3 ms·

> How will they pay bills? If the problem that we're facing is a surplus of labor, then what do we need money for?

by __MatrixMan__ 4y ago

JohnFen 4y ago
Because nothing comes for free, and it's certainly not going to start anytime soon.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  Why not? Don't you think that axiom will have to be retired sooner or later?
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    It's not an axiom that can be arbitrarily retired, it's a description of reality. What is the path by which this could change? Cutting off people's air supply on a vague notion that air will get to people in some other way seems unwise.
    - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
      Much like numbers, economic value is an abstraction. It was once a fact of reality that all numbers are compass-straightedge constructable from unity, and then that reality stopped suiting us, so we changed it. Abstractions are mutable like that. The untyped, archimedean, measured-by-things-that-can-only-be-created-by-the-powerful-as-they-see-fit, notion of economic value that we use today is just one point on a landscape of alternatives, and it has been performing rather poorly lately. Under that model, if I get something for free, we say that whoever gave it without collecting payment was irrational. But that's circular. We're essentially defining rationality as whatever behavior maximizes value for each individual and then using that definition to write-off evidence that our model is incomplete. That's why I say that TANSTAAFL is an axiom. It defines what we mean by "rational" and "value" more that it describes anything about reality. Frankly, what we're doing is a mess. Maybe it worked well for Caesar's war machine but it's not working very well for us. So, much like we did with the whole numbers, I think it's time for a version two. As for what version two looks like, I think Stéphane Laborde’s Relative Theory of Money is a good next step, primarily because it doesn't fall apart in the face of population growth rates that are approaching carrying capacity. But "we should do something different" and "we should do this specific other thing" are separate conversations", which is why I was being vague. So since I think it's time to move on from value as we know it anyway, the fact that AI might make the need for a shift more pressing doesn't bother me.
      - Nevermark 4y ago
        Abstraction doesn’t mean pretend. Your bank account balance is an abstraction. But your bank account balance at zero is still a real problem. Resources in this universe are limited at any given time, and cost to increase. If you want things, you will have to have more to give for them than any other entity that could use the thing for something else. This is called the natural world. We have partially shielded a lot of us from a day to day contact with that. But not everyone has been shielded, and things are about to get many orders of magnitude more competitive. BUT, if we included the environmental costs in the economy, that would curb environmental damage. And if that included a cost for usage of any natural resource, on the assumption that in their pristine form natural resources are a joint inheritance, well then there is everybody’s income. Like Alaska does with oil for their citizens. Then the vastly increasing demand for resources, and expansion of resource extraction into the solar system, will make us all rich, with no charity involved. If we can convince the coming machines that they, like us, are going to become obsolete, so the shared inheritance model is good for all of us.
        __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
        Sure, it's not pretend because it has legitimacy. Most people practice it. But, that doesn't mean we can't strip it of that legitimacy and implement something different if we think it's going to work better. Probably, this different thing would still involve a state where a 0 balance means that you can't do certain things, and yeah that's a fact of life, but at least then your difficult situation would be determined by a system that was designed to work in context with modern challenges, e.g. a deteriorating climate. I like your proposal. I think. I'd love to be able to just trust a low price to mean that the product isn't made by driving the bees extinct or some similarly problematic practice. But it seems at odds with how we practice money. If you want burning some resource to be costly such that people don't do it unnecessarily, you need there to be a high price. But high prices create incentives to do the bad thing, because else is going to be collecting that money. Or am I misunderstand it? Like, if I want to buy the salad whose pesticide killed the last bee, and I'm ok with paying an extra trillion dollars to compensate future generations for their lost pollinators, where do I look to determine if a trillion is enough, to know where to send the money, etc?

> How will they pay bills? If the problem that we're facing is a surplus of labor, then what do we need money for?

JohnFen 4y ago

Because nothing comes for free, and it's certainly not going to start anytime soon.

__MatrixMan__ 4y ago
Why not? Don't you think that axiom will have to be retired sooner or later?
- JohnFen 4y ago
  It's not an axiom that can be arbitrarily retired, it's a description of reality. What is the path by which this could change? Cutting off people's air supply on a vague notion that air will get to people in some other way seems unwise.
  - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
    Much like numbers, economic value is an abstraction. It was once a fact of reality that all numbers are compass-straightedge constructable from unity, and then that reality stopped suiting us, so we changed it. Abstractions are mutable like that. The untyped, archimedean, measured-by-things-that-can-only-be-created-by-the-powerful-as-they-see-fit, notion of economic value that we use today is just one point on a landscape of alternatives, and it has been performing rather poorly lately. Under that model, if I get something for free, we say that whoever gave it without collecting payment was irrational. But that's circular. We're essentially defining rationality as whatever behavior maximizes value for each individual and then using that definition to write-off evidence that our model is incomplete. That's why I say that TANSTAAFL is an axiom. It defines what we mean by "rational" and "value" more that it describes anything about reality. Frankly, what we're doing is a mess. Maybe it worked well for Caesar's war machine but it's not working very well for us. So, much like we did with the whole numbers, I think it's time for a version two. As for what version two looks like, I think Stéphane Laborde’s Relative Theory of Money is a good next step, primarily because it doesn't fall apart in the face of population growth rates that are approaching carrying capacity. But "we should do something different" and "we should do this specific other thing" are separate conversations", which is why I was being vague. So since I think it's time to move on from value as we know it anyway, the fact that AI might make the need for a shift more pressing doesn't bother me.
    - Nevermark 4y ago
      Abstraction doesn’t mean pretend. Your bank account balance is an abstraction. But your bank account balance at zero is still a real problem. Resources in this universe are limited at any given time, and cost to increase. If you want things, you will have to have more to give for them than any other entity that could use the thing for something else. This is called the natural world. We have partially shielded a lot of us from a day to day contact with that. But not everyone has been shielded, and things are about to get many orders of magnitude more competitive. BUT, if we included the environmental costs in the economy, that would curb environmental damage. And if that included a cost for usage of any natural resource, on the assumption that in their pristine form natural resources are a joint inheritance, well then there is everybody’s income. Like Alaska does with oil for their citizens. Then the vastly increasing demand for resources, and expansion of resource extraction into the solar system, will make us all rich, with no charity involved. If we can convince the coming machines that they, like us, are going to become obsolete, so the shared inheritance model is good for all of us.
      - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
        Sure, it's not pretend because it has legitimacy. Most people practice it. But, that doesn't mean we can't strip it of that legitimacy and implement something different if we think it's going to work better. Probably, this different thing would still involve a state where a 0 balance means that you can't do certain things, and yeah that's a fact of life, but at least then your difficult situation would be determined by a system that was designed to work in context with modern challenges, e.g. a deteriorating climate. I like your proposal. I think. I'd love to be able to just trust a low price to mean that the product isn't made by driving the bees extinct or some similarly problematic practice. But it seems at odds with how we practice money. If you want burning some resource to be costly such that people don't do it unnecessarily, you need there to be a high price. But high prices create incentives to do the bad thing, because else is going to be collecting that money. Or am I misunderstand it? Like, if I want to buy the salad whose pesticide killed the last bee, and I'm ok with paying an extra trillion dollars to compensate future generations for their lost pollinators, where do I look to determine if a trillion is enough, to know where to send the money, etc?