[Rhadamanthus]

(Original post by Ex Death)
No it isn't. For the second time, we already have the technological means to carry out the aforementioned processes via computer systems.

And for the third time it does not matter how good the technology is, the information cannot be centralised.

There is no ontological subjectivity in RBE. Why do you petulantly insist on bringing this up? Just because it is applicable to capitalist market forces doesn't mean it is universally applicable to every system. In RBE, the economic means to obtain objects is intrinsically linked to the carrying capacity of the earth rather than subjective social value systems. How you can possibly think this is not a better, more fair and more sustainable system is beyond me. The only people who can possibly oppose this are the greedy rich elite who care nothing for equality.

Are you mad? You CANNOT get rid of ontological subjectivity. If value is subjective then it is subjective under EVERY system, not just every system apart from your one. It doesn't matter what you or I or anybody else thinks is a fairer system, it's about what is actually possible, and you cannot distribute resources in a planned economy. Ffs, getting rid of ontological subjectivity - I've literally only heard two or three suggestions that are more stupid and ignorant than this.

A large proportion of our CURRENT economically relevant knowledge is tacit and unarticulated. You cannot analyse this new system through the lens of the current system's bias. RBE uses the scientific method to derive the most efficient and fair means of resource allocation. The market system is irrelevant and redundant.

Why do you think that your new system will magically change human behaviour? Suddenly upon the introduction of the 'RBE' you will eradicate subjective values and you will, with the click of the fingers and the drawing up of an algorithm, centralise all knowledge ever held by anyone at any time? Knowledge is always tacit and unarticulated. As I said before, your system gives people more of an incentive to hide or give the wrong information.

By the way, every 'economy' is resourced based. That is the point of pricing. The definition of economics is to study distribution of resources under conditions of scarcity. That is why prices go up and down. The irony is that the you think that money causes scarcity, thus you want to abolish the need to pay for stuff in order to create abundance out of thin air. Yours is a monetary-based system in the sense that your method of creating wealth is meddling with money. Supply side economists, on the other hand, understand that scarcity is caused by scarcity of resources, not scarcity of money. Our current system is resource based, since we're concerned with how to produce resources.

Tell me, since people do not individually deserve capital goods like tractors and the like, how will your magical computer actually create capital goods? You cannot effectively create them without prices - without a monetary system. Abolish prices and you abolish the market for capital goods and people starve. Mises put his finger on the fundamental problem with socialism. If the state owns all the resources, then there can be no market prices for the tractors, kilowatt-hours, barrels of oil, and other things necessary for production. Looking at the various productive enterprises in operation at any moment, the central planning-computer won't have a common denominator for all of the different combinations of inputs going into each one. The computer won't know if a particular car factory 'makes sense', because it will just have an enormous stream of data describing the various resources going into the factory, and the amount of finished cars coming out of the factory. These brute facts alone don't tell the computers if they are efficiently using the resources being consumed in the factory.

Robert Murphy explains:

There is no objection amongst economists that given the existence of scarcity, the market is in need of a rationing device. Most economists, except those in extreme favor of centralized rationing, will also agree with the notion that price is the best rationing device of the market. While price hardly acts as a measure of value, due to the fact that no object has an objective value, it nevertheless serves as a useful tool to coordinate production by serving as a conveyor of information between different market agents and a method by which an individual can decide whether or not a particular action is economical.

In a socialistic economy, where prices are absent, this coordination would simply not exist. There would be no host of individual agents communicating through the price mechanism and allocating resources by means of subjective ratiocination. As a result, all meaningful economic activity would come to a halt. Complex programs would be impossible to complete economically, since without a price mechanism there would be no way for a central planner to distribute resources according to their most economical use. Thus, socialist economies are bound to fail. (Source)

Yes you can do it (whether people want to accept it is another matter). Applying the scientific method will always abolish subjectivity in any value. If twenty meters of x requires more resources than forty kilos of y, then x is more valuable than y regardless if y is a car and x is a toaster. Why is this so difficult to understand?

Good one. The study of human behaviour is not a natural science. Humans are not predictable, non-changing objects that act according to set-in-stone scientific laws. The laws of science and the scientific method are inductive whereas the study of human action, wants and desires must be deductive. You have no way to prove that x is more valuable than y if y is a car and x is a toaster. No way at all. The economist should not mimic the behavior of the natural scientists, because the social sciences involve human beings. Human action is characterised by intentional behavior, which involves the rational use of means to achieve desired ends. The very subject matter of economics - capital goods, money, wage rates, etc. - is not defined by physical or chemical properties, but instead by the mental or subjective attitudes that human minds take toward these things. Physical objects such as a toaster or a car do not possess intrinsic economic value. On the contrary, only a human mind can attribute value to such items, and only then do economists classify them as goods. An object is valuable only because there is at least one human being who believes that this object can help satisfy his or her subjective desires. For example, even if a particular root cures cancer, if no one knows this fact, then the root has no economic value, and people will not trade money for it. Consequently, value is caused by an individual's subjective desires and his or her beliefs about the causal properties of a particular item. This is why your plan to magically put computers in charge of everything and abolish money - the only effective way of trading beyond a primitive barter economy - is shoddy and ridiculous.

