Question for strident capitalists...

[cosmictotem]

Again the answer is obvious (assuming your prior statement that land goes on a first to ask for it basis):
The ambulance driver, who took the 2nd dying spouse to the hospital gets this good land, as he goes straight to the land claim office after delivering that last spouse to the hospital - Gets there before the official in charge of new land assignments even gets the death notice. After filing his claim the driver immediately re-enforces it by going to land and planting some seeds, etc. Thus there will be no shortage of "no-money" people wanting to become ambulance drivers.

How would the ambulance even know the quality of the land or even if he wants it before anyone else? What if all available is listed online and that is the first time anyone gets to make a claim to it? So everyone has an equal opportunity as long as they can access the official publications where such land distribution activities are posted.

 

[cosmictotem]

There are not apartment rooms in Bermuda for it to be possible for all who would like to go there and there are real cost to the environment and supply of petroleum to get the visitor there. Again money has nothing to do with these facts. They remain true in your system too.

If that's true then money won't solve then either.

Will be back later for more discussion fun and to address your other points you've already posted. Don't post too much while I'm gone or I have too much to catch up on.

 

[Billy T]

If that's true then money won't solve then either. ...

Agreed. Some things like big house right on a fine beach can only be had by a very small percent of the population. - They are best used to reward those who worked hard / studied for years instead of given out by some random lottery, if you want to have professional like heart surgeon (or my orthopedic surgeon, cousin) even at 5% of the number society needs.

To add to my demonstrated / illustrated in prior post / comments that "You advocate a wasteful low-productive system," I can add: A society that has less 5% of the medical professionals it needs.

 

[iceaura]

Agreed. Some things like big house right on a fine beach can only be had by a very small percent of the population.

Or a week's vacation at a small cabin on a third rate beach. That depends on the degree of inequality that has built up.

It's possible for that small percentage to own not only the one big house on the fine beach, but all the housing space on all the beaches.

 

[iceaura]

The "higher standard of living" you point out of the the participant in a monetary system is merely the result of the ability to over-produce, which will not be prohibited in my moneyless model. You just will have to go about in other ways producing that abundance for yourself.

One person not trading with distant strangers cannot raise their standard of living much above whatever the subsistence hoe farmer in their location can manage. You cannot produce "abundance" for yourself. You have to trade for it.

If they are trading with distant strangers, they need a medium of exchange.

 

[Billy T]

... It's possible for that small percentage to own not only the one big house on the fine beach, but all the housing space on all the beaches.

Yes ever since GWB's tax reductions for the very very rich US has been moving in that direction as wealth becomes every more concentrated, the middle class shrinks and their children (and grand children) get a growing per capita debt to try to pay - They will, no default but with dollars of much less value. Clinton's budget surpluses are a distant dream, now.

 

[Billy T]

(1) How would the ambulance even know the quality of the land or even if he wants it before anyone else? (2)What if all available is listed online and that is the first time anyone gets to make a claim to it? So everyone has an equal opportunity as long as they can access the official publications where such land distribution activities are posted.

On (1) He was just there to get very sick last spouse - Saw the lush garden, fat cow, nice house, etc.
On (2) As no one could read detailed descriptions of many parcels, internet listing is not an informed choice of the most desirable parcel - still just a random assignment. What dose internet listing provide over just be assigned a parcel? If it is a terrible one, when you go look at it you don't try to live on it - just turn it back in to listing agency and try again.

In a money /ownership system, when the owner of a parcel wants to retire (on the money saved and invested over his productive years) to Florida, he may try to sell his house himself or more likely to get the highest price, list with a real estate company where buyers go and tell what they can afford, what school district they want to live in, etc. I only rented and save a lot. (I was very well paid new PH. D, so saved abut 85% of my after tax pay - even bought 16 acres wooded land, as houses depreciate but land appreciates.) Then, when my first born was about to start school, I investigated the elementary schools. By far the best in Maryland were the newly developed planed town, Columbia* and it was not even as distant from my job (at APL/JHU) as the apartment complex in Laurel, MD where I lived at the time. - a clear choice. after an intense week end, I made a firm offer on two townhouses that were near each other. One offer expired in two days at 5PM and then the other became valid for two days.

