Topic: A Resource Based Economy - page 78. (Read 288375 times)

Wow,.,., 4 sane posts in a row..

This thread is going to hell..  
Keep up the good work!

The above poster is correct. Economically calculable systems (markets) have benefitted from the gigantic coefficient to efficient allocation that the Information Age has brought us. Systems that simply lack price intelligence for calculation (planned economies) do not benefit. Zero times a thousand is still zero.

The "Zeitgeist movement" is nothing more than resurrected communist propaganda from the early 20th century except with computers.

It comes almost word-for-word from the propaganda that was floating around from the time of the Bolshevik Revolution. The proponents of central planning always promise a scientifically-managed utopian society where money isn't necessary.

It never works for reasons Mises described as the economic calculation problem. The addition of computers to the toolset of the central planners does not solve the problem, and the Zeitgeist people always handwave around the problem of what happens when the masses don't want to listen to the self-appointed elite that will be telling everybody how many resources they are allowed to utilize. There's only way to impose central planning on those who don't agree and we already know how that works out.

That is not counter-intuitive at all.  Such bubbles are legions in a free market, at all scales.   Members of a family exchange stuffs without using money.     Many workers co-operatives exist.  And I'm sure you can find many other examples of communism-inspired organizations.  In a sense, communism is allowed in capitalism, provided it stays voluntary.

They wouldn't respect each other, why would they? That's one problem we have.

However, I think the problem at least some of us are having with the Zeitgeist thing is not about the utopia itself, but their hand-waving approach. A lot of people have suffered the past centuries to find solutions to problems ZG people think are non-issues.

Anyway, after the latest debate here, I realized that something is more interesting than I thought it was before. In a world where property rights is the norm at the largest scale, you can have bubbles where those rights aren't respected. But in a world that has abandoned property rights, you can't have bubbles that operate under property norms without resorting to violence. Maybe it's counter-intuitive, but it makes sense to create such a bubble and compete with the free-market. From the perspective of the market, the bubble would be as a single entity, like a corporation. From the perspective of the bubble, the free market world would just be another scarce resource.

I can see that some people would see this as an unacceptable compromise, but it really shouldn't be. Imagine that we have accomplished the utopia of the RBE and some other human colony from space with a free market regime arrived on Earth with their fancy technology and vast resources. And they accept Earth as our property and ready to trade with us. That doesn't mean we are ultimately defeated in our communistic ideals. If how we operate makes sense, our norms would spread to them.

If this all made sense, then we could see an anarcho-capitalistic future as a suitable evolutionary path towards true communism. Sheer naivety, but perhaps less naive than what the Soviets thought was smart.

The "zeitgeist movement" will get zero respect from me until its members pick up a basic economics textbook. Right now it is jus generic new age garbage with zero respect for any real world facts. The entire first part of the movie is literarily just fabricated stories. None of the mythological figures had virgin births, and crucifixion wasn't even invented when any of their deaths were named.

Do some critical thinking. It is the greatest gift you have.

Maybe.  But it is much, much closer to reality than is your RBE, for instance.

The free market is a myth. You can't point to something that doesn't exist and say it's working fine, or would work if the state weren't involved. There can be no market without the state involved at some level. Even in the bitcoin economy now we see the rise of the bitcoin foundation, a political, legal and corporate government entity. When you have money, you have a state, and therefore there is no free market.

The free market is, by definition, non-coercive. That's what the "free" part is about. Again, you TVP guys are blaming the problems with state coercion on the voluntary trade. Big mistake.

You highlight symptoms of the state and conflate this with money. We can get rid of patents, legislation, etc and keep money. This is a massive non-sequitur.

Servicing profit DOES make things better for people. If a business make a profit through voluntary trade, it is allocating resources efficiently and providing a desired service to society. It's actually an excellent way to "make things better".

Prices allocate resources according to subjective values. You want people to register their values with an algorithm and have resources allocated deterministically from that data. Don't you recognise that this is exactly what is happening in the market place right now? The market and the aggregate of all voluntary trade IS the algorithm you aspire to (yet never seem to be able to disclose). You constantly highlight problems associated with involuntary trade imposed by the state and then blame these problems on voluntary trade.

