A Resource Based Economy

[Rassah]

What's so unnatural about people wanting to voluntarily trade for mutual benefit?

What's so unnatural about people "taking" out competitors, to increase trade/profits - using all sorts of devious & cunning schemes, also termed a free market?
What's so unnatural about me killing you and taking "your property"?

You think being stolen from by your devious competitors, or being murdered and having your property taken, is voluntary?  

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[QuestionAuthority]

A free market is a fantasy because individuals are self serving assholes that need to be controlled.

When you say "controlled" you mean civilized. Laws are agreements to keep that civilization together. Personal motivations are irrelevant. Humans are social and therefore a collective by definition. You aren't born Hindu in a Muslim family and you aren't born Communist in a Capitalist family. Systems have been created by people to effect civilizations, but there is little significant difference between any of them. People are people wherever you go. They are all capable of good and evil, smart and dumb things. It doesn't matter what system is used as long as it is capable of supporting the most successful civilization. This is where RBE projects like TVP and TZM and many others study civilizations to determine which methods work best in the long run. They use science to back up their data points. You can knock it, but you also then have to refute the science.

If people complied with the law it would be civilized but they don't. That's the reason we need massive amounts of law enforcement officers and military. 

[cbeast]

A free market is a fantasy because individuals are self serving assholes that need to be controlled.

When you say "controlled" you mean civilized. Laws are agreements to keep that civilization together. Personal motivations are irrelevant. Humans are social and therefore a collective by definition. You aren't born Hindu in a Muslim family and you aren't born Communist in a Capitalist family. Systems have been created by people to effect civilizations, but there is little significant difference between any of them. People are people wherever you go. They are all capable of good and evil, smart and dumb things. It doesn't matter what system is used as long as it is capable of supporting the most successful civilization. This is where RBE projects like TVP and TZM and many others study civilizations to determine which methods work best in the long run. They use science to back up their data points. You can knock it, but you also then have to refute the science.

If people complied with the law it would be civilized but they don't. That's the reason we need massive amounts of law enforcement officers and military. 

Most of that is to protect the general peaceful population from outside and aberrant threats, not as a deterrent. Most people never even consider committing serious crimes.

[QuestionAuthority]

A free market is a fantasy because individuals are self serving assholes that need to be controlled.

When you say "controlled" you mean civilized. Laws are agreements to keep that civilization together. Personal motivations are irrelevant. Humans are social and therefore a collective by definition. You aren't born Hindu in a Muslim family and you aren't born Communist in a Capitalist family. Systems have been created by people to effect civilizations, but there is little significant difference between any of them. People are people wherever you go. They are all capable of good and evil, smart and dumb things. It doesn't matter what system is used as long as it is capable of supporting the most successful civilization. This is where RBE projects like TVP and TZM and many others study civilizations to determine which methods work best in the long run. They use science to back up their data points. You can knock it, but you also then have to refute the science.

If people complied with the law it would be civilized but they don't. That's the reason we need massive amounts of law enforcement officers and military. 

Most of that is to protect the general peaceful population from outside and aberrant threats, not as a deterrent. Most people never even consider committing serious crimes.

I guess our perspectives differ because of where we live. In my area, if the police forces were just to protect from outside threats, I have to assume they expect to be invaded by a foreign power at any moment because there's a lot of law enforcement here.

I suppose it also depends on your definition of serious crimes. If murder is the only crime you consider serious then, in my area, only Oakland has a real problem. If car theft, selling drugs to minors, assault, rape, violent crimes including domestic violence, larceny of all kinds is serious then there are quite a few people that do more than consider committing serious crimes. The greater BA combined has roughly 100 violent crimes per 1000 people, 650 car thefts per 100k people, around 75 domestic violence reports per 1000 people, 30-40 hard drug arrests per 1000 people and 680 larceny arrests per 100k. That is a serious amount of crime being committed by your "civilized" citizens. If we start talking about things that are crimes but "every one does it" type of offenses like stealing office supplies from work, lying on an expense report or cheating on your taxes then my entire fucking country are nothing but a bunch of criminals. Very civilized indeed.

