Question for strident capitalists...

[iceaura]

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.

Is there a computer record of the fate of any item of clothing you've ever owned? In my case, exactly one: a pair of shoes donated new to a charity on my brother's tax receipt.

One key piece of information available from purchase records and missing from your setup, is that the item was at one time wanted at at least a minimum level - there was an intended consumption, at least, worth what was paid for it, at least.

University has nothing to do with it, btw.

 

[cosmictotem]

One key piece of information available from purchase records and missing from your setup, is that the item was at one time wanted at at least a minimum level - there was an intended consumption, at least, worth what was paid for it, at least.

But if someone registers want through consumption, the act of ordering and / or taking the item home, how is that information missing from my set up?

University has nothing to do with it, btw.

Well, thank you. I sincerely appreciate the sentiment. A University education is just not feasible for all of us.

 

[iceaura]

But if someone registers want through consumption, the act of ordering and / or taking the item home,

You don't have any minimum on how much it was worth to them, so you have no idea how, why, or even whether, it was consumed. This prevents you from allocating scarce resources among competing demands - blankets for a newborn's crib vs insulation for the roof of the doghouse, say, or extra to be stored in the bomb shelter.

 

[Billy T]

Cosmictotem: You have certainly changed your original "standard supply packages" concept - for the better, I add.
Now you seem to envision a network of large warehouse stores with all the items anyone needs (and a few they just want for a good life, I hope and trust). Sort of a combination "home depot" + diverse large grocery store + drug store + electric appliance store. Perhaps some entertainment centers, like movie and bowling center?

You clearly don't want people consuming more than the governing authority thinks they "should," nor any of the items (non-existing by your production authority) of items they "should not." So will ration consumption by some standard monthly alliance on their credit card, I guess. Is that (credit cards) your "no- money" plan?

Or are you adapting to reality like those of the 1000+ who stated with the same no-money all share equally plan did to not collapse?

Any way letting people chose the material form of their rewards will certainly reduced waste; however the rich may consume more (or better in the case of food) but don't waste much - they invests to earn more power and control that wealth gives. If they were wasteful, they soon would not be rich. As large scale production wastes less than small scale does, per unit of product, I still think that your system is more wastful, but admit letting people chose what they put on their credit card will dramatically reduce waste compared to "standard supply packages" all were originally to get.

Here is how real personnel , per capita, consumption in dollars corrected for inflation ("real") has grow in last decade for which there is data.

Dec. 31, 2014 34367.00
Dec. 31, 2013 33770.00
Dec. 31, 2012 33226.00
Dec. 31, 2011 32878.00
Dec. 31, 2010 32395.00
Dec. 31, 2009 32050.00
Dec. 31, 2008 32860.00
Dec. 31, 2007 33284.00
Dec. 31, 2006 32868.00
Dec. 31, 2005 32203.00

34,367/ 32,203 is a 6.7% increase in ten years. Not excessive, I think.
I think the GDP has increased significantly more than that, so conclude foreigners are getting more benefits than Americans are of what goods and services we make.
But it is hard to square that with the large and chronic trade deficits the US has run all those years.
Data from: https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_real_personal_consumption_expenditures_per_capita_yearly

 

[Michael]

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.

Have you ever worked for a major company? Companies worry about their brands and are often 1000x's more stringent in regulating their products to ensure they don't tarnish their Brand Name products. The LAST thing Microsoft wants is to burn down a bunch of people's houses with their XboxOne. The LAST thing Toyota wants is to be known as the car marker whose cars blow up.

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

WHO the hell do you think pays for it NOW? The Government has no money of it's own. Jesus. If you think redistributing money from companies into University research labs is efficient at solving the problems of specific companies - you're smoking crack. If you think the scientists working at the NIH are anywhere nearly as competent and resourceful as those working in a company - again, you are smoking crack. I recall a group in the NIH who used to toss $250 syringes per use. That is INSANE. Particularly when you can rinse and dry and reuse. Did they care? Nope. Why would they? It's not their money. The NIH isn't going bankrupt anytime too soon. And anyway, you use the roads.

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.

