- 02 Aug 2020 17:45
#15111083
Maybe the time has come to change from the gold standard to the energy standard...
Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...
Moderator: PoFo Economics & Capitalism Mods
JohnRawls wrote:
@ckaihatsu @Andrew Jüterbog
The idea is stupid because the whole reason we moved away from gold is because it has a limited quantity and will never be able to cover the monetary supply as needed. Same goes for any x alternative. Some good based currency is not workable in the modern world on a large scale. There is simply not enough of X good to cover the monetary value of all money if we talk about largest economies. It might be doable in smaller nations. But once again, it will eventually run in to the limitation of their just not being x amount of good at some point.
JohnRawls wrote:
[Gold] has a limited quantity and will never be able to cover the monetary supply as needed. Same goes for any x alternative.
JohnRawls wrote:
There is simply not enough of X good to cover the monetary value of all money if we talk about largest economies.
Andrew Jüterbog wrote:Maybe the time has come to change from the gold standard to the energy standard...
ckaihatsu wrote:---
These are *contradictory* statements, though:
In the first you're talking about gold / x-alternative as being too *deflationary* and inflexible to cover the growing size of the economy. I *agree* on this point and this argument can be used against *Bitcoin* (etc.), since the size of its monetary supply is *capped*, and thus deflationary, ultimately.
However, in the *second* statement you're arguing the *inverse* of your *first* statement, and so this second argument is *not* a valid objective / empirical economic concern -- the money supply is far more flexible that the cumulative pool of goods and services that it represents, as we've seen in successive U.S. presidential administrations that have all increased the money supply through deficit spending, with Keynesian hopes.
The status-quo capitalist concern is that the ratio between the money supply and the goods and services that it represents doesn't *fluctuate* too much, because that then causes havoc with existing *financial* agreements.
But, the 'x' goods variable ultimately *doesn't matter* because the *pricing* / valuations of the empirical money supply can always *change*, up or down, to roughly match the goods (or services) themselves.
JohnRawls wrote:
No, i am talking about there being not enough gold or any good x to cover the world wide or at least major economies monetary supply. That is it. I am not sure where your other ideas came from.
ckaihatsu wrote:Right -- I already *addressed* this by noting that such monetary instruments are *deflationary*.
You're not adding anything new here.
JohnRawls wrote:
As a communist you have warped understanding of economics. Resources are limited so supply and demand applies. It is not a good way to manage your monetary policy.
ckaihatsu wrote:since communism can provide for the common good on a free-access, direct-distribution basis, with *no money* and *no exchanges* whatsoever.
ckaihatsu wrote:"My" monetary policy -- ?
You're confusing me with a Stalinist / state capitalist. Capitalist exchange-values / currencies do *not* apply whatsoever in a post-revolution, post-capitalist context, since communism can provide for the common good on a free-access, direct-distribution basis, with *no money* and *no exchanges* whatsoever. (Post-revolution communism would have all liberated-work inputs as fully voluntary and uncoerced -- the communist 'gift economy' -- and there would be *no state* anyway, so no separatist elitist power structure with authority and its own class-like interests.)
Rugoz wrote:
Unless you know the preferences of all of your subjects, that won't work. Exchange reveals preferences.
True workers-of-the-world socialism would just be an *expansion* of this basic corporate-like / Stalinist-state-like bureaucratic functioning, but it would better correspond to actual realities / facts, because the overall 'pyramid' (of relative individual social prestige, or reputation) would be much *flatter* than we're used to seeing, historically, due to historical *caste*-like bureaucratic *elitism*, or *top-down* administration of the workers themselves.
In the absence of caste / class / careerism / heredity / elitism, the 'base' of the 'pyramid' would be much, much *broader*, to enable a broad-based *bottom-up* dynamic of dynamic social planning, with far less institutional *rigidity*, if at all.
viewtopic.php?p=15095654#p15095654
Unthinking Majority wrote:
What's the incentive to work? When working, what is the incentive for working hard, or working more efficiently? What's the incentive to innovate if there's no competition between companies?
ckaihatsu wrote:Exactly -- all of that so-called 'incentive' for workers is really economic *blackmail* and *extortion* of the labor-commodity, under capitalism, for the worker's life-necessary *wages*, for the necessities of life and living.
The rest of what you describe could simply be done *cooperatively*, given the mass worker collectivization of all means of mass industrial production. With such collectivization all liberated workers would have an objective collective interest in *automating* all mechanical productive processes, so as to better-leverage whatever uncoerced voluntary liberated-labor is available -- the communist-type *gift economy*.
The realization of collectivist *full automation*, ultimately, would enable everyone to do *no* work and to get the fruits of automated mechanical mass production *anytime*.
Unthinking Majority wrote:
What are the social and psychological implications of no jobs? Of people having less reason to get up in the morning?
What's the incentive to cooperate? Why can't I just work, but do a crappy half-assed job and let someone else do most of the work? Why can't I just lay on my ass and watch TV all day? What's the psychological and social implications of this? The real question is, why do you want these objectives?
You're on the farthest left possible. You are what Nietzsche called "the last man". I really think your ideas, though well-meaning, are horrific to the human spirit and human psychology. In modern society, we now have many adults living with their parents into their 30's, never having to grow up, living in the basement playing video games and jerking off to porn while living off the teet of their parent's bank account, instead of going out and making something of their lives, and *gasp* asking someone out on a date. You're just replacing the teet of the parents with the teet of the mob (Leninism would be the teet of the state).
