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> I agree with this, artificial scarcity is a lousy way to get anything done. The end-game of economics ought to be to eliminate scarcity How do you have an ec

> I agree with this, artificial scarcity is a lousy way to get anything done. The end-game of economics ought to be to eliminate scarcity How do you have an economy without scarcity? What are the substantial differences between artificial and natural scarcity?

NoGravitas 5y ago
> How do you have an economy without scarcity? It's easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.
__MatrixMan__ 5y ago
Once you've done away with scarcity, you don't need an economy. After that it's gay luxury space communism for all. And I'd say scarcity is artificial if making more of it requires you to break somebody's rules.
- preseinger 5y ago
  I don't understand the point you're making. I'm all for Gene Roddenbery post-scarcity space communism, but the entire crypto space is based on scarcity...
  - __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
    The original comment was about the "end game" of NFT's. My point is that money has value because we choose to value it, and fungible tokens often don't give you enough information to adequately make that choice, which means that nonfungible tokens have a bigger part to play than their current form would indicate. Currently, most people don't consider whether using a given type of money is in line with their personal values because we all value food and shelter and clean water, so there's enough common ground that it's not worth splitting hairs over. But if you chart a course to a post-scarcity world, then it will take you through a time when food and shelter and clean water are no longer scarce. There will still probably be people causing problems in the world (and using money to do it), and the nonviolent way to take the wind out of those people's sails is to stop valuing their money because it's encouraging behavior that's not in line with your values. This might happen several times before the greedy learn to behave, so in such a world it might be difficult to decide which type of fungible token to use. If you end up using tokens minted by people that ultimately end up pissing off the masses, those masses might reject your money. One way to hedge against this kind of risk is to just go around doing things that you're pretty sure everybody will agree are good things. For each public good provided, mint an NFT and use it as money. Initially we'll need some way to burn stale NFT's to keep the scarcity-logic in check, but this is the road to post-scarcity. Once we're well practiced in valuing a token for its effects, rather than for its scarcity, we'll be prepared to let go of the scarcity logic entirely. Or at least that's the plan.
    - preseinger 5y ago
      Huh? Money, currency -- these aren't market goods, they're exclusive mandates established by sovereign states. You don't get to decide which money you want to use, it's a function of the government of wherever you happen to be. Bitcoin isn't a currency. NFTs aren't money.
      - __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
        If you anticipate that whatever government mandates your money will still be around when you retire, then you're not living during (what I'm claiming is) the endgame of NFT's.
        preseinger 5y ago
        I'm so confused by what you're saying. > money has value because we choose to value it Yes, in a broad sense. > and fungible tokens often don't give you enough information to adequately make that choice If by "fungible tokens" you mean things like fiat dollars or crypto bitcoins, then this is a nonsensical statement. The "we choose" of the prior clause isn't an individual choice, it's a collective choice expressed via government. > which means that nonfungible tokens have a bigger part to play than their current form would indicate This doesn't follow at all. -- > the endgame of NFT's What is the endgame of NFTs? It seems like you're speculating about a post-scarcity society? But in that scenario there would be no reason for any money, fungible or non-fungible, to exist at all. Money is an abstraction, a time-tested mechanism for economic exchange and growth. And the purpose of economics is to _manage scarcity_. If you remove scarcity then economics, money, bitcoins, NFTs, they all have no reason to exist and disappear. -- > If you anticipate that whatever government mandates your money will still be around when you retire Yes. Obviously this is true. China and the yuan, Russia and the ruble, Europe and the euro, America and the dollar, they will all be around, in one form or another, when I retire. And when you retire. And when my children retire. And their children. Sovereign states are the evolutionary output of humanity's effort, over all history, to achieve peace, growth, and stability. They're not problems waiting to be disrupted. They're solutions that we as a species have arrived at, after enormous toil and suffering.
adrianN 5y ago
What do you need an economy for once you've managed to get rid of all scarcity? Th economy is imho just a tool for allocating scarce resources.
- serverholic 5y ago
  If I'm an artist I still need food, shelter, and to buy things in the real world. If I can't make money making digital assets then that heavily disincentivizes me to make them.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    Of course in your scenario we haven't reached the "endgame of economics" that we're currently speculating about, because there still is real-world scarcity.
  - __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
    Luckily, I don't think this is an issue that we need to have consensus on. Even if 95% of the world thinks that NFT's are silly, if 5% wants to use that model to fund the creation of things that they like, there will still be a market for your tokens.
- preseinger 5y ago
  Scarcity will exist until we become a type-2 society. That's not happening for hundreds or more likely thousands of years. If you want to perform the intellectual exercise of speculation then I'm on board but let's make it clear that's what we're doing.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    I thought that's what we're doing in this thread, since we're talking about the "endgame" of economies.
ItsMonkk 5y ago
I think we can use Vickrey Auctions for this problem. Vickrey Auctions are able to give not only price discovery, but also value discovery. Vickrey auctions incentivize bidders to bid their true value. If instead of using price discovery, we use value discovery, the price can stay at 0, so long as a certain (limited) amount of people are faced with a choice that would have them go without. So for example perhaps we sample 50,000 people and say 75% of people keep access, say when they vote. If you bid in the top 75%, you keep access for the period, and you pay the value that the bottom person that kept access bid. That money is then not used to pay for the IP, some other tax will fund the IP or Open Source Software or Meme, that 25% will then go to all the voters for providing their values. So the average bidder will pay nothing, the below average bidder will lose something they value low, but gain, and the highest bidders will fund that. We then take some other collection and sample another 50,000 people, until we find out the value of all of these digital items to people. If you do the subsidization process correctly, I think the idea of IP owners holding their supply back would go away, as releasing it to all would always provide more value than holding it back. I think at the very least this would be an obvious answer to Open Source Software, and this would easily fund things like Linux and Firefox. I think this would stretch further to research, and colleges would now be funded through this mechanism, and the professors who currently waste enormous amounts of time doing grant writing would be able to be productive. Thus the whole issue of journals goes away. Even things like ads, people would bid on their service less because of them, so there would be no fundamental reason to include them as it would reduce the subsidy.
- __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
  I had not heard of those before, that's cool.
- preseinger 5y ago
  I'm sorry, I have no idea how this relates to either of my questions. Can you clarify? -- > The end-game of economics ought to be to eliminate scarcity This doesn't make sense. Economics isn't something with a goal, it's a praxis which exists solely to manage scarcity. Eliminate scarcity and economics disappears.

