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I find it disturbing that a comment like this was actually made earnestly and not in sarcasm, and also that it has replies in the affirmative. In short - in or

by brc 14y ago

I find it disturbing that a comment like this was actually made earnestly and not in sarcasm, and also that it has replies in the affirmative. In short - in order to 'give' something to someone, someone else has to pay, whether in cash or in time. This is the mysterious free lunch that pops up from time to time. If - clearly arguing by absurdity - there is so much machinery and automation that it takes 1% to feed, clothe and house the population - then one might ask - from where does the machinery and automation come from? It must be designed, created, maintained and operated. In order to be constructed, it has to be financed, the risk has to be taken, potential rewards have to be postponed. For people to enjoy 'things that they enjoy' - it means that, instead of postponing consumption for production, it means eliminating production for people, and having their lives focussed on consumption. While, incredibly, nowadays most people can enjoy long breaks of consumption-only activity, if everyone decided to start consuming and stop producing, things would go backwards very quickly. It seems as though the 'good life' is miraculously easy - we take a day off, food is on the shelves, power is supplied to our hose, gas is available to be pumped. This gloss of good life covers up the furious production, risk and activity that goes on 24/7, globally, to make it happen. The incredibly rich standard of living that most people reading this website enjoy is created through a system of voluntary exchange and specialization, whereby people create efficiencies by concentrating on a particular specialty, and exchanging the proceeds of that with the product of others. While there are a precious few people who have accumulated enough surplus through either hard work, theft or inheritance, this represents a tiny percentage. The truth is - more people get to do thing they actually enjoy precisely because of the accumulated surplus of the increased productivity of people over time. But rather than rest on the laurels, most, if not all, people prefer to strive to improve their standard of living even more. In short, what you're trying to describe is some type of utopia - a vision which has lead to the death and suffering of millions. It's dangerous thinking and I would urge you to become more educated in this area.

