A Resource Based Economy

[Misesian]

How convenient to define the conversation to your arbitrary parameters. I am sure everyone in the world agrees with your worldview.

A free market is one where the exchanges that take place are voluntary. Slavery is an involuntary exchange so it is not legitimate in a free market system.

Please show me how I'm arbitrarily redefining the parameters of the conversation instead of just stating it. Are my definitions wrong?

[kjj]

It's not a matter of belief, it's the limitation of their optics. They operate under presumptions set forth by authorities without question. Limiting ones measure to only profits demonstrates that only tools that measure profits are used and any other data is discarded. This is called observational bias.

When you use words like "goodness" and you define them as subjective, you have already dismissed any objectivity. Measuring phenomena is multidisciplinary. There is no need to rely solely on "subjective measurements." It is easy enough to measure objective qualities of goodness. Qualities such as pleasure, nutrition and health, productivity (in general terms), social connectedness, etc. could partially define goodness. I would not interpret goodness in any moral sense, but in the overall wellness of people that tend to be generalized as good. This way we can independently measure factors that discern perceived goodness from acceptable norms. I'm not talking about a "school of thought," but demonstrable quantities subject to falsification and used for making useful predictions. This is an oversimplified explanation, but that's what science is. A truth can be told easily, but it's explanation is almost never easy when it comes to epistemological terms.

Until there is a multidisciplinary correlation supporting the hypothesis that profit is a measure of goodness, it appears to be a fallacy. Fallacies are the bread of authorities. It is far too easy to falsify and support the opposite view that profit leads to pain, pain leads to suffering, and someone loses a hand.

Howabout the obvious one. Slavery.

We're talking about free markets and voluntary exchanges, slavery is not a voluntary exchange.

How convenient to define the conversation to your arbitrary parameters. I am sure everyone in the world agrees with your worldview.

Folks, this is what institutional insanity looks like.

Just out of curiosity, which school do you teach at?

[mobodick]

What if the bitcoin seller is wrong?

In this example the seller was right because he had information that noone else had.
It is just an example to illustrate that there are people who can abuse the system of free market for their own personal benefit.
The question is also if this can still be called a free market. If the buyer knew what the seller knew, would he still have bought? And if not, then was it really a voluntary exchange in the first place?
You propose that if i slip a poison into your drink and make you drink it yourself then we should call it suicide because you drank the poison 'voluntarily'. See what kind of problems this word can give?
I sell you sub-prim mortgage instruments that are completely hopeless. But you don't know and gobble them up like cookies.
It was a 'voluntary' exchange. Now you go belly up from all the cookies. Was that what you would call a voluntary exchange?

There are no certainties, yes there are problems with asymmetric information but there is nothing that government can do to solve this, politicians game the political system regularly by using asymmetric information e.g. minimum wage law, despite the vast amounts of evidence that shows minimum wage laws create unemployment and raise the cost of living politicians have managed to fool the general populace that the minimum wage law is good and prevents exploitation when in fact it is the politicians that are exploiting the people for votes as they prevent people from getting on the job ladder and make them dependent on government handouts.

Since most jobs are not really needed this 'job ladder' thing is mostly in our collective imagination.
For a large part it is something that just keeps the population busy enough to not want to revolt or pillage the neighbours etc.
It's a carrot that uses human greed to get people on the slippery slope of career making and loan taking.
And i think its only ethical to provide a save place for people who do not want to compete against such a circus.
Minimum wage is incredibly important in this role. It's a very stabilizing factor in a society. If you can ensure that everyone with a job can buy food and some other necessities from that salary then overall standard of living will increase which increases productivity etc. Overall you'll have a happier society. And i think that is a much 'gooder' goal than profit.
The fact that an employer can excert enourmous power over his workers through wage is another thing that justifies tools like minimum wage. Look at what is going on in and around India where human rights standards are upheld less well. You see frequent abuse of workers by employers. It's because it's a position of power. Without some rules and some power to uphold them this is what you get when you make your markets free. Only you propose it on global industrial scale.

