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some speculators say we'll enter an age of abundance and money wont matter nearly as much (or at all) but if thats the case, how do businesses transition from t

some speculators say we'll enter an age of abundance and money wont matter nearly as much (or at all) but if thats the case, how do businesses transition from their current state of profit over everything into money is not important? I see it as much more likely that things become monopolized instead

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cosmojg 3y ago
Eh, the strong market for virtual goods and the existence of significant virtual economies[1] like those found in Roblox and Second Life lead me to believe that markets can and will always exist, regardless of how far we progress into and beyond post-scarcity (assuming humanity persists in its current form and consumption preferences remain stable). I'm less certain about the capitalist model in particular, but it too may continue to exist, although maybe just for fun. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_economy
- sgu999 3y ago
  We are already in a post-scarcity world, we have been for decades. The problem is inequalities and the inefficiency of how we use the resources, it doesn't look like we'll change that soon, sadly. I'm more prone to think that in a "virtual" economy we'll still have miserable workers to empty the chamber-pots of the lucky ones who are plugged in the new world.
  - logicchains 3y ago
    > We are already in a post-scarcity world, we have been for decades. It's only a post-scarcity world if you define scarcity by absence of enough resources to satisfy the bare-minimum required for existence. People don't want to live at the subsistence level, and we're not evenly remotely close to having enough resources to satisfy everybody's wants.
    - sgu999 3y ago
      > People don't want to live at the subsistence level, and we're not evenly remotely close to having enough resources to satisfy everybody's wants. What people want is defined by society. Somehow some people want to be alone in a 2 tons EV, a 200 sqm mansion for a family of 4 and retire at 40. Others are tremendously happy with a much, much less resources intensive lifestyles. You would also need to define what is part of the subsistence level. I'd put it roughly at what my grandma wanted: food, shelter, healthcare, some leisure time. A bit more than that is absolutely doable in a civilisation that went from one farmer to feed 1.3 people to one farmer to feed 60 people.
      - logicchains 3y ago
        >What people want is defined by society. Somehow some people want to be alone in a 2 tons EV, a 200 sqm mansion for a family of 4 and retire at 40. Others are tremendously happy with a much, much less resources intensive lifestyles. You just undermined your own assertion. If what people want was defined by society, then everybody would want the same things. But in fact as you stated they don't; some people want a lot, some people want little. There's no way you're going to stop people wanting nice things short of killing the 90% of the population that aren't ascetics, which you'll never be able to do (at least in the US) because that's also the part of the population that owns most of the guns.
        sgu999 3y ago
        We don't have a fully globalised culture yet, what an average American wants isn't what an average Japanese wants. Of course even then, there are disparities and outliers, but we can't really overlook that if you "want" an SUV or an Apple Watch, that's quite likely going to be because the people around you find it valuable. I'd go even a bit further as to say that what is important is probably what people "need", not "want". Apparently we mostly "want" as much as we can have anyway, because that used to be helpful for not dying before being able to reproduce enough. > because that's also the part of the population that owns most of the guns That made me giggle
- dotnet00 3y ago
  What comes to mind is when the entire metaverse and NFT craze was at its peak, there were many unironic suggestions floating around that NFTs were an important aspect of the metaverse because they would substitute for exclusive ownership of digital goods in the way physical items have to be "exclusive" to a certain quantity and quality. The vision basically being that such limitations are a feature in a world where replication is supposed to be effectively free.
- hgomersall 3y ago
  Those virtual economies are typically designed to mimick the real economy. They're often even hampered in ways the real economy isn't due to a misunderstanding of how the real system functions.
- meheleventyone 3y ago
  The economies in Roblox and Second Life didn’t just appear they were built intentionally to make money out of the platforms. They are literally bringing our economy into those games on purpose. Same with other virtual worlds that don’t offer trading for real money they’re just transplanting ‘money’ into their world without much thought beyond the analogue to the real world often with hilarious consequences like runaway inflation. It basically says more about the overriding culture the games are made within than anything about market economies. I also find myself thinking like a rat in a maze towards markets as well. But I also remind myself that far more innovative thought is put towards hustling other rats in the maze than working out how to get out.
hiddencost 3y ago
Bankruptcy. Regulation. Trust busting. Saboteurs.
sgu999 3y ago
Abundance for who? Our entire specie could live comfortably with goodies the last roman emperor wouldn't even have dreamed of, just with our current means of production. Yet we still have people not able to feed their children, dying of exhaustion at work or killing each other for land.
- shreyshnaccount 3y ago
  You've got the causality the other way round. We are in an apparent state of abundance partly because of exploitative practices
  - shreyshnaccount 3y ago
    (shit, not you, the gp)
    - sgu999 3y ago
      I'll reply anyway ;D We didn't manage to have an apparent state of abundance with slavery, which is arguably the finest of our exploitive practices. We do manage to have a state of abundance because of the ubiquity of cheap sources of energy, oil in particular. I'm deeply convinced that current exploitive practices are a consequence of inequalities, no resources scarcity.
  - Joeri 3y ago
    In general I think you’re right. Global GDP per capita is at $13K which is probably not enough to give everyone a western lifestyle if inequalities were stripped away. But specifically for food the situation is different. There’s so much food that much of it gets thrown away, instead of getting to the hungry in time. It’s an allocation and efficiency problem.
    - sgu999 3y ago
      I don't think GDP per capita is meaningful for discussing this, precisely because of the "allocation and efficiency problem" you pointed. It's convenient to measure whether food production would theoretically be enough: take the quantities an adult need, count the throughput of optimal production of proteins, carbs etc. The cost however is meaningless because most of what we spend on is transport, marketing, storage, packaging, shelving, etc. that's what we count when we say that a household spends x% on food. We can do the same for the volume of T-shirts, sqm of housing, etc.
PeterStuer 3y ago
We have been in a state of abundance for a long time. We just choose not to distribute the abundance.
- logicchains 3y ago
  The global average PPP GDP per capita is 18k USD/year. 18k USD/year is not remotely close to abundance.
  - PeterStuer 3y ago
    If I watch my kids and you watch yours, our contribution to GDP is 0$. If I babysit your kids and you pay me 1.000.000$, and you watch my kids and I pay you 1.000.000$, we just created 2.000.000$ in GDP. Were we not in abundance the day before but now we are? What changed?
    - samus 3y ago
      This device only works if these are two completely equal services served by two equally capable persons with the same investment of time and resources. And it assumes that we mutually trust each other to actually do the thing. Also, bringing money into the game makes the responsibility stronger. Especially if those two persons are not living in a vacuum, but have other bills to pay [edit: i.e., to make other people do things for them]. Money is there to make people do things more reliably if there is no other relationship between the buyer and the seller.
      - PeterStuer 3y ago
        One could argue GDP measures the degree of financialization of a society more than it measures the presence or absense of abundance.
        ethanbond 3y ago
        In fact, Kusnetz the actual inventor of the modern GDP measure said something similar: “ Economic welfare cannot be adequately measured unless the personal distribution of income is known. And no income measurement undertakes to estimate the reverse side of income, that is, the intensity and unpleasantness of effort going into the earning of income. The welfare of a nation can, therefore, scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income as defined above.”

