3 ms·

"[A]ccess to resources is determined strictly by how competent individuals are at acquiring and hoarding resources" This claim seems highly implausible to me a

by pdonis 3y ago

"[A]ccess to resources is determined strictly by how competent individuals are at acquiring and hoarding resources" This claim seems highly implausible to me as well. There is enough food in my house to feed its occupants for about a week. Is that "hoarding"? I have retirement savings put by so that I will be able to support myself once I stop working. Is that "hoarding"? What determines what you call "access to resources" (itself a misleading way to put it, IMO) in developed countries is trade. People trade goods or services they produce for money, which they then trade for things they need or want. And this is not "competition for resources". It is cooperation in creating wealth. Practically nobody in a developed country produces goods or services purely by their own efforts; we all cooperate with many other people in the course of doing our jobs. (Which, btw, is perfectly compatible with private property rights--indeed, it requires them. See below.) The reason this doesn't happen in less developed countries is that it's not allowed to: just as corrupt governments in those countries confiscate aid from developed countries, they also confiscate any wealth that is created by their people. So their people have no incentive to create any wealth through cooperation and trade, since they're not going to gain any benefit from it anyway. In other words, they know they will have no private property rights in what they produce, so they don't bother producing.

imtringued 3y ago
>So their people have no incentive to create any wealth through cooperation and trade, since they're not going to gain any benefit from it anyway. In other words, they know they will have no private property rights in what they produce, so they don't bother producing. That sounds way too much like capitalism. >What determines what you call "access to resources" (itself a misleading way to put it, IMO) in developed countries is trade. People trade goods or services they produce for money, which they then trade for things they need or want. "Trade" only makes sense to the extent that human labor is in demand. When there is excess production, the resource already exists and there is no need for further labor. At that point the additional labor has devolved into a hazing ritual. A bullshit job, if you want to call it that. People get access to resources through earning money, therefore even if there are too many resources already, you must add onto this pile of excess resources, for the sake of the hazing ritual, which represents the payment of the entrance fee.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  How can there be 'too many resources already'? Even a single sci-fi fanatic, who genuinely desires a giant Star-Trek like spaceship, requires more 'resources' to satisfy their desire then the entirety of mankind has access to at the present moment. Let alone the billions of people with more modest but still quite sizeable desires.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > That sounds way too much like capitalism. No, it's basic free market economics. "Free market" does not mean the same thing as capitalism, although many capitalists (i.e., people who want to get their hands on as much capital as they can, by hook or by crook) like to claim that it does. Free markets promote freedom and wealth creation. Capitalism can under some circumstances, but under others it undermines those things. Many people feel that currently it is doing the latter. > "Trade" only makes sense to the extent that human labor is in demand. Human labor is always in demand. Even for "resources" which are in "excess production", those resources still have to be transported to the people that need them. For example, food grown in the US in excess of what people in the US need to eat needs to be transported to somewhere else in the world where people are hungry. That requires human labor, and that need for human labor is ongoing, because people don't stop needing to eat when you've given them food once. That process represents wealth creation and is always happening. Also, people have needs and wants far above bare subsistence. The medium in which we are having this conversation would not exist in a bare subsistence world. Neither would countless other things that people value even if they are not strictly necessary for bare subsistence. There are always things that can be produced and traded to create more wealth. > A bullshit job, if you want to call it that. Sure, there are lots of bullshit jobs, but even if you eliminated them all, you wouldn't be eliminating the need for human labor. You would just be redirecting human labor towards more productive uses, i.e., towards actually creating wealth instead of just pretending to. That's a good thing. Even in some utopian future where the vast majority of production processes are automated, so the amount of human labor needed to, say, produce food, is minimal, there will still be human labor required to do other things--like decide what things to produce. Also, in such a world, the price of all those things produced by automation would be close to zero, since the marginal cost of their production would be close to zero. So the drastic reduction in human labor required to produce the necessities of life would be reflected in a drastic reduction in the cost of the necessities of life. That is what "no more scarcity" should look like.

by pdonis 3y ago

imtringued 3y ago

>So their people have no incentive to create any wealth through cooperation and trade, since they're not going to gain any benefit from it anyway. In other words, they know they will have no private property rights in what they produce, so they don't bother producing. That sounds way too much like capitalism. >What determines what you call "access to resources" (itself a misleading way to put it, IMO) in developed countries is trade. People trade goods or services they produce for money, which they then trade for things they need or want. "Trade" only makes sense to the extent that human labor is in demand. When there is excess production, the resource already exists and there is no need for further labor. At that point the additional labor has devolved into a hazing ritual. A bullshit job, if you want to call it that. People get access to resources through earning money, therefore even if there are too many resources already, you must add onto this pile of excess resources, for the sake of the hazing ritual, which represents the payment of the entrance fee.

MichaelZuo 3y ago
How can there be 'too many resources already'? Even a single sci-fi fanatic, who genuinely desires a giant Star-Trek like spaceship, requires more 'resources' to satisfy their desire then the entirety of mankind has access to at the present moment. Let alone the billions of people with more modest but still quite sizeable desires.
pdonis 3y ago
> That sounds way too much like capitalism. No, it's basic free market economics. "Free market" does not mean the same thing as capitalism, although many capitalists (i.e., people who want to get their hands on as much capital as they can, by hook or by crook) like to claim that it does. Free markets promote freedom and wealth creation. Capitalism can under some circumstances, but under others it undermines those things. Many people feel that currently it is doing the latter. > "Trade" only makes sense to the extent that human labor is in demand. Human labor is always in demand. Even for "resources" which are in "excess production", those resources still have to be transported to the people that need them. For example, food grown in the US in excess of what people in the US need to eat needs to be transported to somewhere else in the world where people are hungry. That requires human labor, and that need for human labor is ongoing, because people don't stop needing to eat when you've given them food once. That process represents wealth creation and is always happening. Also, people have needs and wants far above bare subsistence. The medium in which we are having this conversation would not exist in a bare subsistence world. Neither would countless other things that people value even if they are not strictly necessary for bare subsistence. There are always things that can be produced and traded to create more wealth. > A bullshit job, if you want to call it that. Sure, there are lots of bullshit jobs, but even if you eliminated them all, you wouldn't be eliminating the need for human labor. You would just be redirecting human labor towards more productive uses, i.e., towards actually creating wealth instead of just pretending to. That's a good thing. Even in some utopian future where the vast majority of production processes are automated, so the amount of human labor needed to, say, produce food, is minimal, there will still be human labor required to do other things--like decide what things to produce. Also, in such a world, the price of all those things produced by automation would be close to zero, since the marginal cost of their production would be close to zero. So the drastic reduction in human labor required to produce the necessities of life would be reflected in a drastic reduction in the cost of the necessities of life. That is what "no more scarcity" should look like.