I'm trying to grasp this idea of "fair" I keep hearing about. Seems like the supporters of the Charter want wealth to be distributed "fairly". What does that even mean to you guys?
To me, it means everyone gets what they deserve. It does not mean everyone gets the same piece of the pie. If you don't do as much work, you shouldn't get as much pay.
It just seems like your idea of fair is really just you asking for more power, which could be done by taking money away and giving everyone 20 acres of land (or whatever the Charter's plan is once money goes away), but I believe it should be done by hard work and determination. Instead of posting in this thread about how much better life would be without money, go gain some skills, get a good job, and figure out how good life is with money.
On May 19 2012 13:13 Rassy wrote: Some people have an open mind,
FeUerFlieGe United States. May 05 2012 04:02. Posts 502
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Sounds like communism. Sounds like the society in Fahrenheit 451. This has a lot of problems:
1. People are greedy. Money isn't the cause of greed, It's just an outlet. You can be equally greedy over any other object. Getting rid of money isn't going to change human nature.
2. This is extreme socialism. Every item would have to be generic. Nobody would have anything that would set them appart from everyone else. People would begin bartering for whatever unique item they found, like a trading card game. Eventually currency will develop again and our generic world would go obsolete as human materialism kicks in. Once again this is human nature.
3. I don't believe we would advance technologically. There would be no inovation. No competition. In this world, who cares about making a technological inovation. It brings nothing in return to the creator or company. It brings nothing to the company who makes the newest, fastest, safest car. After all, everything is generic anyway and there can only be 1 car company.
And if there were say 2 car companies, why would a company waste it's time developing a better car? Even if people chose to have their car provided by the other company, is car company 1 negatively effected by that? No. Car company 1 does less work now and it's actually an easier job for them. I guess they could do it for fame, but there is no fortune.
The only thing I see spurring technological advancement is the now unhindered human curiosity. But even then there still will be very little INOVATION.
This may be plausible in a distant future. But it's going to take a bloody revolution to overthrow all the banks and the wealthy. And what happens when we have bloody revolutions against rich people?... history.
1-Good point, removing monney wont neccesarely remove greed or desire Human greed and the nature to act in self interest is indeed a huge problem for this system. imagine it starting out with a community of idealistic people wich could slowly grow, i am not sure how to judge greed btw, is it realy something wich comes from within or is it something wich we culturally have developped over the past 1000,s years, and wich we could overcome slowly. Maybe a big part of greed is also a lack of trust and a way to protect ourselves. People want things for themselves because they cant trust other people around them taking care of them if needed,maybe once we dont have to struggle for our existance greed will slowly disapear. 2-Not neccesarely, people can always individualise themselves or produce items in small amounts, rbe does not neccesarely imply bulk production. Also its not like we have 1000,s of different products to choose from now, only with clothes we have. Making to manny different products is not efficient for corporations, cars only come in like 6 different colours, individualisation is only seen in the upper price class of products. 3-here you are completely wrong imo. The biggest technological improvements have not been monney driven and i think we will keep advancing technological, maybe even at a faster rate then now, capitalism holds back technologys wich could hurt direct profits and vested interests for example. If you read for example the autobiography of steve jobs (wich i can realy recommand) you can see that he is motivated by a vision , an ideal and a burning flame inside, not by monney (though it definatly was welcome off course) And i am convinced this goes for all realy important technological improvements and revolutions. Sony had everything in house to make itunes but they didnt. They definatly wanted to make monney but this prooved to be a less efficient drive then the drive of someone with a vision and an ideal (this is just the first example i can come up with)
Money is the incentive to make people come to work when it is convienient for the research, rather than the needs of every single person, which would reduce efficiency in which everything is done.
Besides the fact that the idea itself won't work out (which is of course difficult to explain to people advocating it...), just imagine the transition. Right here you should abandon such an idea.
In order to install such an utopia there would be massive social disruptions, allocation problems, angry citizens (there would be losers too), terrorism, probably even wars if you intend to force it upon the world (and if its not worldwide its doomed to fail anyway...).
Give me some answers on this please. Thanks
Give me some answers on this please the most polite thing ive read in this entire thread.
People often wonder about the transition which is a valid thing to be curious about because as you very well might now these things dont spring out over night. Lets play an experminent for a second.
Lets assume that our current unemployment on 600 million people keep growing which all signs show it will, First of we have to understand that this is due to technical unemployment something that is commen sense for most economist(Advancement on technology automating society).
As unemployment rise goverments quickly learn that if they wanna stay in power and get the votes they need they better treat the working class right by offering safety net and general stability= wellfare society
It is from the look of it inevitiable that automation will stop just so humans can work inefficiently, to maintain labour for income.