What do you mean by game the free market system? Give me an example

Enron comes to mind.. It's a good example of how you can misuse information to game a market.
Honestly, there are many many others.
Most of these try to squeeze between the rules. Imagine there were no rules and they had free reighn in their dealings.We would be sooo screwed. Imagine a Monsanto not having to keep to regulations. Imagine a Shell that would have very little insentive to clean up their shit. Imagine an Bell was still one company ruling over their netherpeoples.
Corporate etities can become enourmous and can have little insentive to do something good for society. In fact, they've been known to suck economies dry with no thought of the people living in that region. You can wait till the 'market' corrects itself but by that time maybe many thousands of people would have lost their home. That is not something most people want so we have regulations that prevent certain dangers that markets can pose to society.

[mobodick]

It's not a matter of belief, it's the limitation of their optics. They operate under presumptions set forth by authorities without question.

Out of curiosity, how are you linking "profit" and "authority?"

Until there is a multidisciplinary correlation supporting the hypothesis that profit is a measure of goodness, it appears to be a fallacy. Fallacies are the bread of authorities. It is far too easy to falsify and support the opposite view that profit leads to pain, pain leads to suffering, and someone loses a hand.

That's such a wishy washy statement, anything can lead to pain, are you saying that the act of profit making actually inflicts pain? Can you give an example?

Howabout the obvious one. Slavery.

We're talking about free markets and voluntary exchanges, slavery is not a voluntary exchange.

In slavery, the ones in pain are actually the product.
There is a voluntary exchange between the buyer and the seller.


edit:
And it's a fine example of how the efficiency of the market has nothing to do with the 'goodness' of the situation.

[mobodick]

Lobbyists only lobby because government has the power to hand out unfair market advantages to lobbyists, if people don't lobby government then one of their competitors will, it is government that always poisons the incentives in the free market, the government is the source for all the problems because it is government that makes the rules.

Lobbying these days is just an institutionalized form of bribery. It's a legal form of corruption and people are simply corruptable, wether they are from the government or not. Anyone with power will experience this pressure. But to change this you need to make govenment more transparant instead of destroying it.

[cbeast]

It's not a matter of belief, it's the limitation of their optics. They operate under presumptions set forth by authorities without question.

Out of curiosity, how are you linking "profit" and "authority?"

Until there is a multidisciplinary correlation supporting the hypothesis that profit is a measure of goodness, it appears to be a fallacy. Fallacies are the bread of authorities. It is far too easy to falsify and support the opposite view that profit leads to pain, pain leads to suffering, and someone loses a hand.

That's such a wishy washy statement, anything can lead to pain, are you saying that the act of profit making actually inflicts pain? Can you give an example?

Howabout the obvious one. Slavery.

We're talking about free markets and voluntary exchanges, slavery is not a voluntary exchange.

In slavery, the ones in pain are actually the product.
There is a voluntary exchange between the buyer and the seller.


edit:
And it's a fine example of how the efficiency of the market has nothing to do with the 'goodness' of the situation.

This is why science isn't about morality. It would be interesting to see some of these "free marketers" become products themselves. They might provide interesting data.

[Lethn]

This is why science isn't about morality. It would be interesting to see some of these "free marketers" become products themselves. They might provide interesting data.

We're already seeing with just the mere idea of Bitcoin being discussed what happens when a lot of free market 'supporters' are introduced to it, as Max Kaiser said, Bitcoin is a litmus test for people who believe in the free market, or something along those lines

[Rassah]

Uh, wasn't Enron an example of regulatory failure? They gamed the regulatory system, bribed the regulators who were supposed to keep them in check, and convinced everyone that everything was OK, because everyone got too dependent on believing regulators. If it wasn't for regulations surrounding Enron, we may not have trusted them as much, would have demanded audits by companies whose reputation was on the line (how badly did US regulator reputation get damaged after that debacle?), and chances are what happened at Enron may not have had the chance to happen in the first place.

