Technocracy -- A new social/economic system

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Well, let's put it this way. It is true in most societies that if nobody cares if a person is gone that their disappearance won't matter too much.


You'd also be doing the individual themselves a disfavor, however, technically, your argument isn't based upon monetary economics but rather based upon anything that considers the preference of that family.


There is a reason why oral contracts usually aren't considered valid. Not only that, but really your argument has reached a point of ridiculousness. We aren't even arguing about economic systems so much as murder and cannibalism.

Essentially speaking, I tend to agree with Orwell on a lot of the things he stated. I might add on to his first claim that I am cynical enough to think that most people have their prices.

Which is irrelevant in terms of economic systems theory. Social actors are "persuaded" into performing actions that they may not necessarily have a natural inclination to perform by the constraints forced upon them by the economic system. Poor soldiers who are your mafia hitmen for the state are "persuaded" to kill people for the profit of the empire. Either that or they remain poor and perhaps victims of another empire's poor soldiers.

But, in a monetary economy which by its very nature is not a participatory one, what is the definition of poor other than the lack of political power that money gives to people who possess it?

Willingness to work? No. This cannot be determined by lack of money alone.
Talent? No. Lots of talented people implies an over saturation of the market. So they can be intelligent, talented and poor.



Of course it has everything to do with economics. Cultural values and what is considered "moral" is hugely influenced by economics. In a merchantilist system which Capitalism is one variant of, concepts like obsolescence of products and assets play a part in the "morality" of your actions. In a circulatory monetary system where everything must either circulate money through the system or be considered obsolete or dead "goods" an entity that doesn't sell is considered obsolete. Of course people can't be considered consumer goods like a dvd player so the alternative must be that they are obsolete capital assets. But, these obsolete capital assets are dangerous because they have a natural desire to be sheltered and fed. What do you do with these obsolete pieces of biomachinery? You wouldn't want to be paying obsolete humans or letting them hang around desperate and homeless do you? No merchant would want that. From the corner store owner to the owners of mulinational corporations, the logic of the system "persuades" you to cannibalize obsolete assets for useful parts.

These guys are following the merchant ethos of planned obsolescence.

No, the constraints belong to reality and are not imposed, it is just that the economic system provides a means of getting past these constraints by using the labor of others.
The definition of poor usually just is "having a significantly lower income than the average for a society". It has nothing to do with political power even though wealth and political power have historically gone hand in hand.

I don't know where this comment came from. Talent is also a term that is relative, so you really cannot have a saturation of talented people in the market otherwise you don't have a saturation at all due to the relative nature of this, so another term would have to be used.


Most certainly not academic economics, I'll tell you that. Actually the proper way to look at it is a feedback loop between the two things. Economics impacts culture and culture impacts economics. Are you speaking of mercantilist economic theory? Capitalism is a system in and of itself and really most things are better considered variants of capitalism than capitalism being considered a variant of another system. I also really would want some better clarification as you are inserting morality where it doesn't need to be. Most people wouldn't consider a person selling obsolete products to be immoral, so your statement confuses me. I can see the argument where people might consider selling obsolete products stupid and refuse to buy, but capitalism does not mean that people cannot choose to live using obsolete materials or methods. Yes, most things have to be valued by others in order to not be considered obsolete, "circulating money" is simply your way of separating the market from the demands of the people in it. You have a creepy obsession with harvesting humans, it sort of freaks me out. Really though, the "obsoleteness" of a human being really goes back to the tendencies of the actors in such a society, as people *do* have the power to care for those and provide monetary support to others. Frankly, your argument, taken a different way(the non-creepy way) was used by Milton Friedman to argue for a negative income tax as a form of welfare because he saw the poor being an externality because of their threatening nature. I really don't know why cannibalism and similar thoughts pop up so often in this discussion though, it is one of the weirdest things.

Oral contracts are entirely valid and enforceable by law, just like any other contract. Problem is, the exact terms of an oral contract are difficult to prove to the judge or jury. The other person will often deny that the contract existed, or will lie about the terms. If there are witnesses or evidence (such as a pattern of transactions), then the court will try to determine the nature of the contract. If it is one person's word against the other, it is difficult for a court to determine the terms that were agreed on; if the terms are undetermined, they cannot be enforced.

