An Anarchist Revolution Or Nothing

Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2010 10:03 pm

I have to say FMJ your are the most interesting "market fundamentalist" I've had the pleasure of encountering. I intend to address more of your points later, when my brain is feeling less wired.

FullMentalJackpot wrote:

I understand. As I said under un-stimulated market conditions your wealth would be at greater risk. Under the current market paradigm your wealth is guaranteed by the FDIC and stimulated by monetary and fiscal policy making you somewhat a free-rider off the system, as we all are.

None of my investments are directly FDIC guaranteed, in fact, there's a big warning at the bottom of every page my financial adviser sends me...

Quote:

Not FDIC guaranteed, may loose value (paraphrased)

On a side note, I owned a GMAC bond that came to maturity just recently. There's a fairly good possibility had the government not done its "magic" that bond would have matured for much less then its total value, or that some other bonds I own might have defaulted. I did however loose a substantial amount in my mutual funds. Fortunately I was intelligent enough to see what was coming and did remove most of those investments prior to the biggest drops. At any rate, there was real loss, some of which was mitigated by my intervention.

The Learned Joined: Jan 11, 2008 Posts: 109

Thanks. Most market anarchists do not study public choice theory which is just the study of the economics of politics adn the incentives politicians face. In addition it attempts to set up a framework for explaining the dynamics of failure of centralized systems, so while most market anarchists can discuss why markets are good and why centralized decision making is likely to fail, their critiques of centralized institutional failure are typically not robust enough; this doesn’t allow the to address claims on the other side in regards to “efficient politics hypothesis” like “we can vote them out” or the magnitude of gains firms might obtain, or the economic incentives a voter faces studying healthcare policy for 5 hours a night to make an informed vote vs playing with his children or relaxing. However in fairness PCT is a postivisitc science and anarcho caps tend to view universal law applied to human action as problematic.

On FDIC , what I mean was that those with substantial wealth that keep loan their money to banks have their wealth guaranteed by the fed.

On bonds: This is exactly my point. The super rich want a stable market, but market stability socializes the losses of firms via quantitative easing ( printing money) or by disrupting the market via tax breaks for certain firms (tech bubble). I think that the rich are and always will be the primary beneficiaries of market intervention. They shape the political agenda and aggregate social will is diluted.

Also when you diversified out of the auto market you were sending a signal to the market that you had low confidence in the auto market. You were actually producing value based on what you knew in regards to teh auto market and what your fear of loss was. You are providing social value when you do this even if you lose or gain.

Posted: Sat Apr 10, 2010 9:09 pm

FMJ wrote:

Also when you diversified out of the auto market you were sending a signal to the market that you had low confidence in the auto market.

I never actually owned "auto market" stocks or bonds. At the time, I would not have been foolish enough to invest in such industry, especially the American industry. GMAC is the finance wing and mostly separate from GM, the parent company. When I purchased the GMAC bond, back in 2004 I believe, the finance industry was rolling well and seemingly quite stable.

Also, the bond matured, it was not sold. Had it been sold, I could have been sending "signaling" information to the industry, but against some strong trepidations, I held the bond to maturity and was basically rewarded for my gamble. Of course, my resistance to purchasing more corporate, finance industry bonds could be loosely viewed as "signaling". I still hold a BofA bond due to mature in a few years. It also lost a great deal of its purchase value during the period, but has now recovered nicely and could actually be sold for more then its maturity value.

Quote:

On FDIC , what I mean was that those with substantial wealth that keep loan their money to banks have their wealth guaranteed by the fed.

The FDIC, as far as I know, only insures standard saving, checking and accounts like certificate of deposit. Being, as you say no risk, they also offer very little in the way of reward. It's typical for these accounts to pay less then a percent, which is generally far less then inflation. That said, I seriously doubt many who hold "substantial wealth" would be invested in such instruments, I know my profile is minimally in such.

Posted: Sat Apr 10, 2010 9:17 pm

So much good stuff to respond to FMJ. Think I'll piecemeal it out for a while.

FMJ wrote:

No because under anarchy the social order emerges from the bottom up but under a form of state few individuals decide what the social order will be. Anarchy just means no rulers or no supermen.