[Mike Christ]

In slavery, the ones in pain are actually the product.
There is a voluntary exchange between the buyer and the seller.


edit:
And it's a fine example of how the efficiency of the market has nothing to do with the 'goodness' of the situation.

This is why science isn't about morality. It would be interesting to see some of these "free marketers" become products themselves. They might provide interesting data.

We would first have to argue that slaves are not people; if slaves are not people, we have no right to call slavery immoral, for one cannot abuse an object lacking its own subject (i.e. damaging someone else's things e.g. it's fine for a person to damage their own property as the subject is okay with this, but wrong to damage another's unless that subject is okay with that; the slave, assuming it is property, has no subject of its own, ergo is not a person.)

If slaves are people, then we must assert that there is a subject involved who does not participate in another's voluntary exchange; if the individual agrees to slavery, he is not a slave (though he may play the role willingly; maybe he's into that), and if the individual does not, then he is being denied his right to his subject and, hopefully, none will agree that this is the righteous path and subsequently help him (sadly, this has hardly been the case considering the past several thousand years.)

Either way, slavery cannot exist within a free market.  There is no situation in which slaves are both people and involuntarily participating within a free market; this is a logical fallacy.  Either the slave is a person to which the slave-owners are wrong and the involuntary trade should be abhorred, or the slave is not a person therefore cannot be considered amongst other human beings as to whether the trade is good or bad for it, just as trading an iPad for however many BTC cannot involve ethics applied to either the iPad or the money, as they have no subject of their own.

The latter can never fit within the realm of ethics because we generally recognize slaves as human.  What we apply to one human, we must apply to another, as we otherwise develop a divide between which groups have rights and which groups do not (i.e. the state and its citizens), which presupposes that there are multiple groups of human beings when there is only one, as Occam's razor shows us.  The latter can only be achieved without human empathy (in which case every individual has their own moral category), but we cannot assume this is the norm, especially among people who bring up slavery as a good example of why free markets are not necessarily right or wrong (this implies slaves are considered people, otherwise it'd be as strange as bringing up a PS3 in this regard, and nobody would understand what was meant.)  We see here that it is illogical to place slaves in their own moral category, as morality, the very foundation of law, becomes null if people can simply decide when morality will apply to them, and when it will not.  Assuming we do want a society of order, then we must adhere to the idea that all people have equal rights; without this, there can be no free market, as there is always a subject, even if they are treated as property, who participates involuntarily, thereby revealing the authority figure necessary for regulated markets thus making the free market void to give way.  This does not mean that every crime nullifies the free market, but it does mean that every crime legitimized shows there are regulatory powers at work: they cannot coexist.

Ergo, for a market to be considered free, it necessitates all subjects claim ownership over their objects, i.e. ownership of their being, their time and energy, and the product of their past efforts, otherwise we are left with objects without subjects, to which other subjects claim ownership i.e. authority, even if temporarily (the core idea behind the regulated market); because there can be no involuntary trade within a free market, every trade is always to the benefit of the individuals involved, otherwise the trade would never occur; following this logic, we can also see that every trade made involuntarily (or trades disallowed by ulterior forces) are to the detriment of the subjects involved, as it steals or suppresses either the subject's time, their personhood, or their property, or all of it.  Even the situation in which a man trades his life and wealth for poison is beneficial for each party as they both get what they wanted (but of course, the man cannot trade his wife or children as this implies they have no subject when they do.)

Anyway, ethics is a science insofar a person understands it; to make a comparison, merely because a person believes 2+2=cupcake does not mean the concept of mathematics is a farce or otherwise inapplicable, it simply means the person isn't versed in concepts of math, and merely because the individual who believes 2+2=cupcake asserts that math is not a science for he can find no constants related to the universe does not mean the constants are not there.  It doesn't stop him from doing so, of course.