[ngupowered]

You think being stolen from by your devious competitors, or being murdered and having your property taken, if voluntary? 

Of course not; just demonstrating one aspect of a s.c. "free market". Here's another:

What's so unnatural about people using child/slave-labor, to undercut competitors and increase trade/profits.

And another:

What's so unnatural about people dumping toxic waste, to undercut competitors and increase trade/profits.

Hopefully, Adam Smith's invisible hand can solve the problem - ROFL!

[herzmeister]

What's so unnatural about people dumping toxic waste, to undercut competitors and increase trade/profits.

Hopefully, Adam Smith's invisible hand can solve the problem - ROFL!

actually... yes! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmds8R7lyw

[cbeast]

A free market is a fantasy because individuals are self serving assholes that need to be controlled.

When you say "controlled" you mean civilized. Laws are agreements to keep that civilization together. Personal motivations are irrelevant. Humans are social and therefore a collective by definition. You aren't born Hindu in a Muslim family and you aren't born Communist in a Capitalist family. Systems have been created by people to effect civilizations, but there is little significant difference between any of them. People are people wherever you go. They are all capable of good and evil, smart and dumb things. It doesn't matter what system is used as long as it is capable of supporting the most successful civilization. This is where RBE projects like TVP and TZM and many others study civilizations to determine which methods work best in the long run. They use science to back up their data points. You can knock it, but you also then have to refute the science.

If people complied with the law it would be civilized but they don't. That's the reason we need massive amounts of law enforcement officers and military. 

Most of that is to protect the general peaceful population from outside and aberrant threats, not as a deterrent. Most people never even consider committing serious crimes.

I guess our perspectives differ because of where we live. In my area, if the police forces were just to protect from outside threats, I have to assume they expect to be invaded by a foreign power at any moment because there's a lot of law enforcement here.

I suppose it also depends on your definition of serious crimes. If murder is the only crime you consider serious then, in my area, only Oakland has a real problem. If car theft, selling drugs to minors, assault, rape, violent crimes including domestic violence, larceny of all kinds is serious then there are quite a few people that do more than consider committing serious crimes. The greater BA combined has roughly 100 violent crimes per 1000 people, 650 car thefts per 100k people, around 75 domestic violence reports per 1000 people, 30-40 hard drug arrests per 1000 people and 680 larceny arrests per 100k. That is a serious amount of crime being committed by your "civilized" citizens. If we start talking about things that are crimes but "every one does it" type of offenses like stealing office supplies from work, lying on an expense report or cheating on your taxes then my entire fucking country are nothing but a bunch of criminals. Very civilized indeed.

Where I live looks like a war zone with all the armed soldiers, police, and private security everywhere. It doesn't stop bombs though. So I don't really see the point. There are armored trucks everywhere hauling cash, but if the truck is robbed and the guards killed, they just print more paper anyway. So I don't see the point. I wonder what makes happy, civilized nations into genocidal butchers? Look at Europe after two world wars. That pretty much got all the violence out of their system and they saw decades of peace afterwars. They didn't have much need for arms except for neutral Switzerland that was probably just paranoid for playing both sides during the war. America hasn't had a blood bath in almost two centuries. It's overdue. I suppose a peasant uprising with their small arms will be met with satellite targeted smart bomb strikes. That should take the violence out of their system for awhile.

[Rassah]

You think being stolen from by your devious competitors, or being murdered and having your property taken, if voluntary? 

Of course not; just demonstrating one aspect of a s.c. "free market".

Ah, so you're saying that with things like theft and murder, a free market would be no worse than what we have now?

What's so unnatural about people using child/slave-labor, to undercut competitors and increase trade/profits.

Slave labor is not voluntary, and thus is not a component of a free market. And there's nothing wrong with letting kids work if they want to. What's wrong with working as a bagger at a grocery, or mopping floors, or making burgers as a kid? It builds character, gives work experience and connections, and gives the child a sense of worth.

What's so unnatural about people dumping toxic waste, to undercut competitors and increase trade/profits.