Not sure about the "bottom up" ideology, but I'm mostly on board with the "no rulers" theme. Which leads to an interesting thread in this conversation. How do you feel about the idea of states and nationalism?

Quote:

My point was that demand is infinite taking into account diminishing marginal utility.

And a good point it is, although not sure about the "infinite" part. My point is that supply isn't infinite, in fact, given our current level of technological sophistication, it's quite finite. I'm a big fan of Al Bartlett. I roughly remember one of his calculations, which went something like this (It was a number of years ago when he made it, early 90s I think)... If the human species continued to use its oil reserves at a 5 percent increase per year (which was the rate at the time), even if the entire planet consisted of oil, we exhaust the supply in just over 500 years (that's a crude reconstruction of the argument, but it makes the point without being entirely accurate)

Whether we use human labor or machine labor, we'll still run into the same wall of resources/supply (unless we're smart enough to limit our demand and population). Perhaps the eventuality of a total machine labor society will be determined by which consumes less resources... human labor or machine labor. I've heard calculation that put machine labor much more efficient then animal labor( which we've mostly abandoned), I believe the same will hold true with machines as we improve their intelligence.

My point is that no amount of machine labor or human labor can increase the limited, basic resources available for our use, nor can any system of economics. This is why we'll eventually need to develop a more sophisticated social structure, other then the rather simplistic, if elegant, supply and demand market paradigm in current use.

The Learned Joined: Jan 11, 2008 Posts: 109

MockingGods wrote:

So much good stuff to respond to FMJ. Think I'll piecemeal it out for a while.

FMJ wrote:

No because under anarchy the social order emerges from the bottom up but under a form of state few individuals decide what the social order will be. Anarchy just means no rulers or no supermen.

Not sure about the "bottom up" ideology, but I'm mostly on board with the "no rulers" theme. Which leads to an interesting thread in this conversation. How do you feel about the idea of states and nationalism?

Quote:

My point was that demand is infinite taking into account diminishing marginal utility.

And a good point it is, although not sure about the "infinite" part. My point is that supply isn't infinite, in fact, given our current level of technological sophistication, it's quite finite. I'm a big fan of Al Bartlett. I roughly remember one of his calculations, which went something like this (It was a number of years ago when he made it, early 90s I think)... If the human species continued to use its oil reserves at a 5 percent increase per year (which was the rate at the time), even if the entire planet consisted of oil, we exhaust the supply in just over 500 years (that's a crude reconstruction of the argument, but it makes the point without being entirely accurate)

Whether we use human labor or machine labor, we'll still run into the same wall of resources/supply (unless we're smart enough to limit our demand and population). Perhaps the eventuality of a total machine labor society will be determined by which consumes less resources... human labor or machine labor. I've heard calculation that put machine labor much more efficient then animal labor( which we've mostly abandoned), I believe the same will hold true with machines as we improve their intelligence.

My point is that no amount of machine labor or human labor can increase the limited, basic resources available for our use, nor can any system of economics. This is why we'll eventually need to develop a more sophisticated social structure, other then the rather simplistic, if elegant, supply and demand market paradigm in current use.

One of the fundamental epistomological foundations of market anarchism or just general support for capitalism is that knowledge is not centralized. This goes back to the idea of the Nietzschean superman, or the Hegelian chosen ruler. All leaders are essentially just people and do not necessarily possess more socially valuable information then average citizens. The SEC failure is an example of why having one regulatory instrument is a bad idea. On multiple occasions private individuals approached the SEC and warned them about Madoff. Because of the structure of our regulatory framework it does not have access to dispersed knowledge that private individuals have, and bcs of the coercive nature of the state private regulators will not be able to compete easily with public ones as the public regulators have infinite access to revenue. This prevents those individuals who warned the SEC from warning other people in society about exposure to madoff.

On the issue of finite resources, my initial point was to deflate the Marxian argument that labor saving devices are evil.
As far as finite resources are concerned i agree, but then i can't predict reliably speculate on what future advances will occur and i don't think humans have a good track record of doing this so talking about finitude of resources doesn't grant those that might depress the alarmism by appealing to future advances.

