[Fasces]

You are right that infinite is not the proper term. More specifically, my point is that as long as there is more energy in the universe than can be consumed by human civilization (including the energy costs required to build and run the infrastructure and materials necessary to turn one element into another), abundance can theoretically exist - even if one material can no longer be found naturally in the environment. A resource cannot be "scarce" if all demand for it can be satisfied through artificial creation.

[lucky]

More specifically, my point is that as long as there is more energy in the universe than can be consumed by human civilization (including the energy costs required to build and run the infrastructure and materials necessary to turn one element into another)

Energy does not get consumed by the human civilization. It's a conserved physical quantity of the universe that does not change.

By such naive energy calculations, 1 liter of water would be worth billions, because it contains 2 * 10^10 kWh of energy.

A resource cannot be "scarce" if all demand for it can be satisfied through artificial creation.

You don't understand the concept of capital costs. Capital essentially can create value out of nothing - but the capital itself is not free. Your accelerators are not popping into existence out of nowhere.

The amount of stuff produced in the world increases - that's economic growth. But it takes time for these things to get produced. You can't just say "hey, they can be produced because there is enough stuff available, so let them all appear right now". If you have a way to produce faster, by all means do (and make a profit!), but you can't just will it into existence.

[Fasces]

Energy does not get consumed by the human civilization. It's a conserved physical quantity of the universe that does not change.

I know about thermodynamics, and I suspect you know perfectly well what I meant by "energy consumption" which is a perfectly legitimate term.

By such naive energy calculations, 1 liter of water would be worth billions, because it contains 2 * 10^10 kWh of energy.

If a system were in place that could turn water into energy that efficiently, I have no doubt that we would use it (and that it wouldn't be worth billions, as there is an abundance of water.)

If you have a way to produce faster, by all means do (and make a profit!), but you can't just will it into existence.

I wasn't insinuating that, and I don't see how you could even think I was.

[lucky]

does not actually challenge the theoretical possibility of abundance

I thought you were not talking about a theoretical future possibility, but of some policy to speed it up by eliminating markets or whatever. I don't see a policy proposal that works.

I wasn't insinuating that, and I don't see how you could even think I was.

You and AFAIK imply that automation is enough to bring about an arbitrary amount of goods. You ignore the fact that labor costs are not the only costs. In particular, capital has a cost.

It's not enough to say "I could produce a lot of iron if I had a gazillion accelerators", that policy doesn't work (ignoring even the ridiculousness of using such an inefficient technology). You have to rent these accelerators for this purpose from somebody who has them or something, it's not free.

You're probably under the illusion that when you eliminate markets and money, you eliminate capital cost. That is not so. Socialists are often under the same illusion.

[Fasces]

I thought you were not talking about a theoretical future possibility, but of some policy to speed it up by eliminating markets or whatever. I don't see a policy proposal that works.

What gave you that impression? I am only discussing the question - whether abundance currently exists and whether it can exist, and describing how a post-scarcity society might look. I am not trying to insinuate that this type of society is currently feasible.

You and AFAIK imply that automation is enough to bring about an arbitrary amount of goods. You ignore the fact that labor costs are not the only costs. In particular, capital has a cost.

Capital would be socialized. Investment in capital to produce a good would be done by the central state apparatus based on projections for future demand of a particular good.

You have to rent these accelerators for this purpose from somebody who has them or something, it's not free.

They would be built and owned communally.

You're probably under the illusion that when you eliminate markets and money, you eliminate cost. That is not so.

Not in the least. I am not an idiot, despite the condescending tone of your posts. Technates use a form of energy accounting to effectively and efficiently govern production. However, an abundant society isn't limited by cost in the same way a scarce society is. The Technate needs only to ensure that annual production meets annual demand. By definition, the Technate has more than enough resources to do this.

[Eran]

The only measure that is relevant is the absolute cost of producing that good, measured by Technocracy Inc. in terms of energy required.

Why are you focusing on energy? Sure - energy is a necessary resource for all production. However, it is never the only resource required. All production requires human effort (labour), land and raw materials. The cost of producing a good will then be the opportunity cost associated with the use of all those resources towards the production of the good that could have alternatively been used towards the production of other goods.

Neither "cost" nor "value" are market-specific terms. Only "price" is.