In a free market? Nothing, since that dumping would be on the property the dumper owns, or on the property someone agreed to allow the dumper to dump on and charged them money for it. Better than it is now, when dumpers dump on " public" property.

[ngupowered]

Rassah, what makes you think that we are not in a free market, at the moment?
So you see nothing wrong with digging toxic shit into the ground, possibly leaking into the groundwater, despite not being "your" property?
I guess that your answer really highlights the mindset of a free-market capitalist.
Perhaps, you may also want to answer the questions posted below.

herzmeister, already 6 minutes in of your linked video, and the guy, examplering a lady suing a factory over a polluted shirt, introduces new concepts that unfortunately raise more questions:

1. What if the factory hides the polluting?
2. How will this "court" enforce anything, if everything is voluntary?
2b. What if the factory doesn't recognize the court?
3. How do we know that the factory is responsible for the polluting?
4. What if the factory doesn't recognize "her" land as her property - seeing that the land was here long before she ever was?

[Rassah]

Rassah, what makes you think that we are not in a free market, at the moment?

A free market isn't a thing you're in, its how trade is being done. Buy stuff from Walmart, or cut someone's lawn for $20? Free market. Pay your monopoly utility power bills or have to sign a bunch of legal forms to hire someone? Not a free market. It's not an all or nothing thing. We live in a mix of both, and I believe free market solutions are better than solutions dictated and enforced with violence.

So you see nothing wrong with digging toxic shit into the ground, possibly leaking into the groundwater, despite not being "your" property?

If it's not your property, and you are damaging someone else's property without their voluntary consent, that's not a free market action, is it? You don't bash someone in the face with a hammer and call it free speech, right? The way you react to such toxic contamination of ground property is either pass laws that regulate dumping and impose fines, or allow owners to bring lawsuits and collect damages based on the actual amount of damage done. We already know the first one leads to dumping companies lobbying to lower the fines, and then just paying them to keep dumping.

herzmeister, already 6 minutes in of your linked video, and the guy, examplering a lady suing a factory over a polluted shirt, introduces new concepts that unfortunately raise more questions:

1. What if the factory hides the polluting?
2. How will this "court" enforce anything, if everything is voluntary?
2b. What if the factory doesn't recognize the court?
3. How do we know that the factory is responsible for the polluting?
4. What if the factory doesn't recognize "her" land as her property - seeing that the land was here long before she ever was?

1. If it's hidden, it's not hurting anyone
2. Will you do business with a company that was found to be doing wrong, or any other company that supports that business? Boycotts can work. Or you could hire a "bounty" law firm or team that would go after the factory to force it to pay up, in exchange for keeping the money.
2b. If it's an obvious pollution problem, you won't need a court decision to do #2.
3. If your property is being polluted, I would guess you would want to know who is doing it.
4. Then neither she, not anyone else, like a competing company, has to recognize their property either, and no one will defend that factory when someone else comes in and takes over.


Now questions back at you

1. Factories pay off regulators to ignore pollution, or to make it technically within regulatory limits, or to make fines so small they can be paid as part of doing business. Regulators aren't subject to voting. What do you do?
2. Factories pick courts and arbitrators that are friendly to their business. You usually have no choice in which court this goes to. Plus they have a team of very expensive lawyers. You have no choice there either. What do you do?
3. When factories dump toxins on public property, there's often no one there to monitor that or find out about it. And when some regulator stumbles on it, they can get paid off. Tons of pollution happens on public property without  consequences because no one owns that property, and no one cares. What would you do?
4. What if the factory decides that having a place to dump pollutants will be better for the local economy, because the factory can expand and hire more workers, and then asks the government to use its power of Eminent Domain to literally take someone's property by force, paying them minimum for it, so it can start polluting on it. It's all legal. What do you do?