Also remember, we have grown more dependent on oil, not because of our decision making but because of the decision making of elites. Bush and his invasion in iraq destabilizes regional extracting and consumes tremendous amounts of oil, Eisenhower's Interstate highway program has altered the entire pattern of the structure of society and how we transport ourselves and how far we live from work or entertainment. Finally there are tremendous subsidies to both oil and auto industry which translate to lower perceived costs to us for using these products. We can only act within the framework the states allow us to. As they take our stuff we have reduced ability to exit from their plans and we cannot build alternative transportation networks bcs we are already financing one with our limited resources.

In regards i mean that FDIC promises to divorce risk. I can hold cash in my house but there is a risk of theft so i put it in a bank but there is a risk if the bank is robbed then i'm out my cash. The FDIC negates this threat so you have no risk whatsoever so a rational person would put their money in a bank, however the bank then lends it out and via fractional reserve system expands the wealth you have 9x. This stimulates asset bubbles and malinvestment. In the end we get what we perceive to be no risk but it eventually comes at a cost in such a convoluted and extended fashion that it's difficult to trace the cause, the attempt to get something for free ( no risk) , to the outcome, market signal amplification that deviates from the fundamentals.

States and nationalism seem to me to be an archaic feature of humanity, i don't approve of either.

Posted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 11:47 pm

FMJ wrote:

One of the fundamental epistomological foundations of market anarchism or just general support for capitalism is that knowledge is not centralized.

I agree that knowledge should be decentralized, in fact I support the idea. However, it's my impression that market-based industries tend to protect their knowledge, holding it as "trade secrets" to improve profits. How can we have capitalism without this real side effect?

Quote:

All leaders are essentially just people and do not necessarily possess more socially valuable information then average citizens.

Gene Brewer wrote:

Don't blame the politicians for your problems. They are merely a reflection of yourselves.

Quote:

On the issue of finite resources, my initial point was to deflate the Marxian argument that labor saving devices are evil.

I did not know that; thanks for pointing it out. There seems to be at least one Marxian argument I'd not be in favor of and probably many others too.

Quote:

States and nationalism seem to me to be an archaic feature of humanity, i don't approve of either.

Don't think I could've said that better myself Cool

Posted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 11:55 pm

FMJ wrote:

That would mean destroying hard assets that have value to society?

I can imagine very few situations where I would find for the destruction of "hard assets" as a "good" thing. Nuclear and biological weapons perhaps.

Posted: Wed Apr 14, 2010 1:27 pm

FMJ,

Just catching up a bit here. Pardon me.
I have to say, that I really am not as well read on this subject as you or MG are. I hope that you will condescend to answer a neophyte's questions and tolerate my naïve assumptions.

The last stuff I have read on this type of governing is Rousseau, and goodness help this fellow, because he is getting the carp beaten out of him in this thread! And I am quite enjoying it!

FMJ wrote:

States and nationalism seem to me to be an archaic feature of humanity, i don't approve of either.

I get from this thread that you hold an anarchy (meaning some nature of de-centralized economy) is a better system than capitalism. Can you elaborate on what this "country" (if you will) might look like? Right now I am a bit confused as to what your position is and what you are offering us.

FMJ wrote:

This goes back to the idea of the Nietzschean superman, or the Hegelian chosen ruler. All leaders are essentially just people and do not necessarily possess more socially valuable information then average citizens. The SEC failure is an example of why having one regulatory instrument is a bad idea. On multiple occasions private individuals approached the SEC and warned them about Madoff.

In the recent downturn of the capitalist economy, my country fared quite well under its very stringent market regulations. Is it possible that the SEC was merely a broken or corrupt bureaucracy when you compare it to the Canadian regulatory system (one that seems to have worked).

MG wrote:

My point is that no amount of machine labor or human labor can increase the limited, basic resources available for our use, nor can any system of economics. This is why we'll eventually need to develop a more sophisticated social structure, other then the rather simplistic, if elegant, supply and demand market paradigm in current use.

We all seem to agree on this. The question left in my mind is that when you mention the "future advances" (which we do have a poor track record in pursuing) does the de-centralized economy develop a better system of pursuing this nature of advance, or does it rely on a neo-luddite philosophy and smash the knitting frames?