* it was just one "neighbor hood" Bryant Woods, then and I was about the 500th resident of city now with more than 150,000 population.

 

[cosmictotem]

Reply to post 399, is easy. Party "A" wants Party "B" to do something, like vote for congress man A's bill, so offers to do something congressman B wants (eg vote for his pet bill, or use A's privilege to get B's son into the US Naval academy, etc.) Money has nothing to do with 80+ % of these big value deals. Absent money they still occur.

Aren't such votes supposed to not be influenced by favors? If I'm going to vote that way, I'm going to vote that way because I believe in it, not because someone is offering to do me a favor. The scenario you set up is a bit false as bill votes usually are about the allocation of funds to be used here or there or not. If there are no funds to allocate, why does there need to be a formal vote?

You certainly could say the problem involves more than just money, it's about resource imbalance. The ability of individuals to amass endless amounts of money (resources) exacerbates the problem. If over consumption is unhealthy for the human body, what is the effect on the health of a planet when all resources are over consumed by billions of people?

Runaway consumption, in the pursuit of money, threatens eco-systems and the planet's entire environment.

The unrestrained ability of companies to pursue unlimited amounts of money (you can read that as money or resources) has created intentional obsolescence, in which companies intentionally design products to eventually fail when they could have otherwise lasted longer and been built for sustainability. So resources are intentionally being wasted so people can make more money. And that's not some senator trying to another to vote for his bill. That's all driven by the pursuit of profit, i.e, money. So corporations can just keep making money without any regard for sustainability or environmental impact. All that matters or needs to be considered is profit. Nice economic model you got there.

When you start seeing shit like intentional obsolescence, there can be no doubt you are seeing a failed system which needs to move over and make room for alternatives.

You say people work for their money and homes and cars and luxuries but really how much work can one really do? When does it end? Is a mansion commensurable to the effort your doctor put in? Is a castle? When will your doctor be satisfied? How much luxury does he require for his existence, that so many others do not? How much of the resources from this one planet with 7 billion other people on it does his existence demand over and above their existence? After becoming a doctor does his biology alter in some way to make his existence impossible without a greater share of resources than someone else? Does his physiology require a Bentley in order for him to access the energy he needs to perform his operations? Will his body chemistry suddenly seize up without an infusion of luxury in to his life? Where is the biological connection between the doctor's extravagant luxuries and the performance of his activities?

Or is it all mental?

 

[cosmictotem]

On (1) He was just there to get very sick last spouse - Saw the lush garden, fat cow, nice house, etc.
On (2) As no one could read detailed descriptions of many parcels, internet listing is not an informed choice of the most desirable parcel - still just a random assignment. What dose internet listing provide over just be assigned a parcel? If it is a terrible one, when you go look at it you don't try to live on it - just turn it back in to listing agency and try again.

In a money /ownership system, when the owner of a parcel wants to retire (on the money saved and invested over his productive years) to Florida, he may try to sell his house himself or more likely to get the highest price, list with a real estate company where buyers go and tell what they can afford, what school district they want to live in, etc. I only rented and save a lot. (I was very well paid new PH. D, so saved abut 85% of my after tax pay - even bought 16 acres wooded land, as houses depreciate but land appreciates.) Then, when my first born was about to start school, I investigated the elementary schools. By far the best in Maryland were the newly developed planed town, Columbia* and it was not even as distant from my job (at APL/JHU) as the apartment complex in Laurel, MD where I lived at the time. - a clear choice. after an intense week end, I made a firm offer on two townhouses that were near each other. One offer expired in two days at 5PM and then the other became valid for two days.

