Do you think a resource based economy advocated by The Zeitgeist Movement is a viable solution to our economic, energy and environment problems? The elimination of money is a very radical idea. If Von Mises were alive today, what would he say?
Do you think a resource based economy advocated by The Zeitgeist Movement is a viable solution to our economic, energy and environment problems?
The Venus Project's "resource-based economy" works on the principle that modern technology can effectively bring about superabundance. The argument is if all the world's resources were made available to some type of central planning board then there would be no scarcity, as this board could decide exactly what to make and in how much quantity. Their website uses the following example,
Consider the following examples: At the beginning of World War II the US had a mere 600 or so first-class fighting aircraft. We rapidly overcame this short supply by turning out more than 90,000 planes a year. The question at the start of World War II was: Do we have enough funds to produce the required implements of war? The answer was No, we did not have enough money, nor did we have enough gold; but we did have more than enough resources. It was the available resources that enabled the US to achieve the high production and efficiency required to win the war. Unfortunately this is only considered in times of war.
Yes, the United States built a very large amount of aircraft in a very short amount of time, and it was for the most part centrally planned. But, the construction of war material came at the cost of consumer goods and private capital goods (IIRC, the fall in private production was ~90%; I can't really remember the exact figure now), and so obviously there was not enough resources to distribute between both war material production and civilian production - otherwise, governments would already be implenting those techniques.
The elimination of money is a very radical idea. If Von Mises were alive today, what would he say?
Resources are scarce. Money is used as the best rationing system for scarce resources. Without money we are bound to use subpar rationing systems. I write about this in "A Primer on Austrian Economics",
There is no objection amongst economists that given the existence of scarcity, the market is in need of a rationing device. Most economists, except those in extreme favor of centralized rationing, will also agree with the notion that price is the best rationing device of the market. While price hardly acts as a measure of value, due to the fact that no object has an objective value, it nevertheless serves as a useful tool to coordinate production by serving as a conveyor of information between different market agents and a method by which an individual can decide whether or not a particular action is economical.
In a socialistic economy, where prices are absent, this coordination would simply not exist. There would be no host of individual agents communicating through the price mechanism and allocating resources by means of subjective ratiocination. As a result, all meaningful economic activity would come to a halt. Complex programs would be impossible to complete economically, since without a price mechanism there would be no way for a central planner to distribute resources according to their most economical use. Thus, socialist economies are bound to fail.
Agreed
Friends, This Wednesday, June 30th, at 3:00pm EDT [(2010-06-30 19:00 UTC)] will be Peter Joseph's Bi-Weekly Radio Address. http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=438&Itemid=1904 http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Peter-Joseph This 2 hour program will specifically focus on common criticisms of The Zeitgeist Movement and The Venus Project. Thank You for listening.
I'll be the first to say it - 2 hours is a little long for some of us. Are there transcripts published so that we can skip to the relevant bits?
I suspect he will address strawmen, just as most critiques of one movement by another focus on strawman arguments.
I think I have the highest post count on this forum, and might be in the top 20 most knowledgable posters, so I would much rather spend 2 hours debating Peter Joseph on economics and social organization, than to listen to him respond to hand picked charicatures of his own position without any interaction from those with legitimate concerns.
Stuff like this is generally done for the benefit of "the troops" (aka true believers) who might stop shelling out $300 for a 5 DVD set that LvMI, the (cue eyeroll) "money philistines", would give away for free.
You know, I think this quote by Rothbard sums up the Zeitgeist movement accurately:
It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a "dismal science." But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.
Zeitgeist seems to be some kind of post-scarcity Singularity cult. I think that most of the responses, while valid, miss the point and will never reach any of the believers.
You have to keep in mind that the calculation argument literally does not apply to a post-singular AI (the computer algorithms that are supposed to run everything in their utopia). We have no way to know what a super-computer the size of Jupiter, with access to its own source-code for rapid self-improvement, could calculate.
Human central planners can not calculate - godlike AIs could.
It most likely will be able to allocate ressources better then a free market of present-day humans. In fact, it could even figure out their preferences - either by analyzing their brains, or by scanning them atom-by-atom and simulating them in a virtual reality to see their revealed preferences. Thats the kind of power level we are talking about.
There is nothing wrong with a ressource-based economy, because in a physical world, the economy is actually based on ressources. Its just that humans do not calculate in atoms of iron - because thats not the simplest method to get things done.
In a world of godlike supercomputers and universal nano-assemblers that can build anything atom-by-atom from a block of raw materials, a ressource-based economy seems pretty likely. Now there could still be "money" - rare elements maybe. But trade and division of labor depend heavily on the exact details - things like aviability of faster-than-light travel, computational cost of centralisation vs distribution etc. Details we cannot really know, because the Singularity is the point in time after which everything is beyond our understanding.
Now the singularity is great science fiction - but the hard part is actually building the very first seed AI that gets everything going, without turning mad and destroying the world. Thats the real and only task - everything else is just talk. So their entire agenda can be summed up with "more AI research!".
Maybe i am wrong, and Zeitgeisters actually believe they can build their robot socialism utopia without post-singularity tech. In that case, they simply write fan-fiction to reality (of the power fantasy wish fullfillment kind). The question of wether vampires sparkle in sunlight is not that relevant in the grand scheme of things.