This causes a shift in values as the public is becoming more and more educated able to understand how the world works how our system operates and what technology is available.
The monetary system will start becoming more and more regulated as automation starts destoying it from the inside. People are gonna clamour for change why are we living with these outdated values! why do we govern society by competetion instead of cooperation when we have enough food for everyone on the planet.
We are in the transition right now it has been gathering momentum for 10 years and finaly it becomes obvious that the financial systems have to bend the rules to stop the whole monetary system from collapsing.
The truth is tho that the majority of the population is to indoctrinated to even question their surroundings and the system we live in you need an epihany of some sorts where things starts clicking and you see it.
Does anyone have a specific government model if we indeed decide to not use money.
of course and if there is no better solution then the one we have now we would use that so we cant go backward but the monetary system has to go. + Show Spoiler +
Money is the incentive to make people come to work when it is convienient for the research, rather than the needs of every single person, which would reduce efficiency in which everything is done.
What are you stating this of? studies show people work better when they pursue their intrests more than anything which is what a RBE encourages. Maybe you should consider that all you know might not be true i personaly dont work for money neither does many in my area.
Without price you have no way to measure your inputs vs your outputs in a production process. Therefore you will have no idea of you are creating or destroying resources in the production process.
Ex. If you spend 100kg of wheat (feed workers) to create 50kg of wheat over time you will have zero wheat because your inputs are greater than your outputs.
Without price there is no way to measure the many various resource inputs that are used in a production process and compare them to the various production outputs. There are simply too many various resources used to aggregate and measure. In other words if everything is free (no price) there is no way to know if you are spending 100kg of wheat to create 50kg of wheat.
Since it is easier to spend resources than create production outputs the default option for any production process will be to spend more than it produces. Shortages in one area of production will be ‘solved’ by adding more inputs to create outputs (even if the input is more valuable than the output). Invariably this will remove resources from another part of the economy and cause a new shortage. Every individual production center will then solve their shortage problem by adding more inputs, which will create even more shortages!
In short, production is impossible without an economic calculation which is impossible without price.
All math used to ensure that businesses use fewer resources than they produce involve price.
Absent price, or a provable functional equivalent (never been done), The Free World Charter, RBE or Venus project mathematically will not work.
Without price you have no way to measure your inputs vs your outputs in a production process
A store can request a warehouse for more goods that is being requested without having pricetag your argument is invalid.
In short, production is impossible without an economic calculation which is impossible without price.
you can meassure demand without money, Not only that you can even have have people rating and changing goods thus improving whatever they demand. How can anyone be so silly to assume that the only way we can meassure production is by using a fictional currency that is based on speculation debt and faith. You know nothing.
If you spend 100kg of wheat (feed workers) to create 50kg of wheat over time you will have zero wheat because your inputs are greater than your outputs.
See this is science this is facts this is reason applied not your sad and pathetic attempts to disgruntle the RBE based on the notion that these are clueless imbecils like the ones we elect for goverment. + Show Spoiler +
According to the CIA World Factbook, the total land area of Earth is 148.94 million square kilometers, with 17.34 million square kilometers used for crop production. In 2007, the US produced approximately 11,000 kg of vegetables per acre. According to the Institute of Simplified Hydroponics, a group of impoverished children in India has developed a 20 square meter hydroponic garden that produces 730 kg/year(1). If these yields were scaled to a full acre, those yields could increase to ~147,000 kg/acre(2). Using orbitropism, increased CO2 concentrations in the air, and LED lighting, yields could theoretically increase to between ~800,000 to ~1,500,000 kg/acre(3). By adding fulvic acid and gibberellin, yields could increase further. Aeroponic variants have demonstrated an 80% increase in production on top of standard hydroponic yields. With these estimates, it is theoretically possible to produce between 1.8 to 3 million kg/acre(4) – between 180 to 300 times 2007 production, enough to feed a few thousand people every year – and with vertical farming, these yields could be increased linearly. If 4.2 billion acres(5) were required to produce 1.3 thousand kg of food for each living person in 2007, the amount of land used for agricultural means could be dramatically reduced to as little as 3.5 million acres without stacking crops(6), to 1.75 million acres using 2 stacks(6), to 700,000 acres using 5 stacks(6), to 350,000 acres using 10 stacks(6), etc. Using advanced aeroponic facilities and vertical farming, it is physically possible to feed an entire city of up to a million people using only 10 acres of land and 50 stacks(7) – if the population increases, simply add more vertical stacks.
I think DeliCiousVP has a gross misunderstanding about what money is...
Consider reading the famous "Money Speech" :
"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Aconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?
"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions – and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.
"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made – before it can be looted or mooched – made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.