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

cosmojg 3y ago

Eh, the strong market for virtual goods and the existence of significant virtual economies[1] like those found in Roblox and Second Life lead me to believe that markets can and will always exist, regardless of how far we progress into and beyond post-scarcity (assuming humanity persists in its current form and consumption preferences remain stable). I'm less certain about the capitalist model in particular, but it too may continue to exist, although maybe just for fun. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_economy

sgu999 3y ago
We are already in a post-scarcity world, we have been for decades. The problem is inequalities and the inefficiency of how we use the resources, it doesn't look like we'll change that soon, sadly. I'm more prone to think that in a "virtual" economy we'll still have miserable workers to empty the chamber-pots of the lucky ones who are plugged in the new world.
- logicchains 3y ago
  > We are already in a post-scarcity world, we have been for decades. It's only a post-scarcity world if you define scarcity by absence of enough resources to satisfy the bare-minimum required for existence. People don't want to live at the subsistence level, and we're not evenly remotely close to having enough resources to satisfy everybody's wants.
  - sgu999 3y ago
    > People don't want to live at the subsistence level, and we're not evenly remotely close to having enough resources to satisfy everybody's wants. What people want is defined by society. Somehow some people want to be alone in a 2 tons EV, a 200 sqm mansion for a family of 4 and retire at 40. Others are tremendously happy with a much, much less resources intensive lifestyles. You would also need to define what is part of the subsistence level. I'd put it roughly at what my grandma wanted: food, shelter, healthcare, some leisure time. A bit more than that is absolutely doable in a civilisation that went from one farmer to feed 1.3 people to one farmer to feed 60 people.
    - logicchains 3y ago
      >What people want is defined by society. Somehow some people want to be alone in a 2 tons EV, a 200 sqm mansion for a family of 4 and retire at 40. Others are tremendously happy with a much, much less resources intensive lifestyles. You just undermined your own assertion. If what people want was defined by society, then everybody would want the same things. But in fact as you stated they don't; some people want a lot, some people want little. There's no way you're going to stop people wanting nice things short of killing the 90% of the population that aren't ascetics, which you'll never be able to do (at least in the US) because that's also the part of the population that owns most of the guns.
      - sgu999 3y ago
        We don't have a fully globalised culture yet, what an average American wants isn't what an average Japanese wants. Of course even then, there are disparities and outliers, but we can't really overlook that if you "want" an SUV or an Apple Watch, that's quite likely going to be because the people around you find it valuable. I'd go even a bit further as to say that what is important is probably what people "need", not "want". Apparently we mostly "want" as much as we can have anyway, because that used to be helpful for not dying before being able to reproduce enough. > because that's also the part of the population that owns most of the guns That made me giggle
dotnet00 3y ago
What comes to mind is when the entire metaverse and NFT craze was at its peak, there were many unironic suggestions floating around that NFTs were an important aspect of the metaverse because they would substitute for exclusive ownership of digital goods in the way physical items have to be "exclusive" to a certain quantity and quality. The vision basically being that such limitations are a feature in a world where replication is supposed to be effectively free.
hgomersall 3y ago
Those virtual economies are typically designed to mimick the real economy. They're often even hampered in ways the real economy isn't due to a misunderstanding of how the real system functions.
meheleventyone 3y ago
The economies in Roblox and Second Life didn’t just appear they were built intentionally to make money out of the platforms. They are literally bringing our economy into those games on purpose. Same with other virtual worlds that don’t offer trading for real money they’re just transplanting ‘money’ into their world without much thought beyond the analogue to the real world often with hilarious consequences like runaway inflation. It basically says more about the overriding culture the games are made within than anything about market economies. I also find myself thinking like a rat in a maze towards markets as well. But I also remind myself that far more innovative thought is put towards hustling other rats in the maze than working out how to get out.