A private group CAN sue. Lawyers make livings out of finding companies to sue. Health Insurance companies - who have to foot the medical bill can raise rates on those people who eat a lot of transfats. Thus encouraging people, who care to save money, not to eat transfats. But get this, people ARE eating boiled in ammonia pink-slime off cuts, snouts, hooves and anuses ground up with wood pulp, infused with HFCS and artificial colors and flavors. This IS happening. Cardiovascular disease, pain-pill abuse, obesity and Type II diabetes are now the norm. Oh and add to that children shoveled into daycare at age 6 weeks, put on antidepressants at age 6 years and then starving themselves and cutting themselves at age 16. This is our Regressive Socialistic utopia. We're living in it.

Who knows how a free society would solve the problems of poisoning food. All sorts of other unknownable inventions we simply lack because they were never invented. Thanks to Regressive Socialists, we never developed a culture of problem solving without first sticking a gun in someone's face. A great example is Rx. Supposedly to 'ensure medical safety' all that has happened is a cartel in medical bloat-priced services and the War on Drugs (also supposedly to 'help the poor' - it's now a War ON the poor). Taken together this has helped turn America into the Police State it is. Perhaps even normalizing America into the never ending trillion dollar Wars on everything.

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.

That's because you lack the ability to imagine what a non-superstitious non-violent society may look like. In other words, you've normalized to this society, so it's all you can imagine.

 

[Michael]

iceaura,

I'm still curious how you'd solve a real world problem. Right now the State has given private fraternities monopolies on a medical services. You know, for the Good of Society because we Use the Roads.

So, in terms of qualifying medical doctors (MD), given this monopoly, medical schools can pump-and-dump thousands and thousands of licensed doctors that can go off to practice medicine all over the world without any care in the world regarding quality. Many of these doctors are barely trained (as an example: no human anatomy training). With this monopoly they can pump-and-dump hundreds of $150,000 a pop medical doctors each year. The Professors turned University bureaucrats have every rational incentive to cut costs (cut training - which is very expensive). Like any institution, Universities are bloated to the hilt with top-down inefficiencies and to keep the students coming in the front door they need to limit the number of MD's to keep the market under supplied (maintain demand for their qualification) as well as pump a low quality product (MD) out the front door. It's pretty much the same problem you should find in ANY State mandated unnatural monopoly. Econ 101.

What is your proposed solution to this problem? I'm genuinely curious.



Notes:
- 480,000 Americans are killed each year due to medical error.
- 3 to 5 million Americans are seriously injured.
- Medical quality has gone down while costs have space-rocketed.
- The AMA is on record attempting to use 'Science' to put competition out of business (ex: making midwifery illegal, reducing fMRI services and limiting Rx).
- Rx monopoly led directly to the War on Drugs and to the largest prison population in history while at the same time many MD's are now pain-pill pushers.
- Everything from public and private schools to universities have been distorted as millions and millions of students race to secure a rent-seekers spots in the coveted regulatory-captured medical 'industry'.
* Entire industries exist to prep for magical single test scores that magically predict who can Practice.
* Even other countries are getting in on the scam with MD schools opened up in the SE Pacific and even China to pump-and-dump MDs back to the USSA.
- The AMA recently released a statement that they somehow, accidentally, who-knows-how, miscalculated the number of MDs needed to treat people in society and we're waaaay under the numbers needed. So, expect less and to pay more. Much more.


Central Planners couldn't even supply enough f*cking bread without people starving to death while a few on the top got fat. Sound familiar? Take a look at our Centrally Planned monetary system. A few fat ones on the top while the bottom 99% are broke. The same is true of medicine. Central Planning Socialists literally murdered off tens of millions of humans the last century - and they're doing it again. Right now.

 

[cosmictotem]

You don't have any minimum on how much it was worth to them, so you have no idea how, why, or even whether, it was consumed.

But if I pay for a blanket, you don't know how I'm using it either. This is this concept of prices that keeps coming up in this thread is such a mystery to me. I'm not sure what anyone is talking in regard to pricing. But I we are getting close to a resolution.

This prevents you from allocating scarce resources among competing demands -

But I know who already has a blanket and who doesn't and a workforce available to produce more, as well as a population who are free to choose to re-allocate their unused resources themselves.

 

[Billy T]

Cosmictotem you have ignored items I supplied a your request:

It (current system) 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.

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.

and this one you only "talked around" but did not solve:

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.