This was explained decades ago, please catch up.

[kvohra]

Downloading music illegally doesn't physically lose the music producer any money. For example if you stole a iPhone, Apple would lose the production cost of the iPhone. If you downloaded a song the company wouldn't get their royalties but they wouldn't lose money. Also if piracy wasn't possible only roughly 5% of all the people that have their music on their iPods now would still have it on their iPods. This means that there is less advertising where somebody might play their friend a song. So I think that not as much money is lost as people perceive. Nevertheless, stealing is stealing, no matter how much it affects the music producer and I purchase all of my music.

[Ex Death]

(Original post by Rhadamanthus)
And for the third time it does not matter how good the technology is, the information cannot be centralised.

Yes it can. It is a scientific fact that it can. Your entire response is not an empirical one, it is clouded by bias in what I can only suspect is an emotional attachment to your preconceived notions of the current economic state of affairs.

Are you mad? You CANNOT get rid of ontological subjectivity. If value is subjective then it is subjective under EVERY system, not just every system apart from your one. It doesn't matter what you or I or anybody else thinks is a fairer system, it's about what is actually possible, and you cannot distribute resources in a planned economy. Ffs, getting rid of ontological subjectivity - I've literally only heard two or three suggestions that are more stupid and ignorant than this.

VALUE IS NOT SUBJECTIVE IF IT IS DERIVED FROM THE RESOURCES IT USED TO BE MANUFACTURED. Honestly I am talking to a brick wall here. There is absolutely no need for personal subjectivity when it comes to the value or price of commodities. Everything comes from the planet and so the planetary resources are what derives the value, not what people arbitrarily deem more valuable. It absolutely matters which is a fairer system because we are quite literally talking about the longevity of the human race here.

Why do you think that your new system will magically change human behaviour?

The new system doesn't magically change human behaviour. Human behaviour has to change for the new system to be implemented insofar as discouraging greed, rampant material consumption and acknowledging that we only have one planet earth and all goods come from planet earth. It is most fair to divide the earth's resources for every person living on the planet.

Suddenly upon the introduction of the 'RBE' you will eradicate subjective values and you will, with the click of the fingers and the drawing up of an algorithm, centralise all knowledge ever held by anyone at any time?

No, the only values which are no longer subjective are the value (or price) of material objects. People simply would need to come to terms with this.

By the way, every 'economy' is resourced based. That is the point of pricing. The definition of economics is to study distribution of resources under conditions of scarcity. That is why prices go up and down. The irony is that the you think that money causes scarcity, thus you want to abolish the need to pay for stuff in order to create abundance out of thin air. Yours is a monetary-based system in the sense that your method of creating wealth is meddling with money. Supply side economists, on the other hand, understand that scarcity is caused by scarcity of resources, not scarcity of money. Our current system is resource based, since we're concerned with how to produce resources.

I have never said that money causes scarcity. Don't put words in my mouth like that, it won't do you any favours. Money is an outdated symptom of scarcity however we are now capable, through appropriate harnessing of technology, to live in near-abundance considering the massive energy production capabilities which are horrendously under utilised at present. Simply put our economic/political institutions haven't kept up with the rate of technological progress over the past 40 odd years.

Tell me, since people do not individually deserve capital goods like tractors and the like, how will your magical computer actually create capital goods? You cannot effectively create them without prices - without a monetary system. Abolish prices and you abolish the market for capital goods and people starve. Mises put his finger on the fundamental problem with socialism. If the state owns all the resources, then there can be no market prices for the tractors, kilowatt-hours, barrels of oil, and other things necessary for production. Looking at the various productive enterprises in operation at any moment, the central planning-computer won't have a common denominator for all of the different combinations of inputs going into each one. The computer won't know if a particular car factory 'makes sense', because it will just have an enormous stream of data describing the various resources going into the factory, and the amount of finished cars coming out of the factory. These brute facts alone don't tell the computers if they are efficiently using the resources being consumed in the factory.

I would advise you to do your own background research on RBE/Venus Project as I have assumed, up until now, that you actually had a decent understanding of it. All essential production processes are automated in RBE. It is perfectly possible to automate almost all consumer products so there is no longer the concept of 'work' as we know it. Everything from extraction of raw materials to manufacturing to shipping a finished good can be automated. Essential services like nursing, teaching, maintenance etc. would most likely require volunteers in this system at least until technology advances far enough that they can also be fully automated (we are already seeing advances in lots of hospital procedures being automated, for example).

RBE isn't glorified socialism for the sole reason that people, on the whole, do not have to work.

Good one. The study of human behaviour is not a natural science. Humans are not predictable, non-changing objects that act according to set-in-stone scientific laws. The laws of science and the scientific method are inductive whereas the study of human action, wants and desires must be deductive. You have no way to prove that x is more valuable than y if y is a car and x is a toaster. No way at all. The economist should not mimic the behavior of the natural scientists, because the social sciences involve human beings. Human action is characterised by intentional behavior, which involves the rational use of means to achieve desired ends. The very subject matter of economics - capital goods, money, wage rates, etc. - is not defined by physical or chemical properties, but instead by the mental or subjective attitudes that human minds take toward these things. Physical objects such as a toaster or a car do not possess intrinsic economic value. On the contrary, only a human mind can attribute value to such items, and only then do economists classify them as goods. An object is valuable only because there is at least one human being who believes that this object can help satisfy his or her subjective desires. For example, even if a particular root cures cancer, if no one knows this fact, then the root has no economic value, and people will not trade money for it. Consequently, value is caused by an individual's subjective desires and his or her beliefs about the causal properties of a particular item. This is why your plan to magically put computers in charge of everything and abolish money - the only effective way of trading beyond a primitive barter economy - is shoddy and ridiculous.

