It seems these folks aren’t capable of getting that I’m not at all interested in discussing their ideas anymore, so long as they don’t actually counter my points which are a rebuttal of theirs. It’s like they’re a mental broken record. >_>
Reply 1 wasn’t much in terms of actual economics, rather it was more blasting on my point that it’s pointless to constantly listen to a repeat of the same idea that I’ve rebutted prior.
Reply 2 is a typical anti-economics (and anti-intellectual) initial salvo by Venus Project folks.
You: As far as I’m concerned Economics means nothing if there are no resources, which are being wasted at a phenomenal rate by the need to perpetuate cyclical consumption.
Me: Not at all, resources today are more efficiently used even when the firm for a number of reasons. The first one is obvious, the price mechanism is a rationing system first and foremost for the fact that as demand increases supply decreases (which leads to an increase in the prices). The converse is true, too. In essence, price is merely that measure of the supply versus the demand, acting as an incrementation mechanism (for the rationing of scarce resources). The other reasons are quite obvious too when you consider the idea of how prices emerge: time preference. Each person has a scale or system of values that one is attempting to fulfill, some are ordinally higher than others. And they even change over time (or due to the fulfillment of them, which Menger’s Marginal Utility Theory comes into play, in which the next good consumed will have a less marginal utility versus the previous consumed good). The other factors deal with the nature of a variation in time preferences in terms of one’s values, which leads to investments and savings that improve the efficiency of production (as more round about a production is, the more efficient it becomes and the more output it can yield (as found by Bohm-Bawerk)).
You: I wish to point out that the objective of the VP is to structure a society that, in fact does not use money as a medium of exchange, which negates the use of those two terms by association.
Me: I would like to point out again that in terms of history, communism and socialism are of course two different terms for two different kinds of political phenomena. The former is the supposed final state of human history as espoused by secular communists (as Christian communists were the first to suppose a similar state in the reunion of Man with God at the end of history…), the latter in contrast is the system by which the price mechanism is indeed abandoned. Thus, with the latter you cannot divorce yourself from it in terms of meaning or intent.
You: I agree that we have advanced technology, but not in the interest of the great majority, to alleviate people of monotonous jobs and solve problems that aren’t manageable by human opinions in the form of legislating a law.Which, in effect, strips us of our rights.It has more so been advancements for private gain.
Me: Much of your errors in this segment deal with the fact that you haven’t the basic understanding of microeconomics (as was discovered by the proto-Austrians and the British Classical school (despite its own errors)), which illustrates how investments in production (the more round about, the more indirect methods used) yield better productivity. This is due to the fact that more direct (and short term) production isn’t always better, which is why that certain individuals will focus their savings of capital into seeking said longterm production schemes (which may include better technology, but also may include better capital configurations, firm structuring, and even contractual arrangements). Again, it all comes back down to time preference. The more you gain in the future in converse to what you have at hand in the present, the more the time preference of a person can lower [Post-Reply Comment This is more of a psychological, rather than economic, assumption. But what I remember in most studies of psychology when I was younger, there’s always an ultimate limit to how much a person will abstain on consumption/enjoyment in terms of long term gain…].
Reply 3 is where things get beefy. I’m not sure how he will reply…
You: Planned obsolescence, I’m sure you heard of it…
Me: Of course, it’s not a bad idea because it utilizes resources that would have gone to waste, such as lower grade ore that’s easier to mine or potentially has a lesser impact on the environment to mine (especially when one considers certain kinds of strip mining that cannot account for various runoff conditions after replanting and etc).
You: Let me give you and example of the primitiveness of our current monetary system.If you were on an island and had nothing but purchasing power like gold and ,say, a chest of money, what use would that be to your survival? It has no functional utility…
Me: Of course it has no inherent utility onto itself, the utility comes from the fact of when you have an economy that is fully matured in terms of the units of production. In this case, money (be it gold, silver, tally sticks, chocolate bars, cigarettes, and etc) is a means of adding indirection to an economy. What I mean by indirection is that you trade me X units of money for Y item(s) or service(s) in place of Z item(s) or service(s). This means that one can avoid Say’s Law (which is that for any good or service supplied there will be a demand for that of another good or service) direct implication that one always wants a good/service in trade for another good/service. Equally, money can be decomposed back to Say’s Law upon purchase of a good/service (otherwise, what is the point of money?). This means that producers of goods or providers of services are free from the concerns of commodities (goods and services) in terms of direct barter in the trade of them for the continual functioning of their operations. That is what indirection in the economy allows for: advanced economic activity.