The Learned Joined: Jan 11, 2008 Posts: 109

MockingGods wrote:

I agree that knowledge should be decentralized, in fact I support the idea. However, it's my impression that market-based industries tend to protect their knowledge, holding it as "trade secrets" to improve profits. How can we have capitalism without this real side effect?

My essential point with regards to decentralization vs centralization can be summed up in Hayeks’ short article “The Use of Knowledge in Society” (45). Hayek states “The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess.”

Socialism or regulated capitalism has to start from the assumption that there are special people who possess knowledge nobody else does. These social ordering principles must operate on the premise that individuals who possess socially valuable are only those that are elected or those who are appointed.
Consider Cliff Gulls(or some cliff dwelling bird I can’t remember): they roost on cliffs and when the sun comes out they disperse in random directions and begin hunting for fish. Could we enhance their fishing if one of them decided where each would hunt? No because no one gull knows where the fish are until one happens to randomly find fish. When one does find the fish he/she flies back to the nest to eat and we see the emergent decentralized knowledge problem clearly. Other fish see the gull returning with food, they also observe its’ direction and where it likely came from. Those gulls know have information they didn’t have before that’s only available because fo the random exploration pattern that would not occur if all gulls flew off in the same direction.

Now these knowledgeable gulls have a basic vector to follow and they all fly off in this direction at some magnitude. Returning gulls with no food in the vicinity might see this rather robust flight formation and it would suggest fidelity about where food is. It is a signal as in a market. This signal gets enhanced as another searching gull that followed the initial satisfied gull’s vector now finds food.

It is, however, impossible to believe that the one gull that found food on this day will be the first to find it on the next and on all succeeding days. Therefore all the other gulls should follow what that gull does from now own. It’s only allowing each gull to attempt random patterns of searching with the expectation of profit ( food or evolutionary fitness) that permits this sort of system of information exchange to flow freely. These are lessons that nature has learned with countless deaths and errors and experimentation and yet we ignore it and anoint one gull to follow, and that one gull then appoints everybody who will then tell us why we should follow him. I don’t see a reasonable argument as to why this methodology should be practiced. It would make more sense if our leaders had the divine right of kings and guided us under their celestial council with god or the vicar of Christ had inspirational leadership from the heavens. That at least makes some sense because there is something omnipotent guiding policy or legal matters. However since our governments largely make decisions in a secular manner ( in many cases) I don’t understand why more skepticism isn’t employed about the capabilities of the elites?

MockingGods wrote:

I agree that knowledge should be decentralized, in fact I support the idea. However, it's my impression that market-based industries tend to protect their knowledge, holding it as "trade secrets" to improve profits. How can we have capitalism without this real side effect?

If your concern is the way firms attempt to extract additional rents beyond the costs of research or production by creating barriers to entry I agree with you, but remember IP law is essentially a state creation, it is not an emergent phenomenon but predicated on the whims of elites for the most part.
However your concern might be that profit seeking individuals may incur additional costs to secure production or trade secrets INSIDE of the market giving them an advantage. They might do this by securing the formula of their soda in a vault that only a few have access to, hiring additional labor or employing additional capital to make the production process seem like it must incorporate additional components to make it harder to discover it, or they might opt to not vertically integrate and depend on a multitude of suppliers so copiers have a harder time discovering how to replicate their production process.

If the 2nd event is of concern to you I would argue that you needn’t ever be concerned about this at all because essentially your lamentation is that these people will not work for free or will work for some discounted return. People will incur the costs of producing socially valuable stuff when they have an expectation of profit, when expectation of benefits is tenable then there is no reason to expect people to generate value at high cost to them for the benefit of others. If you just decided to wait for people to invent stuff and then you used the state to take it I would submit that people would simply stop producing so you would still essentially be in the same position as before except that these things that you wish to take would not be available to anybody.

DigitalAtheist wrote:

FMJ,

Just catching up a bit here. Pardon me.
I have to say, that I really am not as well read on this subject as you or MG are. I hope that you will condescend to answer a neophyte's questions and tolerate my naïve assumptions.

The last stuff I have read on this type of governing is Rousseau, and goodness help this fellow, because he is getting the carp beaten out of him in this thread! And I am quite enjoying it!