Well, you're just plain and simply wrong on so many levels. There is simply nothing subjective about products being manufactured from planetary resources. No doubt a human mind can attach subjective value to an object but the most fair and rational arbiter of ACTUALLY ACQUIRING said object is whether or not the planet can actually provide it. There is absolutely no reason why planetary resources cannot constitute value or price. This is still something you have yet to acknowledge and if you still don't understand that human value systems would need to change for an RBE to take effect then you're simply beyond help.

[onda]

(Original post by Ex Death)
Bull****. I have the right to share any of my belongings with anyone. The corporations don't have intellectual property over my belongings once they are mine.

You're quite right.

[SleepySheep]

(Original post by HighwayUnicorn)
Something saying that they had noticed a illegal download on my IP address and that they could terminate my Internet service if I continued. It was by email.

To be honest when I read it I got scared, deleted the email, closed my laptop and huddled up in the corner

Hahaha I would have done the same. While rocking back and forth, crying. I'm slightly worried now because they don't actually have my email address... I hope they don't just terminate my internet without any warning

[danny111]

(Original post by Axion)
Chances are that if youre illegally downloading one song, Youve probably illegaly downloaded hundreds before @.@

err....no.

I've bought more songs than I downloaded, and i downloaded (far) less than 100 songs.

[danny111]

Also, it's the same as with movies. If a movie has a great trailer then I go to the cinema. If it doesn't I might download it if it seems interesting enough.

If this option were not possible that doesn't friggin mean I would go to the cinema. In fact it would mean I might just do something useful with my time rather than wasting it in front of my laptop.

If I really want a song/album I go buy it.

[Rhadamanthus]

(Original post by Ex Death)
Yes it can. It is a scientific fact that it can. Your entire response is not an empirical one, it is clouded by bias in what I can only suspect is an emotional attachment to your preconceived notions of the current economic state of affairs.

VALUE IS NOT SUBJECTIVE IF IT IS DERIVED FROM THE RESOURCES IT USED TO BE MANUFACTURED. Honestly I am talking to a brick wall here. There is absolutely no need for personal subjectivity when it comes to the value or price of commodities. Everything comes from the planet and so the planetary resources are what derives the value, not what people arbitrarily deem more valuable. It absolutely matters which is a fairer system because we are quite literally talking about the longevity of the human race here.

The new system doesn't magically change human behaviour. Human behaviour has to change for the new system to be implemented insofar as discouraging greed, rampant material consumption and acknowledging that we only have one planet earth and all goods come from planet earth. It is most fair to divide the earth's resources for every person living on the planet.

No, the only values which are no longer subjective are the value (or price) of material objects. People simply would need to come to terms with this.

I have never said that money causes scarcity. Don't put words in my mouth like that, it won't do you any favours. Money is an outdated symptom of scarcity however we are now capable, through appropriate harnessing of technology, to live in near-abundance considering the massive energy production capabilities which are horrendously under utilised at present. Simply put our economic/political institutions haven't kept up with the rate of technological progress over the past 40 odd years.

I would advise you to do your own background research on RBE/Venus Project as I have assumed, up until now, that you actually had a decent understanding of it. All essential production processes are automated in RBE. It is perfectly possible to automate almost all consumer products so there is no longer the concept of 'work' as we know it. Everything from extraction of raw materials to manufacturing to shipping a finished good can be automated. Essential services like nursing, teaching, maintenance etc. would most likely require volunteers in this system at least until technology advances far enough that they can also be fully automated (we are already seeing advances in lots of hospital procedures being automated, for example).

RBE isn't glorified socialism for the sole reason that people, on the whole, do not have to work.

Well, you're just plain and simply wrong on so many levels. There is simply nothing subjective about products being manufactured from planetary resources. No doubt a human mind can attach subjective value to an object but the most fair and rational arbiter of ACTUALLY ACQUIRING said object is whether or not the planet can actually provide it. There is absolutely no reason why planetary resources cannot constitute value or price. This is still something you have yet to acknowledge and if you still don't understand that human value systems would need to change for an RBE to take effect then you're simply beyond help.

