Greece financial crisis

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SkyCore wrote:

Iv been thinking a lot about economics recently...

Historically the value of things and services is based on the market with factors such as supply, demand, regulation, proprietary patents/ trade secrets, competition, and costs of production. But such things are ephemeral; supply can be controlled, demand can be manipulated through advertisement, regulations come and go, secrets can be shared, and costs are also all affected by these same things.

But when you really think about goods and services, the 'true' value is in their utility. How useful, necessary, or entertaining are they. And for how long do they retain their value. We dont have metrics for such utility. And only such a metric would show the 'true' health of a country. Any type of deep analysis on the economy is doomed to fail when sales of cosmetics and pop music are treated the same as food and tools.

Money was a great invention in the ancient times. It replaced the need to carry around ones own produced goods for bartering purposes. Capitalism has risen to dominate the world. But it is fundamentally flawed . It places people and organizations in competition with one another rather than promoting mutual optimal gains to society through cooperation. The incentives are such that knowledge (trade secrets/ patents) is hoarded and not shared, that prices are as high as possible to maximize gains, and employees are given the lowest possible wage. All of this is detrimental to the vast majority of the populace.

With the industrial age came a massive increase in production (and reduction of costs of production) and its associated increase in standard of living. The information age brought to the world digital goods which could be mass replicated and distributed at virtually 0 cost. It had the potential for the free exchange of information (which is the single greatest contribution to the rate of technological growth). The beginnings of the meta-information age are here now. An age that can render all human labor unnecessary as goods can be both produced and transported at 0 cost. It is the era of artificial intelligence that can bring us to a post scarcity society.

Money is an ancient concept and our markets have had thousands... hundreds of thousands of patches through regulation in an attempt to make our financial systems continue to work in the face of technological progress and even more ways of exploiting that system. Exploits such as market manipulation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_manipulation), price fixing, price gouging, and many many more have the aim of diverting wealth to their conspirators without any real gain to society. And that's the key concept 'benefiting society'. Money is blind to this most essential aspect. And we need to tightly couple monetary gain with benefiting society so as to provide incentive to the later.

If we examine the world with an eye on the benefit to society:

-patents and copyrights are counterproductive. When some new idea is invented, its unlimited sharing should result into a massive positive gain for society. But instead patents and copyrights limit and even discourage the sharing of information. The problem is that there is no reward for creating a new idea, only in selling it. Which is indicative of the deeper issue which is money being a limited transferable thing that can only be created by a collusion between the banks and government, rather than being tied directly to the benefit of society. And thus in some way fails when we have a near infinite capacity to produce and distribute some goods.

-banks provide services that in the past required manpower but can now be automated and delivered for a cost of pennies per year on their networked smart phone. But modern banking has seen a vast increase in fees to their customers whom have no choice but to accept it. Think of all the resources that are be wasted on traditional banks; tellers, bankers, security, janitors, buildings, land, etc.

-branding, name recognition, and advertisement provide nearly zero gains for society... some would even argue that it is detrimental to society. What a massive waste of resources to produce the massive volume of advertisement that we see now in both the mass media and the internet. But even more so, a massive loss in time for those that are subjected to it.

I could go on and on, but i think the idea is clear. We dont need or even want the majority of businesses. And governmental regulations regardless of intentions or how well constructed are futile in that the economy is fundamentally flawed.

80% of american workers could be replaced with technology which already exists. And that number is growing daily. Very soon, we will achieve a post scarcity society. And with it will come immense turmoil to every aspect of our lives if we try to continue to hold onto our obsolete systems.

The time to design and transition into a new economic system is NOW. BEFORE that time arrives, to minimize the damage and reduce the future shock.

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Khoranth wrote:

SO in your new system; how will you get people to work? For example: I am 34 with a family, I decide i want to play POE all day/night and not work. How does your system deal with this? Slavery? withhold food and starve me & my family, until I work, which is effectively slavery through dependency.

I would really like to hear how your system would work, without having some type of slavery involved, direct slavery, or indirectly through starvation, or other methods.

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Xavderion wrote:

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Khoranth wrote:

SO in your new system; how will you get people to work? For example: I am 34 with a family, I decide i want to play POE all day/night and not work. How does your system deal with this? Slavery? withhold food and starve me & my family, until I work, which is effectively slavery through dependency.

