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.