I am not entirely denying that, I am simply saying, like you are, that if you bring it up to a judge or a jury it is practically impossible to really get a resolution. So, effectively, the oral contract isn't valid because if a legal dispute about it pops up then there is no evidence.

Money is not reality. Monetary values have an only incidental and slight reflection on reality because it is manipulatable in value. Any piece of commodity valued with money is not standardized in terms of worth, resources, energy or labour. A person working in near slave labour conditions can be paid a lot less for the same labour output, which is a commodity, than someone in a more privileged and generous business.

As said before, whatever constraints are imposed are imposed chiefly by the political power holders which are also the money holders.



Oh yes you can. In terms of monetary efficiency you can cream off the elite layer of talent while workers who are only marginally "less talented", but just as effective if hired in greater quantities to produce the specific product are not hired.

In terms of material efficiency, it can be argued that the greater quantity of workers hired for production can produce greater quantities of output thus making society materially richer. But, we are not talking about material efficiency in a monetary economy, but monetary efficiency. That is political efficiency in accumulating the most political power points (money) in hiring the fewest workers for the greatest output.

Now for workers who aren't hired, they can be taken up in large numbers in the service, parasitic or criminal economy that are largely redundant and simply serve to shift money around without producing anything of real value. Burglars selling stolen goods to pawn shop owners and pimps taking a cut from selling the sexual services of prostitutes and STD infected customers getting treatment for their disease all serve to stimulate the economy.

Whether this situation is humane, whether it leads to human happiness or whether it leads to the reduction of human suffering is all irrelevant which is why monetary efficiency has nothing to do with material efficiency. I'm speaking objectively because people are only motivated into pursuing any action because of their self-interest in reducing their own suffering or the suffering of others or increasing their happiness. Clearly many of these actor are only doing the things they are doing to get money because they are in survival mode which contradicts your claim that Capitalism is a system allowing negotiation of all parties for their self-interest. You can't say that slaves are continuing on living and surviving because of self-interest. Similarly, you can't say that people who are unhappy in doing what they are doing because they are forced into survival mode are acting in self-interest.



Monetary economics is academic economics which is a sham. It's a scholastic exercise that is so flawed and far removed from reality that it might as well be a branch of numerology.



How do you live outside the system? Any infrastructure that is worth anything is monetarized. Where does human beings fit in the accounting sheet. Are they merchandise or capital assets? If you throw out workers who are obsolete then they cannot live without being taken up again as capital assets by other businesses willing to use them. But, why would they? Would you be willing to hire old people, slow people, people with obsolete knowledge?



Only so far in that they can be used by other people with money as capital assets which also means that the amount of help is dependent on how much they are paid and willing to share.

Harvesting humans is simply the natural progression of a system that consider people to be disposable capital assets as logically viewed by people who need to hire them. You dispose of obsolete machinery as well as obsolete humans by stripping them of useful parts. A human being has many useful parts. Meat for protein, bones and teeth for calcium, fat for soap, fillings for silver and gold. At least Heinrich Himmler was honest about this.

Money is a reflection of intersubjective desires. You are right, a commodity does not have a standard value in terms of inputs, but that really doesn't matter because the profit maximizing tendencies of organizations and utility maximizing tendencies of individuals will cause prices, in the long run, to reflect the inputs as they are subjectively valued by participants in the economy. The issue with your example is that either the labor outputs are not the same, or that our other individual prefers to keep his job rather than switching to another job.


Not all money holders have political power though and a lot of them support varying ideas. Not only that, but the "constraints" are really issues of cooperation, as it would hardly be participation if there were no terms to the agreements and ability to select them.

Everything is marginal, but anyway, even though the less talented workers will not be hired for that specific task, there are a number of tasks to be performed.


Monetary efficiency is a better measure as, like I stated, monetary value is an intersubjective phenomenon, it reflects the wishes of the individuals taking part in the economy. That "greater quantity" of workers can also be employed elsewhere rather than overproducing the product in mind, as we don't just have issues of production in a single industry but rather setting prices and production in all industries relative to each other. Umm.... you are making a connection with politics and money that I really don't care much about, and frankly, I'd sooner get rid of the politics than the money. Really though, yes, it is best for each firm to hire as few workers as they can while getting as much production as they can, doing otherwise is just making additional work for its own sake, and frankly, not much of that is necessary.


