Topic: A Resource Based Economy - page 79. (Read 288375 times)

You gotta be kidding, right?

@memvola: All I really want to say is I wouldn't state it's absolutely impossible either. That said, I would want to see Zeitgeist people working on more detailed, low level concepts too, like writing simulations, whatever.


I guess the important point and main difference to our current model of economics is that the Zeitgeisters want to eliminate competition, which of course means we'd have a globally computer-controlled planned economy and a giant single point of failure.


I guess the essence of RBE is there'll be no companies, and the resources that are currently available are a given. When harvesting, the computers would also calculate what's sustainable what's environmentally tolerable. Where supply of goods is rather limited than abundant due to scarcity of resources, they postulate recycling and much more modularity and sharing, as said. Recycling would also be more effective in a market economy at some point of course, but probably doesn't happen because third world mining and labor is unfortunately still cheaper (i.e. political reasons).

Well, actually that guy had the same attitude towards the matter as you and the Zeitgeist people; and guys before him and since. I'm humbly communicating what I see in this pattern, having at least seen some of these papers. A solution is not even formally discussed. The fact that you are saying things like fuzzy logic and statistical analyses strengthens my point. I'm not saying it is definitely impossible. I don't know how to do it. Do you know how to do it? "Scientists" don't even know what the complexity of the problem is, and it's likely NP. You can't ask people to agree that it's possible, if even you don't know that it is.

Besides, this isn't even core of the issue. You still don't, can't and maybe even shouldn't know what people need.

(edit: wording)

Rate of consumption and prices are not substitutes. In markets with competition, prices measure, among other things, how costly it is - resource-wise - to produce a certain good or provide a certain service. How will you calculate this from measuring consumption of said good or service?

If a certain computer part uses some rare earth element that progressively gets harder and harder to mine, requiring more and more resources spent (labor, steel to build machines that mine, etc.), how will you determine whether mining this rare earth element is worth it to produce that certain computer part if you only know how many computers people want, and how much rare earth metal the computer part-company wants, and how much labor the rare earth metal mining-company wants?

That was just one guy working on it at one time. I have faith such problems would be eventually solved. For now I can imagine to rather apply fuzzy logic, statistical analyses, etc... Decentralized crypto-currency was considered impossible for quite some time either.


I still don't see the problem here. Tracking and measuring the rate of consumption of a certain good makes it very well comparable to other goods. This is equivalent to price information. This is not the labor theory of value, where salt and gold would cost the same if the effort to mine them was same.

I've tried to explain them that countless times.  I'm still waiting for an accurate answer.

I think this is a very important point.

If the society they imagine will be able to produce goods and services more efficiently than our current economies, this will simply translate into lower prices. If we imagine they purchase some of the resources that go into making a specific good, the inputs, from the outside capitalistic economies, and are able to produce the same output as a capitalistic business, then they will be able to offer the good at a lower price, and will thus have proven that they are in fact able to leverage science, and all the other things they propose, to achieve higher efficiency than our current capitalist system.

So there's really nothing stopping them. If they start a society somewhere, and become able to provide goods and services at a lower price than everyone else, then they need not do any convincing. This will speak for itself. Until this happens it just seems to me to be people with dreams. Dreams are cool though, but if you're not able to transform them into anything actual, then they won't help anything; they might even make things work since they divert our attention from the real solutions.

This also struck me when viewing a video regarding the Zeitgeist Movement. They seem to forget that prices reflect the inherently subjective valuation that millions upon millions of people do every day. Perhaps this explains why some Marxists are attracted to it, since - as far as I know - the conclusions of Karl Marx' works regarding capitalism were a direct result of operating with a labor theory of value.

One of my economist friends had worked on it almost two decades ago. His thesis was that since powerful computers are now available, this would be possible (he's a strict Marxist). Of course he didn't provide a solution, and at the time I was convinced that it might actually be impossible regardless of how fast computers get, because of non-polynomial complexity.

Besides, I think the price information fundamentally includes normativity, which cannot be calculated. You have to tell the computer what to value, hence the political implications:


Of course, price information is not the only channel you get the values from. Voting is also commonly used. We currently use an amalgamation of both.

Nice summary.

Right, they say abundance is achieved due to automated recycling technologies, which will make people stop being needy and greedy and unnecessarily hoarding food and stuffs. These technologies don't happen today because of profit motives.

Of course, in reality it's not because profit motives are in the way. Such a Venus Project city would be a perfectly valid endeavor also in an market economy. But I guess in reality no entrepreneur is willing to take on the risk to develop and implement these technologies, or entry costs are too high because of some laws (the evil state). Either way, the Zeitgeisters don't describe how to get there either, or are waiting for the big revolution, from what I gather.

