Topic: A Resource Based Economy - page 37. (Read 288384 times)

Do you have an example of an objective measurement of goodness that I (and everyone other human being from the beginning of time until today) missed?

I have no doubt that you can come up with any number of subjective measurements that just by sheer coincidence happen to support your views.  Any fool can do that, and plenty have.

Sometimes.  Sometimes they just find companies with a competing product that's blocking them from getting monopoly prices, buy them out, kill the competing product, and start charging monopoly rates. 

Remember, "More efficient" is not always globally more efficient.  Sometimes it means people pay more money for an inferior product, while simultaneously reducing the amount of that payment devoted to development of better solutions.  The only thing "more efficient" in this scenario is the rate at which the pockets of the investors get filled - and that only in the short term, since the industry is deprived of the progress in efficiency that comes with competition. 

Much argument about efficiency is really about points of view and timeframes.  That which is "more efficient" in producing return on investment in a single company in the next quarter is not usually the same as that which is "more efficient" in producing return on investment in an entire industry (or an entire economy) over the next ten, twenty, etc. years.   The social interest in efficiency is in the latter, long-term industry-wide or economy-wide view.  The capitalist's interest in efficiency is usually measured in the first view only.

Even within a single company, you get different efficiencies with different points of view depending on how much of their fortune someone has invested.  A coalition of Angel investors with 51% of a startup's stock, who have themselves invested only 3% of their own wealth into the startup, would rather pursue a 10% chance of absolutely dominating a market (and making 20X on their investment) than a 60% chance of just making a profitable company (and making 2X on their investment).  But the founder who has sunk every dime he's ever earned into this company, who will be absolutely ruined if it fails and doesn't have money to invest in anything else to offset the risk, has a very different view of the world.   He's looking at a company that could work just fine, and he knows it, and he is getting wound up and run into a brick wall like a crash test dummy instead, taking insanely high risks of failure.   The interests of the Angels and the founder are not in fact aligned, even though both succeed if the company succeeds. 

Just a random point. 

It's not a matter of belief, it's the limitation of their optics. They operate under presumptions set forth by authorities without question. Limiting ones measure to only profits demonstrates that only tools that measure profits are used and any other data is discarded. This is called observational bias.

I find it nearly impossible for you or any rational sane person to believe that.

See?  This is why I usually just skip over this thread.

Profit is the only objective measure of goodness that the world has.

LOL., actually, i watched that one 2 days ago.


Yeah, maybe i was exaggerating. That process can be a good purge.
What i was talking about is more like hostile takeovers where one firm takes over a competitor just to rip it apart.
Meanwhile, the efficiency you talk about is not directly related to the quality of the product or service the company delivers. Maximizing profits is more often than not the goal for these gutting operations.
That is for the good of the shareholders, not for the good of people in general.

Just out of curiosity, what do you think that corporate raiders do exactly?  Is it like the Monty Python skit where a bunch of accountants swoop in with cutlasses, kill everyone and burn the place to the ground?

Because here in reality, what corporate raiders do is find companies that are inefficient and that can be broken up and the assets sold.  Sold means that someone else is buying, which then strongly suggests that the buyers are able to make better use of those assets.  Basically the opposite of waste.

Corporate raiding comes to mind...
Anyway, there is so much wasting of resources and energy going on in various markets that i wouldn't know where to start...

Oh, you mean the wars driven by our western markets?
The ones driven by lobbys from the military industrial complex?
I hope you realize that the 3rd party you speak of could be you, at least that is how it's supposed to work. Companies serve their own selfish needs so we (non corporate entities) need to organize to get some community needs otherwise nothing will happen.
Discussing the US gov is pointless they are fully owned by industry. They are not 'one of the best governments', in fact they are pretty sitty it's just that they leave enough of the markets off the leash to hook everyone on their shiny debt economy.
 

And it's not a question about either/or.
It's about the right kind of governance.
Too little and companies will F*** everyone in te ass.
Too much (or the wrong kind of) control and the government will F*** everyone in the ass.
I would say that in countries like the US the situation is special and people get F***ed from both sides.
But usually a government seeks a balance between all factors that make up a society.

