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From the paper: "[I]n-groups controlling abundance have increasingly chosen to produce non-necessary goods, rather than produce services to distribute necessar

by pdonis 3y ago

From the paper: "[I]n-groups controlling abundance have increasingly chosen to produce non-necessary goods, rather than produce services to distribute necessary goods to regions with less abundance of necessary goods" This claim seems, to say the least, highly implausible given the amount of aid and charity that developed countries give to less developed countries. The chief obstacle to that aid having more of an effect at relieving scarcity in less developed countries is political corruption in those countries: the governments of those countries confiscate the aid and use it to enrich themselves and their cronies, instead of getting it distributed to the people it is supposed to be for. In other words, solutions to the scarcity problems you describe in less developed countries appear to me to be primarily political, not economic.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago
I think you’re confusing my argument. I don’t suggest a solution I’m pointing out that the individual desire to increase personal happiness beyond basic needs for reproduction, significantly outweighs their desire to end that same extreme poverty condition for others. This might be a “duh” but the point is that my hypothesis is that this is a learned/taught perspective, and based on a foundational idea that is no longer true, aka a myth.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- imtringued 3y ago
  We already have solutions. They are based around the principle of economic democracy. It is a simple three step solution: 1. Identify sources of wealth that cannot be reproduced and therefore be hoarded to exclude access 2. Let the government tax or own the asset and grant every citizen equal rights to the asset in question. 3. Let people perform the act of producing reproducible assets on their own, now that they have the ability to do so. Extreme hypothetical: AGI is real and everyone has a personal AGI. Given enough energy the AGI can produce anything in autarky. The primary resource that matters in this hypothetical economy is access to energy. Most people in today's society are born without any access to energy. Their access to energy is conditional upon performing labor, but labor is worthless in the hypothetical economy, therefore people without access to energy will simply die out. There are many forms of economic democracy such as Freiwirtschaft or Georgism. These "economic systems" are built around the idea that non-reproducible assets should be taxed over time to prevent hoarding.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    I agree that something like Georgism is going to be required
- pdonis 3y ago
  > the individual desire to increase personal happiness beyond basic needs for reproduction, significantly outweighs their desire to end that same extreme poverty condition for others...my hypothesis is that this is a learned/taught perspective, and based on a foundational idea that is no longer true, aka a myth. I think you're missing my point. My point is that, before we even get to your hypothesis about why the claim you make is true, we first need to agree that it is true. And I don't think it is. I think people in developed countries have a significant desire to help people in less developed countries--but our political system, which allows corrupt governments to stay in power even though their actions are making their people starve, frustrates that desire. We have been sending huge amounts of aid to the Third World for more than half a century, and we continue to do so, but it hasn't helped and it isn't helping. In other words, to the extent that people in developed countries believe that they might as well focus on increasing their own personal happiness, it's because they don't see that trying to help people in less developed countries accomplishes anything. That is indeed a "learned perspective", but it's learned from actual experience of the effects of aid over the past half century and more, not from any kind of "myth" about scarcity. Indeed, if people in developed countries really believed that resources like food were scarce, we wouldn't have been sending all that aid to less