15ofthe19 said:
You can't say that "scarcity of resources" is a myth without qualifying your statement with "as long as we aren't talking about economic viability in the present context". Sure, the universe is full of everything we need, but who cares if it's too expensive to retrieve said resources?
tiassa said:
The present context of economic viability is what I find mythical in a certain sense.
Well, the intent of this thread is to discuss fundamentals of economics. I think I've come up with a generalized model that is applicable regardless of the details. I'll try to demonstrate why with the rest of your post.
Remember the idea of the consent of the governed; just because there is no state does not mean we do not consent to the madness.
Well okay I would try on that but I have no idea of the relevance. I'm not sure what you mean. Obviously, there
is a state.
Remember that nobody on the face of the planet can tell you what a dollar is worth at any given moment; you need a computer to do it, if at all.
That is entirely wrong. You seem to think there is some objective value floating around in the aether somewhere? Sure someone might try to calculate it, but the value of a dollar is so easy to see that you've completely overlooked it. Did your dollar get you a pack of smokes?
Subjective value is the only value there is. A dollar is as meaningful as any individual thinks it is. It's that simple.
Albert O. Hirschmann opens the first chapter of his book, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism Before Its Triumph with a very simple idea: For my purposes in this discussion, Hirschmann (and Weber; how do you like the natural double-punch of that citation?) might as well be asking, How did the myth of labor and economy transform from one set of virtues to another? How is the pagan sanctified; the tragic become laughable; the demon dwindled to a clockwork toy?
Whatever he says, that's fine. Capitalism underlies any purported economic model, regardless of labels. Can you see why? Ultimately, the strong survive - regardless of what they call themselves, regardless of the label of the system they create for themselves. If this conversation were a discussion of the merits of capitalism (which is not the intent, but to discuss the merits of the model), I would say that true capitalism is absolute best possible means to distribute resources so long as each member is cognizant of the following fact: My neighbors satisfaction is in my best interest, second to my own, but an important consideration regarding my profit function. This can be derived from the simple "we seek what is subjectively good" if you define good in a way that really makes sense. Obviously however, no one is really accountable to that definition, so we see a lot of shallow instead of healthy greed. I think shallow greed makes me want to get the most from you, regardless of the consequences to you. I think healthy greed makes me want to make sure that we
both get what we want from any situation, since we can help each other get what we want again in the future - thereby increasing our mutual chance for survival.
And from that consideration, we might see a bit of the myth exposed.
I see your point, but I don't think "viability" is the issue here. Viability is a fleeting condition of the summation of all the players, the rules of the system, blah blah. Here I'm discussing the foundation. I think I've summarized a basic nuetral model, which could be utilized (with development for particular scenarios/conditions) for determining the potential viability of any set of parameters. I broke it down damnit. I did. LOL. Okay well it seems that way to me. I suppose viability might be at issue, but only the viability of the model, not the viability of the current economy. That is another thread.
Viewed from a certain degree of removal, it looks a bit like a mosh pit. You can stand safely back in the bar and watch the show from there, or you can wander out onto the floor and risk spilling your drink.
This is nature, what do you expect? Actually, I think there is a problem if you have expectations, as you will taint your analysis. You have to really
understand a system before you can attempt to modify it to your expectation. Some systems are of such integration (interconnectedness?) that they are highly sensitive to minute changes.
We might look at it with a simple comparison:
• Then - Slay the dragon, save the maiden, get the glory.
• Now - Why slay the dragon when you can trollop through the forest gathering fewments and sell them for their weight in gold?
• Someday? - Are the aphrodisiac qualities alleged of fewments really worth a war?
Fewments? I don't see the pertinence of your comparison, nor do I see what you're driving at as it stands on it's own.
Coming out of the 1980s, almost anything was for sale. And at some point, Joe Q. Businessman realized that just because he could evict his own mother didn't mean he should. Somewhere in the 90s, people began to tire of serving their economy, though the price of style and prosperity--constant debt--didn't fall completely out of fashion. Instead of reexamining the superficial desires that compel Americans to work so damn hard, people (rightly, nonetheless) looked to the corporate heads--what were the executives doing that interfered with the fulfillment of superficial desire? (As we saw in the Enron instance and others, there were also some vital necessities sacked for the big game.)