Indeed, please stop.  It's just confusing.

Guess I should stop playing angel's advocate for them now. 

Although I believe such an automated city would still be a valid "product" also in a market economy. Some people don't want to be concerned with these pesky earthly belongings all the time.

All in all, one man's utopia is another man's dystopia. Maybe a free world can only mean that like-minded people can come together in respective communities and implement their vision of society. Some would be more individualist and based on the performance principle, and others more on redistribution and equality principles. Then let's hope they'd all respect each other.

As I said, it is insane.

So you basically want to treat humans like animals in a farm.  Taking care of all their needs and desires in an organized, "rational" way.   I guess you're fans of Orwel and Aldous Huxley, aren't you?

Tell me:  when you read "Brave new world", did you think oh my gosh this is the way to go, by any chance?


 

I guess the machine could produce both of them of amounts based on consumption statistics.

This is insane.


If on morning I want to drink coffee instead of tea, do I have to leave the county as well?

How does the computer react when the majority votes that building shrines is the most important thing?

They sure can imagine what a well-functioning society would be like. I'll give them that.

When it comes to providing the actual means of getting there, they are more deficient it seems.

I'm not sure they say they want to abolish private property rights though. What's the point in not having these if everything is abundant anyway? I mean, just because I can order a car doesn't mean that it isn't annoying when I need to get to work and it's gone. Oh, I forgot. Everything is abundant, I don't need to work .

Sounds like a magical place man.

Bullshit, you'll just die out of hunger.
If there are no card there is no food transport and cities would not get enough food to feed their people.
No sense in going to work if you have to take your money to an empty shop.
Also, public transport capacity would not be enough to transport all the people so most people who use a car to get to work would not get to work.

And then the shitload of other problems that RBE tries to run from but will eventually be hit by it in the face with a big slap of reality.
For instance, a city (or even region) has a monopoly on a certain resource that a lot of other sities are depending on and there is no other meaningfully large supply of the good anywhere else.
What if such a city would vote: "FSCK the world, we are self-sufficient enough to survive so the rest can only get this resource at 3x the price".

In other words, how would you ensure cooperation without genetically modifying the human species to not be greedy or self-serving?

No. Welcome to Neo-Marxism.


Remember they want to abolish private property. They say it's unnecessary because everything will be sufficiently abundant, also because of sharing. Cars will be available in an underground garage in your living area, and you just take one if you need one. Computers would track the frequency of usage, as said.

Now what if at a certain point in time all cars are gone? Your gnash your teeth and take the transit. Takes a little longer, but you'll survive. If it bothers you because it happens too often to you and you really prefer cars over the transit, and you believe they are more important than smartphones (using the same rare earths), I imagine the RBE system will have plenty of parameters where people can democratically vote if cars or smartphones are more important to them, and the system will recalculate the production processes.

If you don't agree with what most people vote, maybe you can even move to another city where you'll get more cars because people there vote more in your favor. Also you probably can study engineering and contribute to more efficient production processes so you and everyone can have more cars.  

How would they do that?

Let's say this infamous rare earth element is used both in computer parts and in automobile parts. There is enough rare earth material produced per year to produce 10,000,000 computer parts or 10,000,000 car parts. People want both cars and computers. How do we determine how much rare earth element should be allocated to car parts and how much to computer parts?

Now if you can't answer this, consider that this question - depending on the resource being consumed - is not about one thing or the other, but more probably a choice between literally thousands of things we could put that resource into. Let's say that currently the rare earth material can be used in 54 different parts (if we choose steel instead, it's probably more like millions of different goods), with the amount currently available split, as things are now, in the following way between the parts:
How would you alter this distribution of allocation of this resource to make its use more efficient?

How would you determine if a certain resource is limited or abundant?

And when you've done this, how would you determine if recycling is actually a better use of resources? The recycling itself uses up other resources, how do you know they're not put to work better somewhere else?