyed in the free market, the more expensive it becomes, and the less people want it or are willing to pay for it. Eventually the market will get to a point where continuing to destroy some things is just not profitable any more. UNLESS we have a non-free market player, such as the government, deciding that some things are needed for the general good of the population, and subsidizes that good. Example is corn, which we use in many of our foods, which is subsidized to the point where it costs more to grow it than it's sold for, and which is screwing up our land with overfarming.
As for companies polluting, the bigger issue is the lack of a legal recourse for people to defend their property against polluting factories. I would argue that that's more a problem of the legal system than a free market.

2. People are greedy. They want things done to make them rich. If they are freely allowed to have other people work for them to make them richer, and pay those other people competitive wages, those other people will have money to buy food and not starve if they chose not to. That's not the case in Africa, where greedy free-market people are being kept out by greedy gun-toting people.

No one is saying free market avoids the destruction of the planet. Is the people in the free market the ones who have to do it.

I agree with you on that. I was just pointing out the errors of your argumentation.


No, is not a believe.
If you argue logically and based on premises that I accept as valid, you can convince me.
I believe you can't do it.

EDIT I don't want to be rude. I believe you can't do it in this particular case.

They are not starving because the free market has failed them, they are starving because they live in oppressive regimes with a lot of warlords, crime, and tribal skirmishes, which are preventing the free market from existing.

Devil's advocate question here: If I moved into a TZM commune, what would prevent me from taking the "freely available" resources to the point where there is a bit of a shortage of them, and then selling them to people in exchange for, say, making them work to build me something that is otherwise unavailable? (example, I keep "needing" more and more water, which I store away, until there is a water shortage, and I force people to build me a yacht in exchange for letting them have a bit of water)

If the dynamic equilibrium (which you stated was to goal to achieve by using the scientific method) can be obtained in various ways, you need another value do chose the best alternative.
And again SCIENCE DOES NOT PROVIDES VALUES, nor a direction to go, nor a meaning of life.


Well, then you have to define formally "well being".


That's why I think sustainability is not compatible with people having free access to what they want.


I know.
I don't think free market capitalists believe we have 10 planets.
Also I don't like capitalism, just free market. Gesell can explain you in depth how to end with capitalism without eliminating free market.


There's many factors that lead to inequality, you can't blame the free market and pretend that is obvious.
Big companies are often "powered" by states, they also use coercion (coercion is not free trade).
What do you mean by "more capitalist country"?
Is the US more capitalist than China?


The producer could be just you or me. I'm talking about people when I say producer.
There's no authorities or there's no producers in a RBE?


Monopolies, cartels and such need some form of coercion to keep being monopolies.


My plan for sustainability is probably close to yours: increase localization of food and energy production, permaculture, renewable energies...
I just think we don't have to sacrifice freedom for that. As you said, people must educate themselves and the scarcity of resources will help on that.
Have you heard about peak oil?
We just won't have a monetary system that is based on exponential growth like the one we have today. Just because is unsustainable.
To replace it you don't want money at all.
Most people on this forum prefer gold-like money (bitcoin).
I prefer ripple and/or freicoin because gold leads to interest and I think that's a flaw.

What in the world are you talking about?

The people in Africa, Asia and South America are not starving because they don't want to eat. It's because they have no food to eat.

Hey guys, you think he's really serious or what?

Well how serious are you about preventing them from starving?

Laissez-faire, heck if they want to starve let them?

Is it my fault, heck its not as if I took a job they could have done instead of me, why don't they just get a job, if they had any skills I'd hire them but sheesh I am having a hard enough time just feeding my own SUV?

I'm a doctor, not an economist. If they cannot eat what the nurse carries over from the replicator tell Scotty to replicate something we can give them intravenously?

-MarkM-

I agree. Nobody is suggesting to do that.


Are you high? Or just joking? I don't know if I should take this seriously or not.

What evidence indicates that they do?

Even if not in a free market system maybe they do not?

Are systems any solution at all or part of the problem? Systems have not had a great track record have they?

Are they to be forced to remain in a free market system, or are they simply going to stubbornly insist on remaining in one even if they starve?

Free market proponents hereabouts seem to tend to think the market is not in fact free if people are forced to participate.

However merely giving starving people as many acres of as-arable land (or, generically, "resources") per capita as non-starving people supposedly also has a poor track record as a means of preventing them from starving.

Maybe the only way to prevent them starving would be to invoke some medical doctrine or something that claims to take priority over the freedom of the market, permitting them to be fed intravenously due to suffering from a medical condition (starving person syndrome? hunger? chronic failure to receive enough intravenous nourishment? I guess then it'd come down to doctors versus free marketeers, with maybe the marketeers jeering at the doctors saying if they perform this medical service they are basically slaves, that if they were truly free their hippocratic oath would mean less to them than the jeers of the marketeers, or something?)

-MarkM-

People act according to their environment and stimula.

I'll ask again.

1. How do the people in a free market system avoid the destruction of the inhabitable planet from which we depend on to survive?
2. How do the people in free market system ensure that no people will starve unnecessarily?

As far as I can tell from the wording, it seems to me that free market does not [...], people do (or, possibly, do not).

("Free markets don't kill people, people do"?)

What consititutes necessity in a free market? Possibly such markets might include propaganda profitably explaining how necessary it is that people starve. Who was it who had that .sig about wolves maximising the value of sheep by re-arranging them into marketable food, in effect? Is a market which attempts to prevent evolutionary assets such as aggressiveness, teeth, claws, willingness to prey and kill, from being permissable / marketable / useable products or services truly free?

The material in this part of the thread doesn't really seem to address 2 directly but certainly does not seem to indicate free markets solve the problem.