If you think governments are scary, wait till you learn how multinationals play them like puppets and blame it all on them.
And this does not negate the need for proper governance. Governance is what all known civilizations are built on.

Ahh yes the vision of the anointed, you believe a third party can make better decisions for people then themselves. You think the market is a ravenous beast? Do you not see the dead bodies in the middle east? 2 world wars in the past century, empires constantly rising and crumbling, inflation robbing the citizens of their wealth, an ever increasing and pervasive government and the US is one of the better governments which is very scary, and the market is the ravenous beast?

I'm not sure how somebody can waste resources without being connected to them? Are you talking about banks? I bet they would care if the government allowed them to feel the consequences of their waste.

Well, the problem in the real world is that this is not true.
In fact, the amount of resources wasted on failed projects is staggering.
The only prerequisite for this wasting is that the waster is not directly or visibly connected to the resources being wasted.
If that holds people will piss away anything of value.
And it holds pretty often.

The big problem with this type of capitalistic system is that it mostly produces things that the market wants, and hardly the things that the market needs. This line of thinking will bring you ice cream all the way down to hell instead of preventing going to hell in the first place.
That's why we have structures like goverments. It gives a context and a direction to the wasting so the resources are wasted less.
But the market on its own is a ravenous beast that will eat up anything it can make money off of.

Money is not an illusion, money is a technology invented by people to be able to effectively assess the trade value of goods instead of using the inefficient system of barter, this is why Zeitgeisters frustrate me so much, you're attacking something you don't even understand, you just state something is arbitrary without even explaining yourself, why is it a fantasy? What is irregular about the tape measure? Where is the conceit? There's nothing arbitrary about the market price of something, the price system is the aggregation of the subjective values of everybody in the market economy. If you can't get money, it means you can't produce something of value that somebody wants, so you should look into yourself rather than blaming it on the rich people, granted there are some rich people that got their with morally questionable methods but those are the minority.

What is this technical measurement that produces objective results? It's funny Zeitgeisters just pull out nice words without going into any theory, same as the communists, oh if we all just shared everything and helped the needy and the poor, we have the capacity to save everyone but you won't let us do it.


There are reasons why we do not embark on unprofitable projects, it's because it's waste of resources. If I decide one day I'm gonna devote my time to making typewriters, sink my time, effort and finite resources into this business and then at the end when I start selling them and nobody wants to buy them that's terrible, I've just wasted finite resources that somebody else could have used more effectively and I have actually caused society to become poorer because those resources that went into making typewriters could have gone into making stuff people actually want. Profit should be celebrated, profit is the signal that you have provided something that people want, when you give people what they want it usually enriches their life in some way, so don't complain people won't let you use their stuff because it wouldn't be profitable, if everybody was allowed to do whatever they wanted without care for profit or loss, we would all be much poorer.

For those still invested in the future success of capitalism, this review of recent events might be of interest to you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMXfBm0IPd0

Your actually getting very close with your analogy.  Your car analogy is similar to one we use that money is like a Road and interest is like a wagon sitting in the road blocking traffic and collecting a toll, but a car is a close enough analog, the purpose of a road or car is transportation much as money is meant to facilitate commerce.  

But a real car requires materials and labor to make and it's decay is caused by usage (mostly) rather then time, so it is really not much different from a box-of-tissues or hamburger, your paying for production inputs that are now being consumed when the item is used (indeed that is the way we treat cars).  Money though is not created from resources nor is it used up by transactions like a physical commodity is so we do not need to worry about if their will or will not BE any money (we have the opposite problem of who will get seignorage instead), just if people will 'invest' in owning money in order to rent it.  But if the demurrage car already exists by Fiat creation and demurrage car is costing the person who holds it $50 a day regardless of if it's driven or not, so if your not going to be driving your car your going to loan it to someone for $50 a day.