[cbeast]

Like I said before. Truths a short and simple, only the science can be complex. If your non scientific explanation is s wall of text, it's probably bullshit and not worth reading as a response to a three sentence reply.

[allaa]

Greetings,

I was very excited to learn about the Bitcoin currency several months ago, and I am very pleased to see it growing. I am part of an organization called the Zeitgeist Movement, who advocates a resource based economy. We are interested in seeing a radical redesign of society and an associated shift in values. We understand that the major cause of human suffering today is the current monetary system and the warped values and corrupt behavior inherent in its implementation. We know that we can provide food, water, shelter and a highly technological life style to every one on the planet if we chose to do so. What generally prevents us from doing so is the idea of money, which paralyzes us as a society, in terms of technological advancement, quality of education and healthcare, and a sick culture that encourages us to be competitive and cruel to our fellow human beings.

Knowing and understanding the underlying mechanics of a monetary system is fundamental to not being abused by it. Currently, the vast majority of people are unaware of the destructive and unfair nature of our current fractional reserve banking system, and that makes them vulnerable to all the abuses we see today. Poverty, war, crime and hunger are the result of inequitable economic practices, and will not significantly change until we end or significantly alter our subservience to this and associated institutions. I believe Bitcoin would make for an ideal transition currency until a full RBE can be implemented.

An RBE is basically the realization that there are no arbitrary restrictions on reality. Being bound to the imaginary rules of a monetary game, we limit how much we can accomplish and provide for each other. If we declared all of the earth's resources as common heritage for all the world's people, and used the methods of science to construct and provide all of life's necessities for all people, then there would be considerable reduction in hunger, crime, war and poverty, not to mention unnecessary suffering due to lack of access of medical care or inadequate educational opportunities. If people were given all that were necessary to survive, they could devote themselves to the benefit of all man kind. These would be the values of a resource based economy, not the competitive and acquisitive value based behavior we see today.

I encourage you to learn more about these ideas if they interest you. I hope to support the bitcoin system as long as I am able, and I hope to see it become a dominant and thriving ecosystem in the months and years to come. Thank you for your time and attention.

Normal curency represents numerous problems that botcoin doesn't have and thats the main reason why many people are using it. Even though it wont remove normal currency from market it creates helthy alternative for persons tired of many manipulations and bad influence standard currencies have. Definitly it is interesting and exciting times. Finally after so many year we have certain evolution on financial market, even though it is still more of meta-finances.

[rustan]

I was hoping for a civilised discussion based on reason and science. Calling a group of people "zombies" and "brainwashed" just for the sake of it, without providing any evidence is little more than backyard bullying. If you have an argument, please present it. If you just want to pick up a fight, you will find none Smiley

[LightRider]

I was hoping for a civilised discussion based on reason and science. Calling a group of people "zombies" and "brainwashed" just for the sake of it, without providing any evidence is little more than backyard bullying. If you have an argument, please present it. If you just want to pick up a fight, you will find none Smiley

To whom are your comments directed?

[cbeast]

I was hoping for a civilised discussion based on reason and science. Calling a group of people "zombies" and "brainwashed" just for the sake of it, without providing any evidence is little more than backyard bullying. If you have an argument, please present it. If you just want to pick up a fight, you will find none Smiley

To whom are your comments directed?

Not sure, but that expresses my sentiments as well.

[Doug Rudd]

The problem is that people think the job of the government is to "help" people. If people are bribing politicians it is because the politician is able to use the force of the government to give some kind of subsidy to the briber.

The solution is to realize that it is not the purpose of the government to help. The purpose is only to protect private property. This is the rule of law in the capitalist system. The solution would be for the government to be completely out of the business of helping, subsidizing or improving one thing over another.

And enforcing the rule of law is not "helping" because it is not giving advantage to one person over another. There is only the protection of everyone's property.

[Cryddit]

The problem is that people think the job of the government is to "help" people.

Dunno 'bout y'all, but that is exactly why I (or we collectively) hired those employees. 

We don't have a problem until they forget who they're working for.