How many people really work in the black market economy? Seriously, not a lot, and the ones that do often don't have other alternatives. As noted in the well-noted book, freakonomics, crack dealers tend to live with their mothers and supplement their income by working other jobs. Service industries do have a major importance because they allocate capital. Technically, all things stimulate the economy, frankly, as I stated before, you are operating under some bastardization of Keynesianism, as frankly, I would argue, as I am sure many economists would, that the economy for the most part, really does not care what the individual does, and thus you are loading assumptions onto a model that isn't yours.


The assumption is that every individual is working towards happiness and the reduction of their suffering and that this essentially is both a collective process and an individual one. The market helps the collective work together towards individualistic aims. No, your claim really does not negate mine, nor do I think it is that honest at all. Most people really don't have much to worry about surviving compared to past generation at all. Given the fact that individual quibble about the amount of money made at certain jobs and contract, I would say that this is negotiation for mutual self-interest. I could say that about slaves, but slaves and market participants aren't even close and to say that they are is gross self-delusion. You are comparing a group of people who suffer beatings if they choose other than the choices of a single master, who can be forced to separate from their loved ones against their will, who give them the meagerest of kindnesses, and etc, and you compare this to the wealthiest peoples in human existence who have spiced foods, clean water, education, and all of this in the highest abundance?? Yes, they have to work, those who receive without working are exploiting the work of others, but they get the greatest amount of choice in occupation, in where to dispose of their income, of where to live, and more than any other society in the history of mankind!


Of course! After all, economists never work in industry, they never evaluate their methodology, they never do *any* sort of research, and math, well, they've never heard of systemizing their ideas using that. Really though, my point was that few people in politics actually listen to economists.


Human beings are human beings, they own themselves, and thus cannot really be considered in the manners that you consider them. Companies usually call human beings labor though, as do economists in working their models. It really depends on what job I am doing, frankly, at a fast food job those people would not be undesirable, really though, people are adaptable and essentially the term "obsolete person" is inferring a purpose upon individuals that does not objectively exist, individuals can call other individuals useless to them, but that is different. I think you are not making a distinction between industry and the rest of humanity, because frankly, even if I would not be willing to hire old people, if I decided to support my grandma then she still gets money. The issue you bring up is that other people don't care about other people, which has some truth, but honestly, you have not really determined how this is a problem.


Well, yes, essentially capitalism argues that in order to use the labor of others you have to be used by those others. Why is that a problem? Should these other people have their labor taken from them without recompensation?

Um... no, it really isn't. In order to have harvesting you have to have a different system of ownership. You are confusing capitalism(individualistic ownership and individualistic order) with fascism(collective ownership and collective order), as one cannot harvest something that does not belong to them just as I cannot cook my neighbor's dog. People own themselves, therefore other people do not get the right to dispose of them, stop being so confused on the issues of ownership as they exist in the capitalist system. I never stated that human beings had no use if harvested, and frankly, I have no problem if people contractually had their bodies harvested after death(which already happens to some extent with organ donors), or even chose to hasten their ends for an exchange of useful bodily substance for resources to be used by their causes. Also, btw, I am not going to watch anything on youtube. Just giving you warning, I don't mind wikipedia but I hate having to watch movies, especially given the occasional individuals that will post 3 1 hour long movies at a time.

im glad to see someone giving awesomelyglorious a run for his money in this thread. if i wasnt a smarter man i'd do it myself

Academically, no you do not have that right. But, realistically how are you going to know without well paid social actors that uphold this scholastic nonsense. There's a reason why police are as corrupt and criminal as the "crooks" in a poor country.

Further, the "magic" of the marketplace combined with the anonymous nature of money allows me harvest people, sell their meat and get away with the profits because of the anonymous, untraceable nature of money. You can substitute anything else that is anonymous, untraceable and valuable in place of money also like diamonds.



Again, scholastic nonsense. Poor people don't care about this or can be bought off with bribes or threatened with harm.

Realistically, I think we all know that any system will fall prone to various forms of corruption, the issue is that rampant corruption is not likely in areas of the world where the health of the nation is greater because better legal design is possible.


Frankly, the issue is that this is a case of murder where you have other collaborators. Honestly, I would not want other people tracing my transactions though.


