Skeptic Project

Why would you need a price mechanism, if you knew down to the gram of how much of a resource existed or could be produced? Our current JIT inventory systems have a good idea how much product is consumed (bought) in a given region for a multitude of different industries. It would be an easy switch to change prices to actual scientific measures (volume, weight, etc.)

Okay, that's a start. And how would you valuate those resources? Surely you wouldn't make titanium iPods over titanium space shuttles; how would these decisions be made?

I am essentially asking for a comprehensive design for the RBE that takes into account all the things the systems you will be replacing (government, money, capitalism, democracy) already does. I hope you see why this is necessary.

Also products that are built are not built with planned obsolesence in mind, it is built to last and built to be upgradeable. Items that become obsolete will be designed for easy recyling of base materials.

Planned obsolescence is a losing strategy if you have competitors - one reason the US has anti-trust laws.

> This is a good tack to take and I wish you luck

Likewise.

"Ipod, a camera, a video camera, a PC, a house key, a health monitor etc. all in one?"

God I'd hate to misplace that thing or have it stolen.

Geez TeeZeeDem youre really getting more desparate after each succesive post

"You are actually among the more reasonable of TZM supporters. You're at least willing to answer my questions about an RBE without resorting to "the future" or "robots" too much." - Agreed but in fairness that Do they still make games for the Playstation, N64, and Super NES? seemed pretty desparate

Why have a bunch of single function items? Why not build a hand held that operates as an Ipod, a camera, a video camera, a PC, a house key, a health monitor etc. all in one? As technology progresses, electronics get smaller, so you can build one item with multiple uses, and have more material left over for the space shuttles.

You just described my PDA. Besides - you could have that same stuff in capitalism as well. And I'm not even a fan of capitalism.

But the question you are getting is, how would you allocate it, I say to you, what is the difference between having the "market" price something out of your reach, and having a resource management system tell you that it isn't available in the quantities you want for individual use?

Because the market raises the price once goods become scarce or require too much effort to produce, so you can't just build diamond plated private helicopters.

I don't agree with this system, because it ignores long-term effects as well as the needs of poorer people, but to say "just put everything on a list and let people choose stuff" is just idiocy and I don't know why TZM thinks it would be some kind of revelation. Once one single resource gets wasted that is essential for another process, or you get something but everybody else doesn't, the system is going to fail.

And all you need for that is 0.00001% of the population that just decides to build a castle out of palladium.

The market is a dumb thing, reacting to the stampeding of the herds and a few smart people who can anticipate or precipitate these stampedes. A resource management system is smart, it will have the available statistics to make decisions on what is needed, what is available, and where these resources need to go. We have these systems available to companies, it is not a stretch to have these for entire countries.

The resources management system has to include scenarios for "two recipients demand one resource, demand=X, resource<2x", which is pretty much standard in a world with limited resources. Do we allow everybody to wear gems or not? Do we use them for some public project or not? Do we keep a reserve of resources for safety, if yes, how much? Do we produce the best of all (Computers with ECC Reg RAM and RAID5) or stay with best quality per price (Computers with normal RAM and Storage)? What if we have to replace computer hardware every Y years?

The only logical solution to me is to keep a price system. If TZM disagrees with that, it's their task to convince me (and probably everyone else with some exp. in econ) that their resource management system can automatically arrive at sensible decisions.

Saying "use science" is nonsense. It's like answering "Is P=NP?" with "use math".

I wonder if better management would help the movement go forward. Like, to a level where I couldn't say "here, this part is really dumb" anymore. Setting up monthly donation programs, doing different shows for entertainment so people spend more (heck, VTV is getting $200/mth for himself), hiring some people to work on the plans, whatever.

I'm sure it would, but just how would you be able to replace the management!

Show people who disagree with the movement an alternative, show everyone who doesnt really understand how ineffective and ill concieved TZM/TVP is [even though they believe they fully understand it and that is the majority] exactly what is wrong and offer up a more forward thinking and well laid out plan.

In short do it with or without the leadership, they need you more than you need them because they have no experts, contractors or consultants actually doing anything thats valuable for them other than 3d artwork and film making.