"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss – the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery – that you must offer them values, not wounds – that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade – with reason, not force, as their final arbiter – it is the best product that wins, the best performance, then man of best judgment and highest ability – and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?
"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality – the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.
"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants; money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth – the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Money is your means of survival. The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money – and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.
"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another – their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride, or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich – will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt – and of his life, as he deserves.
"Then you will see the rise of the double standard – the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money – the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law – men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims – then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.
"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it becomes, marked: 'Account overdrawn.'
"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are.
"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood – money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves – slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers – as industrialists.
"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money – and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being – the self-made man – the American industrialist.
"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose – because it contains all the others – the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money'. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity – to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.
"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide – as, I think, he will.
"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns – or dollars. Take your choice – there is no other – and your time is running out."
In short, production is impossible without an economic calculation which is impossible without price.
you can meassure demand without money, Not only that you can even have have people rating and changing goods thus improving whatever they demand. How can anyone be so silly to assume that the only way we can meassure production is by using a fictional currency that is based on speculation debt and faith. You know nothing.
If you spend 100kg of wheat (feed workers) to create 50kg of wheat over time you will have zero wheat because your inputs are greater than your outputs.
See this is science this is facts this is reason applied not your sad and pathetic attempts to disgruntle the RBE based on the notion that these are clueless imbecils like the ones we elect for goverment. + Show Spoiler +
According to the CIA World Factbook, the total land area of Earth is 148.94 million square kilometers, with 17.34 million square kilometers used for crop production. In 2007, the US produced approximately 11,000 kg of vegetables per acre. According to the Institute of Simplified Hydroponics, a group of impoverished children in India has developed a 20 square meter hydroponic garden that produces 730 kg/year(1). If these yields were scaled to a full acre, those yields could increase to ~147,000 kg/acre(2). Using orbitropism, increased CO2 concentrations in the air, and LED lighting, yields could theoretically increase to between ~800,000 to ~1,500,000 kg/acre(3). By adding fulvic acid and gibberellin, yields could increase further. Aeroponic variants have demonstrated an 80% increase in production on top of standard hydroponic yields. With these estimates, it is theoretically possible to produce between 1.8 to 3 million kg/acre(4) – between 180 to 300 times 2007 production, enough to feed a few thousand people every year – and with vertical farming, these yields could be increased linearly. If 4.2 billion acres(5) were required to produce 1.3 thousand kg of food for each living person in 2007, the amount of land used for agricultural means could be dramatically reduced to as little as 3.5 million acres without stacking crops(6), to 1.75 million acres using 2 stacks(6), to 700,000 acres using 5 stacks(6), to 350,000 acres using 10 stacks(6), etc. Using advanced aeroponic facilities and vertical farming, it is physically possible to feed an entire city of up to a million people using only 10 acres of land and 50 stacks(7) – if the population increases, simply add more vertical stacks.
Yes a store can request a warehouse to send more goods. But you have no idea, absent the price system, how much resources and the relative scarcity and importance of those resources that those goods contain. Moreover, the economic calculation problem is not a consumption problem. The issue is not what people want and in what quantity they want it. The problem is a production problem.
For example, the blog article you cite only measures outputs. It makes no mention of the resources required to produce that output. Therefore you have no idea if you are using more resources in your production than you are producing. Even if you "add up" the resources required to make the production you have no way to compare the resources used. How do you compare a ton of iron to a ton of coal or a ton of butter?
Scientists and engineers cannot solve the economic calculations absent a price system. That's why we have industrial engineers - who uses prices to figure out how to build and run factories.
Communism is critiqued in 1920 by Ludwig von Mises through the 'economic calculation problem' which states that production is impossible outside of the free market's solution - the price mechanism.
Socialist planner's say "thanks for the heads up" and develop the Lange-Lerner solution which...
... the Lange-Lerner solution, acclaimed by virtually all economists, asserted that the socialist planning board could easily resolve the calculation problem by ordering its various managers to fix accounting prices. Then, according to the contribution of Professor Fred M. Taylor, the central planning board could find the proper prices in much the same way as the capitalist market: trial and error. Thus, given a stock of consumer goods, if the accounting prices are set too low, there will be a shortage, and the planners will raise prices until the shortage disappears and the market is cleared. If, on the other hand, prices are set too high, there will be a surplus on the shelves, and the planners will lower the price, until the markets are cleared. The solution is simplicity itself!
But this solution applied only to consumer goods - not producer goods (still a production problem). Therefore it didn't work. So their new solution was to just copy what capitalist countries did.
But the decisive rebuttal has been leveled by Mises in Human Action: the Soviet Union and Eastern European economies were not fully socialist because they were, after all, islands in a world capitalist market. The communist planners were therefore able, albeit clumsily and imperfectly, to use prices set by world markets as indispensable guidelines for the pricing and allocation of capital resources.