I'm getting rather sick of this now. I'm going to explain to you the very basics of human behaviour since you obviously have a very elementary understanding of it. Hopefully then you can stop embarrassing yourself with these vacuous posts. First of all, humans act. That is something that is flat-out undeniable. We act to achieve certain ends. That, too, is undeniable. The reason we continue to act is because we are never satiated. This is the law of non-satiation. We do not act according to scientific formulae which is why you cannot use the scientific method to study human beings acting in what is known as the economy. This was the grave error of neoclassical economics - it used the wrong methodology. We should not use the scientific method, but rather praxeology - the study of human action. This is a deductive method, so any logical deductions we make from the axiom that 'man acts' are also logically true. Why precisely is the scientific method a failure when applied to humans? Because we cannot isolate a variable. There is only constant change when it comes to human behaviour. There is no laboratory to observe the actions of humans in. Besides, we already know why humans act. We have the general law and we want to apply it to certain situations, whereas science wants to analyse certain situations to work out general laws. People do not act optimally. The model of homo economicus, which suggests that humans always act optimally to static, unchanging data, does not exist.

Quite simply, there is scarcity in the world. That is a fact. All of our goals are exclusionary - we can pursue one but we do so at the expense of another, due to the scarcity of time and resources. Even in the Garden of Eden time and location are exclusionary and, thus, scarce. RBE will not eliminate this. Some things, like air, are abundant and are thus general conditions, not goods. Since we can only act upon one end at a time, we must rank our ends in order of their importance (i.e. we assign value to them). This is where your argument comes crashing down. The reason value is subjective is because it is. It is a very basic fact of the human condition that we prefer some things over others and that other people may view our choices differently. Think of arguments over what ice cream flavour tastes better - the reason no one can agree is because it is a subjective judgement. If you think that these subjective judgements would become objective under your system then you ought to look up the meanings of the words. The problem of economics is that competition arises over how to use resources due to their scarcity. Thus, goods must be rationed to some degree by those who want to use them.

The task of resource allocation is to satisfy urgently felt human wants, and therefore resources must be devoted to their most important employments. Yet the question must be raised as to how these most important wants or usages are to be determined. It would appear that some means of measuring the value of things is necessary to make these determinations, but this is not the case. There is no such thing as a measuring unit of value, and this fact means that measuring the value of a thing is impossible. Value is a subjective phenomenon that eludes cardinal quantification. A thing's value is in the mind of the person who is doing the valuing, and this process of evaluating is not a matter of measurement. Because valuation is always a matter of individual preference, ordinal numbers are the only type of numerical treatment that can be accorded the problem of valuation. This is the subjective theory of value which did not enter economic science until Menger, Jevons, and Walras introduced it in their analysis around 1871. Until that time, economists had searched for a source of value for all goods as if value were intrinsic in each good.

The problem of value measurement is indicated by the fact that not only do different people often value the same thing differently, but the same person might value a certain thing differently at different times. And under the operation of the law of diminishing marginal utility, a person will always value each additional unit of a given good less than the prior unit's value. If value were quantifiable and measurable, there would exist a standard unit of measure that would be unchanging. It is clear that there is no such immutable unit of measure of the value of a good when different people at the same time and the same person at different times often have divergent valuations of the same good.

Valuation necessarily is manifested in the act of choosing or preferring. One is able to say he values A more than either B or C, but he is unable to say quantifiably how much more he prefers A over B or C. He may qualitatively indicate that his preference of A over B is far more intense than his preference of A over C. In that case, he would be ranking his preferences from first to last in the order of A, C, and B. But this ranking is strictly an ordinal, and not a cardinal, use of numbers. The allocation of scarce resources cannot be based upon any alleged method of measuring their values; employment of particular increments of resources can be decided only through ranking one incremental choice over alternative incremental uses of the same or different resources. Resources, since they are means to consumer goods, derive their ranking from the relative importance of their ultimate products. A more detailed look at the subjective theory of value is presented in chapter 3. (Source)

Value is not intrinsic in goods. A car is useless unless someone values it. Nobody would have employed Wilt Chamberlain in the 1700s, because baseball was not around and no one valued his skills. You don't seem to understand that this is a natural fact of the human condition. Subjectivity will not change simply because a very powerful computer can distribute things. The only way that things can actually be distributed is through the existence of prices. Without prices, there is no economy. This is why people moved away from barterism thousands of years ago, and now you want to take us back. Production doesn't happen because a committee meets and decides to produce corn. You have to have something to guide it. You need signals - i.e. prices and, ultimately, money. The price system is the only way to incorporate supply and demand. This is what I meant earlier when I said, 'In other words, not how a computer would be able to process the continually changing and vast amount of knowledge in order to establish prices, but rather how do you give the computer the knowledge in the first place?' You did not address this. It appears to me that you have lapped up this RBE nonsense and haven't even taken the time to analyse its validity.

It is not, as you say, simply a matter of people 'coming to terms' with the fact that prices are no longer subjective under your system. The fact is that it is impossible to eradicate subjectivity. I don't even know why I have to say this it seems to damned obvious. You cannot do it.

Monetary calculation may lack preciseness and certainty, but that does not mean it does not fulfill its task of guiding future actions according to a producer's view of what the future want-satisfactions of other people will be. It is not the fault of the system of economic calculation that uncertain calculations exist. They arise necessarily because human action always occurs in the face of an uncertain future. Under a social organization with an extensive division of labor, producers require a means of calculation on the basis of a common denominator. Monetary calculation affords this means, although it is not definite or certain. Resources are directed to those used that the owner deems the most promising and remunerative as indicated by his money calculations. Monetary calculation is possible only in a market economy in which the factors of production can be related to money prices. There can be no monetary calculation in a barter economy or on Robinson Crusoe's island. Even socialist theorists have admitted that the allocation of productive resources in a socialized economy would require the establishment of money prices by the central authorities in order to correct discrepancies between supply and demand.