[LightRider]

The problem with Rassah and other capitalists is that they think they can own everything, or that everything can be owned. This is a ridiculous and absurd notion. Promoting such a mentality is what drives the many and varied neuroses and aberrant behavior we suffer today. If people can't recognize that we are transient stewards with temporary access to the universe we inhabit, then they won't behave in accordance with the natural laws of nature to which they are ultimately subject. They think they can make up their own bullshit rules and laws that others must obey. So much for "freedom". Capitalists are egomaniacs who ultimately hire other people to do violence for them so that they can hold on to their idealized fantasies about having their cake and profiting off of it too. They cannot recognize that going against nature is a path doomed to failure and destruction. And what's even more unfortunate, the tiny percentage who think like this have ruined the planet for generations to come, who had no part of nor say in the matter. They will look back at us in wonder and horror at the ideas and institutions we actually promoted and operated under. They are the victims of this "voluntary" system.

[ngupowered]

Rassah, seeing that your original proposition, "about two people voluntarily trading", unless reformulated, itself being too broad- and generally hypothesized and unrelated to capitalism having prive property, and our discussion here are wholly unrelated to both each other and to the topic of this thread, how Bitcoin relates to a Resource Based Economy (RBE), for the sake of the readers, I am terminating it, for this thread, on a quick hyperbole and some notes: what is so unnatural about two people voluntarily standing on one leg in the middle of the street?

but just a quick jab: you wrote that "A free market isn't a thing you're in [...]" but then goes on to say that "We live in a mix of both [...]", my emphasis.

What drives a free market, short term, to care for the sick and disabled, and not cutting corners that could possibly harm others long term, such as toxic spill, in order to maximize profits and remain competitive - where's the incentive, the humanity?

And on topic:

I don't see how Bitcoin will serve an RBE, seeing that the latter is about efficiency which Bitcoin wastes by doing - and competing by - useless hash calculations whose only purpose is to secure the network against the distrust inherent in the market - thus highlighting the antagonism of efficiency and short term profitability.

[criptix]

isnt rbe = no money?

or did i misread something?

[LightRider]

isnt rbe = no money?

or did i misread something?

It's an oversimplification. Given a relevant education and attendant set of values, we would utilize the resources available to us to provide a high standard of living for all people, and do so without the arbitrary and artificial restrictions of a monetary price tag.

[V for Varoufakis]

The Keynesian resurgence of 2008–2009
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes#The_Keynesian_resurgence_of_2008.E2.80.932009

2008–09 Keynesian resurgence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%9309_Keynesian_resurgence

[Rassah]

If people can't recognize that we are transient stewards with temporary access to the universe we inhabit, then they won't behave in accordance with the natural laws of nature to which they are ultimately subject.

Transient stewrds with temporary access instead of ownership? What, you mean like the logging companies that are destroying the rain forest that no one owns?

[cbeast]

If people can't recognize that we are transient stewards with temporary access to the universe we inhabit, then they won't behave in accordance with the natural laws of nature to which they are ultimately subject.

Transient stewrds with temporary access instead of ownership? What, you mean like the logging companies that are destroying the rain forest that no one owns?

Right because that's not sustainable.

[qiwoman2]

With freedom comes responsibility, if we have anarchy it is impossible to have a resource based economy..there has to be some organizational structures within a fluid and creative economy..Even those who are on the creative fringes need some discipline in their arts and structure to compose their masterpieces..So you need both organization and also fluidity to get the perfect results.

[cbeast]

With freedom comes responsibility, if we have anarchy it is impossible to have a resource based economy..there has to be some organizational structures within a fluid and creative economy..Even those who are on the creative fringes need some discipline in their arts and structure to compose their masterpieces..So you need both organization and also fluidity to get the perfect results.

You can have both. We just haven't built the organizational structures yet. They must follow general rules, but still be open enough to allow expansion outside the parameters where such rules apply. It's a big universe. Science knows no limits. As long as we continue to create a prison environment, we limit ourselves. If we ultimately choose to remain imprisoned, then we face the responsibility of our own extinction.

[AtheistAKASaneBrain]

The Resource Based Economy status is too advanced and individuals that think about it are too advanced beyond the pack, I don't think we will see it during our life times. There are way bigger chances that BTC becomes the global ledger and we all become rich than seeing RBU during our lifetimes.