Well, what can I say? Thems the breaks. The free market also lacks no cases of missed opportunities or lucky accidents. You keep asking me to solve issues the free market cannot even guarantee solutions for itself. There will be advantages and disadvantages in all socio-economic models. The disadvantage in the free market is you can always be outbid and not get the parcel that way. The disadvantage in the moneyless system, assuming you're finicky regarding getting free land (I personally wouldn't be too much), is you could miss out on a parcel if you're not on your toes.

Regarding fertile land, technology has advanced to the point where you could produce many times more food with hydroponic vertical farming than tilling the land. So you're scenario, while only an example, might not even come up.

 

[iceaura]

You keep asking me to solve issues the free market cannot even guarantee solutions for itself.

If you haven't solved the free market's problems, and you can't solve the communal share problems, what are you hoping to gain by centralizing and micromanaging from a distance even the smallest exchange decisions, while concealing your medium of exchange inside a huge and impenetrable pile of software and distant committee meetings?

Regarding fertile land, technology has advanced to the point where you could produce many times more food with hydroponic vertical farming than tilling the land.

Yeah, and fusion power has made all our gas engines obsolete - as soon as a couple of glitches have been ironed out.

 

[cosmictotem]

If you haven't solved the free market's problems, and you can't solve the communal share problems, what are you hoping to gain by centralizing and micromanaging from a distance even the smallest exchange decisions, while concealing your medium of exchange inside a huge and impenetrable pile of software and distant committee meetings?

Let's get down to brass tacks.

Advocates of the free market are constantly complaining about these constant socialist and communal schemes popping up in response to the resource conflicts and environmental degradation the free market offers no solution to but to ignore, right?

And they consistently complain these alternate economic models can't solve these problems and that the free market monetary system is the superior model.

Well. Prove it.

Why are so many people dissatisfied and so poorly taken care of under the free market?

Is it because all those people don't want to participate in the free market?

Why doesn't the superior system address these issues?

Where do all the dissatisfied citizens come from if the system works the way it is?

And what's the answer if it's not a more even distribution of resources?

A more imbalanced distribution of resources?

 

[Billy T]

... And they consistently complain these alternate economic models can't solve these problems and that the free market monetary system is the superior model.
Well. Prove it. ...

It is far from perfect, but does not collapse* within an average of three or less years in the 1000 or so times it has been tried.

It does not suffer from the low productivity of almost all workers are doing the least required.

As a productivity incentive, it gives electronic coupons in crude proportion to the worker's productivity, that can be exchange for what each consumer desires, not standard supply packages that provide many item few desired but some need like diapers, that are in such excess they have no barter value - so about 98% are just trash canned.
I. e. your alternative is very wasteful as it tries to dictate what people should want but don't so they discard many undesired items.

It rewards people very well for years of hard study, even a decade or more, so they do that effort. Your alternative would be lucky to have even 5% of the skilled medical specialists that are needed.

It encourages innovation and risk taking as people open new businesses in hope of growing rich as they grow, even though they know most such new businesses fail.

That is a businesses that transform material resources into product with little public demand soon disappear (unless occasionally "bailed out" by the govern) but not when the government (or "supply package content setting authority," if you prefer that terminology) can keep on wasting resources forever by putting items of little demand it deems "good for you." in supply packages.

You can leave your farm to your heirs, but in your system there is little or no incentive to take good care of land you farm as you get old - your son can not get it - some stranger likely will. (As you grow old and "warn out" so does your land.) I.e. your system is efficient in transforming good farm land into poor soil land few even want.

BTW, I can not speak for others, but I have never complained that your system would fail to solve the problems that do exist in the current system - only that your system adds many more new and much more serious problems, such as listed above, to those that do exist in the current system, while solving none of the current problems, especially if history is any guide.

* Some of the 1000+ avoided collapse by switching to family ownership and management of farm land and begain to use money as flexible means of exchange and store of value for future needs /desired, like retirement and medical care by well paid doctors. NOT ONE, which remained true to the "no-money, collective production especially farms and, all share equally" creed /beliefs survived! A few with common, strong religious beliefs many have survived for a decade.