[Ex Death]

(Original post by Rhadamanthus)
I'm getting rather sick of this now. I'm going to explain to you the very basics of human behaviour since you obviously have a very elementary understanding of it. Hopefully then you can stop embarrassing yourself with these vacuous posts. First of all, humans act. That is something that is flat-out undeniable. We act to achieve certain ends. That, too, is undeniable. The reason we continue to act is because we are never satiated. This is the law of non-satiation. We do not act according to scientific formulae which is why you cannot use the scientific method to study human beings acting in what is known as the economy. This was the grave error of neoclassical economics - it used the wrong methodology. We should not use the scientific method, but rather praxeology - the study of human action. This is a deductive method, so any logical deductions we make from the axiom that 'man acts' are also logically true. Why precisely is the scientific method a failure when applied to humans? Because we cannot isolate a variable. There is only constant change when it comes to human behaviour. There is no laboratory to observe the actions of humans in. Besides, we already know why humans act. We have the general law and we want to apply it to certain situations, whereas science wants to analyse certain situations to work out general laws. People do not act optimally. The model of homo economicus, which suggests that humans always act optimally to static, unchanging data, does not exist.

Quite simply, there is scarcity in the world. That is a fact. All of our goals are exclusionary - we can pursue one but we do so at the expense of another, due to the scarcity of time and resources. Even in the Garden of Eden time and location are exclusionary and, thus, scarce. RBE will not eliminate this. Some things, like air, are abundant and are thus general conditions, not goods. Since we can only act upon one end at a time, we must rank our ends in order of their importance (i.e. we assign value to them). This is where your argument comes crashing down. The reason value is subjective is because it is. It is a very basic fact of the human condition that we prefer some things over others and that other people may view our choices differently. Think of arguments over what ice cream flavour tastes better - the reason no one can agree is because it is a subjective judgement. If you think that these subjective judgements would become objective under your system then you ought to look up the meanings of the words. The problem of economics is that competition arises over how to use resources due to their scarcity. Thus, goods must be rationed to some degree by those who want to use them.

The task of resource allocation is to satisfy urgently felt human wants, and therefore resources must be devoted to their most important employments. Yet the question must be raised as to how these most important wants or usages are to be determined. It would appear that some means of measuring the value of things is necessary to make these determinations, but this is not the case. There is no such thing as a measuring unit of value, and this fact means that measuring the value of a thing is impossible. Value is a subjective phenomenon that eludes cardinal quantification. A thing's value is in the mind of the person who is doing the valuing, and this process of evaluating is not a matter of measurement. Because valuation is always a matter of individual preference, ordinal numbers are the only type of numerical treatment that can be accorded the problem of valuation. This is the subjective theory of value which did not enter economic science until Menger, Jevons, and Walras introduced it in their analysis around 1871. Until that time, economists had searched for a source of value for all goods as if value were intrinsic in each good.

The problem of value measurement is indicated by the fact that not only do different people often value the same thing differently, but the same person might value a certain thing differently at different times. And under the operation of the law of diminishing marginal utility, a person will always value each additional unit of a given good less than the prior unit's value. If value were quantifiable and measurable, there would exist a standard unit of measure that would be unchanging. It is clear that there is no such immutable unit of measure of the value of a good when different people at the same time and the same person at different times often have divergent valuations of the same good.

Valuation necessarily is manifested in the act of choosing or preferring. One is able to say he values A more than either B or C, but he is unable to say quantifiably how much more he prefers A over B or C. He may qualitatively indicate that his preference of A over B is far more intense than his preference of A over C. In that case, he would be ranking his preferences from first to last in the order of A, C, and B. But this ranking is strictly an ordinal, and not a cardinal, use of numbers. The allocation of scarce resources cannot be based upon any alleged method of measuring their values; employment of particular increments of resources can be decided only through ranking one incremental choice over alternative incremental uses of the same or different resources. Resources, since they are means to consumer goods, derive their ranking from the relative importance of their ultimate products. A more detailed look at the subjective theory of value is presented in chapter 3. (Source)

Value is not intrinsic in goods. A car is useless unless someone values it. Nobody would have employed Wilt Chamberlain in the 1700s, because baseball was not around and no one valued his skills. You don't seem to understand that this is a natural fact of the human condition. Subjectivity will not change simply because a very powerful computer can distribute things. The only way that things can actually be distributed is through the existence of prices. Without prices, there is no economy. This is why people moved away from barterism thousands of years ago, and now you want to take us back. Production doesn't happen because a committee meets and decides to produce corn. You have to have something to guide it. You need signals - i.e. prices and, ultimately, money. The price system is the only way to incorporate supply and demand. This is what I meant earlier when I said, 'In other words, not how a computer would be able to process the continually changing and vast amount of knowledge in order to establish prices, but rather how do you give the computer the knowledge in the first place?' You did not address this. It appears to me that you have lapped up this RBE nonsense and haven't even taken the time to analyse its validity.

