Topic: A Resource Based Economy - page 51. (Read 288376 times)

So you think say 10 people can adequately make equivalent decisions for the needs of say 1 million people as 1 million people could make for themselves?

You're deluding yourself.

The economic calculation problem destroys socialism's claim that it would "bury capitalism." Socialist economies never have and never will produce more material wealth than capitalist ones, end of story.

You forgot to add: "We are the Borg. Resistance is futile."

The economic calculation problem is a fiction promulgated by the priests of the economic religion. An attempt to attribute more to a resource or process than there is in reality. When you submit yourself to this false authority of economic theory, then you cannot hope to come to the correct solution to a problem. We are organisms capable of recognizing technical problems and implementing technical solutions to those problems. Introducing the arbitrary and artificial mechanics and myths of a monetary paradigm serve only to subjugate the majority in favor of the minority.

No, obviously not completely. The idea isn't to make a utopia. In any civilization there will still be crime, desperation, and other aberrations that aren't considered "normal" or "ethical."  The only debate I guess is what people consider "ethical" or "fair" or "civilization." As mentioned, I think if you align incentives to match up with what people generally consider fair or just, civilization as a whole would be better off. What we have now has extremely misaligned incentives all over the place, with politicians being bought off, corporations writing their own regulations, bureaucrats enforcing laws for the sake of following rules without questioning if they are just, etc, and it may be easier to simply dismantle the giant house of misaligned incentives (or let it become irrelevant) than to try to fix it, simply because the incentives that keep it the way, many of which are personal wealth and trade related themselves, are too great to overcome.

I agree, fairness is unattainable, but I look at the various systems, including out "somewhere in between" current one, with regards to incentives. I don't believe that a resource-based economy will work, because the incentive is for people to keep what they work on, and to not work on what is "someone else's job." With Resource-based economy, even if the accepted cultural understanding is that everything should be shared, it would take only one nonconformist asshole, be it an artist, inventor, or whatever, who doesn't want to share his creation or information, to throw a wrench into the system. The "someone else's job" problem is just the tragedy of the commons. If no one is maintaining that god computer or those robots that control everything, because it's someone else's job, and that someone else who's job it was quit a long time ago because he got bored, well... Likewise for information sharing with trade. I have no incentive to give information to the big computer, because it's just more work that doesn't make my life any easier. And you have no incentive to check my information, because you got used to trusting that the computer tells you everything.

With the ancap setup, there's no assumption that everyone will trade fairly. The only assumption is that everyone will have an incentive to check and learn about what it is they are trying to trade for, since it's something that will affect them directly. So, while in extreme statist society the expectation is to give up information to others, which goes against incentive, in an ancap society the incentive is to collect information yourself. I think that's really the only major difference between the two trade systems.

As for something in between, to me it just feels like trying to interject the "give up information" anti-incentive and the "tragedy of the commons" problem into the personal responsibility incentive to find out on your own, and calling it "balanced."

This is certainly not true.
I agree that it gives you a sort of first level protection. But what if, for instance, necessity is in play?
Can a deal that includes necessity be voluntary, in principle?
I make a point of it because it was suggested that you can have a civilization based fully on these voluntary exchanges.

Well, almost.
You cannot know all circumstances or consequences of a deal in all cases, so you can never guarantee a fair deal.
The more information you have and can process, the better you can be sure you get a good deal.
So certainty about fairness of a single unprotected voluntary exchange only goes so far.

My point is that you can only have relative fairness in society. You cannot have an absolutely fair system, in principle. Fairness is a human construction anyway. There is nothing fair about nature, for instance.
I see this as a big problem for both the resource based economy and a lot of the anarchistic ideas.
On one side, the resource-based-economy people wants to control eveyones resources.
It requires some godly computer running some godly software that makes no errors and has no exploits. It's almost religious if you think about it.
And it requires the current holders of resources to comply and share fairly (or at least, according to the computers demands). I don't see this happening any time soon because it will lead to a conflict around a different opinion of what is fair.

On the other side anarchist capitalists want free uncontrolled market states (preferably floating) and naively assume everyone will trade in a fair way (or else they pull out their guns) and that the market will automagically balance in a fair way.
Free markets, altho efficient, balance towards maximum profit, not towards where there is the most need for a good. This will lead to lots of friction which will lead to conflict. Not a stable substrate to run large societies on.

I find neither of these solutions particulary fair altho both systems were thought up with fairness as a goal.
An optimum fair solution probably lives somewhere between these two extremes of statism and freedom.

It's just an example where all three parties to the exchange got into the exchange voluntarily. They specifically wanted to conduct the exchange in that way. And through this method, the chances of information problems are minimized, if not eliminated.

But who arbitrates the arbitrators...

You are absolutely right.
But the problem is that you do not always know what you should have known, even in hindsight.
What i'm trying to say is that a free market based only on voluntary exchages will not automatically exclude scamming or conflicts of interest.
The courts can only go so far and it really depends on the quality of the information available. If no sufficiently incriminating information is found then a judge cannot (or should not) convict you.
And this information problem will be present in any market, free or otherwise.


Read the second paragraph here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_Mafia#Protection_rackets