developed countries for more than half a century. It's precisely because we know that we have excess resources and can afford to send them elsewhere to help, that there has been widespread political support in developed countries for sending all that aid. Any reduction in that support doesn't come from beliefs about scarcity; it comes from observing that the actual consequences of the aid are not the intended ones. (Note, btw, that the existence of "excess resources" in developed countries for things like food depends on people in those countries creating wealth over and above the needs of bare subsistence. So "the individual desire to increase personal happiness beyond basic needs" in developed countries is required in order for there to be excess basic needs to be sent as aid to less developed countries.)
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    Your perspective boils down to “we’ve already tried to and failed.” To which I would argue, in fact, we have not tried it, even barely Actually trying would look more like the following: The children who are currently mining for Mica for beauty products on behalf of LoReal would be stockholders outright of stock in LVM, as a result of their work, not literal slaves You are suggesting that the process that we have used so far, which is individually determined capital redistribution via means that pick apart the donation through service fees, middleman functions, etc. This is what you are suggesting is trying? No. What I’m saying is that the people who hoard wealth and power will hoard more wealth and power up until socially that is no longer acceptable. we need to determine ways to distribute or rather, not steal in the first place, the value that labor is creating.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
imtringued 3y ago
Developing countries receive aid for geopolitical reasons, not to actually help them out. The IMF gives contradictory advice that doesn't help. China, Korea, Japan etc all ignored IMF advice and see where that got them. >In other words, solutions to the scarcity problems you describe in less developed countries appear to me to be primarily political, not economic. Uhm, that was the entire point of the paper. There is material abundance but no access. Also, you can project the hoarding behaviour onto the corrupt cronies so that objection doesn't go against the paper but is in support of it.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > Developing countries receive aid for geopolitical reasons The point isn't why those countries agree to receive aid, it's why there is political support in developed countries for sending it. If the paper's hypothetical were true, that people in developed countries prefer to increase their own personal happiness instead of helping others, the aid would never be sent because voters in developed countries would never support it. > There is material abundance but no access. The paper doesn't just make this factual claim (well, it's sort of factual--talk about "access" already presupposes particular ideological views, but let that pass). It makes an additional claim about why this is true. I don't think that additional claim is true (see above and my other post upthread in response to the author). > you can project the hoarding behaviour onto the corrupt cronies The "hoarding behavior" that the paper claims is not the behavior of the corrupt cronies in the countries receiving aid, it's the behavior of the people in the countries that are sending aid. And that claim about "hoarding behavior" is wrong, as I've already posted elsewhere in this discussion.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    At the macro scale they are the same thing The failure of direct aid as described is entirely inclusive of all actors priorities involved. There is no true global cooperative desire to solve these problems so it doesn’t happen, and these signaling actions - which is what they are - are known to be ineffective. CFCs and Polio were eradicated. For all its flaws were pulled together to get through COVID. We can actually do stuff we want to do at global scale when we really want to Go read the book on medicins san frontiers to get a closer look at the massive differences in what the “Aid” community does versus they claim to do The fear of scarcity and all its downstream effects of hoarding and individualism