It is not, as you say, simply a matter of people 'coming to terms' with the fact that prices are no longer subjective under your system. The fact is that it is impossible to eradicate subjectivity. I don't even know why I have to say this it seems to damned obvious. You cannot do it.

Monetary calculation may lack preciseness and certainty, but that does not mean it does not fulfill its task of guiding future actions according to a producer's view of what the future want-satisfactions of other people will be. It is not the fault of the system of economic calculation that uncertain calculations exist. They arise necessarily because human action always occurs in the face of an uncertain future. Under a social organization with an extensive division of labor, producers require a means of calculation on the basis of a common denominator. Monetary calculation affords this means, although it is not definite or certain. Resources are directed to those used that the owner deems the most promising and remunerative as indicated by his money calculations. Monetary calculation is possible only in a market economy in which the factors of production can be related to money prices. There can be no monetary calculation in a barter economy or on Robinson Crusoe's island. Even socialist theorists have admitted that the allocation of productive resources in a socialized economy would require the establishment of money prices by the central authorities in order to correct discrepancies between supply and demand.

I had a big reply written out which my computer decided to crash on. I can't be bothered to retype it all but the key point is that you refuse to take into account the scientific capability of the planet to actually provide for this 'human subjectivity'. Human subjectivity is rendered moot if the planet cannot provide for it. This is what RBE is about. Not cyclical consumption and manufactured demand ad infinitum.

I would very much appreciate it if you could explain to me why you, von Mises and any other economic theorists are exempt from taking into account whether the earth can actually provide for the current system without destroying it. Bonus points if you can also cover social inequality too.

Simply put, there is no reason why RBE will not structurally work. I have never argued against human subjectivity - only against price subjectivity. You have fallaciously conflated price subjectivity with human subjectivity. There is absolutely no reason why the price of a good cannot be determined by the planetary resources it took to produce it. Whether people would be willing to accept it or not is another matter (I suspect the majority would considering the longevity of the planet and human civilisation is quite literally at stake).

[Rhadamanthus]

(Original post by Ex Death)
I had a big reply written out which my computer decided to crash on. I can't be bothered to retype it all but the key point is that you refuse to take into account the scientific capability of the planet to actually provide for this 'human subjectivity'. Human subjectivity is rendered moot if the planet cannot provide for it. This is what RBE is about. Not cyclical consumption and manufactured demand ad infinitum.

I would very much appreciate it if you could explain to me why you, von Mises and any other economic theorists are exempt from taking into account whether the earth can actually provide for the current system without destroying it. Bonus points if you can also cover social inequality too.

Simply put, there is no reason why RBE will not structurally work. I have never argued against human subjectivity - only against price subjectivity. You have fallaciously conflated price subjectivity with human subjectivity. There is absolutely no reason why the price of a good cannot be determined by the planetary resources it took to produce it. Whether people would be willing to accept it or not is another matter (I suspect the majority would considering the longevity of the planet and human civilisation is quite literally at stake).

Save your replies in Microsoft Word when they're long, that's what I do. As I've mentioned before, no science whatsoever can account for subjectivity. The human brain analyses things subjectively and no supercomputer can possibly centralise this. It is an epistemic and and an ontological problem. Nothing you've said can raise an argument against this. Aside from this, arguments about 'the earth' being able to produce things are just baloney. 'The planet' does not produce anything. The planet hosts the resources that are subjectively valued by humans then put into production by people acting upon indicators - indicators such as prices in any developed economy. The pseudo-mysticism you seem to attach to 'the planet' is just meaningless, really. Social inequality is a totally different matter and arguments can be raised that the capitalist economy tends towards a bettering of circumstances for people of all incomes, although some (Rawlsians) may argue that a welfare state should be set up to tax the wealth produced by capitalism and redistribute it to the poor. To pretend that your scheme and its abolition of money will be beneficial to the extremely poverished is to ignore the tendency of history and the history of resource allocation in a non-market economy. It hasn't worked before, and there's no reason it should work now. Furthermore there is not much difference between human and price subjectivity. Prices arise from things like marginal utility, not from the amount of 'planet' that went into producing it. It does not matter how hard a worker labours, if there is no demand for his product then it is not worth anything. Your re-hashed labour theory of value is just as defunct as the old one, and if the people don't accept it (as you admit is possible) then you're pretty stuck. People will not pay £100 for a loaf of bread, no matter how many graphs you draw or algorithms you devise that say they will.

[2468_James_Maaay]

(Original post by Rhadamanthus)
I'm getting rather sick of this now. I'm going to explain to you the very basics of human behaviour since you obviously have a very elementary understanding of it. Hopefully then you can stop embarrassing yourself with these vacuous posts. First of all, humans act. That is something that is flat-out undeniable. We act to achieve certain ends. That, too, is undeniable. The reason we continue to act is because we are never satiated. This is the law of non-satiation. We do not act according to scientific formulae which is why you cannot use the scientific method to study human beings acting in what is known as the economy. This was the grave error of neoclassical economics - it used the wrong methodology. We should not use the scientific method, but rather praxeology - the study of human action. This is a deductive method, so any logical deductions we make from the axiom that 'man acts' are also logically true. Why precisely is the scientific method a failure when applied to humans? Because we cannot isolate a variable. There is only constant change when it comes to human behaviour. There is no laboratory to observe the actions of humans in. Besides, we already know why humans act. We have the general law and we want to apply it to certain situations, whereas science wants to analyse certain situations to work out general laws. People do not act optimally. The model of homo economicus, which suggests that humans always act optimally to static, unchanging data, does not exist.