I think [an RBE] probably would be authoritarian myself.

It might have to be to work, but of course this contradicts TZM's anarchist philosophy.

@Special Ed

Can I get my Model-T's tires vulcanized at my local patrol station? It's already been mentioned before in this thread by someone else: new technology phases out old stuff, should Nintendo simply avoid moving beyond Super NES just to make people feel better that they never have to upgrade?

Of course not, if they did they’d be out of business. But every product brought to market has a planned life cycle, with it being phased out at the end. That’s planned obsolescence. Generally they aren’t building products with longevity in mind as most gains in year over year profit growth comes from A) new product lines, B) new physical locations to sell those products.

A great example of how it's being dealt with now is, post-cartridge, you can support former versions, and many do: a PS3 can play PS and PS2 games. My blu-ray player can also play DVDs, CDs, VCDs, etc.

Well I would disagree with you about the backwards compatibility between PS3 and PS2 games. The PS3 play PS1 games only. Hence I need to maintain both a PS2 and a PS3 in my home. I am bitter. But backwards compatibility is a great thing, not all systems do it though because it costs money to do so.

@Domokato

I don't get it. Do you think your CRT monitor should be "upgradeable" to a flat-screen? Do you think it would somehow be able to if we were in an RBE?

No of course not, many items would be built with modularity in mind, so you can swap stuff out and plug and play, but for items you cannot do that for, you would simply drop it off for recycling and pick up a new unit made with the latest technology.

I'm not denying that we have the technological capability to do resource management. I'm asking how you would design the system to work. An RBE is a little different from a company since it deals with the public sector as well. Presumably, an RBE wouldn't have an authoritarian structure like traditional companies do, would it? How would these resources be valuated and allocated?

That is a good question; I guess you would need to look at people’s basic needs first, like food, water, shelter, health care. These would be would be ranked as most important to provide for first. The rationality is you can’t be creative if you are dead from starvation/dehydration/exposure. Then you would look at what you had left and rank the use of resources to be used in projects that had the best impact to society in general, for example, you would allocate resources to projects that had the potential to either create/find more resources, recycling/reuse existing resources, design around reliance on scare resources. The rationality is that the bigger the pool or more efficient your use of your pool of resources then the more that will be available for use in the other two tiers. Next on the rung would be to devote resources to projects that improve the standard of living for everyone, this would be the luxuries, the nice to haves. Some of these tiers are interchangeable, for example lets say we were running out of food with current production standards, we would shift available resources to solve that food problem from some of the other allocations (luxuries going first), because obviously that is a problem that impacts everybody.

I don't know what you mean by "the ultimate expression of capitalism" (vague), but for capitalism to serve consumers well it needs competition amongst producers. That's why monopolies need to be broken up.

If you start a business and what to remain in business you need to grow you business, or you will stagnate and die. If you are in a small town with no competition, the need to grow isn’t as strong and status quo can reign, but as soon as you introduce competition, you must outgrow your competitor and acquire him (monopoly) or drive him out of business, or arrive at a mutually beneficial arrangement (cartel) in which you co-ordinate your strategies to keep out other entrants into the market.

What are you talking about? This is way too simplistic. Crappy goods are cheap, quality goods are expensive. You buy what's best for your purposes and what you can afford. That's how it works in capitalism.

I would agree with that.

Although it may seem like it, I am actually not a capitalism apologist. I'm just explaining what capitalism can handle that an RBE doesn't yet have answers for. You are actually among the more reasonable of TZM supporters. You're at least willing to answer my questions about an RBE without resorting to "the future" or "robots" too much.

But all the best answers end in “the future” and “robots”. :)

Anyway, once we are done with the economic aspect, there is still the social aspect that needs to be resolved. Specifically, how will you get people to work despite not being paid, and how will you get people to not be burdens on society despite not having laws.

I would first ask for the definition of burden. Quadriplegics are burdens on society but we don’t have laws against them. Do you mean burden as in those that act criminally? I think that the motivation for most crime will disappear in the face of equal access to abundant resources, but those people who act criminally because they want to and not because of a defect in their brain chemistry, would be exiled and/or shunned. As I’ve said before, laws keep honest people honest, it doesn’t function well as a curb for undesirable behaviour if you don’t get caught.

