Topic: A Resource Based Economy - page 67. (Read 288348 times)

Holy fuck. How can you be this dense?

Available quantity is irrelevant. If we cannot use the same atoms and molecules at the same time is it scarce by the economic definition.

Yes, it will be a new policy-making system. And that is still a system that is making political desicions.
Because you outsource it to an AI doesn't make it less political.
Politics in reality is a much wider notion than you make it out to be.
Saying something affects politics on a global scale but is not somehow political is nonsense.
Politics is not just a mechanism, it's a playing field. Needless to say, these ideas are staged on a political stage and that is where they need to fight to have any chace of becoming reality.

To use your example ( ), the bowl is the stage of politics. You could put anything in there and it will be political.
Politics is about steering societal structures. It doesnt matter if it is controlled by democratically elected humans or by AI's, it's still politics.

And this is a very good example of the kind of short-sightedness that proponents of these ideas tend to propagate.
They see their ideal but do not notice that the ideal requires the same kinds of mechanisms to become reality as the ones it is supposedly trying to remove.
It's a fairytale that can only have come from the luxury laden ritch western countries we tend to live in because it is depending very much on the thing it tries to eliminate.
It's exactly like people using the internet to say that we don't need the internet.

So let me drop this question again:
How will you convince Russia to give up all their resources without any politics or wars?
Or China?
Do you realize that there are a lot of unique places on earth that have certain resources that other parts don't have? How will you convince them to listen to an AI telling them to give away the stuff that makes them wealthy without any political action?
If you think these things don't matter then you're in denial.
There is no realistical way of implementing a resource based economy wthout getting the whole world on your side. And politics is the stage to these people. So no matter how you communicate your ideas to the people, that communication is political in nature no matter the message.

Labor theory of value is a terrible economic fallacy, iirc.  It seems like an other common point that Zetgeist/VenusP has with communism, also.

Why on earth would you be willing to take the actual very same cubic meter that I just took when there is a whole sea available??  You won't some sea water, right?  It does not have to be the actual water that I just took, does it?

If you isolate the cubic meter as you do, then we are not talking about a sea of water anymore.  We are talking about a cubic meter of water.  You act as if the sea has just vanished away.  No wonder you conclude that this water is scarce.  You make it sound as if there was only one cubic meter for you and me.

I don't understand your logic way of thinking.  It does not matter if you can't use the part of the water I took.  What matters is that there is still some water left for you to take.  There is much more than enough water for you and me, because the amount I took is very much negligible compared to the size of the sea.

The sea is a water resource.  Using it consists in taking a small amount (necessary small compared to the size of a sea) of water from it.  We can both do it in the same time.  So it is not even scarce by your definition.

It's as absurd as saying that any vehicle, no matter how big it is and how many seats it has, can not transport more than one person.  You'd say that on a plane for instance, if someone is using the seat number 42, you can't use this seat anymore.  So a boing 747 can only fly one person at a time.


Haven't you noticed that in the word "resource", there is "source"?  We don't have to use the same water, but we use the same source of water.  So this source of water is not scarce.  So sea water is not scarce.  But maybe a more accurate to say it would be that the sea is not a scarce source of water.

Geez you guys have been busy. Yes, when I mentioned sand and air as things we pay for, I wasn't just talking about transportation. Good quality sand that can be used as a source of silica for CPU dies is not widely available, and good quality air is rare when there is pollution. Glad someone pointed that out.
And actually, the air pollution issue brings up the other problem with he concept of "lack of scarcity," that being that even if you have an almost unlimited abundance of things, for example air, solar energy, and raw materials, using them for production may mean having to exchange one supposedly abundant resource for another. For example, if you but those 100BTC worth of replicating robots and let them replicate, in the process they will create dust and polluting byproducts, which may both reduce the amount of clean air, and thanks o smog reduce the amount of sunlight shining through to provide the energy. Now those supposedly abundant things are really scarce. And if you claim, "but this will only be localized to areas with pollution, where these robots were used," you are either ignoring that everyone will want the luxury of such robots, and thus all areas will get polluted, or are saying that replicating robots will have to be heavily regulated so that only certain people can use them, and thus will have to force the cheap 100BTC replicating robots to be scarce.

The post-scarcity label comes from the labor theories of value. The story is, when you don't need labor to produce stuff, value goes to zero. It makes a lot of sense from the perspective of LTV, but I think it ironically proves that LTV itself doesn't make sense. So, yes, you will still have to distribute resources because they are scarce from an objective economical standpoint.

I have discussed this with hard-core Marxists a couple of times. In my opinion the problem arises because labor is ill-defined. I'm not saying it can be done better by the way, that's why I've scrapped LTV from my mind a long time ago.

Oh, for the love of Mike...
There's nothing on that page which matches the definition I gave above. Even the French term just refers to the English one.

Indeed it is. and since scarcity (in the economic sense, not the colloquial sense) is a fundamental tenet of nature, true abundance is impossible. We can, with advanced technology, come pretty close, but we keep running up against the fact that matter, and to a lesser extent, energy, is scarce, regardless of it's relative abundance. The best way to make sure that the best use of these scarce resources is made is to use a price system, and to recognize the costs in using those resources. If everything is "free," some jackass might come along and use all the iron in the asteroid belt to build his robot army when it would have been more profitable for him - and the market - to have built houses.