Mises's insight was confirmed as early as the mid-1950s, when the British economist Peter Wiles visited Poland, where Oskar Lange was helping to plan Polish socialism. Wiles asked the Polish economists how they planned the economic system. As reported, "What actually happens is that "world prices", i.e. capitalist world prices, are used in all intra-[Soviet] bloc trade. They are translated into rubles ... entered into bilateral clearing accounts."
I think DeliCiousVP has a gross misunderstanding about what money is...
These values are outdated, We have the technology to create abundance to feed.cloth,shelter everyone on earth. "Money is in the way" i cant belive i read it i should have stoped at
Money is your means of survival
Where i just saw swollen bellies, Sickening stop promoting these old notions it kills.
Yes a store can request a warehouse to send more goods. But you have no idea, absent the price system, how much resources and the relative scarcity and importance of those resources that those goods contain. Moreover, the economic calculation problem is not a consumption problem. The issue is not what people want and in what quantity they want it. The problem is a production problem.
What problem data is being collected from all fronts much more efficently then our monetary system, Our system will be automated to a degree never seen before so we will have major production easily i dont understand what you
For example, the blog article you cite only measures outputs. It makes no mention of the resources required to produce that output. Therefore you have no idea if you are using more resources in your production than you are producing
It is being mentioned, What amount of land we have the amount of water available because you were talking about food and food is being represented, I dont have a full list on what resources are scarce and what is abundant off my hand nor is it relevant to this direction.
RBE or Monetary it dont change the resources available but a RBE will be much more competent at preserving, utilizing,recycling and allocating resources than a monetary system is by far.
a RBE is only valid if these criterias are met 1. We can feed/Hydrate everyone on the planet, 2 We can shelter everyone on the planet.
We can do this but our old predatory monetary system is holding us back.
Scientists and engineers cannot solve the economic calculations absent a price system. That's why we have industrial engineers - who uses prices to figure out how to build and run factories
. This qoute is invert
Who do you think made these studies created the designs Jacque fresco himself is an industrial enginner the inventer of a RBE. it always baffles me to see people who have an "opinion" that is the opposite of reality no wonder the world is such a messed up place. Only time will cure your naive notions about how the world realy works.
Communism is critiqued in 1920 by Ludwig von Mises through the 'economic calculation problem' which states that production is impossible outside of the free market's solution - the price mechanism.
That might be true but lacks relevance because this is not communism, Communism is a monetary idealogy, This is the next step in human social and technological evolution. The biggest so far.
If left is communism and right is capitalism RBE is above it. it is not to the left or right but one step above just like the feudal system became obsolete so did our monetary system and one day the RBE system will be obsolete in the format it will be first implemented.
It is simply impossible to solve the economic calculation problem absent a price system. There are too many distinct resources that would need to be cataloged, measured and updated in terms of scarcity and demand.
If you disagree then post the algorithm that solves the economic calculation problem absent a price system so that we can take a look at it.
Until you do that then the RBE remains proven to be unworkable.
Listen guys, you cant just abolish money (or government, or whatever else) and thereby solve the worlds problems. Money is neither good nor bad. Money is a tool, and tools have no inherent moral value. What matters is how they are used. Capitalism is a system that encompasses that. But while capitalism has its flaws and destructive trends, it is so far the best system invented that remains consistent with human nature. Humans will work and when it benefits them directly, and stop the instant it does not. Your system being supposedly better and providing benefits for all will not change that. Without Direct benefits no one will work as hard... Unless you propose to motivate them through force. This is what happened with communism and rbe, like communism, offers no direct incentives for effort. Hence the same flaws. You guys assume people will refrain from mental and physical torpor and make wise decisions just because your system is idealogically liberating and provides widespread benefits. Such benefits have no power to motivate even if they could be achieved without force - doubtful, since you provide no direct incentives for those who would produce them.
Having said all that, capitalism will eventually be replaced just like feudalism and monarchy eventually were, despite conservative opposition similar to that of the free marketers in this thread. Whatever the successor is though, it will likely incorporate money and government alike, with reforms and modifications where needed. It will adopt a sane policy towards human nature, knowing that the best that can be done is to motivate people in accordance with their natures, rather than blindly hoping people will do what is best for all.
In short, production is impossible without an economic calculation which is impossible without price.