I would really like to hear how your system would work, without having some type of slavery involved, direct slavery, or indirectly through starvation, or other methods.

Thankfully we have abundance so people who simply don't want to work get their basic stuff for free so they can survive and do whatever they want. Most people want to work, though. It's a common misconception to believe that if humans don't need to work they sit on their lazy ass all day and do nothing. That's only a minority.

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Khoranth wrote:

SO in your new system; how will you get people to work? For example: I am 34 with a family, I decide i want to play POE all day/night and not work. How does your system deal with this? Slavery? withhold food and starve me & my family, until I work, which is effectively slavery through dependency.

I would really like to hear how your system would work, without having some type of slavery involved, direct slavery, or indirectly through starvation, or other methods.

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Khoranth wrote:

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Xavderion wrote:

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Khoranth wrote:

SO in your new system; how will you get people to work? For example: I am 34 with a family, I decide i want to play POE all day/night and not work. How does your system deal with this? Slavery? withhold food and starve me & my family, until I work, which is effectively slavery through dependency.

I would really like to hear how your system would work, without having some type of slavery involved, direct slavery, or indirectly through starvation, or other methods.

Thankfully we have abundance so people who simply don't want to work get their basic stuff for free so they can survive and do whatever they want. Most people want to work, though. It's a common misconception to believe that if humans don't need to work they sit on their lazy ass all day and do nothing. That's only a minority.

1) This is an old-fashioned view of things. People who do not work are not all "sitting on their lazy ass doing nothing". I gave you a clear example in my post --> play POE all day/night. Catch up with the future, there is plenty of non-work stuff to do in advanced countries nowadays.

2) You stating that the majority of people want to work, and would work, in a "work is optional society" does not make it a true statement. You are just pulling this out of thin air.

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SkyCore wrote:

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Khoranth wrote:

SO in your new system; how will you get people to work? For example: I am 34 with a family, I decide i want to play POE all day/night and not work. How does your system deal with this? Slavery? withhold food and starve me & my family, until I work, which is effectively slavery through dependency.

I would really like to hear how your system would work, without having some type of slavery involved, direct slavery, or indirectly through starvation, or other methods.

Im still mulling over the details. So far i envision some ideal end point where everything is automated by machines rather than people and thus noone needs to work. Automation of the production of minimum human requirements is a much closer goal line which i feel can be approached( although probably not fully achieved) in a very short period of time with enough support.

But of course it will take a considerable amount of work to reach either of those points. I believe the vast majority of human labor which exists presently is completely unneeded and often outright harmful to the whole of society. So much of our society is focused on the acquisition of money, as if it is THE goal rather than a means to achieve other goals. And from a broader perspective, current incentives support such thinking instead of the production of goods and services which are useful. If we change the economic incentives by immutably linking money earned with the benefits you are providing to society, then we will vastly increase production and reduce waste (provided employment remains constant).

This is for the transition time between a capitalistic society and the potential utopia. Such a change would not be such a drastic and immediate alteration as eliminating money all together (eliminating money is only realistic when you already have infinite resources). It would be not much different than the way things are now; free enterprise, employees, public works.

One very alien change i feel is necessary is the consumability of money. When you spend your money the funds are not transferred, instead they are destroyed in a sense. The funds are locked in place in your account (all digital money) and depreciates with the asset acquired. Such a method helps prevent any exploitation of the system.

The actual seller of the item receives little to no gain. Indeed, ideally it is all automated.

But the producer (and potentially the transporters and storers) of the product receives compensation( money is actually created!) for the benefit to society they are providing. Ideally such numbers are dynamically generated by computer algorithms. With such algorithms being defined by the government or populace at large(in a true democracy).

Separating utility credit from leisure credit also seems like a good idea to me. How many paintings are really worth even a single bag of chips or a wrench? They cant really be compared, so dont even try.

How does this sound so far?

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Khoranth wrote:

Like what about police? what about jails? firemen? how do you convince someone to do a life risking job, instead of not working, along side the majority of the population?

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Khoranth wrote:

I feel like you would end up with 30-40% of the population still being required to work, how do you deal with that?

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Khoranth wrote:

The EU was a bad idea, and eventually all of the foolish countries that joined the EU will fall under German control. This is why the UK declined to join, they did not want to fall under German domination.