That's the thing. Economic scarcity is talking about the same atoms or molecules.

No.

As I said above, just because there are millions of other cubic meters of seawater available for use does not mean we can both use the same seawater at the same time. We'd have to use different seawater - even if it is from the same source - and that makes it scarce.

BTW there is something I don't get in this whole RBE/Zeitgeist/Venus thing.  In a post-scarcity economy, why would you need a political system to distribute resources??  Isn't that contradictory?  People (sometimes) need to ration things precisely when they are scarce.  If there is no scarcity, why don't you just let people build whatever they need when they need it?

Nahhh... That's all backwards gobbledy-gook.  Just because something affects something else, does not mean it is or becomes or has anything to do with the nature of the something else.  Yeah, politricks will be affected -- by being more exposed than ever as the impotent (mostly with regard to effective policy-making:  the thing it's supposed to be for) dress-up extravaganza that it is -- And then it might actually become (or be replaced [likely with "AI"] with) a system of distributing resources that is hopefully more efficient than the current abysmal policy-making system we have now.  Politics is supposed to be about making policies that best distribute resources among entities, but the "politics" we all are used to is nothing more than a homecoming queen crowning.
Politics being affected or changed or exposed or eliminated... affected in any way, by any thing, does not mean that that thing that affected it is political.  I guess I'm repeating myself here but it really looks like some backwards logic you are using, based on some sort of mindset that politics will always have to exist in its current form?
I mean, I pee in a fresh porcelain bowl of water.  The water is then affected by my pee.  Does that fact alone make my pee of the nature of water?  What if I peed on the bowl instead of in it?

They cannot manifest without profoundly affecting current politics.
Therefore their ideas are very political in nature whether they realise it or not.

If their ideas boil down to producerism (as opposed to consumerism), I can see that manifesting worldwide without any political influence at all... Aside from possibly comic relief
Hoo boy, that election happened, and people sure were acting more foolish than usual that day.

By a-political they just mean they are the other side of the coin.
They would have to excert extreme political power to make their ideas reality.

What do you mean exactly by "no matter how much demand there is"?.

Let's go back to solar energy.  I said that to me it is abundant.  Or at least we can imagine a civilization in which it is.  Because there would be enough devices to convert it into electricity or other more practical form of energy and that would make a tremendous amount of power for ten billion humans.

Now, you could say, "yes but if there are on thousand billion humans, the sun power might not be enough".  When you say "no matter how much demand is", do you include the body count of population?   If so, then to me nothing that is material can be abundant.  You can always imagine a number of people big enough so that the quantity of the material per human becomes very small.  In which case, the very notion of abundance looses much of its meaning.


«
- Look, there is plenty of cake for my birthday party!!
- How many people are coming?
- Ten. Why?
- So there is not enough cake at all.  Because one hundred people might be coming.
»

(kind of look like a Lewis Carrol dialog, but it's what inspires to me the idea that Sun's energy is not abundant)

The very notion of abundance has to depend on demand.  To me it means:  "when offer far exceeds demand".  Otherwise it does not make much sense.

Grondilu, the economical meaning of "abundant" is not the same meaning of the colloquial use of the word. A resource is economically abundant when every demand for it can be instantly satisfied - no matter how much demand that is. Everything else is scarce.

The sole example of something for which every demand can be fully and instantly satisfied that I know of is breathable air. And as I said above, even that could become scarce is some very specific contexts.

Indeed.  I see what you mean now.   You're probably right.  Reminds me of the typical examples we give to define non-rival goods:  sreet lights and bridges.

I definitely prefer the "non-economical" definition of scarce:  «uncommon, rare; difficult to find; insufficient to meet a demand.»  It seems more consistant.

This whole thread is incredible - Libertarians vs. Transhumanists, it's the ultimate Internet war.
Like cyborgs vs pirates, just with logical fallacies instead of bullets.

Many people like to pigeon-hole the Zeitgeisters as communists... I think that might be adding a political meaning to the movement that really probably was not originally intended.  I thought the ZG and the Venus Project were supposedly apolitical; perhaps I've been mis- or under- informed.
But, from what I gather about these people:  They are anti-CONSUMERISM.  So, what's the opposite of consuming?  Producing.  So, are they producers?  Maybe wanna-be producers?
I've read elsewhere on this forum (and other places) that our current economic situation has something to do with the balance between consuming and producing tipping too heavily toward consuming.  Anyway, I don't think the issue needs any extra politification.  Just my 0.02 BTC.

My point was that the screen is clearly scarce, while it can be used by multiple people. I know space and seats are also scarce, but I was talking about the screen.
I don't think "impossible multiple usage" defines scarcity. "Impossible multiple control" perhaps.

Here's a funny remark.   Let's say "scarce" really means finite (or that whatever is finite is also scarce).

Something that is abundant can very well be nethertheless finite.  After all, as mirkhul pointed it out (and even underlined it):  infinitiy does not exist (I don't think that's true but let's imagine it is).

So something can be abundant and yet finit.  But if it's finite it is also scarce.

Conclusion:  something can be both abundant and scarce.

I'm sorry but to me, there is something wrong here.

Well, there is a limited number of seats in the theatre, isn't there?  And only one person at a time can seat on a seat.  So it's not the movie that is rival (that's why there is such mess about copyrights anyway), it's the seats.  What's your point exactly?