smokeyj 14y ago
By promoting voluntary exchange, you're really talking about free markets and free enterprise -- but that isn't the only solution. Coercive exchange is a popular economic model that is rather prolific in the academic circles. Why should anyone believe in free markets over a command and control economy?
- brc 14y ago
  This is a trolling remark, right? Do you seriously believe a centrally planned economy can be superior to one in which economic activity is self-directed, decentralised and based on the price discovery model?
  - smokeyj 14y ago
    Not trolling, just setting up the spike for a pro-market supporter.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
  - mindslight 14y ago
    Of course a planned economy has the possibility to be much more productive than one left to be self-directed. In the self-directed economy, people will only work at jobs they dislike often enough to fulfill their needs, build up security for the future, and support the elective activities that they do with the rest of their time - the demand for work is elastic. In a semi-planned economy like the US, taxes and inflation will eat up the long term technologically-growing surplus (to build the empire), the purchasers of labor will keep the demand for hours worked per employee high in the short term, bureaucracy will ensure plenty of ultimately non-producing make-work jobs to keep up the status quo, and the people stuck working more than they need to in highly skilled jobs (being ahead of the aforementioned taxflation) will spend their surplus of money on the newest version of gadgets for status and entertainment.
  - slurgfest 14y ago
    On most problems, no, a reasonably free market is very efficient and quite practical. The market often fails to sort out public-goods problems. In areas where the market is not free due to widespread deception and/or coercion, going full Somalia is not the answer. The freedom of the free market has to be bootstrapped somehow. Also notice that it is quite ordinary INSIDE companies to have central planning and resource allocation. (And not-entirely-favorable comparisons to the Soviet Union are certainly possible for many of the largest companies - I do not refer to liberal politics). If it were a universal law that planning were always wrong, then every family and every individual would be a fractal of pure capitalism. Instead, my dog and my daughter do not pay for the health care I provide and are coerced to go for walks and go to school, respectively. And each part of my body carries out its function in a more or less compulsory way, without bidding for glucose.
waterlesscloud 14y ago
OK, that's one viewpoint on the world. And, to be clear, one viewpoint I mostly agree with in terms of society right-now-this-instant. I've normally dismissed the idea of post-scarcity economics as some unrealistic utopia. While there is an undeniable trend of a smaller and smaller percentage of the economy devoted to basic survival necessities, it was never clear to me that that number could get close to zero. But when I step back and take a clear headed look at it, I think maybe it could. We're not there now, and we won't be tomorrow, but we will be someday. I'm coming to believe in that conclusion. We could get there in a decade or so if we pulled out all the stops and chased it at damn-the-torpedoes speed. We'll likely be pretty close in a few decades no matter what we choose (barring self-destructive paths, always possible of course). So then, now that I'm coming to accept the outcome, I've started thinking about what will make it happen as quickly as possible. Why drag the transition out? It's going to be painful, but it's better to get the pain over with. The band-aid philosophy- rip it off all at once. What are the obstacles to the transition? How can they be mitigated or avoided? What can we, as engineers and entrepreneurs, do to make it happen faster and smoother? Even if you DON'T accept the inevitability of the post-scarcity economy, it's worth taking some time to pretend you do, imagine what that world is like, and how you would get there from here. Certainly more value than in just insisting that the system we have will live forever. Even a casual reading of history makes it clear that absolutely will not happen.
- dreamdu5t 14y ago
  A clear-headed look at the world would tell you that resources are very scarce. Just because we're very efficient at producing food compared to our ancestors doesn't mean things aren't scarce.
- brc 14y ago
  Well, I've spent a lot of time doing more than a casual reading of history, and I certainly don't subscribe to a 'post-scarcity' view of the world. The human desire for a better life is insatiable. By a better life - this doesn't necessarily mean bigger houses or shinier gadgets - though that is a feature of the current generation, and just about every one before that. By a better life, I mean more health, better education, and a longer and happier life for ourselves and our offspring. Even if, using the thought experiment, we can supply the basic needs of survival for the equivalent of the first ten minutes of our labour per day - most peeople are not going to choose to spend the rest of the day doing nothing. Taking food - already in most developed places excess calories are a problem rather than insufficient calories. But even then, when faced with more choice, many people choose to select organic or specialty foods, which require more of their available funds. Choosing an all-organic diet might take up 2 hours of your working day to purchase, but that's a choice many will make. Similarly, the ultimate human demand - a longer life with less health problems - will never decrease. So even if the provision of basic staples as a proportion of economic activity decreases, it will be offset by increases in unlimited demand for specialised healthcare. Specialised treatments are the ultimate consumable - like fine porcelain dinnerware, what was once available only to the wealth gradually becomes more affordable to more people. My understanding and interpretation of all the recorded human history I have read is that the desires for a better will never be sated. Going to a world in which there is no scarcity means arbitarily drawing a line under 'what is necessary' - any rational observer would say that line has long since passed in many societies - but people don't want to stop at that line. The only way to make that happen is to coerce people to stop at a level of particular of consumption, and that is something I want no part of.
bicknergseng 14y ago
I don't mean to argue with your points or attack a straw man, but your conclusion: "...some type of utopia - a vision which has lead to the death and suffering of millions" is confusing to say the least. I'm not sure if you think that millions have died in utopian style communities throughout (not even realistic), but even if that were true, what about those in non-utopian communities? Dreaming, even naively, of a utopian future is dangerous only to the ones who control our dystopian present.
- brc 14y ago
  What I mean is that millions have died when leaders have set out on creating a utopian society. Because individuals wants and needs are necessarily diverse, they cannot be forced into a set pattern by dictat of a leader. When this has been tried, it has led to the deaths of millions. That is because the very nature of a utopian vision is radically different per individual. So the implementation of a particular individual utopia - or even a shared vision of a small group - must necessarily mean either excluding or enforcing that vision on people who don't agree with the vision. What I mean is that millions have died because of the chasing of utopian dreams by small groups. Being killed by your own government, either directly, or via its actions, is the ultimate in unnecessary and premature death.
  - slurgfest 14y ago
    The Stalinist system and its non-Russian offshoots were historical particulars, not generic representatives of utopianism. You imply that it is the utopianism which caused millions to die, but you have ignored other examples in the Fascists and Nazis, who were reactionary rather than utopian (they wanted their nations restored from the damage done by liberals and other outsiders), and yet still intentionally murdered millions. From the utopian examples you conclude that it is a sort of Stalinist slippery slope from shorter work weeks to genocide. Yet you do not seem to conclude the same thing with regard to the church-and-apple-pie traditionalism that Fascists favored. Why not? Well, in each case the happy pictures used are only tangentially relevant to the regimes which used them. So it is quite wrong for you to draw an equivalence between the left-wing pictures and genocide, without also at least drawing an equivalence between the right-wing pictures and genocide. Or concluding that the pictures are not completely relevant. I don't think it is especially likely for you to be killed by your western government. But for what it's worth, I can't see any reason to prefer being killed by non-governmental agents, or people who have your ideology rather than a left-wing one. Getting killed sucks regardless.
doktrin 14y ago
>>If - clearly arguing by absurdity - there is so much machinery and automation that it takes 1% to feed, clothe and house the population - then one might ask - from where does the machinery and automation come from? It must be designed, created, maintained and operated. In order to be constructed, it has to be financed, the risk has to be taken, potential rewards have to be postponed. Your entire argument is underpinned by two basic assumptions : 1. Human labor will always be required to develop goods and maintain infrastructure 2. The number of individuals required to fulfill #1 equals or exceeds the global pool of working age individuals Neither of the above are certainties. >>In short, what you're trying to describe is some type of utopia - a vision which has lead to the death and suffering of millions. It's dangerous thinking and I would urge you to become more educated in this area. Your line of reasoning is reactionary. While I too am quite the fan of free market capitalism, this doesn't mean it is the only possible sustainable system of human growth & cooperation. It's a current economic reality, not a religion.
slurgfest 14y ago
The real underlying point here is that owners of machines and stocks of resources are under no obligation to provide a penny to others under any circumstances, and that thinking they are is tantamount to Stalinesque genocide. However, taxes are legitimate and have been around forever. I imagine that you regard this status quo as slavery. Also, limited work-weeks have been around forever. I gather that you regard this as freeloading. And these things ultimately provide for public goods, without any Stalinesque genocides being perpetrated against 'job creators'. At the same time, taxes do not get collected without legally accountable economic activity. Indeed, as productivity increases, we should see benefits such as people not being forced to immediately begin starving in the street because their job became economically unnecessary, and people not being forced to work 80-hour weeks to provide for the profit of somebody else. If overall productivity increases only come with less social security and more compulsory work for one class, that is because another class is applying coercion to steal labor, which is not morally any better than stealing capital. This observation does not require one to be a Bolshevik, nor does it entail that any mass killings will occur. Nor does it involve revolution. The status quo of several decades in the western world is already something of a balance between workers and capitalists. Now you are peddling the idea that this arrangement has been unfair to the capitalists who have been tremendously enriched by it. That isn't correct. It is in the interests of capitalists not to kill and overwork the people whose time is required to produce anything, and not to strangle the average consumers whose spending power drives the economy. The problem is that short-term thinking and ideologues such as yourself are working to convince capital holders otherwise, that they should cash out as quickly as possible without regard to the social impact of what they are doing. That's dangerous thinking and I urge you to become more educated in this area.

