Re: [ox-en] Re: herrschaft
- From: Stefan Meretz <stefan.meretz hbv.org>
- Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 23:55:31 +0100
Hi Graham and all,
let me strongly support your thinking direction:-)
On Wednesday 14 January 2004 15:54, Graham Seaman wrote:
The key question is: How can a free society be self/organized, if
there is no invisible hand at all (no exchange, no money, no
market, no state)?
I agree in general but I'd put it a bit differently: How *does* a
Free Society organize itself.
I always used to be very against libertarianism. Now I'm finding the
logic of my own positions is pushing me in that direction. I'm not
happy about this, so would gladly be told why the following suggestion
is wrong:
This does not push you in direction of libertarianism. Don't just take it
as a "ideology" ("a trick to confuse people"). Libertarianism reflects
some realistic parts of action possibilities - however in a complete
wrong framework of a society where goods must be commodities. It is not
by chance, that Libertarians like free software.
There is an 'invisible hand' in a free society.
It would not call like that, but let me experimentaly say: yes. (see
below)
It doesn't work through the medium of money, but directly through need.
Yes! (btw. money does not just act like a "medium"...)
If I (for large
enough values of I) need some software, but that software doesn't exist
in free form, I will write it. If the software already exists in just
the form I want it, I won't bother. The supply of programmers for
particular types of program is regulated by need: this invisible hand
is the hand that scratches your own itch...
Yes. This is how free software goes.
Applying this more generally, if there is no bread available, I (again,
for large enough values of I) will learn how to bake and distribute
bread to people. And if there is no flour for me to use, I will set up
a mill. etc. No compulsion, and no monetary incentives; where there is
a perceived need, there will (almost) always be someone who finds it
fulfilling to satisfy the need. If too many people are trying to
satisfy a particular need, then it will become mundane, no-one will
want to do it, and the supply of people who do will again fall off.
Generally yes. A precondition is a society of opulence. Capitalism is a
society of scarcity. Think globally.
Two possible problems with the revised 'invisible hand' (only 2?? ;-):
a. Nobody finds working in a sewage farm fulfulling. Then people will
have to get together and find alternative ways of dealing with sewage
that don't require sewage farms. But maybe in some cases there are no
alternative ways?
Important: You re-define the quite stupid question "Who want to do ugly,
boring, stupid etc. stuff" to "How can we get the question 'who does this
... stuff' out of the world?" On the german list the title of this debate
is "Who cleans the toilet?" ("Wer putzt das Klo?") or "the
toilet-question" with a nice essay from Annette Schlemm.
However, there are "indirect" solutions. Maybe not all "toilet-questions"
can be eliminated. If you eliminate 9 of 10 of those questions, the
remaining one isn't so important any more.
b. There is a shortage of doctors. No problem, lots of people would
love to be doctors. But it takes 10 years to learn to be a doctor...
ie. the invisible hand is, in general, incapable of planning ahead.
At this point, I disagree. It is the point, where Casi wants to reinvent
"conscious action" against "invisible hand". However, it is not an
opposite. Humans do always plan ahead, do always act conscious - but want
directs this planning and acting? It is a question of the driver: is it
driven alienatedly by value (e.g. money) or driven by need? Driven by
need all problem solutions are scalable.
This is where StefanMn transforms my "How can a free society be
self/organized" to "How *does* a Free Society organize itself". I agree.
OK, apart from those two objections, is this idea too absurdly simple
to be possible? Like Adam Smith's invisible hand turns out to be more
ideological wishful thinking than anything else, does this version too?
"Your" invisible hand is a quite "visible hand", because all that
infrastructural questions of logistics, planning, organizing etc. are
only be solveable by those people who view and know them best. This
excludes "central planning" as any simple individualist picture of "there
is my need, and there I produce my satisfaction".
Ciao,
Stefan
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