Quite simply, there is scarcity in the world. That is a fact. All of our goals are exclusionary - we can pursue one but we do so at the expense of another, due to the scarcity of time and resources. Even in the Garden of Eden time and location are exclusionary and, thus, scarce. RBE will not eliminate this. Some things, like air, are abundant and are thus general conditions, not goods. Since we can only act upon one end at a time, we must rank our ends in order of their importance (i.e. we assign value to them). This is where your argument comes crashing down. The reason value is subjective is because it is. It is a very basic fact of the human condition that we prefer some things over others and that other people may view our choices differently. Think of arguments over what ice cream flavour tastes better - the reason no one can agree is because it is a subjective judgement. If you think that these subjective judgements would become objective under your system then you ought to look up the meanings of the words. The problem of economics is that competition arises over how to use resources due to their scarcity. Thus, goods must be rationed to some degree by those who want to use them.

The task of resource allocation is to satisfy urgently felt human wants, and therefore resources must be devoted to their most important employments. Yet the question must be raised as to how these most important wants or usages are to be determined. It would appear that some means of measuring the value of things is necessary to make these determinations, but this is not the case. There is no such thing as a measuring unit of value, and this fact means that measuring the value of a thing is impossible. Value is a subjective phenomenon that eludes cardinal quantification. A thing's value is in the mind of the person who is doing the valuing, and this process of evaluating is not a matter of measurement. Because valuation is always a matter of individual preference, ordinal numbers are the only type of numerical treatment that can be accorded the problem of valuation. This is the subjective theory of value which did not enter economic science until Menger, Jevons, and Walras introduced it in their analysis around 1871. Until that time, economists had searched for a source of value for all goods as if value were intrinsic in each good.

The problem of value measurement is indicated by the fact that not only do different people often value the same thing differently, but the same person might value a certain thing differently at different times. And under the operation of the law of diminishing marginal utility, a person will always value each additional unit of a given good less than the prior unit's value. If value were quantifiable and measurable, there would exist a standard unit of measure that would be unchanging. It is clear that there is no such immutable unit of measure of the value of a good when different people at the same time and the same person at different times often have divergent valuations of the same good.

Valuation necessarily is manifested in the act of choosing or preferring. One is able to say he values A more than either B or C, but he is unable to say quantifiably how much more he prefers A over B or C. He may qualitatively indicate that his preference of A over B is far more intense than his preference of A over C. In that case, he would be ranking his preferences from first to last in the order of A, C, and B. But this ranking is strictly an ordinal, and not a cardinal, use of numbers. The allocation of scarce resources cannot be based upon any alleged method of measuring their values; employment of particular increments of resources can be decided only through ranking one incremental choice over alternative incremental uses of the same or different resources. Resources, since they are means to consumer goods, derive their ranking from the relative importance of their ultimate products. A more detailed look at the subjective theory of value is presented in chapter 3. (Source)

Value is not intrinsic in goods. A car is useless unless someone values it. Nobody would have employed Wilt Chamberlain in the 1700s, because baseball was not around and no one valued his skills. You don't seem to understand that this is a natural fact of the human condition. Subjectivity will not change simply because a very powerful computer can distribute things. The only way that things can actually be distributed is through the existence of prices. Without prices, there is no economy. This is why people moved away from barterism thousands of years ago, and now you want to take us back. Production doesn't happen because a committee meets and decides to produce corn. You have to have something to guide it. You need signals - i.e. prices and, ultimately, money. The price system is the only way to incorporate supply and demand. This is what I meant earlier when I said, 'In other words, not how a computer would be able to process the continually changing and vast amount of knowledge in order to establish prices, but rather how do you give the computer the knowledge in the first place?' You did not address this. It appears to me that you have lapped up this RBE nonsense and haven't even taken the time to analyse its validity.

It is not, as you say, simply a matter of people 'coming to terms' with the fact that prices are no longer subjective under your system. The fact is that it is impossible to eradicate subjectivity. I don't even know why I have to say this it seems to damned obvious. You cannot do it.

Monetary calculation may lack preciseness and certainty, but that does not mean it does not fulfill its task of guiding future actions according to a producer's view of what the future want-satisfactions of other people will be. It is not the fault of the system of economic calculation that uncertain calculations exist. They arise necessarily because human action always occurs in the face of an uncertain future. Under a social organization with an extensive division of labor, producers require a means of calculation on the basis of a common denominator. Monetary calculation affords this means, although it is not definite or certain. Resources are directed to those used that the owner deems the most promising and remunerative as indicated by his money calculations. Monetary calculation is possible only in a market economy in which the factors of production can be related to money prices. There can be no monetary calculation in a barter economy or on Robinson Crusoe's island. Even socialist theorists have admitted that the allocation of productive resources in a socialized economy would require the establishment of money prices by the central authorities in order to correct discrepancies between supply and demand.