So no one ever needs to 'invest' in cars in order for them to exist or for them to be available to borrows, and really investing means using resources for a productive asset with risk, their is no such thing as investing in money.  We do not believe people should be 'investing' in money to make more money, their will be plenty of incentive to rent money without a positive interest rate because the incentive to lend is the Difference between the interest rate and the demurrage rate.

As for chopping down the forest, we want people to make the sustainable harvest which maximizes total production over an unbound time horizon.  Most natural resources can yield small amounts indefinitely if not over-harvested, a good example would be a fishery.  If some new asset class is available that offers a higher rate of return then the sustainable rate of harvesting then yes their would still be every incentive to over-harvest IF such investment opportunities exist.

But when money alone is not such an asset it will cause the rate of return on nearly ALL investments to decline because the competitive rate-of-return on capitol will never fall below interest rates.  Thus we would expect returns to fall to very low levels and entrepreneurs drive down prices and capitol investments return just above 0% returns, natural regeneration is generally well in the double digit returns so it would never be wise to destroy a perpetual source of wealth (nature) for a smaller source (capitol).

I was just pointing out that interest on money is analogous to paying rent to get use of something. So, when I am borrowing money and paying it back with interest, I am in effect renting many dollar bills, and paying monthly rent on each one.
So, if we use the type of money that has nominal interest rates reaching zero, isn't that the same thing as renting a car for $50 a day, with the car being so fragile and shitty that it loses $50 a day in value? I don't think any car rental place would bother investing in such a car, since they won't make any money renting it to others.
This will also apply to money. If everyone in the world used the same money, which had built-in demurage or some other method of making interest on lending be 0, landowners with trees will still make Discount Rate judgements, and chop down their trees for something else they believe will hold or rise in value.

One day, we will achieve more than democracy+capitalism can do.

I await eagerly to see how.  I suspect individuals will ultimately have even less influence on a hypothetical well-managed society than they have now.  I suspect that individuals will no longer be employed in a decision-making capacity in government at all.  Perhaps we will all become the "pets" of some utterly invasive AI that keeps track of every damn breath we take and knows where we are at all times.  I fully expect to be utterly surprised, and possibly initially horrified, when something that seems to fly in the face of my long-held humanist beliefs starts getting better results. 

But in the long run it is the results that matter. 

Of course, precisely the same methods could be used to achieve results horrific beyond all imagining. 

Here we go again with the fairytale super duper computers.

Show us a program or otherwise a system that can successfully manage an RBE.
Without it the whole idea is garbage can material.

You can not provide anything because you simply don't have the tools to technically measure and assess with unambiguous and objective results.
If this is not a fantasy then please first provide some evidence that such a method exists at all. Then we can see for ourselfs what it provides and what not.
Otherwise, dream on.

LightRider:  All value is subjective under ANY system, even knowing/cataloging everything on Earth dose not assign value to it, for that we still need subjective human judgment, and yes humans will make errors in judgment that is inevitable under ANY system.  Simply saying you will 'computerize' things doesn't eliminate error, it's plain old Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Answer me in a simple yes or no, are you reading anything I am linking?  If you are unable or unwilling to do so then please say so as I would then know that this conversation is pointless.  So far none of your responses lead me to believe you have read any of my links.  I am trying to have an honest debate here and I've seen the Zeitgeist movie so you as an apologist for it are obligated to read the counter argument material I present.

"Real value" is a matter of opinion in a monetary system. Since money is entirely an idea, an illusion and distortion of reality, it can offer no benefit in assessing what is truly valuable to humanity. By using technical measurement and assessment with unambiguous and objective results, we can provide a true picture and a clear course of action regarding human organization and enterprise. Subjecting ourselves to arbitrary whim and false authority is the path that leads to our destruction. There is no getting around this fact. There is no arguing your way out of the conceit that an irregular tape measure will provide irregular measurements. It cannot be done and we must disabuse ourselves of this fantasy.

Death of capitalism is inevitable if AI will continue advancing, making Luddite fallacy obsolete!