Not as long as the energy/materials/etc produced by a society is greater than the energy/materials/etc that same society can physically consume.

To prove the impossibility of a post-scarcity society, it is enough to show that goods and services dependent on human effort can easily be physically consumed at levels that are not sustainable by any society. We need to go no further.

Exclusive use cannot exist in a Technocratic society. There is no property. You can only own what you can use and only for as long as you can use it.

Not long-term exclusive, but even momentarily-exclusive. I like, for example, not to have to share my bed with anybody other than my wife. Is that kind of exclusive use going to be available in that society?

Scarcity in services is not relevant to whether abundance can exist.

What possible sense of "abundance" or consequences of abundance make sense while excluding services? For example, scarcity drives a market economy. Even if only services and not physical products are scarce, a market in such services would still exist.

If every citizen had an opportunity to drive a Ferrari after placing their name on a one week waiting list then this would represent a higher standard of living than a capitalist society in which a one day Ferrari rental costs 6 months wages for the average citizen.

You remind me of early 20th-century socialists who speculated about the riches that will be available on socialist societies by virtue of rationalisation of the production process, elimination of profits, marketing and other "capitalist" inefficiencies.

To suggest that a Technate would see innovation and consumer-satisfying production without private ownership of the means of production and profit/loss and price mechanisms is utopian on an entirely different level than merely speculating about a world in which physical goods can be created virtually free.

Investment in capital to produce a good would be done by the central state apparatus based on projections for future demand of a particular good.

Shall we revive the Socialist Calculation Problem to show that such central planning is doomed? How will the central state apparatus identify the best uses of scarce resources (such as human labour)?

[AFAIK]

If every citizen had an opportunity to drive a Ferrari after placing their name on a one week waiting list then this would represent a higher standard of living than a capitalist society in which a one day Ferrari rental costs 6 months wages for the average citizen.

You remind me of early 20th-century socialists who speculated about the riches that will be available on socialist societies by virtue of rationalisation of the production process, elimination of profits, marketing and other "capitalist" inefficiencies.

Like state health care systems that are provided with a fraction of the administration costs of the private sector. No marketing, no billing department, no lawyers checking policy small print for a loop hole.

Businesses and corporations are command economies. They compete with one another and have no income beyond the sale of goods, services and stock but don't pretend that they are not totalitarian institutions.

[lucky]

If every citizen had an opportunity to drive a Ferrari after placing their name on a one week waiting list then this would represent a higher standard of living than a capitalist society in which a one day Ferrari rental costs 6 months wages for the average citizen.

6 months of wages? $1500. That's less than 2 weeks of median household income. With a 2-day delivery, no week-long waiting list.

[AFAIK]

If every citizen had an opportunity to drive a Ferrari after placing their name on a one week waiting list then this would represent a higher standard of living than a capitalist society in which a one day Ferrari rental costs 6 months wages for the average citizen.

6 months of wages? $1500. That's less than 2 weeks of median household income. With a 2-day delivery, no week-long waiting list.

That was a hypothetical example. Technocracy promises to make goods available immediately whilst reducing working hours dramatically.

[Eran]

Like state health care systems that are provided with a fraction of the administration costs of the private sector. No marketing, no billing department, no lawyers checking policy small print for a loop hole.

Hundreds of millions of people in the US are happy with their private health insurance programs. Conversely, people in countries with government health care often wait weeks or months for diagnosis or treatment. Government manages to waste billions without marketing (though they do have PR efforts), billing (unless you consider tax collection and enforcement...) or lawyers checking the rules (hence vast fraud, e.g. in social benefits).

Businesses and corporations are command economies. They compete with one another and have no income beyond the sale of goods, services and stock but don't pretend that they are not totalitarian institutions.

They are command structures, but not fully-contained economies. They are hierarchical, but not totalitarian. The very name "totalitarian" suggests control over the totality of one's life. No corporation does that. Only government can.

To the extent that they are based on rigid command structure, corporations become progressively less efficient. In a free market, such dis-economies of scale limit the size of businesses. No similar limits exist in the public sector.

Technocracy promises to make goods available immediately whilst reducing working hours dramatically.

These promises are empty. There is no logic or science behind them. By far the best mechanism for identifying, developing and exploiting technology for making goods cheaper is the competitive private sector. It had huge success over the past 200 years. Suggesting that government could do better is foully.