Well this is just nonsense. Huge communitys have existed and produced in the past without having (credit) monney. Price is a huge simplication annyway, an abstract number to represent the resourses used. Resources are converted into a price but this price is arbitrary (nature for example has an economic pricetag wich is way lower then the cost to replace it, manny resource prices are regulated) and a huge simplification. Wich is reason for the manny manny failed investment and bad products, wich in a "perfect free market" should not exist. The consumer is not someone who tries to optimalise its utility,he is not calculating at all, the consumer is a lemming. Optimalisation of utility is suposed to be done by consumers in the capitalistic system but this is not the case in reality at all.
The most important is though is that we can have a price/cost tag without monney. We can calculate based on resources wich use of resources would create the highest utility, We could measure utility by letting people speak out there preferences, this does not neccesarely have to be expressed by spending monney on an item, thats just one way to do it.
Monney has 3 functions from origine. 1-to store value. 2-a measure to calculate. 3-to facilitate trade.
we can have a measure to calculate without having it used to trade and store value.
we drifting away from the core btw, and only responding to attacks The core is that monney and the current system create scarecity.
On May 19 2012 13:23 Competent wrote: I just read through 47 pages and I think I have absorbed enough to make a very valid point.
A main concern I see is, " How can we be sure things will be distributed evenly? Fairly? etc..."
So I new plan has been suggested. A plan that will remove the current system that isn't fair, doesn't distribute evenly, is not just, etc and it was never implemented to be any of those things... Now, your main concern is the new system--which is aimed at being fair/just unlike the current one--won't be?
Tell me, what the hell do you have to lose? Really? You are worried that this new idea might be like the current system, and THAT is the reason you are against it? Earth to you! Oh never fucking mind. If you haven't got it by now, I don't think you ever will.
So, the current system is really based off of a banking system, if u traveled in the middle ages you wouldnt be able to trade the wheat from your farm at your new destination, hauling the wheat and the agging in travel would ruin that prospect. So their has to be a common currency, fora long time it was gold, now it would probably be oil/gas. Before paper currency was introduced as the general currency silver and gold was the base currency, this was even true to an extent until 1972 when america (the worlds reserve currency) went off tue gold standard.
A currency free world would never happen, everything has a price and that price would be weighted in the something such as gas. If you work on a farm right now, they will pay u 12-15 an hour, or 96-120 a day. If you worked on that farm without wages you would probably be payed with a room and food. One of those sounds like slavery... Because ppl wont do somthing that they dont have to a system without currency is doomed to fail in the world we have created. Communism, which is a step farther than what you are proposing is not a successful model. It will not be successful (outside of small family like communities) until our entire world is automated and there is no meed for wages, we have a few centuries for that to happen.
Its interesting that you and others think that a capitalist system doesmt work, especially since capitalism is the reason a middle class exists. Not to mention that prior to tje industrial revolution and the tech that followed most of tje wealtj in every country was controlled by the ruling class. Its easy to think of a faceless picturecof some greedy business man and say that said person is bad forcthe country and is why currency system doesnt work, but if you apply a face such as bill gates, or warren buffet or Carlos slim (the 3richest ppl in the world outside of the rothschild family) then you have a way different opinion, not only that but look at peoppe such as mark zuckerberg, just because people have success doesnt mean that a currency system is bad. The american dream is a house, a boat and some kids, this is still possible and as long as businesses stay in america and keep their jobs in america it will live on. Obviously im not looking at europe or otjer countries in this reply because thats not where i live (and the economic systems in most european countries are failing).
If you are looking for the reason why america is failing than look at our government. Ppl seem to constantly blame greed as tje cause for our problems when in reality greed and fear are the only emotions you can count on.
PS. Posting from phone so there are grammatical errors
I have an issue with your response--along with others. It is the same response I see browsing all these pages for people who are opposed. It is the same response I hear when I talk with co-workers or friends. I hear a lot of "can't" & "won't". I am not given any actual reasons. I am just told it can't happen; it won't happen. No evidence or reasoning behind it. It simple "can't/won't" work. Sorry, but that evidently should show that it doesn't work for me.
Next we have them pointing to how well the current system works. However, there isn't any pointing out that what products are created aren't best for the environment. These are just the cheapest to make. No mentioning of the incredibly poor wealth distribution(top 1%), the creation of money with no contribution to society(stocks). And no pointing out that we are at the mercy of currency. If things aren't going well financially, then people lose homes, starve, and cannot receive health care. These homes, farms, and hospitals are still there. They still have people qualified to do the job. These home are still capable of housing people. Instead people go hunger. They go without medical attention. And they sleep in their cars(if they have one).
I argue that this is immoral bullshit. We have the means to keep everyone fed. We have the houses to keep everyone sheltered. We have the hospitals to keep everyone healthy. What do we not have? Money for everyone. This is why the question is being proposed--why the hell do we need this paper? Simply put, we don't.
