Topic: A Resource Based Economy - page 120. (Read 288375 times)

It seems LightRider is trying to break Woods's Law:

Whenever the private sector introduces an innovation that makes the poor better off than they would have been without it, or that offers benefits or terms that no one else is prepared to offer them, someone—in the name of helping the poor—will call for curbing or abolishing it.

You forget that the whole idea behind a Zeitgeist society is complete control management of the natural resources of the entire planet. that doesn't leave a lot of room for much of anything else really.

How many Star Trek movies are there already?

Don't you lot watch them?

What for we need waste time energy and resources, let along donations, on poorer attempts to represent interesting societies?

Are you lot even Trekkers at all? Or just timewasters, maybe even underminers seeking to undermine the vision by taking the valuable pocket change people might be able to use to obtain some free time to watch a trek episode or even a whole movie?

Movies have BEEN DONE already. You are not the we you keep talking about, you seem more like a bunch of wannabe grand nagi or high mucketty mucks yakking on and on about how EVERYONE ELSE should do something because YOU DO NOTHING and so that YOU CAN DO NOTHING.

Go scrub the transporter platform with a toothbrush then report for education at the holodeck.

-MarkM-

Yep.  Without a some sort of 'money' to convey 'value information' there will be no effective way to calculate the 'opportunity cost' of any action or inaction.

Money is the 'collective mind,' that the RBE talk about.  A free money takes into account the collective individuals' 'value' that the economy places on 'anything.'

Things that benefit society (bring in more useful resources) will be 'profitable,'  things that destroy useful resources will be 'unprofitable.'

There is only one moral code that people need to accept:  'only enter into voluntary relationship with other people.'  and the right for one to use 'self defence to stop cohesive violent force.'

Then people will be free to choose whatever society they want to live in.  Of course some will choose to live in 'Zeitgeist' communities, others will choose not to.

In general we all want the same things. We are set against each-other so that we do not collaborate to achieve our mutual desires by the machinations of the powerful few.

You advocate capitalism, the idea that trading x for y will lead to profitable outcomes for certain parties. I advocate sharing, using x and y for the benefit of everyone, with the understanding that the only "profit" to be had is a better world for all people.

One thing Venus Project is right about is that superabundance relative to today is possible, or should be at any rate. If they propose to have an computer that builds up anything that people ask, then sure, nothing about that idea is inconsistent with the idea of capitalism or of human action so long as they are not saying that capitalist acts between two consenting adults will become illegal. In this scenario the god-like computer will simply be fulfilling the role of a "super entrepreneur".

Eventually prices will be cheap, but prices will still exist. Even if a car becomes very cheap to build, it does not follow that each person will be able to own 50 000 cars each. So long as the universe is finite then there will be prices, and this is not something imposed upon us but rather something that follows as a necessary consequence of the fact that there is real scarcity in the world and there always will be, land is not homogeneous and neither are people, and each person has a different set subjective values. You cannot centrally plan knowledge that only exists inside the individual, like individual preferences and how they interact to allocate capital via the price mechanism.

Again, I see no reason why a "super entrepreneur" type of computer could not exist so I don't deny that. I don't think we're there today but certainly I can only imagine where we would be if not for all of the waste and misallocation caused by wars and central banking.

Venus Needs Some Austrians
Zeitgeist Movement along with the Venus Project (forum discussion)

Who doesn't want a better life? Who's "we"?

Yes, the central planning of the price of money has caused a great deal of disruption and misallocation. You hurt the many when you place the power of money in the hands of a select few.


Which economic institutions are you referring to, here? If you are referring to the problems caused by governments then I agree, but unfortunately there are laws of physical nature which impose a real cost on the exploitation of resources. It takes physical labor and capital to exploit resources and convert them into a form usable by people. It's not free.


Well, we can trade with people and exchange in mutually beneficial exchange. This is what I call capitalism. Or, we can force a person to do what we want. This is what I call statism. Either you use force or you don't. Maybe you don't use force in every sphere of life, but I don't think it's possible to "partially" force someone to go to jail or to pay their bills. How is this a false dichotomy?


Hell yes! It seems we want the same things, but this is what I call capitalism. Maybe we're simply talking about the same things?

Still cheaper than the lives we lose due to financial interest.