by pdonis 3y ago

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

I think you’re confusing my argument. I don’t suggest a solution I’m pointing out that the individual desire to increase personal happiness beyond basic needs for reproduction, significantly outweighs their desire to end that same extreme poverty condition for others. This might be a “duh” but the point is that my hypothesis is that this is a learned/taught perspective, and based on a foundational idea that is no longer true, aka a myth.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
imtringued 3y ago
We already have solutions. They are based around the principle of economic democracy. It is a simple three step solution: 1. Identify sources of wealth that cannot be reproduced and therefore be hoarded to exclude access 2. Let the government tax or own the asset and grant every citizen equal rights to the asset in question. 3. Let people perform the act of producing reproducible assets on their own, now that they have the ability to do so. Extreme hypothetical: AGI is real and everyone has a personal AGI. Given enough energy the AGI can produce anything in autarky. The primary resource that matters in this hypothetical economy is access to energy. Most people in today's society are born without any access to energy. Their access to energy is conditional upon performing labor, but labor is worthless in the hypothetical economy, therefore people without access to energy will simply die out. There are many forms of economic democracy such as Freiwirtschaft or Georgism. These "economic systems" are built around the idea that non-reproducible assets should be taxed over time to prevent hoarding.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  I agree that something like Georgism is going to be required
pdonis 3y ago
> the individual desire to increase personal happiness beyond basic needs for reproduction, significantly outweighs their desire to end that same extreme poverty condition for others...my hypothesis is that this is a learned/taught perspective, and based on a foundational idea that is no longer true, aka a myth. I think you're missing my point. My point is that, before we even get to your hypothesis about why the claim you make is true, we first need to agree that it is true. And I don't think it is. I think people in developed countries have a significant desire to help people in less developed countries--but our political system, which allows corrupt governments to stay in power even though their actions are making their people starve, frustrates that desire. We have been sending huge amounts of aid to the Third World for more than half a century, and we continue to do so, but it hasn't helped and it isn't helping. In other words, to the extent that people in developed countries believe that they might as well focus on increasing their own personal happiness, it's because they don't see that trying to help people in less developed countries accomplishes anything. That is indeed a "learned perspective", but it's learned from actual experience of the effects of aid over the past half century and more, not from any kind of "myth" about scarcity. Indeed, if people in developed countries really believed that resources like food were scarce, we wouldn't have been sending all that aid to less developed countries for more than half a century. It's precisely because we know that we have excess resources and can afford to send them elsewhere to help, that there has been widespread political support in developed countries for sending all that aid. Any reduction in that support doesn't come from beliefs about scarcity; it comes from observing that the actual consequences of the aid are not the intended ones. (Note, btw, that the existence of "excess resources" in developed countries for things like food depends on people in those countries creating wealth over and above the needs of bare subsistence. So "the individual desire to increase personal happiness beyond basic needs" in developed countries is required in order for there to be excess basic needs to be sent as aid to less developed countries.)
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  Your perspective boils down to “we’ve already tried to and failed.” To which I would argue, in fact, we have not tried it, even barely Actually trying would look more like the following: The children who are currently mining for Mica for beauty products on behalf of LoReal would be stockholders outright of stock in LVM, as a result of their work, not literal slaves You are suggesting that the process that we have used so far, which is individually determined capital redistribution via means that pick apart the donation through service fees, middleman functions, etc. This is what you are suggesting is trying? No. What I’m saying is that the people who hoard wealth and power will hoard more wealth and power up until socially that is no longer acceptable. we need to determine ways to distribute or rather, not steal in the first place, the value that labor is creating.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

imtringued 3y ago

Developing countries receive aid for geopolitical reasons, not to actually help them out. The IMF gives contradictory advice that doesn't help. China, Korea, Japan etc all ignored IMF advice and see where that got them. >In other words, solutions to the scarcity problems you describe in less developed countries appear to me to be primarily political, not economic. Uhm, that was the entire point of the paper. There is material abundance but no access. Also, you can project the hoarding behaviour onto the corrupt cronies so that objection doesn't go against the paper but is in support of it.

pdonis 3y ago
> Developing countries receive aid for geopolitical reasons The point isn't why those countries agree to receive aid, it's why there is political support in developed countries for sending it. If the paper's hypothetical were true, that people in developed countries prefer to increase their own personal happiness instead of helping others, the aid would never be sent because voters in developed countries would never support it. > There is material abundance but no access. The paper doesn't just make this factual claim (well, it's sort of factual--talk about "access" already presupposes particular ideological views, but let that pass). It makes an additional claim about why this is true. I don't think that additional claim is true (see above and my other post upthread in response to the author). > you can project the hoarding behaviour onto the corrupt cronies The "hoarding behavior" that the paper claims is not the behavior of the corrupt cronies in the countries receiving aid, it's the behavior of the people in the countries that are sending aid. And that claim about "hoarding behavior" is wrong, as I've already posted elsewhere in this discussion.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  At the macro scale they are the same thing The failure of direct aid as described is entirely inclusive of all actors priorities involved. There is no true global cooperative desire to solve these problems so it doesn’t happen, and these signaling actions - which is what they are - are known to be ineffective. CFCs and Polio were eradicated. For all its flaws were pulled together to get through COVID. We can actually do stuff we want to do at global scale when we really want to Go read the book on medicins san frontiers to get a closer look at the massive differences in what the “Aid” community does versus they claim to do The fear of scarcity and all its downstream effects of hoarding and individualism