All a system like the one proposed requires is a small population of willful people with the right mindset. If I knew that when I went to work that I had 90% of the worlds population was on my back, and that I was taking care of their needs, I would enjoy working. And that is all this system requires. A handful of people to do the work machines can't.
Or we can just wait until 60% of the workforce's jobs are taken by machines. It would be interesting to see how a monetary system works when more than half of the people required to participate in it don't receive paychecks because a capitalist corporation's only concern is to make money.
On May 20 2012 22:26 Competent wrote: Or we can just wait until 60% of the workforce's jobs are taken by machines. It would be interesting to see how a monetary system works when more than half of the people required to participate in it don't receive paychecks because a capitalist corporation's only concern is to make money.
This wont happen in the next few hundred years. And once again come the blame on money, i recommend you read http://conspiracies.skepticproject.com/articles/zeitgeist/ Read the parts where he talks about things that both zeitgeist and free world charter have in common. people have said in this thread time and time again why it wont work cant work and is based on flawed assumptions, and yet those who advocate it are saying the exact same mantra again and again without really refuting the point.
I for one am in favor that this thread be closed as its been the first 5 pages again and again and again with the 3-4 zealots of this idea saying the same things.
we drifting away from the core btw, and only responding to attacks The core is that monney and the current system create scarecity.
Thats exactly the problem here, you seem to be completely missing the fact that what is currently being discussed right now concerns the inner workings of the RBE. You can state all you want that the current system creates scarcity, but if you can't prove how your system would work, then you can't prove that it's in turn going to make the scarcity problem any better. Simply saying ''believe me well suddenly become super technologically advanced so everyone will have everything they need'' is not enough. Anyone can invent a system that would solve every man's problem in the world, but in the end they are just words, if you can't establish those systems in reality, then theres no real point discussing them.
tldr : ''Your system creates scarcity, my system doesnt but I cant prove it''.
On May 20 2012 22:26 Competent wrote:
I argue that this is immoral bullshit. We have the means to keep everyone fed. We have the houses to keep everyone sheltered. We have the hospitals to keep everyone healthy. What do we not have? Money for everyone. This is why the question is being proposed--why the hell do we need this paper? Simply put, we don't
Thats wrong, all money is in itself is a trading currency. We don't have enough doctors to keep everyone perfectly healthy, so instead of having a random person decide for us who gets to get treated first, we decide for ourselves by deciding what amount of money were ready to spend.
Same goes for feeding people, currently, we dont have enough food to keep everyone on the planet fed for as much as they want to eat. So now how do you decide who gets to eat what ? Once again money is the answer, I can either eat a lot and have less of something else, or I can eat less and have more of other things. Now simply saying that ''yes but we have the technology to make as much food as everyone would ever want'' is not enough because that would require ressources and work to get there.
On May 20 2012 21:48 Rassy wrote: In short, production is impossible without an economic calculation which is impossible without price.
Well this is just nonsense. Huge communitys have existed and produced in the past without having (credit) monney. Price is a huge simplication annyway, an abstract number to represent the resourses used. Resources are converted into a price but this price is arbitrary (nature for example has an economic pricetag wich is way lower then the cost to replace it, manny resource prices are regulated) and a huge simplification. Wich is reason for the manny manny failed investment and bad products, wich in a "perfect free market" should not exist. The consumer is not someone who tries to optimalise its utility,he is not calculating at all, the consumer is a lemming. Optimalisation of utility is suposed to be done by consumers in the capitalistic system but this is not the case in reality at all.
The most important is though is that we can have a price/cost tag without monney. We can calculate based on resources wich use of resources would create the highest utility, We could measure utility by letting people speak out there preferences, this does not neccesarely have to be expressed by spending monney on an item, thats just one way to do it.
Monney has 3 functions from origine. 1-to store value. 2-a measure to calculate. 3-to facilitate trade.
we can have a measure to calculate without having it used to trade and store value.
we drifting away from the core btw, and only responding to attacks The core is that monney and the current system create scarecity.
Market pricing were never proven to be the best system, it was proven to be the only system that works.
In a perfect free market failure will still occur. We live in a world where demand is uncertain.
Ex. You absolutely cannot know the demand for a given movie before it is made!
Simply saying that we can measure without price is nonsense. You have to show it! No one is questioning that primitive societies (hunter gatherer) can operate without price. But sophisticated economies with capital goods and supply chains need price. If you disagree then show the math!!