I'm really only interested in energy production; all the rest is stamp collecting.  But these are my thoughts on the tech in the video, in the order in which they appear:

Window Solar Cells
   Low efficiency, limited materials, and difficult to scale up production
   All of the windows in all the buildings on Earth would amount to about 100 Watts / person
      Not insignificant but probably not worth the cost

Space Solar Power
   Require 10 km^2 receivers?
   Huge risk of failure
   High energy costs of launch
   Limited materials
      Will only really be feasible once space mining / manufacturing is cost effective

Geothermal
   All of the potential geothermal energy in Iceland:
      20 TWh / year == 2,281,591,050 watts == 0.25 watts / person
      About one LED light bulb
   Requires good sites
   Deep drilling is energy intensive and risky

Ocean Thermal Energy / Organic Rankine Cycle
   This is interesting and I'm actually currently looking into this

Wave Power
   Looks like lots of concrete and steel
      Doesn't last long in saltwater
      Requires lots of energy to produce / poor EROEI

Floating Wind Farms
   Haven't done the EROEI on these but it is questionable
   Could have potential though

In General
   These are huge machines that require lots of skilled human labor to build
   And usually they don't scale down
   In a RBE, how do you convince skilled workers to build them for free?

Giant Vertical Axial Wind Turbines
   Even bigger machines
   Require extremely good sites -- coastal with high winds and no picky neighbors

Hydrocarbon Fuel Cells
   Useful on a small scale for peak power production
   That Bloom guy is lying about exponential growth in efficiency
      He's also lying about 'sand' being the basis of the tech
      There are probably some limited materials required
   Hydrocarbons are better used as transport fuel than for electricity
      Prices tell us this
      In an RBE we would have no price signals
   Co-gen has been used for a while and is cheaper on large scales
      Prices tell us this too

When we choose to value a better life for all people.

I think we should abolish slavery.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqv0Y1t1bNw

Human resources.


Okay, what resources are available that are not being utilized?  What sources of renewable energy, and what technologies, can be used to power machines like cars and steel mills for example?  How high of a standard of living can your ideal society produce given current technology?  Is it something along the lines of India/China or more like Western Europe?

Resources are everything that exists that can be used to produce what we need to live. We can harness the abundant natural renewable sources of energy to power machines that can produce abundant sources of food, clean air and water, and products necessary for a high standard of living. This can be done if we eschew the wasteful and unnecessary traditions and practices that we have had with us since antiquity.

Worldwide debt stands at trillions of dollars. What resources does this amount reflect? Prices are manipulated because information is private, not public when it comes to owning resource rich lands. Prices are arbitrary when the currency they are valued in can be manipulated to the benefit of a select few. There are more than enough resources available to provide for all people. Arbitrary restriction through economic institutions ensure that a small group of people maintain control over those resources at the detriment to the many. You assert a false dichotomy when you say we can only have statism or capitalism. We can choose to live without being subservient to anyone or anything but the laws that govern nature.

Along those lines, I'd like to know what constitutes a "resource".  Is it just raw materials?  Refined materials?  Produced goods?  Services?

And if it includes goods and services, then how do you propose to produce them in abundance?  Forced labor?  Zero-point energy generators?

A question for the RBE folks: How is any economic system not ultimately based on resources? If we're not living in a paradise as promised by RBE proponents, it's not because there's a conspiracy to hold back resources (although there is a lot of waste caused by governments). Prices are not arbitrary; they reflect actual availability of resources as well as demand for those resources. Simply asserting that "resources are abundant" will not magically make it so, and to the extent that any practitioners of RBE follow the principles of mutual exchange and trade then they are actually following capitalism (though probably not what they think of as capitalism). To the extent that they go against the principles of mutual exchange and trade then they are simply following statism, which might be fine for them but isn't fine for me. We have enough of that as it is.

From another thread:


No one has to beat anyone. We create the infrastructure necessary to provide access abundance to all people. There is no stealing because there wouldn't be a need to. There wouldn't be violence because there would be no need for it. We don't need a convoluted system of arbitrary resource restriction because all resources are available to those who need them. We spend enormous amounts of time and energy today to keep people from accessing what they need, and even more time and energy in punishing people who are forced to engage the system using undesirable methods and tactics. Unless those people happen to be in the upper percentage of wealth owners, in which case they can cause as much abuse as they wish without reprimand.

That's why I said "technical processes and information" need to be our guide, not individual opinions which are obviously flawed.