hiddencost 3y ago

Bankruptcy. Regulation. Trust busting. Saboteurs.

sgu999 3y ago

Abundance for who? Our entire specie could live comfortably with goodies the last roman emperor wouldn't even have dreamed of, just with our current means of production. Yet we still have people not able to feed their children, dying of exhaustion at work or killing each other for land.

shreyshnaccount 3y ago
You've got the causality the other way round. We are in an apparent state of abundance partly because of exploitative practices
- shreyshnaccount 3y ago
  (shit, not you, the gp)
  - sgu999 3y ago
    I'll reply anyway ;D We didn't manage to have an apparent state of abundance with slavery, which is arguably the finest of our exploitive practices. We do manage to have a state of abundance because of the ubiquity of cheap sources of energy, oil in particular. I'm deeply convinced that current exploitive practices are a consequence of inequalities, no resources scarcity.
- Joeri 3y ago
  In general I think you’re right. Global GDP per capita is at $13K which is probably not enough to give everyone a western lifestyle if inequalities were stripped away. But specifically for food the situation is different. There’s so much food that much of it gets thrown away, instead of getting to the hungry in time. It’s an allocation and efficiency problem.
  - sgu999 3y ago
    I don't think GDP per capita is meaningful for discussing this, precisely because of the "allocation and efficiency problem" you pointed. It's convenient to measure whether food production would theoretically be enough: take the quantities an adult need, count the throughput of optimal production of proteins, carbs etc. The cost however is meaningless because most of what we spend on is transport, marketing, storage, packaging, shelving, etc. that's what we count when we say that a household spends x% on food. We can do the same for the volume of T-shirts, sqm of housing, etc.

PeterStuer 3y ago

We have been in a state of abundance for a long time. We just choose not to distribute the abundance.

logicchains 3y ago
The global average PPP GDP per capita is 18k USD/year. 18k USD/year is not remotely close to abundance.
- PeterStuer 3y ago
  If I watch my kids and you watch yours, our contribution to GDP is 0$. If I babysit your kids and you pay me 1.000.000$, and you watch my kids and I pay you 1.000.000$, we just created 2.000.000$ in GDP. Were we not in abundance the day before but now we are? What changed?
  - samus 3y ago
    This device only works if these are two completely equal services served by two equally capable persons with the same investment of time and resources. And it assumes that we mutually trust each other to actually do the thing. Also, bringing money into the game makes the responsibility stronger. Especially if those two persons are not living in a vacuum, but have other bills to pay [edit: i.e., to make other people do things for them]. Money is there to make people do things more reliably if there is no other relationship between the buyer and the seller.
    - PeterStuer 3y ago
      One could argue GDP measures the degree of financialization of a society more than it measures the presence or absense of abundance.
      - ethanbond 3y ago
        In fact, Kusnetz the actual inventor of the modern GDP measure said something similar: “ Economic welfare cannot be adequately measured unless the personal distribution of income is known. And no income measurement undertakes to estimate the reverse side of income, that is, the intensity and unpleasantness of effort going into the earning of income. The welfare of a nation can, therefore, scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income as defined above.”