Topic: Occupy Round Table on Bitcoin - page 2. (Read 10880 times)

Ok. First, thanks for the direct response. It's appreciated; I'm not just trying to slam RBE, rather I'm trying to scrutinize the one aspect that seems most out-of-place to me.



Oh, I understand that. But I think the various forms of possible, less-than-ideal RBEs are a distraction. I want to avoid the more trivial issues surrounding that, plus I want your arguments to be coming from the strongest possible base. Since I think replicators, to some degree, are theoretically possible (maybe a few thousand years down the road) and I agree that we can keep getting closer to this ideal, I have no problem starting my discussions about RBEs with the presumption that the ideal has been achieved. It makes things easier for you, and I have no issues with it.



Timebanks... is this similar to things such as the LETS system? Or possibly bitcoin-denominated Ripple?

Personally, that's kind of what I envisioned. Once material goods are truly abundant, the most valuable things will become human services/performances and new ideas. The only way to keep track of those things is a simple accounting setup of some sort... possibly Bitcoin-like. So this makes sense.

I don't think there will be enough people gifting massages (at least, excluding creepy, over-eager masseurs no one wants to go to) to meet the demand of people wanting them though; I could see timebanks hanging around just to deal with this sort of excess demand. We'll probably have to agree to disagree over whether machine massages would be more desirable than human contact.



Actually, if there were timebanks, and I could trade the credits for massages for myself, personal entertainment from singers, etc., I'd find them valuable and could be incentivized by them.

Lacking incentive though ("I've given you three massages this week already Jim, I'm done for now,") it's good to hear no methods would be used to force one to provide a service.



Now, here's where I kinda get to my point. If timebanks are around, and I'm incentivized by them, likely others would be as well. This essentially would turn timebank credits into a form of money, and even if it's small, some sort of market (complete with exchange rates, etc.) would likely develop around it. ("Oh, honey! Five timebank credits! What a great birthday present!")

And, humans being human, a certain level of status or prestige would also likely become associated with accumulated credits. ("Man, that guy has a million credits! He could provide some pretty sweet services for himself and his kids for decades!") And of course, gifting credits or transferring them to ones descendants would be possible unless there was some deliberate attempt to prevent it (which, like today, would be worked around.)

If this market is allowed to function, even if socially frowned upon, then I guess that's the end of my questions. Essentially, money could crop up in a RBE, and those wanting to make use of it wouldn't be stopped from doing so. In which case, provided getting to this ideal is completely voluntary, I don't think I have any issues with RBEs.

Good luck.

I'm not an economist or financier, just an engineer. I helped a teensy bit with engines intended for the A380.

From MY perspective, the design and build of the A380 would have been easier in a RBE. No intellectual property in my way (that's a big one), no export control laws, no union conflicts, no "financial quarters" driving due dates instead of going straight back from the build schedule, no one working the project who isn't personally interested in flight... It's not like the A380 was made within a perfectly functional capitalist system.

Not to say the econ works out for everyone, but it's certainly not hard to imagine doing my part without the money stuff. Right now I've got everything I "need". So long as I don't miss out on too much fun stuff, I wouldn't mind the technocracy and would probably appreciate fewer corporatist roadblocks. The an-cap utopia so many propose here would be nice too; let's start both and then I'll decide who deserves my services more.

A lot of the preferences people have are based on what they are used to. This has been proven regarding taste, people from different cultures value different tastes in food because they have been eating certain kind of food ever since they were children.

To me it's simply a matter of getting used to different kind of service. No longer would you have a human barber, or a human at the cash register or a human serving at the bar. Possibly most massage would be machine based as well. I doubt people would kill one another if they don't have a willing human masseur as their close friend.

None of this takes away from socialising with other human beings, in fact it enhances it. The socialising would be with other people using the service, with your friends and members of the community. People would simply get used to the fact that you don't talk to the bartender because there isn't one anymore. This is exactly the same as the disappearence of the elevator man. People have gotten used to that pretty well, I'd say.

The fact is that by doing this we remove the need for wage slavery, people can become so much more than the mundane jobs most are forced to do today. It's a relief of massive proportions. I'd like to note that there would be no force in this, if someone wants to be a bartender or a barber even though we offer a machine instead, they can continue to do it. The point is to automate jobs that people don't want to do and jobs that machines are a lot better at.

