Re: [ox-en] Re: No-trade society (was: Re: herrschaft)
- From: Robin Green <greenrd greenrd.org>
- Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 21:58:10 +0000
On Wed, Jan 14, 2004 at 06:31:06PM -0500, Graham Seaman wrote:
Trade is necessarily bidirectional: in this case, her sculpture <-> your
painting, but normally, her products <-> money. What about
multidirectional - someone wants sculptures from her, and if she feels
like it, she makes them. She wants to eat, and if the chef round the
corner feels like cooking for her, he cooks. Everyone is producing things
for others, but no-one is doing direct exchange (except by pure chance).
That kind of society would not need trade.
But people would still choose to trade, because it would incent people to
do things they wouldn't otherwise be bothered to do.
I think the penduulum swings too far here. In richer countries extrinsic
motivation for work (money) is king, but I think there is a balance to be
had between instrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
Perhaps you are groping towards the notion of no _compulsion_ to trade to meet
basic needs (which is my current focus). But that's of course a _very_
different kettle of fish. That could in principle be met by a Basic Income,
without getting rid of capitalism at all (that's assuming a Basic Income is
sustainable under so-called "global capitalism" - I think we will soon find out,
when Brazil introduces it, as a recent law they've passed mandates them to!)
????? Are you sure? Do you have any references? (Portuguese is ok).
Just one so far.
http://www.widerquist.com/usbig/24NOV-DEC2003.htm
Basic Income would be great, the day I see a government genuinely
implement it (without a revolution or similar massive changes first) I
will eat my words and change my mind about all this...
Well, the government still has to decide what level it will be. My guess is
at best, it might be enough for someone living in a shanty town to stay alive
on. Probably less. And of course it will be phased in gradually.
find this highly implausible. Trade/money can be, but in very many ways is not,
a proxy for some kind of measure of the social usefulness or social
appreciation for a person's work. Even considering how laughably detached
today's distribution of wealth is from such a goal, I don't think the idea
should be dropped. I don't think the typical hairdresser or night bus driver
or miner wants to drop it, either. They would like to remain _rewarded_ for
the work they do, not just given the same as everyone else, I suspect.
I think the typical [name job here] might prefer not to have to turn up
for a job every day at all.
But surely you would agree that even now there are some people that accept the bargain
of an employer's control over them in return for cash, not because they are forced
to but because they like the reward they get? These are fortunate people, of course.
But I think these people would prefer to have to turn up every day because of what
they get out of it.
Incidentally, how are you going to run an emergency service (fire, hospital) without
requiring people to turn up every working day?
Jobs are only needed because society is
organized around money.
Let's separate work and pay. You mean, pay is only needed because society is
organized around money. Well, yes, because not everyone is Mother Teresa!
It'd be great if everyone was willing to work for no reward, but that's not
going to happen!
Mostly, in my experience, they are a waste of
time, energy and lives - most people I know have things they would much
rather be doing than a job - useful things, too. God only knows how much
of my own life I've wasted doing utterly pointless crap because I need a
job to survive....
Oh, I agree that jobs waste a lot of people's time doing pointless stuff.
Though I do seem to have noticed quite a large number of people doing
'socially useful work' (ie. developing free software) without money being
the incentive... Isn't the argument that 'there has to be a carrot for
people to work at all' dead now?
Yes, but not all socially useful work is like that.
For large enough values of I? What about too small values of I? The supply
is then regulated incorrectly, is it not?
I propose Graham's law: given a large enough population, there will always
be someone who enjoys doing any purposeful task. At least for software, I
think it's already been demonstrated.
But there is an obvious mismatch between what common users want and what
the original programmers want, in many apps.
Self-interest != general interest. We can see this from capitalism. Effort
is to quite a great extent magnetised towards what serves self-interest.
Because they have more important things
to do, you see. That doesn't mean the need doesn't exist, it's just not
important enough on their scales (compared to, say, getting fed).
OK, I'll bite - what's an existing case of this? Just to make this more
explicit: the size of I in this case is the number of programmers on the
internet, and a demonstration of this problem would be a useful free
program that is not going to get written... (I'm guessing it's the
definition of 'useful' that's going to be the get-out clause...)
Well, maybe every useful free program is going to get written.
(By an AI, eventually ;-) But that's not the point. The point is,
is itch-scratching efficient at serving social needs?
It's a lot more efficient than Microsoft, but those are not the only
two alternatives.
--
Robin
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