[Doug Rudd]

No, that is the very problem. IF we want the government to use its force to plan new bridges, put ethanol in gasoline, cleanup from hurricanes, THEN we open ourselves up to people fighting over who gets this government contract, and who gets that regulation that keeps out other competitors.

We should have a perfectly even playing field where nobody gets a favored position from the help of government force over another. Where if people want something they are going to have to get it by voluntary cooperation between themselves - without interference from government force. This even playing field is made from the government using its power of force exclusively for protecting rights, that is, protecting individual property.

[Cryddit]

Nope.  People are generally okay, but they aren't sufficiently confident in the benevolence of others to extend the necessary degree of cooperation with others in a situation where the other may do damage or make their own contribution worthless.  I wantcommitments from people if I'm going to trust them to cooperate, and without some way to get and enforce long term commitments,  there's not much point in putting any real resources into the public good.  That may not always mean government. But government is what we have now.   A good replacement for it will still require public planning and law enforcement.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are new. We've committed to a set of rules about what are legitimate transactions and allowed technology to enforce those rules on ourselves.  But we can still get Goxed, even with everybody following those rules.

We need at least some rules that we can't commit to using just technology. We have to hire some kind of guardian just to enforce the rule about most people being uncoerced most of the time.  And the hell of that is the job can only be done BY coercion of those who would otherwise freely choose to point guns at someone and demand sexual favors on pain of death for refusing. T

[Rassah]

We need at least some rules that we can't commit to using just technology. We have to hire some kind of guardian just to enforce the rule about most people being uncoerced most of the time.  And the hell of that is the job can only be done BY coercion of those who would otherwise freely choose to point guns at someone and demand sexual favors on pain of death for refusing. T

We can distribute/decentralize uncoersion through assassination markets, or private bounties on screwing someone else's property, and distribute defence by normalizing gun ownership and auto defense systems. It would add very real costs to being more coersive than someone else.

[Bit_Happy]

Greetings,

I was very excited to learn about the Bitcoin currency several months ago, and I am very pleased to see it growing. I am part of an organization called the Zeitgeist Movement, who advocates a resource based economy. We are interested in seeing a radical redesign of society and an associated shift in values. We understand that the major cause of human suffering today is the current monetary system and the warped values and corrupt behavior inherent in its implementation. We know that we can provide food, water, shelter and a highly technological life style to every one on the planet if we chose to do so. What generally prevents us from doing so is the idea of money, which paralyzes us as a society, in terms of technological advancement, quality of education and healthcare, and a sick culture that encourages us to be competitive and cruel to our fellow human beings.

Knowing and understanding the underlying mechanics of a monetary system is fundamental to not being abused by it. Currently, the vast majority of people are unaware of the destructive and unfair nature of our current fractional reserve banking system, and that makes them vulnerable to all the abuses we see today. Poverty, war, crime and hunger are the result of inequitable economic practices, and will not significantly change until we end or significantly alter our subservience to this and associated institutions. I believe Bitcoin would make for an ideal transition currency until a full RBE can be implemented.

An RBE is basically the realization that there are no arbitrary restrictions on reality. Being bound to the imaginary rules of a monetary game, we limit how much we can accomplish and provide for each other. If we declared all of the earth's resources as common heritage for all the world's people, and used the methods of science to construct and provide all of life's necessities for all people, then there would be considerable reduction in hunger, crime, war and poverty, not to mention unnecessary suffering due to lack of access of medical care or inadequate educational opportunities. If people were given all that were necessary to survive, they could devote themselves to the benefit of all man kind. These would be the values of a resource based economy, not the competitive and acquisitive value based behavior we see today.

I encourage you to learn more about these ideas if they interest you. I hope to support the bitcoin system as long as I am able, and I hope to see it become a dominant and thriving ecosystem in the months and years to come. Thank you for your time and attention.

Utopian collectivism doesn't do any harm if it's 100% voluntary, so enjoy your communal living.