Saerden:It most likely will be able to allocate ressources better then a free market of present-day humans.
So if I understand this correctly, these people wish to substitute algorithms for free will, correct?
Maybe within certain arbitrary catagorical frameworks, but I don't see how it can go beyond that. The word "value" has no real meaning, it is merely a descriptive short hand word.
I think this is what he would say:
If one were to take these plans seriously, one would not have to deal with them in a discussion of the problems of interventionism. One would have to realize that syndicalism is neither socialism, nor capitalism, nor interventionism, but a system of its own different from these three schemes. However, one cannot take the syndicalist program seriously, and nobody ever has. Nobody has been so confused and injudicious as to advocate syndicalism openly as a social system.
Just replace syndicalism with resource based economy
Saerden:You have to keep in mind that the calculation argument literally does not apply to a post-singular AI (the computer algorithms that are supposed to run everything in their utopia). We have no way to know what a super-computer the size of Jupiter, with access to its own source-code for rapid self-improvement, could calculate.
This zeitgeist stuff reminds me of Huxely's "Brave New World".Any one else feel the same way?
Basically we're no longer dealing with individuals, but of course this is contingent on the mind being reducible to atoms that can be incorporated into such a super AI. Unless it irons out individuals altogether in this manner (which is not what the socialist calculation argument seeks to address, you're right), granting this assumption, such AIs will remain fiction, and there is moreover the question of whether one would even wish for this to happen to them to begin with. It's aggravated by the fact that AIs do not in fact think like humans do, they work in a rather different, more formulaic manner which in fact cannot neatly approximate human reasoning at more complex levels. Hence whether such super-AIs are even possible is an open question in itself, and has as you say nothing to do with the real world and likely won't ever until very remote futures, if even then. Basically then there's two issues to deal with, one being whether the incorporation of individual minds into an AI is even possible and the other whether such an I is itself possible.
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
You have to keep in mind that the calculation argument literally does not apply to a post-singular AI (the computer algorithms that are supposed to run everything in their utopia). We have no way to know what a super-computer the size of Jupiter, with access to its own source-code for rapid self-improvement, could calculate. Human central planners can not calculate - godlike AIs could.
No matter how big or smart a computer gets, it can never find a way to make 2+2=5. The calculation problem isn't one of having enough brainpower, it's one of epistemological impossibility. It is impossible to calculate profitability without property rights.
It most likely will be able to allocate ressources better then a free market of present-day humans. In fact, it could even figure out their preferences - either by analyzing their brains, or by scanning them atom-by-atom and simulating them in a virtual reality to see their revealed preferences. Thats the kind of power level we are talking about. There is nothing wrong with a ressource-based economy, because in a physical world, the economy is actually based on ressources. Its just that humans do not calculate in atoms of iron - because thats not the simplest method to get things done.
I think the problem is much more dire than you suspect: In order to be able to accurately do so, the Transcendant would have to simulate, particle for particle, the entire universe. Including itself. In other words in order to be able to calculate the future with certainty the AI needs to be smart enough to be able to predict its own behavior which, as I'm sure you're aware, is computationally impossible.
Even with nanoassembly resources will still be scarce: There are still a limited amount of particles in the universe and a limited amount of energy to power the assemblers. Although the material wealth that could be created by them is far beyond our wildest imaginations, it'd still be scarce: There would still be nowhere enough to satisfy every last desire a being could possibly have (infinite). How will they decide which ones should be fulfilled and which ones should not?
Ultimately the Transcendants will have to operate in the same (praxeological) way current entrepreneurs do. Their methods of production and distribution will be unrecognizable but praxeology cannot be negated by any change in society.
This is why I left the transhumanists. They seriously believe that, once the first transhuman AI is turned on, everything else will just spring into being. And they seriously suggest diverting all the resources of mankind into making this happen.
And another thing: Their constant scaremongering. Ooh, we have to achieve immortality before we kill ourselves through nuclear war/global warming/whatever! That's why it's worth it to just drop everything else!
"We have no way to know what a super-computer the size of Jupiter, with access to its own source-code for rapid self-improvement, could calculate."
But would its calculations be able to properly take into account the subjective preferences and thoughts of itself and of other transapients and similarly-gifted archailects? Will its intellect keep up at the same pace with the unimaginable growth in the complexity of the market and technologies and complexity of other marklet participants?
>It most likely will be able to allocate ressources better then a free market of present-day humans.
Unless the human inherently prefers resources not allocated by an overbearing non-human. A simple example is a Luddite who wants to grow his own food. For him, the archailect can do nothing to help him, unless it involves underhanded deception (e.g. sending nanobots into his garden to secretly accelerate growth).
"In a world of godlike supercomputers and universal nano-assemblers that can build anything atom-by-atom from a block of raw materials, a ressource-based economy seems pretty likely."
Yet there is always scarcity. As a human I might want to experience 1,000,000 years of virtual reality each physical day, but because of limited processing power, I will find it cheaper on the free market to purchase only 500,000 years of VR per day. Instead of purchasing only 1000 remotely located VR backups of my brain, I prefer the safety of purchasing 1001 copies.