 

[Michael]

Sorry, this I meant for this to be up with another post.

Anyway, the truth is (and this is a truth), no one can tell me the price of my coffee cup sitting here. Only I can know the price. And it changes depending on my mood. This is why we need sound money. Which is only derived though a free-market. We need laws that protect property, not steal it. Laws the protect against fraud, not make it legal by regulation.

But we're not getting any of that. Instead, we're getting more Centralization and the central planners need to reduce their variables - that is to say, reduce our privacy and liberty. Yet, they'll only approximate my value of my cup. They can not know it. It's impossible to know. Only I know it. Tens of millions of trades happen every single second. Central Planners are never, ever going to come even remotely close to the efficiency sound money provides in allocating resources. Thus they will limit trade, limit freedom and use violence. Just watch. It's happening more and more with every passing day.

 

[cosmictotem]

Cosmictotem: You have certainly changed your original "standard supply packages" concept - for the better, I add.
Now you seem to envision a network of large warehouse stores with all the items anyone needs (and a few they just want for a good life, I hope and trust). Sort of a combination "home depot" + diverse large grocery store + drug store + electric appliance store. Perhaps some entertainment centers, like movie and bowling center?

If my distribution method appears to have changed it is more due to my poor initial expression and anticipation of many of your assumptions.

Or are you adapting to reality like those of the 1000+ who stated with the same no-money

Well, I never denied there would be some kind of electronic tracking of how many supply packages an individual was due over the course of a month. However, the allowance would be the same for everyone, with the caveat that they could supplement their cooperatively produced resources with resources either produced by their own effort or resources produced in a contained free market monetary model voluntary exchange with others that did not require, at any time, the participation of unwilling participants.

 

[iceaura]

Who's paying for this research, who's paying for publishing it, and who exactly has standing to sue?
WHO the hell do you think pays for it NOW?

Taxpayers coerced at gunpoint to hand money to their government. That's part of my plan.
Is that part of your plan?

What is your proposed solution to this problem? I'm genuinely curious.

Single payer health insurance, medical training - like all certified higher education - paid for by future tax percentage, for starters.

In general, socialization of the medical insurance and training business. The private, market based stuff has been underperforming fairly dramatically - for reasons obvious to anyone with a basic grasp of modern economics. It's a classic example of an unmakeable market - you can't get the costs and benefits, information, or risk, structured into the point of exchange.

When in a hole - and the US is in a pretty deep and muddy one - quit digging, in other words.

Companies worry about their brands and are often 1000x's more stringent in regulating their products to ensure they don't tarnish their Brand Name products

That's why the major gasoline manufacturers refused to put tetraethyl lead in their product. You know, unless they didn't?

But if I pay for a blanket, you don't know how I'm using it either

But I do know its use is as valuable to you as the time and effort put into making it was to the makers. That puts a limit on the possible wastage.

But I know who already has a blanket and who doesn't and a workforce available to produce more, as well as a population who are free to choose to re-allocate their unused resources themselves.

So? Do I get my free silk lined comfy blanket or not? My dog is cold. Also, I need something for the garage floor when I change oil.

 

[cosmictotem]

But I do know its use is as valuable to you as the time and effort put into making it was to the makers. That puts a limit on the possible wastage.
So? Do I get my free silk lined comfy blanket or not? My dog is cold. Also, I need something for the garage floor when I change oil.

It's starting to become clear to me that there are multiple layers of confusion regarding the kind of resource management model I am proposing.

Firstly, I'm not sure why under a resource management model that sets limits on consumption, why consumers would assume an abusive and negligent relationship to the preservation and use of their allotted resources. You appear to be under the impression citizens would be able to demand an unlimited amount of resources in whatever quantity they desired at any time regardless of the relative life spans or existing quantity of a good in their possession or production process. You can't just stock pile more goods than you can demonstrate actual need for like 8 refrigerators.

Secondly, the fact that there is a set limit placed upon individual consumption is what puts a limit on possible wastage.

Thirdly, the current profit rewarding model is what produces waste through the setting of no enforcible limits on consumption for those who have the means and the introduction of intentional obsolescence for profit. Money represents access to resources and if an individual can get unlimited money, they can access and control more resources than they may require.