by brc 14y ago

smokeyj 14y ago

By promoting voluntary exchange, you're really talking about free markets and free enterprise -- but that isn't the only solution. Coercive exchange is a popular economic model that is rather prolific in the academic circles. Why should anyone believe in free markets over a command and control economy?

brc 14y ago
This is a trolling remark, right? Do you seriously believe a centrally planned economy can be superior to one in which economic activity is self-directed, decentralised and based on the price discovery model?
- smokeyj 14y ago
  Not trolling, just setting up the spike for a pro-market supporter.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- mindslight 14y ago
  Of course a planned economy has the possibility to be much more productive than one left to be self-directed. In the self-directed economy, people will only work at jobs they dislike often enough to fulfill their needs, build up security for the future, and support the elective activities that they do with the rest of their time - the demand for work is elastic. In a semi-planned economy like the US, taxes and inflation will eat up the long term technologically-growing surplus (to build the empire), the purchasers of labor will keep the demand for hours worked per employee high in the short term, bureaucracy will ensure plenty of ultimately non-producing make-work jobs to keep up the status quo, and the people stuck working more than they need to in highly skilled jobs (being ahead of the aforementioned taxflation) will spend their surplus of money on the newest version of gadgets for status and entertainment.
- slurgfest 14y ago
  On most problems, no, a reasonably free market is very efficient and quite practical. The market often fails to sort out public-goods problems. In areas where the market is not free due to widespread deception and/or coercion, going full Somalia is not the answer. The freedom of the free market has to be bootstrapped somehow. Also notice that it is quite ordinary INSIDE companies to have central planning and resource allocation. (And not-entirely-favorable comparisons to the Soviet Union are certainly possible for many of the largest companies - I do not refer to liberal politics). If it were a universal law that planning were always wrong, then every family and every individual would be a fractal of pure capitalism. Instead, my dog and my daughter do not pay for the health care I provide and are coerced to go for walks and go to school, respectively. And each part of my body carries out its function in a more or less compulsory way, without bidding for glucose.