For scarce resources, like (maybe flying) cars etc, they advocate a sharing model, so nothing that people who prefer it that way already do today. Of course, the question is unanswered that the scarcity can also be on the time axis. Like, I dunno, tickets for the super bowl final. Still they want to abolish money, and if people use cigs to trade them on the black markets, big brother PJ will jump out of the TV screen and smack them over I guess.

I don't get it. If that is the case, our current system works fine.

They still have left to explain how we will use the earth's resources more efficiently than a capitalist economy does, all else being equal.

Didn't you read their description of it? Demand and wanting things is a result of the brainwashing system we have been raised in, and in RBE no one will want anything other than what is needed for basic survival 

The question is how does this system limit the use of resources? We need to limit our use, because the earth only has a finite amount of resources. Money does this by crediting people who produce something other people desire with money. They can then use this money to obtain something they themselves desire. How will a RBE throttle demand?

Well, this is not the problem I see with it. They postulate that RBE will achieve abundance, and a smart computer system has all information and will track all consumption, i.e. the rate at which items are taken from the shelves in the "stores", i.e. demand.

What concerns me rather is the political implications, i.e. the organ that is given the power to control all computers, machines, resources, and land to harvest them.

OK. I'll help you then.

Anarcho-capitalism is based on private property rights and nothing more.

Using money is compatible with this.

If a RBE doesn't use money, will they prevent people who would like to use money from using it?

If not, how is RBE any different from Anarcho-capitalism? Ie., is a RBE based on any additional principled aside from private property?

I get that you want to use science and cooperation to build a better society, but the question is not what you think will be a more efficient way for a society to function, the question is how you will build a society that encourages the improved use of resources, as you suggest a RBE will.

Also, allow me to point you to the video where two ZM advocates are unable to answer the question of how efficient use of resources will happen without the price signal being available (because money doesn't exist): http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=hxjwBZjADiM#t=2528s

So might I ask you; how can we calculate how to efficiently use resources when we have no price information available?

+1

Especially considering how easy it is to publish a scientific paper nowadays.   Consider this:

There is not a single article mentioning the word "Zeitgest" in arxiv.org

Edit.  My bad, I made a typo.  There is one.  A single ONE on the whole arxiv.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.2016

Here is the abstract:
« Whereas physics in the period from about 1880 to 1910 experienced a steady growth, it was also a revolutionary period in which the foundations of the physical world picture were criticized and reconsidered. Generally speaking, from about 1890 mechanics and materialism came under increasing attack and sought replaced by new formulations based on either energy, the ether, or the electromagnetic field. Fin-de-siecle physics was in many ways a chapter of turmoil in the history of science. I review the main developments and alternatives to the established physics, in particular energetics, ether physics, the electromagnetic world view, and also the role played by radioactivity and other new rays discovered in the years around 1900. In the end the anticipated revolution based on the "matter is dead" catchword did not succeed. A revolution did take place in the period, but it was a different one that did not derive from the Zeitgeist of fin de siecle. »

+1

The Zeitgeist Movement is based on science, super computers, and mathematical algorithms.
It just seems that no one actually KNOWS what that science, super computers, and algorithms are. The terms sound cool, and there are always "people who understand this better than I can and can explain it better," but no one has actually ever met those people either.

Economics, politics are not really science, are they?   I mean, politics is about deciding what's good for society.  And science has very little to say about what's good or wrong in the way people live their lives.

Any "social design project" stinks.   Society is not something that has to be designed by anyone.  It is an phenomenon that emerges from a collective behavior, not from the wicked mind of some lunatics.  You know what kind of people used to talk about science in order to defend their views on society?  Eugenists, and not just in the german third reich.

To me this whole Zeitgest movement seems to be in the direct lineage of Francis Galton.  It's not the same theory, but there is the same way of trying to defend it.


But let's just give you the benefit of the doubt, one second.  You say "science is based on facts".  Ok, what facts are you talking about?  Which reasoning exactly leads you to think that your crappy socialist project is the way to go for humanity?  And please don't just point me to a youtube video or some weird esotheric website.  If you are not capable of summering it yourself here, I suspect it's either because you did not understand it, or because there is just not much to understand.

o rly?  where's the academic studies? 

I'm advocating Zeitgeist Ideas for a while now.. I came to understand that adults, (25 years old +, me included) are too much endoctrinated to easily understand all the social underlying aspecct of an RBE...  It took me a lot of learning, listening and book reading to fully understand that an RBE is not only possible, but the only way for human kind to survive..

I bet and work on educating the younger, as their mind are still opened and not so polluted yet..

The Zeitgeist Movement is based on science, wich do not use mind association of predetermined ideas.. Science is based on facts !

What do I want ?
Evidence based change !
When do I want it ?
After peer review !

Read books, listen to podcast, etc..  there is a lot of great stuff to learn, question, discuss..

The change must begin in our value !