What? I'm not saying you're wrong, but it seems like you're just making shit up. How do you reach this conclusion? As far as I can tell, there is always a mixing swirling interaction of education, bad greed, good greed, blah blah. I'm saying at a given time there are some people like Joe Q. Businessman before his realization, som like him after, some who do a wholly different thing... some who do both depending on their mood... on and on. Every iteration of players can be found within the system. I see that you're just making generalizations about the system at a given time, but I don't see their validity. That doesn't mean they're wrong of course.
So in the now, people look at the then and say, "No, not again." And, of course, they'll do it anyway, but that's beside the point for the moment.
That is so wholly dependent on timing and circumstance that I don't see the validity. You're right that
some people do that, but to make it a generalization doesn't hold water to me, as there are so many different configurations of mindset. Could be that I'm not paying as close of attention as I think I am.
In terms of the scarcity of resources, we might look at the resource challenges that made Arabia such a fierce region. We might also consider the near-genocidal "taming" of the United States in the name of "Manifest Destiny."
Oh, so you're criticizing governments. Yeah okay then. That's not really what this was intended to be about, but as you wish.
Obviously, resources were plentiful in the pioneer days, unlike a desert in Arabia, but implementation challenges made the resources expensive, as such.
Resources are only as plentiful as your ability to attain and utilize them. (scarce, see)
In an abstract consideration, the idea of harvesting minerals from space certainly does fall under the "expensive" category, but it serves well as an example because it is the future and not the past.
No tiassa, at the moment it falls under the "impossible" category. It will become possible over time at least within the next 100 years or so I'd imagine.
What is the confusion between the dog-eat-dog ideas of the world and the cooperative human endeavor?
Well, that is a thread in and of itself. Coorporations behave the way they do for good reason I think. Sounds like a good conversation. If you start a thread, please provide a link. My opinion is that corporations often sell-out to the bottom line in cash only evaluation because there is no broader profit function to go by. Their investors generally invest to make money, not to improve the world, so the board of the corporation feels responsible to providing exactly that - cash profit. I think that is wholly short-sighted, but hard to avoid without intervention or proper education.
Born under the bad sign of Nixon, awakening at the transition from Carter to Reagan, I grew up on the idea that human beings are in competition with one another. And watching that dynamic between people reveals much about the miseries of the world.
So you think the bum on the street has survived as long as he has because of this horrific escalation of competition?
We're a cooperative collective bent on internecine competition; one of my favorite taglines is that "Nature should be enough." Weather and climate, geology, microbiology--shouldn't drought and earthquake and flood and the eventual comet or asteroid be enough? HIV, ebloa, cancer?
You completely ignore that what is "good" is wholly subjective. Some people surely think that my death would/will be good. I beg to differ. This subjective inherently introduces friction into the system, and is exactly part of nature. I suppose there are aspects of "good" that are general. Like that which benefits us as organisms for the most part, it's good to fix a broken leg or you won't be able to walk, etc. I think most things that affect the overall value of "i think this is worth that" however, is wholly subjective. Rather, just because it's valuable to everyone, that doesn't mean that is really more than the subjective value. It's just that most people have a few subjective things in common... like being people for instance.
What about the question of whether humanity is obliged to deal with a certain baseline percentage of pedophiles and predators?
Oh I see you've taken it under consideration sort of at least. Hmm.. yes what about that indeed? Best possible solution is to reach a consensus on acceptable behavior and attempt to maintain accountability for said behavior.
In the meantime, we might remember how much of our economy is based in things breaking. I'm not just talking about your auto mechanics and vending machine and copier servicepeople, but also your friendly Microsoft tech support department. These days, software is released well before it's ready. How many recalls would you accept for your car? Of course, our lives and safety on the road is more important to us than the frustration of a collapsed OS, so in a certain way that's understandable. But we also know what that frustration does. (Look at how much "economy" the Y2K scare created.)