NoGravitas 5y ago

> How do you have an economy without scarcity? It's easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.

__MatrixMan__ 5y ago

Once you've done away with scarcity, you don't need an economy. After that it's gay luxury space communism for all. And I'd say scarcity is artificial if making more of it requires you to break somebody's rules.

preseinger 5y ago
I don't understand the point you're making. I'm all for Gene Roddenbery post-scarcity space communism, but the entire crypto space is based on scarcity...
- __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
  The original comment was about the "end game" of NFT's. My point is that money has value because we choose to value it, and fungible tokens often don't give you enough information to adequately make that choice, which means that nonfungible tokens have a bigger part to play than their current form would indicate. Currently, most people don't consider whether using a given type of money is in line with their personal values because we all value food and shelter and clean water, so there's enough common ground that it's not worth splitting hairs over. But if you chart a course to a post-scarcity world, then it will take you through a time when food and shelter and clean water are no longer scarce. There will still probably be people causing problems in the world (and using money to do it), and the nonviolent way to take the wind out of those people's sails is to stop valuing their money because it's encouraging behavior that's not in line with your values. This might happen several times before the greedy learn to behave, so in such a world it might be difficult to decide which type of fungible token to use. If you end up using tokens minted by people that ultimately end up pissing off the masses, those masses might reject your money. One way to hedge against this kind of risk is to just go around doing things that you're pretty sure everybody will agree are good things. For each public good provided, mint an NFT and use it as money. Initially we'll need some way to burn stale NFT's to keep the scarcity-logic in check, but this is the road to post-scarcity. Once we're well practiced in valuing a token for its effects, rather than for its scarcity, we'll be prepared to let go of the scarcity logic entirely. Or at least that's the plan.
  - preseinger 5y ago
    Huh? Money, currency -- these aren't market goods, they're exclusive mandates established by sovereign states. You don't get to decide which money you want to use, it's a function of the government of wherever you happen to be. Bitcoin isn't a currency. NFTs aren't money.
    - __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
      If you anticipate that whatever government mandates your money will still be around when you retire, then you're not living during (what I'm claiming is) the endgame of NFT's.
      - preseinger 5y ago
        I'm so confused by what you're saying. > money has value because we choose to value it Yes, in a broad sense. > and fungible tokens often don't give you enough information to adequately make that choice If by "fungible tokens" you mean things like fiat dollars or crypto bitcoins, then this is a nonsensical statement. The "we choose" of the prior clause isn't an individual choice, it's a collective choice expressed via government. > which means that nonfungible tokens have a bigger part to play than their current form would indicate This doesn't follow at all. -- > the endgame of NFT's What is the endgame of NFTs? It seems like you're speculating about a post-scarcity society? But in that scenario there would be no reason for any money, fungible or non-fungible, to exist at all. Money is an abstraction, a time-tested mechanism for economic exchange and growth. And the purpose of economics is to _manage scarcity_. If you remove scarcity then economics, money, bitcoins, NFTs, they all have no reason to exist and disappear. -- > If you anticipate that whatever government mandates your money will still be around when you retire Yes. Obviously this is true. China and the yuan, Russia and the ruble, Europe and the euro, America and the dollar, they will all be around, in one form or another, when I retire. And when you retire. And when my children retire. And their children. Sovereign states are the evolutionary output of humanity's effort, over all history, to achieve peace, growth, and stability. They're not problems waiting to be disrupted. They're solutions that we as a species have arrived at, after enormous toil and suffering.

