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>Ultimately what matters is incentives, and I do wonder what kind of utopian scheme you could come up designing specifically for that... It's an interesting qu

>Ultimately what matters is incentives, and I do wonder what kind of utopian scheme you could come up designing specifically for that... It's an interesting question, but it should be worth examining the framing; why do incentives matter so much in the discourse? Is social incentivizing the core (or should it be the core) of an economy? What have incentives looked like in pre-capitalist societies? Were they always monetary, or different for different classes, genders, or other groups of people? The literature from sociology, anthropology and social psychology in the last twenty years has shed some light on those questions, so I'd also be interested to hear about them. There's a moral dimension too - do we want to create a kind of society where the incentive to work for a great proportion (or perhaps even a majority) is held over their heads by a wage they need to live, or defer to the totalizing administration of the state's welfare policies? Even welfare has transformed; since the 80s there's been a trend toward what's been called "workfare".

rumanator 6y ago
> There's a moral dimension too - do we want to create a kind of society where the incentive to work for a great proportion (or perhaps even a majority) is held over their heads by a wage they need to live, It seems you failed to register that life under communist regime also fits into the "wage slave" pattern you're describing, moreso than in democratic and capitalist societies. In fact, back home the local communist party is rather insistent in referring to people as "workers", to underline that that's precisely their raison d'etre. The only difference between communist regime's and non-communist regime's regarding how resources are allocated is the communist rhetoric that tries to classify the resources syphoned by the state into the regime's pocket as the people's income.
Nasrudith 6y ago
Incentives aren't just a part of discourse but any learning function essentially - if there isn't an incentive to change then it just "sticks to the default plan or lack of plan". If they don't have any incentives the system won't react to changes and if they are misaligned they will tend towards the wrong reaction systemically. For better or worse in the real world fundamentals "leak" past the officially set incentives and may undermine them. Monetary per-se and capitalism per say are an anchronistic terms as trade goods filled the niche for millenia be they perishables like food and furs or imperishables like gold and jewels. Communism could be called a deep retro throwback to palace economies. There is a lack of records of personal wealth or tracking and the indication there from sunken ships shows outgoing local goods and incoming foreign goods in bulk in amounts beyond personal production or usage. Essentially it is apparent that the leadership took all outputs and allocated supplies as needed to those under them. Sounds similar to "from each according to their abilities and to each according to their needs". It proved in the end eventually unpopular and unsustainable given the Bronze Age collapse and their complete lack of survival of old palace economies even with other benefits. Although given bronze age standards a lot of people wanted to kill their neighbors for various reasons (revenge for theft, captures, and killings) so it may have been unrelated to the economics.

rumanator 6y ago

> There's a moral dimension too - do we want to create a kind of society where the incentive to work for a great proportion (or perhaps even a majority) is held over their heads by a wage they need to live, It seems you failed to register that life under communist regime also fits into the "wage slave" pattern you're describing, moreso than in democratic and capitalist societies. In fact, back home the local communist party is rather insistent in referring to people as "workers", to underline that that's precisely their raison d'etre. The only difference between communist regime's and non-communist regime's regarding how resources are allocated is the communist rhetoric that tries to classify the resources syphoned by the state into the regime's pocket as the people's income.

Nasrudith 6y ago

Incentives aren't just a part of discourse but any learning function essentially - if there isn't an incentive to change then it just "sticks to the default plan or lack of plan". If they don't have any incentives the system won't react to changes and if they are misaligned they will tend towards the wrong reaction systemically. For better or worse in the real world fundamentals "leak" past the officially set incentives and may undermine them. Monetary per-se and capitalism per say are an anchronistic terms as trade goods filled the niche for millenia be they perishables like food and furs or imperishables like gold and jewels. Communism could be called a deep retro throwback to palace economies. There is a lack of records of personal wealth or tracking and the indication there from sunken ships shows outgoing local goods and incoming foreign goods in bulk in amounts beyond personal production or usage. Essentially it is apparent that the leadership took all outputs and allocated supplies as needed to those under them. Sounds similar to "from each according to their abilities and to each according to their needs". It proved in the end eventually unpopular and unsustainable given the Bronze Age collapse and their complete lack of survival of old palace economies even with other benefits. Although given bronze age standards a lot of people wanted to kill their neighbors for various reasons (revenge for theft, captures, and killings) so it may have been unrelated to the economics.