Don't see the relevance.
Are we the same nation today as we would have been, as we were, for having abandoned the gold standard?
I dunno.
What would happen if we stopped one night and gave every person on the face of the planet a million dollars?
The individual would see the value of what other people consider a dollar to be worth, plummet hugely.
• We'd run out of money? Says who? And why?
• Markets would collapse? For what reason?
You can print as much money as you want, doesn't mean shit if people don't value it. Markets would collapes because people would lose confidence in their ability to gauge value. They'd likely recover in some time once they absorbed the new value estimates, but all in all you'd end up with about the same scenario as when you started. See the antropic principle.
The nearest I can figure is that "the rich" would panic at the offset of their comparative wealth. If you have a ten million dollars to Joe's ten-thousand, you have a thousand times more money than he does. But if you have eleven million dollars to Joe's million and change, you're only ten or eleven times richer than Joe.
You've pitched this idea before. Found yourself a pulpit eh? As you wish. Let's think about it some then shall we? Okay: Everyone gets a million dollars - prices on everything shoot up through the roof overnight. The foundation of the value of money is totally shot - your cigarettes are of different value to the person who sold them to you yesterday. Everything is of different monetary value than it was the day before, so like I said, the markets go crazy because the established cash value of everything goes to shit. Eventually, the fray settles down... cash value is re-established and everyone still has to work, because we have to attain and utlize the resources to provide things that people value. So your idea is nothing but forced wealth re-distribution, which I think is redundant to a healthy economy.
That really seems to be what it's about, and why Star Trek aims toward an ideology in which money is a useless concept.
I see, you're still on the premise of limitless resources. Nice, but wrong. Note that star trek is a fantasy. Love the show, love the idea, but it's entirely impractical as value exists today. Your resources would have to be
actually limitless as a foundation for such a society, and I don't think you'd like what would happen if resources were actually limitless. At this point, negative greed is limited by means. This would not be the case if resources were not fundamentally scarce.
Think of the days when we get off this rock and start mining the asteroid belts; will we see a replay of American expansion? A new Manifest Destiny?
Probably (sadly).
New robber-barons aiming to create a serfdom out of an allegedly free society?
Depends on if it is allowed, under what terms - and the values of the individuals undertaking the endeavor.
Why would we have to? Are we incapable of learning or unwilling to learn?
You speak as if your expectation is relevant. I don't mean that as rude, I mean that your expecation is irrelevant. One can either change the system not to allow it or hope things work out. The ideal scenario is that you
motivate people to
help their brothers rather than trod on them. You motivate people to trod on them and trod they will - at least some of them. Expectation be damned.
And whether I embrace the world, seek to conquer it, or hide from it in a cave somewhere, while I cannot control what circumstances have come before me, I certainly am responsible for my decisions in response to the relevant factors, as well as being responsible for the internal priorities that make the relevant factors important to begin with. It's easy enough when the process is "duck, someone's shooting!" But when it's how to accommodate a suicidal reliving memories of rape, it's a different story entirely. And it's not exactly a clearly-defined issue when we inflate it to a scale that encompasses humanity and all its quirks.
Figure out a way to motivate people to improve each other, rather than destroy each other, then instill that into the system. You do end up with a bit of a problem though, in that whole "subjective good" thing. If you for instance, think I am improved by learning macrame and I disagree, we have a bit of an impass eh? How do we resolve it? According to your perspective, we should "learn" from it eh? Who is supposed to learn what? Who says what is "good"? Should we all turn to
you for our lessons? Are you sure they are good? What if my good disagrees with yours? Should you just scold me into thinking your good is good? You think that's gonna work? Isn't that a violation of what you just said about learning? The only possible way is to motivate me to understand that what I've considered to be good up till now, can be left by the wayside.. and give me reason to adopt a new good. Give me something irrifutable, something beautiful (as I see it) and I'll follow. Scold me and I'll just kick you in the nutz. At least that's a generalization of how I see psychology playing into this.