adrianN 5y ago

What do you need an economy for once you've managed to get rid of all scarcity? Th economy is imho just a tool for allocating scarce resources.

serverholic 5y ago
If I'm an artist I still need food, shelter, and to buy things in the real world. If I can't make money making digital assets then that heavily disincentivizes me to make them.
- adrianN 5y ago
  Of course in your scenario we haven't reached the "endgame of economics" that we're currently speculating about, because there still is real-world scarcity.
- __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
  Luckily, I don't think this is an issue that we need to have consensus on. Even if 95% of the world thinks that NFT's are silly, if 5% wants to use that model to fund the creation of things that they like, there will still be a market for your tokens.
preseinger 5y ago
Scarcity will exist until we become a type-2 society. That's not happening for hundreds or more likely thousands of years. If you want to perform the intellectual exercise of speculation then I'm on board but let's make it clear that's what we're doing.
- adrianN 5y ago
  I thought that's what we're doing in this thread, since we're talking about the "endgame" of economies.

ItsMonkk 5y ago

I think we can use Vickrey Auctions for this problem. Vickrey Auctions are able to give not only price discovery, but also value discovery. Vickrey auctions incentivize bidders to bid their true value. If instead of using price discovery, we use value discovery, the price can stay at 0, so long as a certain (limited) amount of people are faced with a choice that would have them go without. So for example perhaps we sample 50,000 people and say 75% of people keep access, say when they vote. If you bid in the top 75%, you keep access for the period, and you pay the value that the bottom person that kept access bid. That money is then not used to pay for the IP, some other tax will fund the IP or Open Source Software or Meme, that 25% will then go to all the voters for providing their values. So the average bidder will pay nothing, the below average bidder will lose something they value low, but gain, and the highest bidders will fund that. We then take some other collection and sample another 50,000 people, until we find out the value of all of these digital items to people. If you do the subsidization process correctly, I think the idea of IP owners holding their supply back would go away, as releasing it to all would always provide more value than holding it back. I think at the very least this would be an obvious answer to Open Source Software, and this would easily fund things like Linux and Firefox. I think this would stretch further to research, and colleges would now be funded through this mechanism, and the professors who currently waste enormous amounts of time doing grant writing would be able to be productive. Thus the whole issue of journals goes away. Even things like ads, people would bid on their service less because of them, so there would be no fundamental reason to include them as it would reduce the subsidy.

__MatrixMan__ 5y ago
I had not heard of those before, that's cool.
preseinger 5y ago
I'm sorry, I have no idea how this relates to either of my questions. Can you clarify? -- > The end-game of economics ought to be to eliminate scarcity This doesn't make sense. Economics isn't something with a goal, it's a praxis which exists solely to manage scarcity. Eliminate scarcity and economics disappears.