A simple example from the natural world is the ability of elephants to feed off their environment until the resources are exhausted and they starve. Access to an excessive abundance of resources appears to be a successful strategy but all the while the elephants are eating themselves slowly into starvation through the inability to comprehend the necessity for sustainability.

 

[Michael]

Single payer health insurance, medical training - like all certified higher education - paid for by future tax percentage, for starters.

I fail to see what single payer health insurance has to do with University medical training. Medical training is done in universities. Insurance is a policy directive and is handeled in a totally different public institutions, usually a State agency totally unrelated to training in about any way your can image. Two totally separate entities. Anyway, I'm telling you right now, access to single payer publicly funded healthcare will not alter the quality of medical training. I'm not sure why you thought it would?


Here's a fact: The people running the training programs have every incentive to cut training resources (which are extremely expensive) and pump as many low (but-still) University qualified MDs through the system as is legally possible.

I'm not talking about a 'hypothetical' here.

Publicly funded University's have zero incentive to produce high quality MDs. As a matter of fact, I've actually worked in a medical school that specifically cut training to the point where around 1/2 of the people working quit in disgust. The medical school is still pumping out MDs. About double the rate they were then. For awhile many had ZERO access to human cadavers. If they wanted access they had to pay AFTER they had an MD. They were charged an additional $15,000 for a 3 week lab. We're not talking a small University. This is a name brand University.


I'm telling you right here and right now that access to 'free' public health insurance has no baring on the quality of MD. As a matter of fact, the quality has gone down. Not up. Down.

Secondly, training MDs in a publicly funded University has NOT increased quality. The quality continues to go down. As a matter of fact, the majority of the Professors who bulked at cutting training quit. Number of MDs on the other hand increased.


The solutions you offered do NOT work in the real world.

But, I am still curious. What other solutions do you have?

One thing you'll need to factor into your 'solutions' is the people running these Public programs do not care as to the quality of training. Make sure you get that. They do not care about the quality. These ARE the 'Regulators'. They run huge multibillion dollar public institutions.
- They do not need to worry about going bankrupt.
- They do not need to worry about ever running out of students willing to pay 6 figures to get their MD. The line is out the door and miles long.
- They certainly do not need to worry about what the piss-ant voter thinks or does not think.
- They do not need to worry about "quality" of MD.
- They're not going to lose their jobs and they're paid 6 figures with perks you'd only dream of.



So, do you have any other suggestions?

 

[Michael]

Taxpayers coerced at gunpoint to hand money to their government. That's part of my plan.
Is that part of your plan?

That's not going to increase quality of education. You'll select for the least competent while those best suited to the job will either quite and find employment elsewhere, do a lackluster job or slowly become institutionalized towards violence.

All that happens is the people with right connections get their hands on the gun and point it right in your face. Which is why the same bankers the should be in jail were instead, able to use the State (and it's Central Bank / Central Violence) to bail themselves out, leaving the poor to pay with a reduced standard of living. Like I said in the past, unless you're the type of person who would willing shoot your mother in the face and pimp out your daughter to get ahead, then you're not going to beat them. Their propensity for violence dwarfs anything you have the will to stomach. These are the same type of people who rained chemical hellfire onto cities of women and children, burned them alive. All without losing a wink of sleep - just to lift the stock price of a company they own shares in.

Anyway, gun in the face also doesn't work. You'll have to find another solution.


Note:
There's only two things that grow uncontrollably - growth purely for the sake of growth: Cancer ......and the Government.

 

[iceaura]

Single payer health insurance, medical training - like all certified higher education - paid for by future tax percentage, for starters.
A fail to see what single payer health insurance has to do with medical training. Medical training is done in universities

OK, I needed more than a comma. Here's the same exact thing, with clarified punctuation: 1) Single payer health insurance. 2) Medical training - like all certified higher education - paid for by future tax percentage. For starters.

But, I am curious, as to what other solutions you have

Well, for starters, there are 34 possibilities, in addition to the single-payer insurance modification and the altered payment for medical training recommendations that were tailored to the US setup.

That is, choose at random from among the 34 non-US medical care systems of the Western Industrialized world - use a dartboard, or dice - and adopt whichever one comes up. Impose it at gunpoint, if necessary - hire Cuba's army.