[Fasces]

To prove the impossibility of a post-scarcity society, it is enough to show that goods and services dependent on human effort can easily be physically consumed at levels that are not sustainable by any society. We need to go no further.

No, not services - that is outside the definition put forth by Technocracy for a post-scarcity society. Why are you trying to change it? Why are you incapable of making your point within the scope of the question?

[Eran]

I feel this argument is futile. Not because we have differing opinions, but because while extraordinarily unrealistic, the point under discussion is also immaterial.

The point of post-scarcity was to stipulate a society in which market institutions (like scarcity, prices, profit, etc.) become obsolete.

For that to happen, it isn't enough that some subset of people's desires can become abundant. All that would do is shift the market and its institutions to cover those objects of human desire which are still not super-abundant. That may include the services of other people, as well as those uses of physical objects which you exclude from the scope provided by the Technate (e.g. exclusive rather than shared use).

Thus even if bread and cars are free, hair-cuts and massages won't be.

[Fasces]

And how will services be sold when money has no meaning? When goods are freely available to all?

The market breaks down with abundance in physical goods.

[Eran]

Why is it difficult to envision a market for services? Money arises naturally when people want to exchange things.

Imagine a "club" of people doing services for each other. Babysitting. Hair-braiding. Cooking. Help with the lawn. At first, people help each other as neighbours, without keeping exact track of "debts". Over time, and so as to enlarge the circle of participants beyond those who know and trust each other, transferrable IOU's are created to represent service-based debt.

Over time, specialised firms emerge to facilitate such exchanges (perhaps like eBay), issuing their own form of (electronic?) IOUs. Those IOUs become, for all intents and purposes, money.

The market doesn't break down with the abundance of physical goods as long as other goods (or services) are still valued and exchangeable.

[Coyote]

That's a good soundbite, but there's an upper limit to consumption. More importantly, it completely ignores distribution methods; people are starving today not from a lack of food anywhere, but a lack of ability to access food. Yes, people feel scarcity today, not because they inherently desire more but because there is an artificial scarcity thrust upon them. Certainly you're familiar with how diamonds, which are both abundant in nature and even easier to manufacture, are limited by one corporation by over 90% in order induce a false sense of scarcity? Or the recent escapades by Goldman-Sachs shuffling aluminium between warehouses in order to drive up aluminium prices? If the principle works so well that an abundant crystal that can be readily made can be seen as worth thousands of dollars even when the resale value is known to be 10% what you paid, and we've observed the same behavior elsewhere by businesses, what doubts can you provide that our modern "scarcity" that we agree is felt, is not wholly manufactured?

People starve by two methods. By not earning their bread, or by governments not allowing them to do so.

Both are an absolute tragedy.

[TechnocracyTNAT]

"No government in all history has ever assumed responsibility for the livelihood of individual citizens. It never has -- and never would -- because it daren't.

Technocracy demonstrates that you need a new form of control, endemic to social operations. The constitutions were sufficient for the cracker-barrel democracy of the country store, but they are incompetent and incapable of operating the present technology of the continent. They have simply outlived their usefulness, that's all. You need a different method of control as your scale of quantities change. When we moved out of the hand-tool age, it didn't matter what decisions we made; but now we have to have a method of control that conforms to the needs of this civilization. Those who create a civilization must ultimately control it. It must be administered by the same methods that created it. In the last analysis, the governments of this continent are those who operate it.

There are several thousand ways of controlling the water running out of a spring -- a bundle of rags or anything. Step the water up to the size of a city supply running through the mains at 5,000 pounds pressure to the square inch and you need a motor-operated gate valve. But power is now being developed from a waterfall so high that a wineglass of water falling from the top develops one horsepower. If you attempted to control that by a gate valve, the force of water would whip the penstock across the mountainside like a piece of macaroni across a plate. Same water each time. It is the magnitude of the force that varies. A hundred and fifty years ago, 98 percent of energy consumed was human energy. It is the same in China today. Today in North America, only 2 percent of energy consumed is human energy; the rest is the energy of coal, oil, gas and hydroelectric power. Our present consumption is 156,000 kilogram calories per capita per day, as against China's 4,000 kilogram calories."

- HOWARD SCOTT TOUR IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA Sept. and Oct., 1937
archive.org/details/TheWordsAndWisdomOfHowardScott