waterlesscloud 14y ago

OK, that's one viewpoint on the world. And, to be clear, one viewpoint I mostly agree with in terms of society right-now-this-instant. I've normally dismissed the idea of post-scarcity economics as some unrealistic utopia. While there is an undeniable trend of a smaller and smaller percentage of the economy devoted to basic survival necessities, it was never clear to me that that number could get close to zero. But when I step back and take a clear headed look at it, I think maybe it could. We're not there now, and we won't be tomorrow, but we will be someday. I'm coming to believe in that conclusion. We could get there in a decade or so if we pulled out all the stops and chased it at damn-the-torpedoes speed. We'll likely be pretty close in a few decades no matter what we choose (barring self-destructive paths, always possible of course). So then, now that I'm coming to accept the outcome, I've started thinking about what will make it happen as quickly as possible. Why drag the transition out? It's going to be painful, but it's better to get the pain over with. The band-aid philosophy- rip it off all at once. What are the obstacles to the transition? How can they be mitigated or avoided? What can we, as engineers and entrepreneurs, do to make it happen faster and smoother? Even if you DON'T accept the inevitability of the post-scarcity economy, it's worth taking some time to pretend you do, imagine what that world is like, and how you would get there from here. Certainly more value than in just insisting that the system we have will live forever. Even a casual reading of history makes it clear that absolutely will not happen.

dreamdu5t 14y ago
A clear-headed look at the world would tell you that resources are very scarce. Just because we're very efficient at producing food compared to our ancestors doesn't mean things aren't scarce.
brc 14y ago
Well, I've spent a lot of time doing more than a casual reading of history, and I certainly don't subscribe to a 'post-scarcity' view of the world. The human desire for a better life is insatiable. By a better life - this doesn't necessarily mean bigger houses or shinier gadgets - though that is a feature of the current generation, and just about every one before that. By a better life, I mean more health, better education, and a longer and happier life for ourselves and our offspring. Even if, using the thought experiment, we can supply the basic needs of survival for the equivalent of the first ten minutes of our labour per day - most peeople are not going to choose to spend the rest of the day doing nothing. Taking food - already in most developed places excess calories are a problem rather than insufficient calories. But even then, when faced with more choice, many people choose to select organic or specialty foods, which require more of their available funds. Choosing an all-organic diet might take up 2 hours of your working day to purchase, but that's a choice many will make. Similarly, the ultimate human demand - a longer life with less health problems - will never decrease. So even if the provision of basic staples as a proportion of economic activity decreases, it will be offset by increases in unlimited demand for specialised healthcare. Specialised treatments are the ultimate consumable - like fine porcelain dinnerware, what was once available only to the wealth gradually becomes more affordable to more people. My understanding and interpretation of all the recorded human history I have read is that the desires for a better will never be sated. Going to a world in which there is no scarcity means arbitarily drawing a line under 'what is necessary' - any rational observer would say that line has long since passed in many societies - but people don't want to stop at that line. The only way to make that happen is to coerce people to stop at a level of particular of consumption, and that is something I want no part of.

bicknergseng 14y ago

I don't mean to argue with your points or attack a straw man, but your conclusion: "...some type of utopia - a vision which has lead to the death and suffering of millions" is confusing to say the least. I'm not sure if you think that millions have died in utopian style communities throughout (not even realistic), but even if that were true, what about those in non-utopian communities? Dreaming, even naively, of a utopian future is dangerous only to the ones who control our dystopian present.