Did I miss the mention of Rousseau? Or did I discuss him already ? I’ll have to check.

DigitalAtheist wrote:

I get from this thread that you hold an anarchy (meaning some nature of de-centralized economy) is a better system than capitalism. Can you elaborate on what this "country" (if you will) might look like? Right now I am a bit confused as to what your position is and what you are offering us.

I can’t elaborate on what society would look like because society would evolve like any other complex system of language, or culture or biome. These things just cannot be intelligently designed. Society now is run by elites and they accrue tremendous benefits, this does not please me.

DigitalAtheist wrote:

FMJ wrote:

This goes back to the idea of the Nietzschean superman, or the Hegelian chosen ruler. All leaders are essentially just people and do not necessarily possess more socially valuable information then average citizens. The SEC failure is an example of why having one regulatory instrument is a bad idea. On multiple occasions private individuals approached the SEC and warned them about Madoff.

In the recent downturn of the capitalist economy, my country fared quite well under its very stringent market regulations. Is it possible that the SEC was merely a broken or corrupt bureaucracy when you compare it to the Canadian regulatory system (one that seems to have worked).

Did your country have exposure to toxic assets? Did it have a housing bubble as substantial as ours? Because there are a multitude of variables it’s difficult to say that without our regulatory institution we would be worse off. Perhaps one could argue your regulators made it worse and you would have had more growth. Because we cannot see the alternative reality we can only grasp at proximal notions of what helped and what didn’t when an economy is the sum total of a multitude of integrated yet separate components that all have recursive effects in a dynamic system.

What we can know is something rather simple; knowledge isn’t centralized. My point about SEC should illustrate the problem with concentrating knowledge. If you want something accomplished or society demands something from regulation to burgers is it a good idea to have a few people doing this? I don’t think this argument can be made for any institution because knowledge itself is not centralized. Knowledge is dispersed. Therefore if we try to create institutions that do something and we want it done well but we limit the number of people that can alter the behavior of the institutional framework or innovate new institutional paradigms then we limit the amount of information that that institutional model has access to. Often very mundane and even stupid people will have access to very important information. In addition information may exist in a fragmentary form that no single person has access to.

However for the sake of argument let’s say there are superhuman people in society that know exactly how to regulate and exactly what to do to rule us. How do you extract them out of the population and put them in power?

This is not an issue of corruption though that’s an argument for another day as I believe that’s another structural problem with democratic institutions as they default to a more corruptible state given the moral hazard.

DigitalAtheist wrote:

We all seem to agree on this. The question left in my mind is that when you mention the "future advances" (which we do have a poor track record in pursuing) does the de-centralized economy develop a better system of pursuing this nature of advance, or does it rely on a neo-luddite philosophy and smash the knitting

Since knowledge itself is not centralized it should follow the decentralized economy does a better job. Some may point to moon landings or the internet but what would have been invented had the resources, extracted from the private sector to finance these projects, from the private sector been maintained. I can know for certain that bureaucracies don’t have the same means of establishing efficiency because there is no pricing mechanism and they are not subject to the same selective forces of a market where if they don’t profit they are purged.

The Learned Joined: Jan 11, 2008 Posts: 109

MockingGods wrote:

Gene Brewer wrote:
Don't blame the politicians for your problems. They are merely a reflection of yourselves.

While i partially agree with this in the sense that politicians are human's not gods, where i disagree is that the incentive structures and the sociological forces that act on their decision making process are very differnt then the average citizen.

In this sense i will say epistemologically they are just like us but morally they are more subject to degradation due to the immense gains they can net from engaging in corruption.

I'm not sure who Brewer is but i prefer Lord Acton
"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely "

Or how about Jeffrey Friedman

"What state theorists have not, to my knowledge, recognized is that the most important source of “state autonomy” may not be tax revenues or military forces, but the public’s ignorance of the great majority of the things that states do. –Jeff Friedman."

The Learned Joined: Jan 11, 2008 Posts: 109

On the issue of labor saving devices i believe the marxist would actually say that labor saving devices allow the capitalist to extract additional labor out of the worker while not necessarily increasing his wages. So if you had a production line prior to some automation input and after the insertion of that input you could produce 40 x the output the marxist , i think , would argue you should increase their wages 40x.