I imagine there will come a point when technological unemployment and outsourcing puts enough people in jeopardy they will decide that deflation is not such a terrible thing. Imagine, if you will, as productivity increases, costs of items produced become cheaper. If business didn’t have the impetus to grow, it would be acceptable to allow people to remain employed, but just employ them for fewer hours. So for example, you used to work a 40 hour week, but technology productivity has reduced your work week to 20 hrs, but at the same time this productivity has caused 50% deflation. Your purchasing power hasn’t changed, except you now have more free time to pursue other more creative interests. Or if you want to you could take on another “fulltime” job for 20 hours a week. Eventually (yep here come “the future”), automated productivity will reduce the cost of basic items that it will not make much sense to charge for them. So as your work hours decrease, and productivity increases, you will actually require money for less and less things. So those that require money as incentive can still get that incentive in transition. So I envision not an abrupt changeover to a system of no money, but a gradual phasing out.

@ oreolvrs

"You are actually among the more reasonable of TZM supporters. You're at least willing to answer my questions about an RBE without resorting to "the future" or "robots" too much." - Agreed but in fairness that Do they still make games for the Playstation, N64, and Super NES? seemed pretty desparate

I save all my desperate arguments for you my little oreo cookie. Just kidding, I just try to address people points without interjecting too much of my own stuff. Really, my anecdotal stuff was more desperate than the point I made about companies making the conscious decision to manufacture products that they intend to phase out over a period of a several years.

@ CyborgJesus

You just described my PDA. Besides - you could have that same stuff in capitalism as well. And I'm not even a fan of capitalism.

Jesus, it really has a health monitor and a house key? I was trying to be all futuristic, and lo and behold the future is here!

Because the market raises the price once goods become scarce or require too much effort to produce, so you can't just build diamond plated private helicopters.

So what is your issue with having a resource management program telling you the same thing? Is it because it is harder to rail against something impersonal like the market?

I don't agree with this system, because it ignores long-term effects as well as the needs of poorer people, but to say "just put everything on a list and let people choose stuff" is just idiocy and I don't know why TZM thinks it would be some kind of revelation. Once one single resource gets wasted that is essential for another process, or you get something but everybody else doesn't, the system is going to fail.

Then why wouldn’t you build some “reasonability” algorithms into the resource management program? Is it too authoritarian to tell people that you can’t build a castle out of palladium because we need it for other processes? What is wrong with expecting people to behave as though this is the only commandment “All decision made with regard to the highest good for all?” There is a difference between wants and needs. Just because you want your own palladium castle, doesn’t mean your going to get it, unless you have a real sound and logical reason.

The resources management system has to include scenarios for "two recipients demand one resource, demand=X, resource<2x", which is pretty much standard in a world with limited resources. Do we allow everybody to wear gems or not? Do we use them for some public project or not? Do we keep a reserve of resources for safety, if yes, how much? Do we produce the best of all (Computers with ECC Reg RAM and RAID5) or stay with best quality per price (Computers with normal RAM and Storage)? What if we have to replace computer hardware every Y years?

As I described up above with Domokato, we would have tiers, resources that everyone needs to live a healthy, stress-free life, resources devoted to producing more resources, and resources devoted to producing stuff that raises the standard of living for all. So I get what you are saying, diamonds are relatively rare, do we allow everyone to wear diamonds, when not everyone can? Since it is rare and not everyone can have them do we make sure no one can have them? I guess as a society we’d ask ourselves how important is the question of everyone having access to wearable diamonds, if it was important enough we would devote resources to “solve” this problem. But you know what I think will happen, is that most people would regard the wearing of gems as an anachronism and not really relevant in society where inequality doesn’t exist.

@ Nano

Without natural selection of the market to starve people to death for doing the wrong thing, just how do you stop peoples decisions effecting the lives of others negatively.

I would say that education is a good first step. Give people enough relevant information and tools to make reasonable decisions, and then we have to worry less about people making wrong decisions.