We don't need to think Star Trek to talk about RBE. It does not need any Star Trek technologies, in fact RBE can be applied to a society of any level of technology. There have been tribes and communities in the past that had RBE mindset, they shared what they had and they knew that overfishing etc. is unsustainable, so they didn't do it. Of course if we apply RBE to the whole economy of the modern world, we need advanced technology. But unlimited energy and replicators is not a necessary part of it, the point of the whole system is the intelligent use of our scarce resources.

This is a good question. I think that in transition to a RBE type system you would need transitional methods. One of these methods could be timebanks, which are essentially a bartering system but they work perfectly for services such as massage. I've never claimed that it's a straightforward path to remove barter, it will be a very slow process and perhaps we never get rid of all barter. But I think that even this can change if we live in a type of "gift economy" for long enough, people just give you massages without expecting anything in return.

Possibly nothing and no one could force you to do it either, because it's unlikely that anyone has anything that you necessarily need. If they do, then there could be trade. Regardless, I see this direction as the right way to go. A lot of the bad jobs today are still there because the employees are forced to do something to secure their livelihoods. With an RBE type mindset we would try to solve the issue in other ways.

I see a need for timebanks in the beginning but in general it's hard for any trading system to become anything but a small part of the society. It's important to remember that even stuff such as drugs would be 100% legal, all of them, so no black market can be born out of it. There are only a few niche markets where such a market could be born, and it's okay if it does.

I don't know what qualifies as a non silly explanation of a society where things such as the A380 are produced without money or barter, because that probably is silly to you. But I will explain it regardless.

The design of the aircraft would be done just like it is done now, by the efforts of scientists and engineers. These are people who want to work in designing aircrafts, their livelihoods are provided automatically as is for everyone else. This is just something they like to do.

The actual design of the aircraft and the parts used could differ because price wouldn't be an issue. What would be an issue is the resource efficiency of a certain part and the system would assign a number to this, based on all the relevant indicators. Keep in mind that this system would know the exact scarcity levels of every known raw material on Earth, its depletion rate, pollution potentials etc. It would obviously also know all the information related to the technical strength of that material and would help the engineers in choosing the right materials for the plane.

Now this system does not know these things just like that, we need scientists to gather that data. That is why the first step of RBE is always survey. It means that scientists of different fields must actually input all the data in the computer before the computer can actually do anything with it. We can build a computer model of RBE but as long as we don't have real data (which is mostly protected by individual corporations today) it's not a real model.

Continuing with this exercise, the aircraft itself would be built in the same way as it is built know, by machines. The materials would be mined by machines, refined by machines and transported by automated transport vehicles to the factory where it is finally assembled. A small amount of humans are needed to supervise the production and fix the machines in case of issues. These are again people who both want to do it and are qualified to do it.

This is not very different from how it is done now. Most production is done by machines. In RBE there would naturally be more machinery because of one of the goals in the society would be to get rid of unwanted human jobs as fast as possible. We have so many jobs today that can be automated with the level of technology we have now, if we just wanted to. The biggest obstacle for this is money, which causes corporations to often choose cheap human labor instead of machines. It has nothing to do with our actual technology and resources. But this will change soon even in this system.

Finally, there is a bigger question here. Do we even want to build A380's? Is aircraft the most efficient way to travel, long term? These would have to be calculated. Maybe we decide to start building tunnels for very high speed maglev trains instead. All transit systems would be re-evaluated and one thing is for sure, traffic based on private cars is the first thing to go. It's so inefficient it sickens me.

At the risk of this heading down a path that was NOT intended... some people just want the human contact. Whether they know it or not, this is one of the main reasons people visit masseuses today.

And that being the case... it seems clear to me that demand for this will always exceed the supply of people willing to just massage everyone for free out of charity. But that won't make the demand go away, despite the (monstrous, totalitarian) re-education that would be so desperately focused on to try to change human nature.

So, again, for someone seeking this service today, they just visit a spa, ask for the service, and pay some form of money for it.

How would one acquire a massage in a RBE?

Um. Building on spec means building something without being paid up front. Not at any stage up front. What does that not answer?

because why?  you think a strawman wrapped in bad fiction might be less obvious?

Interesting to hear you say that.

Heh, this made me think of what kind of porn they would have in a RBE society:

Citizen TC-834, you've been volunteered by the people's desire initiative subsection 7 to fulfill your fellow humans sexual desires. You will be coupled with a female comrade who will assist you in meeting our community's sexual needs. Please proceed to the bedding chambers in 5 time units.