As George Santayana said: "Those who can not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." You want to make it 1001+ failures.

 

[cosmictotem]

not standard supply packages that provide many item few desired but some need like diapers, that are in such excess they have no barter value - so about 98% are just trash canned.

Okay, I have explicitly addressed this assertion before. A supply package would merely represent a maximum unit which could be filled with the good choices of their recipient. Supply packages would be infinitely customizable but merely limited to a set maximum consumption per a time factor, depending on the kind of good and it's expiration.

your alternative is very wasteful as it tries to dictate what people should want but don't so they discard many undesired items.

And your alternative is very wasteful because it places zero limits upon individual consumption or corporate and industrial accountability for environmental impact or sustainability.

So there, I've debunked your erroneous assertion concerning waste in my model while the waste, not to mention the looming environmental threat, in the present model remains unaddressed.

 

[cosmictotem]

That is a businesses that transform material resources into product with little public demand soon disappear (unless occasionally "bailed out" by the govern) but not when the government (or "supply package content setting authority," if you prefer that terminology) can keep on wasting resources forever by putting items of little demand it deems "good for you." in supply packages.

If a good is not being consumed at a pace as another similar good, such goods and the workforce behind them can be discontinued and or re-channeled into the successful good. Simple as that. Additionally, do new cars not sit on lots under the current system? Are there no product flops under the current system? How many Zune's were produced, btw? Hey, did the Makibot 3D printer ever make it to market?

You can leave your farm to your heirs, but in your system there is little or no incentive to take good care of land you farm as you get old - your son can not get it - some stranger likely will. (As you grow old and "warn out" so does your land.) I.e. your system is efficient in transforming good farm land into poor soil land few even want.

Right because only relations can appreciate the value of productive farmland and so the farmer, if it was a farm that produced food for others beside his own family, would not have already cultivated relations with others still able to work his farm in his old age on behalf of the cooperative population. And like there would be any reason for the old man to panic in a RBE if his son didn't inherit his farmland because you're projecting monetary value onto the farmland and resale value that would only exist in a monetary model.

It's like your mind is half in the monetary model and half in the resource based model and you get confused. And you just make tons of work for me because I have to painstakingly untangle this confusion.

But I do enjoy the discussion so don't feel to bad.

 

[iceaura]

And they consistently complain these alternate economic models can't solve these problems and that the free market monetary system is the superior model.

Well. Prove it.

A pox on both houses. An unregulated "free market" system would be as bad a mess as any micromanaged "supply packet" clusterfuck.

You need a medium of exchange, and it needs to be in the hands of people making the exchanges. And these exchanges need structure and regulation.

If a good is not being consumed at a pace as another similar good, such goods and the workforce behind them can be discontinued and or re-channeled into the successful good. Simple as that.

That is a very complex task, and not at all easy to accomplish.

For starters, it's almost impossible under your system to determine whether two goods are "similar", or whether one is being consumed faster than the other. Measurement of demand is very difficult in the absence of a purchase decision.

In addition, you appear to have no means of allocating goods in short supply among disparate levels of demand - some people really need a backup generator, other people would kind of like to have one in the garage in case trouble comes up. Your system can't tell the difference.

 

[Michael]

If you want more examples, try BHT and BPA and trans fats and tetraethyl lead fumes and artificial sweeteners and sugars and high fructose corn syrup and so forth an so on.

All of these are perfectly legal (as far as I know) under our current regulatory system. Don't count on the FDA making them illegal until private citizens make the change by inventing new BPA plastics and tapping into a market desire for BPA free products (as an example). The question you may want to ask yourself is how a free society would deal with the problem of BPA? Well, much the same way - minus the violence. They'd first conduct investigations into the effects of BPA on health. These would be published and companies would be liable to be sued. Further, health insurance companies, who'd ultimately be stuck with the bill, would probably sue and/or develop means to reduce BPA exposure to their clients. And other unknowable technologies.