Or we could just expand Medicare, getting rid of the special restrictions on price negotiation, and add the cost to the payroll deduction (it would almost but not quite double). That doesn't fix your training problem, but poor training of doctors is far from the biggest problem US medical care faces.

And so forth.

 

[iceaura]

Taxpayers coerced at gunpoint to hand money to their government. That's part of my plan.
Is that part of your plan?
That's not going to increase quality of education. You'll select for the least competent while those best suited to the job will either quite and find employment elsewhere, do a lackluster job or slowly become institutionalized towards violence.

It had nothing to do with any "quality of education". I wanted to know who you thought was going to pay for all this research into the effects of products sold on the free market, this research you claimed would replace government regulation etc, by informing the consumer in some unspecified manner.

 

[Michael]

OK, I needed more than a comma. Here's the same exact thing, with clarified punctuation: 1) Single payer health insurance. 2) Medical training - like all certified higher education - paid for by future tax percentage. For starters.

I'm telling you it doesn't work. What are you missing? You'll have to come up with another solution because the ones you offered is being tried right now and the quality is going down year after year. As a matter of fact, training will be reduced again in 2017. As an example, training was a tight 16 weeks. It was cut to 14 weeks (which meant some training was simply cut and assumed they can make this up in the hospital). This was then cut to 13 weeks. In 2017 it will be cut to 12 weeks. Not just a single item here. We're talking about missing about 8 months of total medical training in a space that's already cutting resources anyway. Not to mention the quality of entering student has plummeted and standards have been lowered to ensure all are pumped through the system.

Just to be clear, dumping more generational debt / money into the problem will not fix the problem. As an example, $10 million was specifically set aside to train medical students - except zero was spent to do so. ALL (and I do mean ALL) of it was consumed in bureaucracy to provide the 'service' for the training - which never happened. Hundreds of millions was dumped into redesigning the pedagogy. Quality is now lower.


So? Do you have any other solutions?

 

[Michael]

It had nothing to do with any "quality of education". I wanted to know who you thought was going to pay for all this research into the effects of products sold on the free market, this research you claimed would replace government regulation etc, by informing the consumer in some unspecified manner.

Firstly, we don't live in a free society do that's impossible to know the answers to. Secondly, there's plenty of billions raised to run experiments outside of government right now. Many billions are donated to Private Universities where in a free society even more resources would be made available. IF those institutions wanted to, they could do high quality research in a short amount of time testing the effects of chemicals in cell assays. As an example. Thirdly, I stated insurance companies have an incentive. Fourthly, private groups of people - like the American Heart Foundation.

We are currently directing TRILLIONS of dollars into useless Wars that POLLUTE and KILL people with that pollution. And you're going to crap on about the State protecting us? Are you kidding me?!? The US Government is the single largest polluter in the world! It's also burning through more limited energy resources compared to anything close! And what do we get for a lifetime of taxes? Shitty everything from Pink Slime to Government schools that pump-and-dump functional illiterates at a rate of 1 in 5 (soon 1 in 4 and then 1 in 3).

 

[spidergoat]

You think any polluter would give a shit about rules in your shitty libertarian vision?

 

[Michael]

You think any polluter would give a shit about rules in your shitty libertarian vision?

Let's just stop and think about this a minute.

Rationally speaking, I think most people would prefer to live in a world where the groups of humans with the legal authority to initiate violence against innocent people in society is limited? So, why preface Libertarian with the word 'shitty'? Don't you prefer to live in a more moral and less immoral society? I'm pretty sure most would choose the more moral over the more immoral.

You may make an argument as to why you do not think that we're able to live in a society where we limit and attempt to eliminate the groups of humans who are given the legal authority to initiate violence against other, innocent groups of humans. But I don't know what you think this would be a good thing? If anything, it should be said with a sad resignation that you think there are aspects to human society that simply cannot and will never be overcome without threatening innocent groups of humans.

As to why polluters would give a shit. Well, for the same reasons as today. The law protects property. The same laws today, if applicable, would be present in a society without the EPA. The EPA was started in 1970, we managed before without it - we can manage against without it. Not to mention, the EPA is a revolving door whereby Regulators move in and out of the Government and Industry like a revolving door, primarily writing 'Regulations' the protect polluters FROM being sued by individuals.