200 years ago, the average person was out of the house by 18 or younger, soon met a spouse, settled down, had your own small plot of land to farm, worked hard everyday, knew how to survive the elements, hunt or grow your own food, and were fully independent. A cop or a hospital wasn't 5 minutes away, you survived on your own or had to ride days or weeks on a horse. Now young people need safe spaces to protect their feelings.
Never having to work a day in your life or support yourself is not a utopia, it's a dystopian hell-hole. A life dedicated to comfort and leisure is a sure way to weaken human society.
ckaihatsu wrote:Heh! 'Subjects.'
The whole *point* of communism is to *eliminate* any and all standing pyramids / social hierarchies, in favor of what I call liberated-workers co-administration over all social production.
Exchanges favor those who can access the *most* exchanges, as with greater wealth ownership, so you're basically arguing for further capitalist elitism.
Rugoz wrote:
No money means no exchange and that implies central planning. Hence a central authority will distribute goods according to some criteria.
ckaihatsu wrote:No, you're thinking of historical Stalinist-type state planning, circumscribed to one nation-state, and done by separatist specialized bureaucratic elitist administrators.
It's problematic mostly because it has to resolve material inputs and outputs in a linear way, with input-output tables, over a wide expanse of geographic productive and consumptive entities, upfront, in a 'blueprint'-like way, before any gears start turning -- very complex.
I posit an *alternative*...
ckaihatsu wrote:
I posit an *alternative* -- a landscape-of-piles-of-stuff. Society would have to collectively determine how stuff is to be taken from the various piles of stuff, and for what reasons, and once any pile of stuff is diminshed in quantity, the local liberated-workers of that associated workplace would do uncoerced voluntary labor to *replenish* the quantity of stuff, to bring that local pile-of-stuff back to its original size. (This would be the communist 'gift economy'.)
In this *nonlinear* way there would not have to be any 'blueprint'-type centralized planning upfront, as from a Stalinist-type bureaucratic elite, for a state.
Relative centralization, as over two or more localities in common, could take place in a 'bottom-up', *emergent*, kind of way, for efficiencies of scale. In the following model I have all social production being relatively centralized, all the way up to a *global* scale, potentially, on a *per-item* basis:
Emergent Central PlanningSpoiler: show
Also:
labor credits framework for 'communist supply & demand'Spoiler: show
https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/20 ... ost2889338
And:
Multi-Tiered System of Productive and Consumptive Zones for a Post-Capitalist Political EconomySpoiler: show
Rugoz wrote:
No offense but your "alternative" is all gibberish and devoid of substance. If you don't realize that yourself it's frankly hopeless.
The State is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is beautiful. And as I have mentioned the word labour, I cannot help saying that a great deal of nonsense is being written and talked nowadays about the dignity of manual labour. There is nothing necessarily dignified about manual labour at all, and most of it is absolutely degrading. It is mentally and morally injurious to man to do anything in which he does not find pleasure, and many forms of labour are quite pleasureless activities, and should be regarded as such. To sweep a slushy crossing for eight hours, on a day when the east wind is blowing is a disgusting occupation. To sweep it with mental, moral, or physical dignity seems to me to be impossible. To sweep it with joy would be appalling. Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt. All work of that kind should be done by a machine.
And I have no doubt that it will be so. Up to the present, man has been, to a certain extent, the slave of machinery, and there is something tragic in the fact that as soon as man had invented a machine to do his work he began to starve. This, however, is, of course, the result of our property system and our system of competition. One man owns a machine which does the work of five hundred men. Five hundred men are, in consequence, thrown out of employment, and, having no work to do, become hungry and take to thieving. The one man secures the produce of the machine and keeps it, and has five hundred times as much as he should have, and probably, which is of much more importance, a great deal more than he really wants. Were that machine the property of all, every one would benefit by it. It would be an immense advantage to the community. All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be done by machinery. Machinery must work for us in coal mines, and do all sanitary services, and be the stoker of steamers, and clean the streets, and run messages on wet days, and do anything that is tedious or distressing. At present machinery competes against man. Under proper conditions machinery will serve man.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/arch ... /soul-man/
ckaihatsu wrote:Hmmmm, you'll excuse me if I don't just take your word for it at face-value, especially since you haven't *addressed* any of its substance, or detail.
ckaihatsu wrote:Here's from my favorite political essay:
Rugoz wrote:
Because there is none.
Rugoz wrote:
Look at Leontief intput-output models, static and dynamic, then you can add substitutability, and you arrive at modern computable general equilibrium models, respectively dynamic versions of it. Once you got that, come up with your own thing.
ckaihatsu wrote:
No, you're thinking of historical Stalinist-type state planning, circumscribed to one nation-state, and done by separatist specialized bureaucratic elitist administrators.
It's problematic mostly because it has to resolve material inputs and outputs in a linear way, with input-output tables, over a wide expanse of geographic productive and consumptive entities, upfront, in a 'blueprint'-like way, before any gears start turning -- very complex.
ckaihatsu wrote:
I posit an *alternative* -- a landscape-of-piles-of-stuff. Society would have to collectively determine how stuff is to be taken from the various piles of stuff, and for what reasons, and once any pile of stuff is diminshed in quantity, the local liberated-workers of that associated workplace would do uncoerced voluntary labor to *replenish* the quantity of stuff, to bring that local pile-of-stuff back to its original size. (This would be the communist 'gift economy'.)
In this *nonlinear* way there would not have to be any 'blueprint'-type centralized planning upfront, as from a Stalinist-type bureaucratic elite, for a state.
Rugoz wrote:
"unintellectual, monotonous and dull labor" has already largely disappeared. That doesn't change the planning problem however, apart from making labor even more difficult to quantify.
What exactly is wrong? We know how many rockets w[…]
I'm surprised to see the genocide supporters (lik[…]