Talk about a wall of text, this is a berlin wall of text.

[Ex Death]

(Original post by Rhadamanthus)
Save your replies in Microsoft Word when they're long, that's what I do. As I've mentioned before, no science whatsoever can account for subjectivity. The human brain analyses things subjectively and no supercomputer can possibly centralise this. It is an epistemic and and an ontological problem. Nothing you've said can raise an argument against this.

Again, I am not arguing against human subjectivity, only price subjectivity. Please stop conflating the two - they are not mutually inclusive.

Aside from this, arguments about 'the earth' being able to produce things are just baloney. 'The planet' does not produce anything.

You should've just said this 10 posts back, it would've saved a lot of time. You, along with most economists in their utmost stupidity, see fit to disregard the sustainability of the overarching system which allows their theories and models to enact in the first place. It is absolutely comical how you pass off the planet as a mere 'externality' when it is at the foundation of the system you advocate.

What happens when there is no more 'planet' to support your system? Who cares, right? Let's carry on living our wonderful hedonistic lifestyles with our heads buried in the sand.

Also just a heads-up: The planet produces everything. Yes, everything.

The pseudo-mysticism you seem to attach to 'the planet' is just meaningless, really.

Yes, what was I thinking. The carrying capacity of the earth is just a load of mysticism and fairytales. Let's ignore science! The only science we need is economic theory taken in vacuum!

Social inequality is a totally different matter and arguments can be raised that the capitalist economy tends towards a bettering of circumstances for people of all incomes

Nice joke. Capitalism is predicated upon the mathematical certainty that an income gap between high earners and low earners will inevitably emerge. This leads to civil unrest and social inequality. I'm sure you don't care about this though do you?

To pretend that your scheme and its abolition of money will be beneficial to the extremely poverished is to ignore the tendency of history and the history of resource allocation in a non-market economy. It hasn't worked before, and there's no reason it should work now.

Good strawman there. I hope you realise that RBE does not abide by what has happened in the past. There is an entirely different contextual framework in the establishment of RBE, mostly notably technological innovation meaning that virtually no one needs to work.

Prices arise from things like marginal utility, not from the amount of 'planet' that went into producing it.

Only in our current system.

People will not pay £100 for a loaf of bread, no matter how many graphs you draw or algorithms you devise that say they will.

If a loaf of bread were to require more resources than a car to manufacture then it would become more expensive than a car. This is highly unlikely, however, as there will be a proportional correlation between human subjective value and actual price value under RBE. Moreover, it barely matters because, if in the unlikely scenario that a loaf of bread becomes more expensive than a car, the loaf of bread will fall out of favour and it won't matter at all.

[123maz]

well everyone does it, its YOUTUBES fault really and most of all i just copy and paste the video really, someone has already downloaded it for me ;p

[the golden god]

I'll happily admit i've never bought a song or album, my whole music library would cost way too much to pay for so I simply think: Why pay for something you can so easily get for free.

[Jack22031994]

(Original post by the golden god)
I'll happily admit i've never bought a song or album, my whole music library would cost way too much to pay for so I simply think: Why pay for something you can so easily get for free.

But you've stolen it, just because it isn't a physical item doesn't mean it's not theft, it's the same as stealing CDs from a shop but you wouldn't do that would you?

It's surprising on here how many people think they can justify theft


This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App

[Devel]

(Original post by Jack22031994)
But you've stolen it, just because it isn't a physical item doesn't mean it's not theft, it's the same as stealing CDs from a shop but you wouldn't do that would you?

It's surprising on here how many people think they can justify theft


This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App

It can be regarded as theft, but it is not equatable to stealing a CD from a store.

[Jack22031994]

(Original post by Devel)
It can be regarded as theft, but it is not equatable to stealing a CD from a store.

It's regarded ad theft because it is theft, and of corse it Is equatable from stealing a CD, it's the same thing, it just isn't physical


This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App

[Devel]

(Original post by Jack22031994)
It's regarded ad theft because it is theft, and of corse it Is equatable from stealing a CD, it's the same thing, it just isn't physical

It would only be equatable if when you steal the CD, you dont steal the CD, instead you make an identical copy and leave with that.

[Dmon1Unlimited]

(Original post by thealpz)
Can you actually be punished for downloading stuff via torrent in the UK?
I'm coming to study in September, and I'm curious, because in my country it is unimaginable that you would be punished for downloading stuff

Downloading stuff with torrents is not illegal....
Downloading Illegal stuff is illegal...

Using torrents = okay
Using torrents to illegally download a song= not okay



If I make a few drawings, scan them into my computer and make them into a torrent, then why would it be illegal if friends/family download such a torrent.

[Dmon1Unlimited]

I don't get why there are such large fines, I suppose it's an attempt from companies to 1) deter people from downloading and 2) unethically try to recover not just the money lost by the one guy downloading, but the money lost by thousands of people that are downloading

Personally, i think it should be equivalent to what would happen if you steal a chocolate bar... Or something like cost of the song + £50 as punishment

Obviously you can't just fine for the cost of the song only...