But the constraints and processes which define the present context of economic viability are as much mythic as patriotism or religion. Certainly, we must deal with the circumstances, but we might look to Martin Luther, Martin Luther King Jr., and, in his own right, George W. Bush. Each of them, in working with the circumstances put before them, chose to invoke new paradigms and strive toward the fulfillment of a new convention among people: Protestantism, civil rights, a new American hegemony.
Saying it doesn't mean anything. Do it and you're making progress. Be careful though, that you're not unwittingly working to the detriment of that which you value.
Economy? Well, Marx had an idea. I like Wilde's take on socialism. But people (Americans, for instance) don't believe in these ideas. They believe in competition, in winners and losers, and choose division and comparison.
You seem to think they
should. What if the ideas are just wrong (I don't know what wilde's take on anything is, so I have no idea)? Maybe they're right, but people can't relate to them. If people can't relate to them, why would they believe them? Personally, I think socialism is a horrible, terrible, sick thing, founded it idealistic retardation. Healthy capitalism, where your satisfaction is part of my profit function is the only viable economic foundation in my opinion... rather, it's inherently most efficient. Healthy competition is the thing. It allows the most satisfaction for the least cost, as people are free to pursue what they want and are motivated not to pursue it if they turn out to be bad at it. That keeps people who are good at doing what they do, doing what they do, which is generally what they want to do - because they're good at it. Basically, if you don't know how to cook a pizza, step aside and I'll show you, if you still can't figure it out, or if you spend all of your pizza money on cocaine, you really shouldn't be in the pizza business. Get out so someone else can give it a go. That is competition, and that is freakin beautiful from my perspective.
But they can choose the cooperative and communitarian any time, and suddenly the scarcity of resources is seen as an opportunity and not a challenge; survival of the fittest becomes about species and not about individuals; and suddenly the way things are is considerably different from the way things were--a new context is chosen and established.
So now you've abandoned your theory that resources aren't scarce? It could be that I've misunderstood some of what you've said.
Which all adds up to approximately why I don't think it necessary to qualify the statement that scarcity of resources is a myth according economic viability in the present context.
The statement is simply false to begin with, so qualification is unnecessary.
Or am I on the wrong vein again?
You have basically said that resources are limitless, which is in total disregard to having been corrected as follows:
Originally Posted by wesmorris
the scarcity of resources is more of a statement of the effort required to process them into useful goods. a resource is scarce because it is not readily available. you have to do something to acquire it
- You have not at all IMO shown that you understand this, or addressed it.
A resource is not scarce if I can think of it, it appears immediately before me and that is the entire deal. Otherwise, someone has to jack with it. That person has a limited amount of time (x hours per day for their adult working life) in which to jack with aquiring it. What is their motivation to do it? Do you think you'll be more motivated if I offer you a bigger sandwich for lunch? What about a steak dinner? A house? Are you gonna be my friend if I help you out? What if I don't like you nor want your friendship? That should be enough? Why don't you get the resources yourself? Oh you don't know how? Well I do, so how are you gonna motivate me to action? I might be motivated if you're gonna die if I don't act, but are you gonna die if you don't get your smokes? Eh? You think socialism solves this problem?
IMO, it just makes it worse.
Why????
Because socialism tries to pretend there is "good" that everyone agrees upon, rather than letting the system come to it's own balance. Why? Because
value is subjective.
Well, I'm talking in generalization above really. A tinge of socialism is desirable, depending on how you define it. It's my belief that for a society to consider itself "modern" or "responsible", the basics should be accessible to anyone in need of them. food, shelter, clothing and medical attention should be available to anyone who needs them (of course all of them excepting medical attention being wholly modest accomodations). Less than that is barbaric. If you note, that is basically the way things are
right now though some people refuse it due to mental illness or whatever. Lots of paranoids on the street you know, mostly because their condition makes them wholly unreasonable, even in seeking medical treatment. The point here was that anything more than the basics, you should earn.
Crap I'm rambling and I have to get some work done.