The system itself does have a concern, and frankly, people being harvested for organs can already happen, the issue is one of legal structures, which goes back to designing mechanisms to promote orderly action. Yes, if we fail to set up legal structures to deal with this then we have major problems. Honestly though, the solution you are promoting is totalitarianism, which I think has a lesser ability to work as markets will arise even in Soviet Russia. If we legalize something, then we have greater ability to control it and watch over it, just think about prohibition, when alcohol was prohibited we had a lot of violent crime involving it, but after we removed it alcohol did not have as much organized crime.

cheers to a lad who knows when hes won an arguement and stops replying

Honestly, I don't feel much like I am running. I suppose you might think I have dramatic theoretical weaknesses, but honestly I don't think so as I am merely standing upon neoclassical theory, perhaps even Austrian theory and arguing against ideas that were rejected years ago. If you think I am running then you could point out the supposed theoretical flaws in my ideas and I could attempt to address them.

The notion of monetary prices as a result of subjectivity and monetary value thus being an intersubjective assessment of value is a mainstream economic thought, just look at a price theory book and specifically at the idea of utility, which is an unknowable figure we only see via comparison or trade offs. Given that the greater phenomena of demand in commodity markets, and supply in labor markets are results of subjective notions of utility, I would argue that my idea is philosophically viable and even a superior notion if we seek to improve human conditions.

The notion of wages as being a result of marginal utility of labor is also a solid neoclassical stance, and thus the notion that under a capitalist society people are paid the value of their labor seems rational. Now, of course, I am not going to argue that this is a perfect reflection as there are various issues of limited knowledge that we must take into account and ultimately the heterogenous nature of the labor market, however, it still is a good approximation given that as we note earlier, the value of an item is based upon the assessed value of it. Other measures of value can have their flaws because of how supply can change, if we do not recognize the perceived value of a product then we cannot recognize how supply should change.

As well, the notion of capitalism as a cooperative organization is something found in most classical liberal thought, and easily demonstrated with Milton Friedman's example of the pencil created by the division of labor. Ultimately Prot is arguing that capitalism is a negation of rights because he defines rights as including positive rights, and I define capitalism as the fullest expression of rights and freedom because I define rights as negative rights and thus more a freedom from coercion by a single group. To his own complaint I would throw back a few Hayek quotes, such as this one to show why property is good even for those who don't have it: "What our generation has forgotten is that the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that nobody has complete power over us, that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves."

Ultimately, some of the failures I see in Prot in addressing the capitalist system is by assuming homogeneity and a conscious class division, as even though a class of people may exist, they are not necessarily strongly allied. Ultimately, to look at this, there is a difference in sociological theory used, economists almost exclusively argue for a functional theory often based upon marginal productivity theory or some variant thereof, but Prot is arguing a conflict theory.

I dunno, I did not think that Prot had won as I did not see him as actually effectively taking down the neoclassical theory as completely invalid. We can argue that some portions of neoclassical theory are wrong, but I think most opponents of neoclassical theory, other than perhaps Marxists (I did read a book on metaeconomics by Dr. Paul Crosser, whom I strongly suspect to be Marxist, where he derides economic theory for its attention to subjectivity and rejection of the labor theory of value, and honestly, I think that some of his arguments against methodology have some similarity to those used by Prot, which may give credit to Prot, but I did not respect Dr. Crosser's argument much and the arguments are significantly different, and I think that Crosser sidesteps too much of the neoclassical analysis instead of focusing on notions of value as one being objective and the other subjective), give it more respect.

Last edited by Awesomelyglorious on 29 Feb 2008, 8:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

dude how do you wake up in the morning? do you argue with yourself? why arnet you the president of the world by now if all your ideas are right? oh give it a rest will you, talk to me when you are

I have great difficulties with it. Yes, I do argue with myself. Being president of the world demands a lot of circumstances to be set up exactly right. I am biding my time on that one.

fair enough, and you argue some good points, you just get caried away with it. relax smoke a blunt, life isnt this demanding or important

A run for his money? An equal rival in terms of logical debate?

Don't even think about it.

AwesomelyGlorious is AwesomelyDefeated and made to look like a fool in 3 moves.

Checkmate in 3.

Are you ready?