@ Alton

Zeitgeisters and the crew always ignore preferences and the law of conservation when they bring up "planned obsolescence". When it comes to technology and consumables, someone *must* save or abstain from consumption for it to be realized. And that someone does not do so for free. The higher the quality of resources/features used, the higher the cost. Producers and businesses engaged in planned obsolescence activity as a means of controlling costs and also as a way to keep up with consumers' time preferences. For example, a cell phone manufacturer may decide to use parts in its phones that have a maximum lifespan of 10 years, instead of parts that could last 20 years if consumers on average may not want to own a phone for so long, especially as technology advances.

OK I’d agree that we tend to ignore that to produce we need to forgo first, if you’d agree that you are ignoring that once the initial investment in made into productive infrastructure, it will return increasing benefits and require less labour. For example at my company, we utilize a number of different databases and analysis programs that sometimes return more than one version of the “truth” depending on which department it was for and how it was designed. When writing reports, finding the where the data is in which database it resides is always a chore, not to mention if a change is made in the database you have to go into each report and make sure that report is pointing to the correct database or field. What we are working on right now is a layer that will allow the user to grab the data that they want and based on the business rules in the layer will return consistent data for all parts of the business. No more hunting, no more laborious code writing, the layer generates the SQL without the user seeing it. Best of all if there is a change to any of the underlying databases, then the change is made once in the layer and it will populate to all the reporting structure. The work comes from defining the business rules so they are consistent and acceptable across all business segments. After that work is done, report writing that took weeks, will take hours, maybe even minutes and everyone becomes a report writer, it will no longer be a specialized area. Future changes and improvements to the system can be implemented with less labour going forward, all because we invested the labour upfront. So each iteration is more productive and requires less labour to accomplish. So you spend less time abstaining to produce.

I wonder about companies keeping up with consumer preferences, it that the case or is it that companies market choices to the consumer that they want them to have? I’m sure that it used to be the case that consumer demand drove product choice, but I think it has shifted somewhat to you can choose only from what is available, and what’s available is what the company chooses to make. Like Marge said about Homer make-up shotgun to paraphrase “I don’t think women like to be shot in the face.” To which Homer replied “Women will like what I tell them to like.”

@Sil

I think I'll chime in a bit here since I sort of know something about this. Development companies might not be making new games for these old systems but there is still a high demand for many many games as well as the old platforms themselves. Just take a look around eBay whenever you get some free time from saving the world.

So you have a secondary market of people who like the retro stuff, how does that impact the point that these platforms are now dead-ends? You want to play the newer stuff you need a new platform.

Also, I find it completely hypocritical that you even bring this up. You say:
>>"Why have a bunch of single function items? "
But then when people DO do these things it's planned obsolescence? When Microsoft combines Wi-fi into it's new system it's planned obsolescence because the old models didn't have that, and when Apple combines a phone and a web browser and an iPod it's planned obsolescence because people now have to go run out and buy the latest new gadget... but when you suggest combining "an Ipod, a camera, a video camera, a PC, a house key, a health monitor etc. all in one?" this is suddenly not planned obsolescence but technical brilliancy.

How is that hypocritical? Most companies do not design anything that is built in discrete modules that you can upgrade by pulling out a piece and plugging a new one back in. Computer hardware is one of the few industries that do design for this, but it could be better. The question would be why can’t they design their products with future expansion in mind? Also how many of these companies take responsibility for their product after it is obsolete? A few do, and end of life programs are becoming more common, but this should be one of those things that go without saying I sell it to you I maintain it for you during it’s productive life and I will recycle/dispose of it for you when it is no longer of use. This should be built into the price. In an RBE, everything that can be recycled will be recycled.

You advocate this technological advancement but bitch about it when technology actually IS being advanced. In short, you're kind of full of shit my good man.

I’ve been accused of worse. What I bitch about is the waste that requires you to replace entire systems of hardware and software because it is more profitable to force your consumer to spend money on new products every couple of years that are only marginally better. This applies less to hardware, because the gains are real in performance every year. But other consumables not so much, like Vista or Windows ME, sorry to offend any Vista or ME fans out there.