That aside, let's change tact a bit. Suppose there's a group of people who have a monopoly on a service. We'll say it's qualifying medical doctors. Given their monopoly, they can pump-and-dump thousands and thousands of licensed doctors that can go off to practice medicine all over the world. Suppose these doctors are lowly trained (as an example: no human anatomy training). Suppose anyone who worked within this institution that complained was shown the door. With their monopoly they could continue to pump-and-dump hundreds of $150,000 a pop medical doctors each year. Every incentive would be to cut costs (training - which is very expensive) and to just let these doctors learn on the job. Even if this means many more people would die unnecessarily due to incompetence. What is your proposed solution to this problem?

 

[iceaura]

All of these are perfectly legal (as far as I know) under our current regulatory system

No, they aren't. They were, but recently socialist scientific research has been catching up with them and making inroads into the influence of the capitalist R&D departments and marketing efforts.

The question you may want to ask yourself is how a free society would deal with the problem of BPA? Well, much the same way - minus the violence. They'd first conduct investigations into the effects of BPA on health. These would be published and companies would be liable to be sued.

Who's paying for this research, who's paying for publishing it, and who exactly has standing to sue?

Nobody that I know of is ever going to be able to prove their heart attack came from trans fats in their diet, for example. Statistically, we know it's a major factor overall - but in no individual case does it cause a unique harm done by nothing else in a regular person's life.

The only interested party I can see doing all that is some kind of taxpayer funded representative government flexing its muscles. But you describe that as constituent of a free society.

 

[cosmictotem]

For starters, it's almost impossible under your system to determine whether two goods are "similar", or whether one is being consumed faster than the other. Measurement of demand is very difficult in the absence of a purchase decision.

Alright, so you all here have the university degrees and I'm fine admitting I don't. What am I missing here that you've been taught to see? What does putting a price on something do that the mere record that a good was consumed or not consumed doesn't? And if it does provide more information, haven't we arrived at a point where computer technology has enabled us to dispense with prices? That's what I keep hearing from resource based models like the Zeitgeist Movement.

In addition, you appear to have no means of allocating goods in short supply among disparate levels of demand - some people really need a backup generator, other people would kind of like to have one in the garage in case trouble comes up. Your system can't tell the difference.

Again, what am I missing here? Maybe my lack of a university education is showing but why does the difference need to be determined at all? I think you might have a fundamental misunderstanding of how my proposed resource model would work. Anything in short supply, given a gross mismanagement of production in relation to population statistics and need, would spur an instance of new production, not the reallocation of existing goods already in the hands of private citizens. So all requirements for goods would be directed at the means of production. If you already have a generator in your possession, you are not obliged to give it to anyone, if you don't wish to. And this extends to all goods. No goods from the cooperative use of labor, once distributed to the private citizen, would be fair game for redistribution. If something is in short supply, people may be requested to provide their energy to produce more of the scarce good but no good in your possession will be taken from you unless you offer it.

But quite apart from my own proposal, it's been a long thread and I don't remember if you, Billy T or billvon have provided your suggestions for solutions to resource imbalances. Do you have any or do you resign human society to a constant struggle between the Haves and Have-nots? Or do you believe everyone can at least be put in a position of an acceptable standard minimum of comfort that doesn't create societal discontent spawning discord and personal dissatisfaction?
And how are you going to solve it? Would you put a fixed cap on income?

 

[Randwolf]

Judges could be bought off by private prisons to send more inmates their way by ruling a higher percentage of cases against defendants, etc.

If there were no money, could I not just pay off the judges with a few chickens and a pig?

 

[cosmictotem]

If there were no money, could I not just pay off the judges with a few chickens and a pig?

Ha Ha. Very funny, Randwolf. You're a riot. Or shall I consider that your formal argument against a RBE?