Ex. You are running a light bulb factory. Absent price, how do you calculate what lot sizes you will use? Do you produce 10, 100, or 1000 bulbs (100W) before switching over to another bulb (60W)? If you produce in larger batches you will reduce the resources that get used in the setup process (switching from one bulb to the next) at the tradeoff of increasing resources tied up storing more inventory. Here's the current calculation involving price: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_order_quantity
On May 18 2012 13:32 JonnyBNoHo wrote: DeliCiousVP so at this point if you can't answer the question beyond posting links to 2hr long propaganda films then I'm done with this little debate even though it's been fun . It's a simple question in market economies but a huge question as to how a RBE will be run in the real world. If it (in both parts 'a' and 'b') cannot be answered thoroughly then the RBE cannot work.
Here's the question again.
In a RBE (Resource Based Economy) how do you evaluate whether or not building a steel mill is:
a) worth the specific resources it will consume in its construction and use b) a better use of resources than other options
Note: you do not have infinite resources - building the steel mill will mean that something else that is wanted will not be built.
Of course he has no answer to this...
All attempts at Utilitarian central control economies have failed and will continue to fail, and can never succeed, because we as humans are individualists, and the social circle of the people we actually care about is much smaller than the society that we live in, so we have dissenting interests, the "fair" reconciliation of which is a problem of exponential mathematical complexity, meaning it's not solvable in practice, at least in a dynamic system.
We're not bees or ants in a single hive or anthill, we don't all share a common purpose without coercion.
Humans are individualists... I hate this ridiculous myth. Its absolute. fucking. bullshit.
If you read what I wrote you'll see that it doesn't contradict what you're saying. We are social to an extent. Recently studies have been done showing that a human brain can support at max 300 or so relationships.
Are humans are social animal in general? yes, but we are indvidualists on the scale that this topic is discussing.
Humans are a social animal. 99.9% of our genetic history was spent working in egalitarian tribal groups, and studies show people were much happier that way, even without all the medicine, abundant (albiet processed to hell) food, and techy toys. Connection, communication and affection from other humans is a fundamental need for psychological health.
Like I said, this doesn't contradict what I've said.
It has been the undying objective of the elite, neo-liberalist oligarchs in the modern era to convince the public that humans are happiest alone, not caring for or tending to the needs of others for mutual benefit. It's bullshit. There's a word for people who don't empathize or collaborate with other people: sociopath.
You're blowing this out of proportion. I agree that most people have some sort of feeling of debt to the society, because the society made it possible for them to become the people that they are, however this isn't being social, this is simply being moral (being appreciative is part of morality.)
Are people social? Yes, but we're not social with the entirety of the human race or even our nation, or even our town/city. Are there small communities, like the Tibettan ones who can collaborate as one unit in order to achieve their "greater good?" Yes, but these communities are nowhere near the size of a nation, and or the world.
There's a limit to how social we are. There is even a limit to how social ants and bees are. Ants of the same species but different colonies may fight each other instead of all coming together to build a bigger colony, why? because they're not social to such a huge extent, their common "greater good," generally only extends to the their own colony, which is admittedly very large, but they don't have the same unified hive mentality when you think about the total population of all the ants on the entire planet.
Similarly, utilitarian communism, and similar societies can exist for humans on a very small scale, but they CAN NOT exist on a very large scale, because we as humans are simply not that social. The reason we willingly have organized governments/countries (meaning the peoples that actually willingly accept them) is because of personal incentives, and benefits that it brings for each person and the circle of people that he cares about, not for the "greater good."
Oh here comes the condenscending ad hominems to go with a logically flawed rebuttal.
My need for food is actually a conflicting interest with your need of food, because there's a finite amount of food, and if in a case when there's not enough food for everyone these interests become not only conflicting, but their fulfillment becomes mutually exclusive.
Imagine now that you were the president or someone with alot of power. Imagine you still reason this way now you create a society built upon this notion. "There is not enough for all of us we most compete over the resources" This idea is a darwin expression used to justify the murdering of millions.
Just because it's physically possible to grow enough food doesn't mean that there aren't inherent inefficiencies in all methods of distribution.
Determining ideal or even close to ideal method for distribution for the population the size of the human race is PHYSICALLY impossible. Period. Therefore "fair" centralized planning is impossible.
We don't have the free market because it's some kind Utopia, you're arguing strawman here because you claim that just because I believe in money, commerce, banking, free market, and etc. I think that this is the perfect world to live in... I don't. In my perfect world I would have my choice of food/drink/entertainment/housing/transportation at a whim, and most important of all I would have more time to spend on this planet (immortality?)
But this is irrelevant to a realistic discussion because Utopias don't exist, and in the end the reason they don't exist IS the scarcity of work-force/food/energy/materials/etc.