Sidebar: The SNES is a great system, and I have far too many fun memories playing that thing... but I can't blame Nintendo for also giving me the N64 to play stuff on. Games that never would have been possible on the SNES.

Final Fantasy 2 and 3 were my favourites, really got me on the whole idea of RPG’s.

Well, I’d like to say you all have been most gracious in allowing me to speak on your forums. I am glad I actually got to discuss an RBE with you. I’ve learned that our ideas have some holes that need work and our movement needs a different motivation. I’ll read your replies to my last post, but I won’t be replying right away. I need to spend some time reworking some ideas and researching my arguments. I would like to come back and post an update on my endeavors if I could.

Of course not, if they did they’d be out of business. But every product brought to market has a planned life cycle, with it being phased out at the end. That’s planned obsolescence.

Actually that's technical obsolescence, not planned. Planned obsolescence carries with it the intention to have the product break sooner that it would otherwise so that it would have to be bought again. Tech companies don't usually plan for their products to break; rather, they don't plan for their products to last because it is expensive to do so. In other words, they may use less durable components that are cheaper and that will last only as long as they expect a certain percentage of customers to keep them since the product may become technically obsolete, and then pass on those savings to the customer. In other words, they make a cheaper product that doesn't last as long because 1) it will become technically obsolete anyway, and 2) the lower price helps it compete in the marketplace and provide consumers with cheaper products. This is actually an example of capitalism working out pretty well for everyone.

No of course not, many items would be built with modularity in mind, so you can swap stuff out and plug and play, but for items you cannot do that for, you would simply drop it off for recycling and pick up a new unit made with the latest technology.

Can you name some gadgets that aren't already modular that would be in an RBE, and why they are that way now and why they wouldn't be in an RBE, and how that modularity would be achieved in an RBE?

We have recycling in our current system, but it is not really that efficient. For example, in order to recycle paper you need to have extra trucks driving around picking it up, which puts CO2 into the atmosphere, whereas lumber companies grow trees that take CO2 out of the atmosphere that wouldn't be there otherwise [http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Recycling.html]. Electronics recycling may be a different matter, though.

That is a good question; I guess you would need to look at people’s basic needs first, like food, water, shelter, health care. These would be would be ranked as most important to provide for first. The rationality is you can’t be creative if you are dead from starvation/dehydration/exposure. Then you would look at what you had left and rank the use of resources to be used in projects that had the best impact to society in general, for example, you would allocate resources to projects that had the potential to either create/find more resources, recycling/reuse existing resources, design around reliance on scare resources. The rationality is that the bigger the pool or more efficient your use of your pool of resources then the more that will be available for use in the other two tiers. Next on the rung would be to devote resources to projects that improve the standard of living for everyone, this would be the luxuries, the nice to haves. Some of these tiers are interchangeable, for example lets say we were running out of food with current production standards, we would shift available resources to solve that food problem from some of the other allocations (luxuries going first), because obviously that is a problem that impacts everybody.

Sounds like a reasonable outline. You've gone worlds farther than most TZM members; they usually just dodge the question and start rambling on about how capitalism is raping them. Anyway, if you can continue to design this system out, maybe we will actually have something we can analyze and discuss. An RBE as it is currently defined by TZM is so vague we can barely argue about it.

If you start a business and what to remain in business you need to grow you business, or you will stagnate and die. If you are in a small town with no competition, the need to grow isn’t as strong and status quo can reign, but as soon as you introduce competition, you must outgrow your competitor and acquire him (monopoly) or drive him out of business, or arrive at a mutually beneficial arrangement (cartel) in which you co-ordinate your strategies to keep out other entrants into the market.

Right, in an unregulated capitalist economy that would be the best strategy (which is why libertarianism is so fail). But with anti-trust regulation, doing so would only get your monopoly or cartel broken up. I don't think anyone is arguing that unregulated capitalism is the way to go. The regulations are there for a reason - because we've already seen what happens without them.

I think that the motivation for most crime will disappear in the face of equal access to abundant resources, but those people who act criminally because they want to and not because of a defect in their brain chemistry, would be exiled and/or shunned.