brc 14y ago
What I mean is that millions have died when leaders have set out on creating a utopian society. Because individuals wants and needs are necessarily diverse, they cannot be forced into a set pattern by dictat of a leader. When this has been tried, it has led to the deaths of millions. That is because the very nature of a utopian vision is radically different per individual. So the implementation of a particular individual utopia - or even a shared vision of a small group - must necessarily mean either excluding or enforcing that vision on people who don't agree with the vision. What I mean is that millions have died because of the chasing of utopian dreams by small groups. Being killed by your own government, either directly, or via its actions, is the ultimate in unnecessary and premature death.
- slurgfest 14y ago
  The Stalinist system and its non-Russian offshoots were historical particulars, not generic representatives of utopianism. You imply that it is the utopianism which caused millions to die, but you have ignored other examples in the Fascists and Nazis, who were reactionary rather than utopian (they wanted their nations restored from the damage done by liberals and other outsiders), and yet still intentionally murdered millions. From the utopian examples you conclude that it is a sort of Stalinist slippery slope from shorter work weeks to genocide. Yet you do not seem to conclude the same thing with regard to the church-and-apple-pie traditionalism that Fascists favored. Why not? Well, in each case the happy pictures used are only tangentially relevant to the regimes which used them. So it is quite wrong for you to draw an equivalence between the left-wing pictures and genocide, without also at least drawing an equivalence between the right-wing pictures and genocide. Or concluding that the pictures are not completely relevant. I don't think it is especially likely for you to be killed by your western government. But for what it's worth, I can't see any reason to prefer being killed by non-governmental agents, or people who have your ideology rather than a left-wing one. Getting killed sucks regardless.

doktrin 14y ago

>>If - clearly arguing by absurdity - there is so much machinery and automation that it takes 1% to feed, clothe and house the population - then one might ask - from where does the machinery and automation come from? It must be designed, created, maintained and operated. In order to be constructed, it has to be financed, the risk has to be taken, potential rewards have to be postponed. Your entire argument is underpinned by two basic assumptions : 1. Human labor will always be required to develop goods and maintain infrastructure 2. The number of individuals required to fulfill #1 equals or exceeds the global pool of working age individuals Neither of the above are certainties. >>In short, what you're trying to describe is some type of utopia - a vision which has lead to the death and suffering of millions. It's dangerous thinking and I would urge you to become more educated in this area. Your line of reasoning is reactionary. While I too am quite the fan of free market capitalism, this doesn't mean it is the only possible sustainable system of human growth & cooperation. It's a current economic reality, not a religion.

slurgfest 14y ago

The real underlying point here is that owners of machines and stocks of resources are under no obligation to provide a penny to others under any circumstances, and that thinking they are is tantamount to Stalinesque genocide. However, taxes are legitimate and have been around forever. I imagine that you regard this status quo as slavery. Also, limited work-weeks have been around forever. I gather that you regard this as freeloading. And these things ultimately provide for public goods, without any Stalinesque genocides being perpetrated against 'job creators'. At the same time, taxes do not get collected without legally accountable economic activity. Indeed, as productivity increases, we should see benefits such as people not being forced to immediately begin starving in the street because their job became economically unnecessary, and people not being forced to work 80-hour weeks to provide for the profit of somebody else. If overall productivity increases only come with less social security and more compulsory work for one class, that is because another class is applying coercion to steal labor, which is not morally any better than stealing capital. This observation does not require one to be a Bolshevik, nor does it entail that any mass killings will occur. Nor does it involve revolution. The status quo of several decades in the western world is already something of a balance between workers and capitalists. Now you are peddling the idea that this arrangement has been unfair to the capitalists who have been tremendously enriched by it. That isn't correct. It is in the interests of capitalists not to kill and overwork the people whose time is required to produce anything, and not to strangle the average consumers whose spending power drives the economy. The problem is that short-term thinking and ideologues such as yourself are working to convince capital holders otherwise, that they should cash out as quickly as possible without regard to the social impact of what they are doing. That's dangerous thinking and I urge you to become more educated in this area.