Could it be that you might have grasped the text clearer had it said the people instead of the people in the free market? As maybe mentioning where the people happened to be (in a free market) distracted you from the idea it is the people who must do it if it is to be done, toward some idea that only if the people were in a free market they could or would do so? (I would take it more as implying that if there not people in the market there probably would not be much that could or would happen to prevent the undesired results...)

-MarkM-

OK, let me rephrase then.

1. How does the free market avoid the destruction of the inhabitable planet from which we depend on to survive?
2. How does the free market ensure that no people will starve unnecessarily?

Quite eager to hear.

We could debate about numbers and quality, but it's beside the point.

The point is that it was questioned whether people would do anything without monetary compensation.

The answer is clearly: yes, they have and they will.


Finally, you admit that you have a personal belief, which cannot be changed, regardless of whatever evidence is proposed.

I guess that kind of ends it.

Faith over reason and reality.

How did you get from "The free market won't provide that. The people within the free market have to do it. If they chose suicide and self destruction, there's nothing free market can do. Free market can't impede suicide." to "you have a blind faith, or a blind wish, that the free market will, somehow, avoid that." ?

Is there some grammatical or syntactical quirk of the language you think in that takes that English in some completely different way than (I am relatively sure) most English would probably take it?

There seems to be a massive gap or divide here between what you got and what you got it from... upon re-reading it, does it still say what you thought it said, or does it maybe seem amenable to some other interpretation now?

-MarkM-

I think you're wrong on this. Maybe you're right in the number of developers but most free software is paid to be produced.
I bet Google alone (and is not the only big company that produces free software) produces more free software than all the volunteers together.


I don't think you can convince me that the scientific can tell you what to do, either with a video or with logic argumentation.
The seed of Nietsche is inside of me. I can't confuse science with morals anymore.

It can.

What is the alternative? Invisible hands guided by God, or maybe Santa?


Good or bad are loaded terms. Let's say: "diminishes or maximises well being". That is objective. Starvation diminishes well being, that's a fact.

Come on jtimon, let's be practical.


Free access is according to the availability. They go hand in hand.

Geez.

Look, it's real simple. The planet has a carrying capacity of X, you have to manage it accordingly. You can't pretend you have 10 planets.

Sadly, free market capitalists believe we have 10 planets to spare.

Sorry to break the news for you: we don't.


It's not my opinion, the data shows that. The more capitalist a country is, the more inequality and social darwinism. Th more inequality, the more problems.


You still think os the producer as an individual or a central authority. In an RBE there is no such a thing, ergo what you state is a non sequitur.


If you can't see how the market continuously creates oligopolies, cartels and monopolies without any regard for the environment or the people at large, you have missed the last 50 years of our history.

Shall I go and list all human activities, and how 90% of the market is controlled by no more than 5 companies, that continuously destroy the environment?

Please wake up and open your eyes.

We are not talking about abstract philosophy or theoretical models. We are talking about real life.


OK, so finally I get it.

You have no plan to avoid self-destruction, you have a blind faith, or a blind wish, that the free market will, somehow, avoid that.

Any explanation on how that may happen?

That's not far from what we advocate, but if we really want to succeed that people would have to wake up and start other communes all around the world, improve from the initial design, and make it holographic.

The general culture has to change, otherwise we'll have a working sustainable city, while the rest of the world is going to shit. Eventually it will catch up and reach us as well, so isolation is not really an option.


The only thing that is prohibited in the movement is violence. I guess you can fill in the gaps yourself.


Thanks.

Hey, we're all in this together, after all, we only have one planet

I'm sorry if you don't like that term. Yes I made it up inspired by your videos. You can chose another one you feel more confortable with.
But not dynamic equilibrium, because there's many ways to achieve it and you claim science can make you decide one.


You say good is subjective but bad is objective.
I don't like starvation, but I don't think it is objectively bad. Bad (as good) is always subjective .


Finally understood. Sustainability is a priority over people getting free access to their necessities.
When a conflict appears, sutainability gets first and the free access may be stopped when necessary.


If there were evidences, it may evident to me. But I (and many people) happen to think different from you. You can say that's because our ignorance, but that wouldn't be an argument.
As far as I can tell, nobody defends social darwinism nor eugenics here.
I don't think free trade results in "poor getting poorer and rich getting richer", but if it did, then can't imply "almost complete social immobility" at the same time.


If TZM believes Interest is a problem, I can provide you material and links to other organizations that think the same way.
Here's an example:

http://www.complementarycurrency.org/

Not all the currencies listed there have a way to prevent interest (demurrage or mutual credit).


Unless the producer of the good/service you need/want wants to give it to you as charity, you either have to coerce him or give him something he wants/needs in exchange.
Money's just a proxy.


No. This your an opinion. It must be proved to become science.


We have the same goals, we just differ in the means needed to achieve it.


The free market won't provide that. The people within the free market have to do it.
If they chose suicide and self destruction, there's nothing free market can do. Free market can't impede suicide.

So essentially you want to start a form of commune to prove this can be done while holding zero desire to force people to refrain from their voluntary transactions in a free market based on whatever form of currency or barter they choose? If so, I would have little issue with your creating an experiment and allowing people to voluntarily join or disregard such. I would be surprised, however, if TZMs theories around environmental degradation didn't lead to calls to use force against those involved in voluntary transactions that your movement deemed as socially reckless or harmful to the environment.

If force and the involuntary redistribution of private land is entirely out of the equation then I would simply say good luck to you and let me know how it goes.

Yes, luckily environmental groups are changing the general culture, but so far very few social systems have done anything substantial about it.

Notable exceptions: Iceland, Sweden and Norway, but far from being really sustainable, and the core problem is not addressed (namely: why do companies pollute so much and how do you prevent that in the first place?)

Nobody is addressing that.