Legally exiled or just socially exiled? In other words, will you have police enforcement for this? I don't think social exile alone is enough.

Also, I haven't seen any research that shows how much crime is caused by lack of resources. Do you have any?

So I envision not an abrupt changeover to a system of no money, but a gradual phasing out.

So why the movement?

Anyway, I know you said you wouldn't be responding, so I understand if you don't answer those questions.

TeeZedem wrote:

OK I’d agree that we tend to ignore that to produce we need to forgo first, if you’d agree that you are ignoring that once the initial investment in made into productive infrastructure, it will return increasing benefits and require less labour.

I see no reason for me to agree to this because there are more details in question as in what this investment is in, and if the benefits outweighs the costs. Just saying you will make more benefits from what you invest in is different than what you really have to spend for it verses the returns.

For example at my company, we utilize a number of different databases and analysis programs that sometimes return more than one version of the “truth” depending on which department it was for and how it was designed. When writing reports, finding the where the data is in which database it resides is always a chore, not to mention if a change is made in the database you have to go into each report and make sure that report is pointing to the correct database or field. What we are working on right now is a layer that will allow the user to grab the data that they want and based on the business rules in the layer will return consistent data for all parts of the business. No more hunting, no more laborious code writing, the layer generates the SQL without the user seeing it. Best of all if there is a change to any of the underlying databases, then the change is made once in the layer and it will populate to all the reporting structure. The work comes from defining the business rules so they are consistent and acceptable across all business segments. After that work is done, report writing that took weeks, will take hours, maybe even minutes and everyone becomes a report writer, it will no longer be a specialized area. Future changes and improvements to the system can be implemented with less labour going forward, all because we invested the labour upfront. So each iteration is more productive and requires less labour to accomplish. So you spend less time abstaining to produce.

Sounds good and even with this example it still takes the costs of human resources (labor, knowledge, skills) and other resources like computers that you will have to look at to see if you are really saving more than what you are spending. How much time and money for resources will it take to make this analysis program of databases a reality? How much will it take to maintain it?

I wonder about companies keeping up with consumer preferences, it that the case or is it that companies market choices to the consumer that they want them to have? I’m sure that it used to be the case that consumer demand drove product choice, but I think it has shifted somewhat to you can choose only from what is available, and what’s available is what the company chooses to make. Like Marge said about Homer make-up shotgun to paraphrase “I don’t think women like to be shot in the face.” To which Homer replied “Women will like what I tell them to like.”

Many companies conduct surveys, and they research past successes to get an idea of what people want and what may most likely sell.

If a monopoly emerges efficiently without harming anyone, or breaching contracts, this can be a good thing since this is what most consumers are choosing to satisfy their preference in something and its success can allow it to afford to cooperate or merge with other businesses. An efficient monopoly unlike a political one is still bound by the laws of supply and demand, and even common law where there is no guarantee its success will last forever nor there is a rule where every company will have to make an efficient monopoly acquire them.

Yeah but monopolies have an incentive to stay on top, and if unregulated, a monopoly has no reason not to use their financial weight to squash new competition unfairly (e.g. setting prices so low, even to the point where the monopoly operates at a loss, that the competition is driven out of business). By controlling the market, they can also afford to screw over customers who may be dependent on their products via planned obsolescence, artificially high prices, etc. Yeah, they might choose not to do that, but why? For a publicly owned corporation, the CEO's responsibility is to the shareholders, which means profits first!

@Domokato

That's still no guarantee that if an efficient monopoly looks to squash their competition by setting prices too low or too high or operating at a loss, that they will have more success or no other competitors will emerge to challenge them. Remember, people's preferences are still involved where they can choose to boycott this "monopoly", take their money elsewhere or pool their money to start their own community friendly service. People still have the possible action to stop giving any company any of their money once they realize their products are horrible, and their prices are unfair despite the company being an exclusive provider. Even other investors can still find incentives like better pricing and better quality to challenge any company even if an existing one may hold the largest market share by far.

I only see such monopolies you mentioned killing any competition literally if they can use a central government to enforce such things as patents (they can set their license real high with this), eminent domain, and being excused from common law.