The senior Zeitgeist did an about-face and headed down the right corridor and saluted a passing scientist looking for any psychological traits that implied "irrationality".

TC-834, began to scowl. He had been taught from birth to take kindly to such "voluntary" transactions or such will imply willful ignorance of the scientific method. The last time he was punished for his irrationality, he was sentenced to reeducation. He had traded lunch with his friend Kenneth and was labeled with ignorant capitalistic tendencies. Reeducation camp was long and tedious and consisted of cleaning toilets and massaging the backs of the many senior scientists. At least this time he could experience sex with a half-way decent partner. This is far better than the time he was assigned to the disabled...

Such negative thoughts about others is considered irrational by the Zeitgeist Commission since unconditional love is expected of all citizens, yet TC-834 cringed in disgust every single time he was assigned to sexual duty with partners he did not prefer. If found of this crime, TC-834 could be sentenced to re-education for another decade.

Heh, I should really write a book on this.

What have you got against the masseuse-bots? They can look after your *every* need you know.

I'm only playing devil's advocate here - as I tend to think money will always exist.. but if you're going to go as far as postulating star-trek style replicators,
why would you want anything at all from another human which wasn't given out of pure willingness to give/please?

Couldn't it be that in a society awash with replicators and robots, the very idea of accepting any good or service from a person who 'expected' some reward would seem 'ugly' or 'perverse'?

Well, I have time to spare, so I'll try once again.

Let's presume an idealized RBE. Practically unlimited energy. Star Trek replicators. Everyone has their own. Forget how we get here... the discussion isn't that interesting (mostly speculation,) and since it's theoretically plausible, it's not really relevant how we get here.

Assuming that background, three questions to the RBE community as a whole:

(1) How do I acquire all-natural done-by-a-human oil massages? (Yes, I'm serious.)

(2) As a highly sought-after masseur, what would incentivize me to give massages to anyone besides close friends or loved ones? (I'm being precise; not "why would I", but "what would incentivize me.")

(3) What stops someone from quantifying the incentive (even in a crude, vague fashion) and then accumulating more of the incentive and making an industry out of that incentive?

cbeast is a moron or trolling. Seems like a com major to me though...

in other words, you can't answer my question...

Many things are built purely on spec. What you get afterward depends on what you value.

Thanks for the links.  I can't wait to get to part 2 as I'm 30 minutes into the first part and am finding myself disagreeing with most of the conclusions the speaker has drawn.  I'll try to give this whole idea a fair shake as I'm no friend of the "status quo" but I have a feeling that the solutions offered in part 2 may be worse than what we already have.

Can you give me an example of how you can achieve the design and construction of an aircraft, an Airbus A380 for instance, without using money at any stage? Are you gonna do barter for any parts, IP, material, labour? So buy RollsRoyce engines with camels? And you sell the A380 to a collective of farmers in exchange for a couple tons of corn? I am really looking forward to reading a non silly explanation of how such a thing as a A380 would happen without money...

Here's a transcript. It's not formatted. http://dotsub.com/view/dd83d532-7fcd-4a5c-a7f5-58f245ab4fe6/viewTranscript/eng

Here is one possible scenario for an RBE "authority."
Try this as a thought experiment. Imagine being connected to a lie detector that measured respiration, heart rate, blood flow, etc. You do this voluntarily along with many other well educated experts on particular issues. You were then to engage in conversation with your peers on how to solve some societal problems. How trustworthy would the results of this discussion be? Would this method help eliminate corruption?

I suppose you will say that they will all be trained to deceive all of these tests by going through super spy training. Ok, we'll up the ante. If they are caught lying, they will be further tested and if they fail or refuse, they will be eliminated from the process. It's possible this will be done in error, but they may appeal to volunteer for deeper examination including brain scan.

All I'm saying is that there are solutions to problems and that I'm sick and tired of people who criticize with nothing to add to the conversation.

I have something. There are many lectures on the concept, this one explains the system fairly well in my opinion: http://vimeo.com/7857584 & http://vimeo.com/7938805

Part one of the lecture is mostly a rundown on the problems of our society and where we're heading if we do nothing, the second part goes into the details of a RBE. But I don't recommend skipping part one. An important part of understanding the solutions is to understand the problems. Many think they understand the problems, but in reality they don't.