So, in an economy without money prices [or money] there is no means by which firms can be allowed this means to indirection in capital [commodity] flow. Such firms would have to store a host of goods and services to simply operate, thus their means to supply their intended good or service would be hampered by the additional operating costs of storing non-firm produced goods/services for use in trade. Imagine a baker having to store carpenter’s goods (and tools) just to be able to trade for shoes with the cobblers? And the cobblers storing baker’s goods for the carpenters and the carpenters storing cobbler’s goods for the cobblers? In essence, their entire capital structure couldn’t focus solely on providing baked goods, carpenter services (and goods), and shoes since there would exist no money or money prices.
To say the least, one cannot assume it’s primitive on the basis of its operation when one considers how money and money prices operate in actuality.
You: Today we have all these resources held and coveted by corporations (that in effect commit atrocities few people are aware of), which could feed the world at no cost, house the world at no cost.
Me: First, corporations are legal constructs, not constructs of the economy itself. Second, no one truly holds any property costless as even possession itself is costly. And possibly more costly in terms of certain resources like uranium or chroline gas.
You: You are talking about an ideal that was never in practice.The ideal form Marx envisioned was never accomplished for the workers have not been liberated, they are still oppressed till this day.
Me: You are completely missing the point. These are not mere ideals, these were practiced beliefs, even among the early Christian communists (among many of their bloody uprisings in the Middle Ages). And in the period of the 19th century, many private communes instituted similar money-price-free policies that ultimately lead to the impoverishment of these communes. Larger experiments existed in the form of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, which used production quotas in place of money prices (The classic examples of the failures of price-free economies would be the Five Year Plans of the Soviet Union and The Great Leap Forward in China). History marks the journey of the Venus Project and the socialists with the same disastrous failures. And it is up to you to prove that these failures are exceptional cases rather than the normal condition of a money-price-free economy.
You: You fail to see that without regard to investment or all this other nonsense your talking about, technology will be maximized to its most efficient capacity to serve the human species, regardless of business concerns.
Me: Technology does not exist in a vacuum of human actions. Technology is the means by which human actions are made manifest. Whether it’s a musical instrument or a car, a human end is fulfilled by the use of a given technology or that the given technology offers a means to an end (such as a tracter plowing a field for the planting of wheat or corn). Whatever be the case of end in itself or a means to an end, technology requires the factor of human reasoning to be created. It cannot be made whole by mere wish. It takes successive generations of experimentation, personal insight, and general adoption. And how do you propose to accelerate it? By excluding the most common measure of technology: profit! Profit in this case is an end in itself, be it extra food or clothes, or simply more money in place of a given set of commodities.
Technology as I stated earlier takes time as well, which means someone must save or abstain from consumption for it to be realized. And that someone does not do so for free. To deny the individual a means by which profit can be measured in terms of commodities of one kind or another (money) is to deny the means by which then one can measure the productivity of a technology attained. Thus, how can one assume that technology can even be conceived, let alone achieved, in absence of profit?
You: Production systems will be manufactured to their most productive state and appropriate to peoples needs, not restrained by affordability of what can be produced by a company or who can purchase it.
Me: Again, you have yet to grasp the most basic of economic facts: there are always scarce means and limitless ends. Whether it’s the world of Star Trek or our world, things do not exist context-or-consequence-free. For there to be production, there must be savings. For there to be savings, someone must abstain from consumption. These are immutable facts of economics. As such, to assume that costs can be ignored is like ignoring that the law of conservation is always in effect (locally).
Please consider this an invitation to study economics (especially microeconomics) and not an attack on your belief in a better future (as it is my belief that everyone seeks a better future otherwise why do folks strive to improve everything or anything in the world?), but it is an attack on your ignorance. An ignorance, which I believe can be corrected with the minimal of study on your part. Ignorance by itself is not a sin, willful ignorance is (in my opinion).
You: Of course you might deny this.I will continue moving forward.
Me: I do not deny anything. I simply deny the myth that money prices are evil and constraining.