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> Anyway, my thought is that if we can give people basic freedom from the inane logistics of life, they will free themselves up to do other things. Very few peo

> Anyway, my thought is that if we can give people basic freedom from the inane logistics of life, they will free themselves up to do other things. Very few people will do nothing. I can't even imagine nothing. You need to realize that all money has to come from somewhere. If you're some 3rd-party observer and want to hand money out to some people, you'll have to take it from others, and you have no business doing that, nor does anyone else. We're all trained to think about economics from a central planning perspective. People drone on and on about what should be done to an economy, or how whatever should be arranged, when in reality, it's all about people interacting and engaging in voluntary exchanges and investments and so on. Capitalism is just people pursuing their personal gain, which is something they'll do regardless of what kind of "system" you'd like to place upon them. It's important to realize that Capitalism itself, as I've just described it, is not a system. It's not a model for economic behaviour that's imposed on people, it's what people do in any case. Scarcity is a fact of nature and life. This planet's resources are scarce - there's just a certain, finite amount of them out there, and that's it. Our time as human beings is scarce too, there's no way around that (for now). It's pointless to wax poetic about "post-scarcity" and what should be done about it. If we get there, we get there. But until then, we'll have to work within the confines of scarcity and that's fine. We're all responsible for our own well-being, we're all pursuing our personal goals all the time, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's just how we're biologically wired to behave. The only problem with economies in the world is coercion, ie. other people intentionally affecting your choices in the market, compelling you to do something else than you'd otherwise do. Perhaps the most massive example of this is fiat currency. Without taxes being collected in dollars and euros etc, no one would use those currencies.

bluntly_said 13y ago
I think you're missing the point of the article. Pretty much entirely.
- whatevsbro 13y ago
  Well that was bluntly said. I'm not sure it's accurate though, and besides, I was just talking about the nature of economies and Capitalism, which is certainly relevant to an article talking about, well, economies. But if you see a problem with what I said, perhaps you'd like to tell me what it is?
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    The problem is, the whole part of the article was post-scarcity. You identify that earth resources are scarce. What if they're not? What if all of our energy is renewable? What if we close the loop for mined materials so we recycle in-system and no longer consume additional materials from the earth? If we're wired around scarce resources, we will need to adapt when scarcity no longer occurs. Today's Atlas would say, "Give me enough energy and mass, and I'll move the universe." With enough energy, anything is possible.
    - whatevsbro 13y ago
      Quote from the article: there are plenty of reasons to believe that we may be at the beginnings of a post scarcity economy. We have a surplus, no doubt. Of course, we still have legions of people in the world that are starving, and even people still here at home. But we actually have the capacity to feed them, to feed everyone, even now, even if we don’t have the will. It’s not a matter of scarcity; it’s a matter of the organization of labor and capital. The problem here is that there is no "we" that can implement this unrealistic plan of arranging for an easy living for everyone. We're all just individuals and pursuing our personal gain, as I mentioned. That much is constant, because it's how we're biologically wired to operate. So, there is no "collective we" that could decide how to run a society, but that's exactly what he's suggesting. Of course, the only entity that makes collective decisions is the government. But the government only has one way to affect an economy: coercion. In essence, this guy is suggesting that governments should force some people to provide for other people. It's just another version of "welfare", but any kind of welfare system is about using force and coercion to re-allocate resources, because otherwise resources would just get "allocated" through voluntary exchanges. In reality, it makes no sense to talk about some specific "allocation" of resources, because the only way you can even try to achieve that is through coercion again. Coercion is immoral and forbidden though, so you have no business trying to effect any specific allocation of resources. In addition, there's a gross mistake at the root of all this: the idea that you know how resources should be allocated. We're already covered that without coercion, resources will just end up where ever they may, and that's just the end result of countless people pursuing their personal gain, making the exchanges they want to, and so on. You are only your own personal self, and you don't know what kind of exchanges other people should go through - it's all subjective. In summary, people talking about "post-scarcity" or a "resource-based economy" (Zeitgeist) and how those should be arranged, are basically engaging in central planning, and they either realize it would require massive amounts of coercion or they do not. In the first case, they're just plain evil, and in the second, they're clueless. Either way, what they want is impossible.

bluntly_said 13y ago

I think you're missing the point of the article. Pretty much entirely.

whatevsbro 13y ago
Well that was bluntly said. I'm not sure it's accurate though, and besides, I was just talking about the nature of economies and Capitalism, which is certainly relevant to an article talking about, well, economies. But if you see a problem with what I said, perhaps you'd like to tell me what it is?
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  The problem is, the whole part of the article was post-scarcity. You identify that earth resources are scarce. What if they're not? What if all of our energy is renewable? What if we close the loop for mined materials so we recycle in-system and no longer consume additional materials from the earth? If we're wired around scarce resources, we will need to adapt when scarcity no longer occurs. Today's Atlas would say, "Give me enough energy and mass, and I'll move the universe." With enough energy, anything is possible.
  - whatevsbro 13y ago
    Quote from the article: there are plenty of reasons to believe that we may be at the beginnings of a post scarcity economy. We have a surplus, no doubt. Of course, we still have legions of people in the world that are starving, and even people still here at home. But we actually have the capacity to feed them, to feed everyone, even now, even if we don’t have the will. It’s not a matter of scarcity; it’s a matter of the organization of labor and capital. The problem here is that there is no "we" that can implement this unrealistic plan of arranging for an easy living for everyone. We're all just individuals and pursuing our personal gain, as I mentioned. That much is constant, because it's how we're biologically wired to operate. So, there is no "collective we" that could decide how to run a society, but that's exactly what he's suggesting. Of course, the only entity that makes collective decisions is the government. But the government only has one way to affect an economy: coercion. In essence, this guy is suggesting that governments should force some people to provide for other people. It's just another version of "welfare", but any kind of welfare system is about using force and coercion to re-allocate resources, because otherwise resources would just get "allocated" through voluntary exchanges. In reality, it makes no sense to talk about some specific "allocation" of resources, because the only way you can even try to achieve that is through coercion again. Coercion is immoral and forbidden though, so you have no business trying to effect any specific allocation of resources. In addition, there's a gross mistake at the root of all this: the idea that you know how resources should be allocated. We're already covered that without coercion, resources will just end up where ever they may, and that's just the end result of countless people pursuing their personal gain, making the exchanges they want to, and so on. You are only your own personal self, and you don't know what kind of exchanges other people should go through - it's all subjective. In summary, people talking about "post-scarcity" or a "resource-based economy" (Zeitgeist) and how those should be arranged, are basically engaging in central planning, and they either realize it would require massive amounts of coercion or they do not. In the first case, they're just plain evil, and in the second, they're clueless. Either way, what they want is impossible.