Even if posited as nothing but a computational problem, it’s still infeasible.
The orignal exposition of the socialist calculation problem was challenged by this guy:
He came up with linear programming. This allowed the planners to express output of something as a ratio of other goods. This still didn’t realy help in terms of finding out the availability of things, but inventory could help with that.
The problem with this method is a combination of two things: values within the matrix are always changing, and solving the matrix is an NP-complete problem. To solve a linear programming problem for an entire economy in a reasonable amount of time, is quite frankly, impossible.
It doesn’t suprprise me that there isn’t a single computer scientist, mathematician, or economist within their group.
Even if we had a super-computer with unlimited processing power, and that computer was somehow all-knowing, i.e. it knows all production capacities, inventories, reserves and all peoples personal preferences, what would be the point of it? It still couldn’t make the economy a tad more efficient. At best it could simulate the free market, just without personal freedom. In effect the choices of this computer would be a form of implicit money. Because money is “we can’t produce everything we want, so we must decide what we want most”, that’s what it would do. It wouldn’t make production more efficient, or resources more abundant, but it would completely destroy incentives and ingenuity.
BUT WE KNOW THAT YOU WILL LEAVE OUT YOUR SCARCITY BASED MEASELY LIFE AND JOIN THE LIFE OF ABUNDANCE! GET IT?
Can someone explain what he means through that? On they’re forums, they’r never precise in they’re arguments.How do they plan on making a computer create abundance of resources?
I’m not even going to concede the absurd concept that it will ever be possible for a super computer to be all-knowing and able to rationally allocate resources. But a super computer which meets the subjective preferences of a group of individuals will only occur through entrepreneurial discovery in the market. Profit and loss will shift resources and consumers to those companies which produce computers that are more efficient. With the capital needed to invest in such a project and the utter risk involved, though, I don’t really see such a project being undertaken any time in the near future. But if there ever does come the day that computers are developed to do this, there will always be enormous profit motive and intense competition to develop computers with more improved technology that perhaps can allocate resources to more people in more efficient ways. Simply starting a society from scratch and putting faith in a mythical super computer will likely fail before it even starts or it will almost quickly result in mass starvation, death, and huge wasteful allocation of resources. Or maybe I’m just missing something.
One person literally told me that eliminating money would eliminate costs. In other words, scarcity only exists because opportunity costs are explicitly expressed via money prices. I mean, I don’t know what to say. Maybe Americans really are fucking stupid?
It’s not just Americans, most of Europe is running their health care industries based on that fallacy. If the government declares some commodity to be “free” it no longer costs anything. If I should name the single most destructive force in modern society, it’s that people don’t understand basic market pricing. It poisons everything.
I found Molyneux’s original review that started this debate and he lost me at the start where he pointed out that the Zeitgeist kooks agree with his nutty human nature denial and exaggeration of the prevalence of child abuse. Molyneux is sound on economics and I’m sure he refuted the economically ignorant Zeitgeist kooks, although he usually spends most of his time talking about his nutty ideas. Molyneux is a human nature denier and seems obsessed with exagerrating the prevalence of child abuse. His show is largely filled with psychologizing and he often comes very close to saying that all parents are child abusers. Take away the libertarianism from Molyneux and he would fit in perfectly with the Zeitgeisters. Libertarians in general have a poor understanding of human nature (actually, most people in our politically correct age share this, but libertarians tend to be below average in this area, even in today’s denialist society), which certainly isn’t helped by libertarian “philosophers” who spread human nature denial.
You are right that both Molyneux and the Zeitgeisters are strong anti-innatists, but that hardly puts them in the same camp. They differ on most sentiments, and ones economic position is a big part of ones ideology. The Nazis were innatists, does that mean that if it wasn’t for their economic position you would fit in perfectly with them? Of course not.
Yeah, I think going so far as calling Stefan a “human nature denier” is a bit much. He certainly seems to believe that people have many innate traits. However, he generally promotes the idea that the tendency towards statism and agressive violence are reinforced, rather than discouraged, by the way we raise kids.
In my opinion, I think he thinks that desire for liberty and empathy and such are defaults minus state indoctrination and abuse. Though, there are of course needs for philosophy and such, of couse. As well – as stated in famous innatists like Steven Pinker – that people have basic ideas about morality from an early age… don’t hit, this belong to this person, people feel pain, something which applies to one thing applies more generally, etc. He certainly agrees with economics, where economics has a say about human nature. Which is why he discusses economics at all.
The alternative would be that what we have now is the natural order. Since everything now occuring would be a result of some innate and unchanging process. The reality is that we have some innate and some conditioned things. No one has completely worked through all of it.
Whereas Zeitgeist duder is saying that liberty and all that is unimportant and arbitrary. We need to re-educate people from a blank slate to accept the Venus Project. Because peole never know what they are doing at all unless they can be trained to.
“However, he generally promotes the idea that the tendency towards statism and agressive violence are reinforced, rather than discouraged, by the way we raise kids.”
It can be reinforced or discouraged. Depending on choices you make. I don’t see how that is controversial. It is not a statement about parenting in general. Since parents all make different decisions.
It can be reinforced or discouraged. Depending on choices you make. I don’t see how that is controversial. It is not a statement about parenting in general. Since parents all make different decisions.
Yeah this is what I meant to say. Stefan does make some arguements that public schooling, and the structure of American schools in general (and worldwide, for that matter), encourage rather than discourage authoritarianism. That’s not a particularly controversial statement either, I don’t think.
The Zietgiesters take it much much further though, in thinking that they can (and should) condition wants and desires out of human beings.