According to the CIA World Factbook, the total land area of Earth is 148.94 million square kilometers, with 17.34 million square kilometers used for crop production. In 2007, the US produced approximately 11,000 kg of vegetables per acre. According to the Institute of Simplified Hydroponics, a group of impoverished children in India has developed a 20 square meter hydroponic garden that produces 730 kg/year(1). If these yields were scaled to a full acre, those yields could increase to ~147,000 kg/acre(2). Using orbitropism, increased CO2 concentrations in the air, and LED lighting, yields could theoretically increase to between ~800,000 to ~1,500,000 kg/acre(3). By adding fulvic acid and gibberellin, yields could increase further. Aeroponic variants have demonstrated an 80% increase in production on top of standard hydroponic yields. With these estimates, it is theoretically possible to produce between 1.8 to 3 million kg/acre(4) – between 180 to 300 times 2007 production, enough to feed a few thousand people every year – and with vertical farming, these yields could be increased linearly. If 4.2 billion acres(5) were required to produce 1.3 thousand kg of food for each living person in 2007, the amount of land used for agricultural means could be dramatically reduced to as little as 3.5 million acres without stacking crops(6), to 1.75 million acres using 2 stacks(6), to 700,000 acres using 5 stacks(6), to 350,000 acres using 10 stacks(6), etc. Using advanced aeroponic facilities and vertical farming, it is physically possible to feed an entire city of up to a million people using only 10 acres of land and 50 stacks(7) – if the population increases, simply add more vertical stacks Source http://zeitnewsblog.blogspot.se/2011/03/meeting-human-needs-how-resource-based.html .
Now you just condemed a billion people to starve and i just applied science to society and created abundance. When people utter ultimatiums like cant be done, Never!,its unsolvable! you create suffering. This is not some maxistic mother russia notion this is the future of society and we need to reach it at a faster pace then we are today for the betterment of all mankind.
You didn't create abundance, you created nothing. You just said that if everything goes well in a perfect world it is MAYBE possible to create enough food for everyone... well no one is arguing this, if you think it's so easy why don't you go do it.
You didn't mention the difficulties that come with feeding the plants nutrients in stacked aeroponic farms, you didn't mention the difficulty of building these farms. You didn't mention the fact that all of this would account only for the vegetative food, what about meat and fish? Should we just not have meat and fish, because they are not the most efficient way of growing food in terms of number of kilograms/acre? We can just eat grass, and take supplements right? How many people would want to agree to this?
Similarly do you think we shouldn't have luxury cars, because they are a waste of resources to create when a simpler car, or a bus service could do the job more efficiently?
Or what about shoes? why have shoes that are both black and brown when it's more efficient to have the facilities simply make the same type of shoes... And why would we EVER risk of creating extra products? That's inefficient, let's just figure out the perfect ratio of amount shoes needed per person, and then stop making more, because they would be a waste.
Now this is starting to sound like a place I used to know.
The same goes for our interest in acquiring anything else, and there are things that are even more scarce than food, the interests for which cause even more conflicts.
Like we already confirmed your values are dangerous and ineffective. That is why you need new values updated and improved upon that offers compassion as a strength rather then indiffrence co-operation over competition. How can you understand something this advanced when your values are 200 years old?
Compassion isn't a strength or a weakness. Compassion is a sensibility.
Competition PROMOTES co-operation, but only when it's actually beneficial. Competition is what keeps people honest and efficient in their trade. My values aren't 200 years old, they are timeless: "I care about the wellfare of myself, and my loved ones." It is part of standard human genetics, and is what allowed us to survive as a species (self-preservation, andmaternal/paternal instincts.)
I want to highlight that part to encourage anyone to look at it as an individual statement, what does that sound like? 1984? Big brother? I ROBOT? You're right, that's exactly what I need, I'll make my way to the command center at 12:00 PM sharp tomorrow for my scheduled re-programming, thanks you for the reminder.
Eventualy most if not all of you will reach the understanding of this direction, And to understand it is to approve of it because its not an idealogy that is just how you conceive it because of the lack in refrences you have. it is just the scientific method adapted to society and it welcomes change and improvement.
No it's not the scientific method. The scientific method would never argue with concrete mathematics.
I'm a Communist and have always supported this kind of life-style. There is nothing wrong standing in line, you do it all the time at the bank so why do you have to be all stuffy about global peace?
Did you guys know that in China, entertainment programming that depicts alternate reality and time travel has been banned. It seems the government is afraid that the chinese people will start dreaming - they are fearing the imagination of their citizens.
In the west, we have a different problem. Here we don't think of prohibition, because the 'ruling system' has nearly oppressed our capacity to dream.
And those who still dare to dream? They are mostly dreaming of a muslim/terror-free society. :/
DelicousVP, they will tell you that you are dreaming, but the true dreamers are those who think that things can go on indefinitely the way they are, just with some cosmetic changes. We are not dreamers, we are the awakening from a dream which is turning into a nightmare.
EPT
the most polite thing ive read in this entire thread. 
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