All these criticisms of technology are predicated on the notion of labour theory of value, whereby labor just has intrinsic value. I've not studied alot of this bcs i just find the basic tenets of LTV irrelevant with from a cursory glance as many things labor produces may paradoxically not be valued at all. There are concepts like labour power, or wasted labour power and other things that attempt to save LTV if not modify it to permit subjectivism ( i like A but you don't like A), so i presume prices can adjust under LTV.

Anyway this notion of Labor saving devices is also popular with Luddites or neo-Luddites though i'm not sure you'll find many online as they just generally hate technology.

Posted: Wed Apr 14, 2010 9:17 pm

FMJ wrote:

I'm not sure who Brewer is but i prefer Lord Acton

Gene Brewer is the science fiction writer of K-PAX.

DA wrote:

I have to say, that I really am not as well read on this subject as you or MG are.

I'm quite certain FMJ is the only person in this conversation that is well read on economic theory... I certainly am not. I do find the subject interesting, but not enough to drive me to read other supposed "experts".

Posted: Wed Apr 14, 2010 9:30 pm

FMJ wrote:

If your concern is the way firms attempt to extract additional rents beyond the costs of research or production by creating barriers to entry I agree with you, but remember IP law is essentially a state creation, it is not an emergent phenomenon but predicated on the whims of elites for the most part.

While this may be true, remove state meddling and the situation would probably remain the same or even worsen. The practice seems to be intrinsic to a reciprocal, market-based economic system.

Quote:

However your concern might be that profit seeking individuals may incur additional costs to secure production or trade secrets INSIDE of the market giving them an advantage. They might do this by securing the formula of their soda in a vault that only a few have access to, hiring additional labor or employing additional capital to make the production process seem like it must incorporate additional components to make it harder to discover it, or they might opt to not vertically integrate and depend on a multitude of suppliers so copiers have a harder time discovering how to replicate their production process.

If the 2nd event is of concern to you I would argue that you needn’t ever be concerned about this at all because essentially your lamentation is that these people will not work for free or will work for some discounted return. People will incur the costs of producing socially valuable stuff when they have an expectation of profit, when expectation of benefits is tenable then there is no reason to expect people to generate value at high cost to them for the benefit of others. If you just decided to wait for people to invent stuff and then you used the state to take it I would submit that people would simply stop producing so you would still essentially be in the same position as before except that these things that you wish to take would not be available to anybody.

My only concern is the practice, not the economic side-effects. I'm of the opinion that it slows, or in some cases, inhibits discoveries that could radically change our world for the better. I wonder for instance, if all medical research was shared openly, how much further along the science would be. Or energy research. Things that really matter, not a soft drink formula per se.

The Learned Joined: Jan 11, 2008 Posts: 109

MockingGods wrote:

FMJ wrote:

If your concern is the way firms attempt to extract additional rents beyond the costs of research or production by creating barriers to entry I agree with you, but remember IP law is essentially a state creation, it is not an emergent phenomenon but predicated on the whims of elites for the most part.

While this may be true, remove state meddling and the situation would probably remain the same or even worsen. The practice seems to be intrinsic to a reciprocal, market-based economic system.

I don't see how it could be the same because you would reduce the possibility for individuals to obtain monopoly privilege. IP is essentially something we all pay for, its' socialized, but it benefits the few. These inventors patents often extend perversely beyond the costs they incur. Because of its' socialist nature its' very difficult for us to accurately measure the benefits of somebody holding a patent for extended periods. We pay for it no doubt via taxation but can you assess the dollar per dollar value you get from it ?

There is a podcast that makes this point from Russ Roberts.

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/05/boldrin_on_inte.html

This is contra-randian notion. Most Randians or objectivists think intellectual property is intrinsic and should be protected forever, that means somebody and their descendants should be able to sit on a patent forever.

me wrote:

However your concern might be that profit seeking individuals may incur additional costs to secure production or trade secrets INSIDE of the market giving them an advantage. They might do this by securing the formula of their soda in a vault that only a few have access to, hiring additional labor or employing additional capital to make the production process seem like it must incorporate additional components to make it harder to discover it, or they might opt to not vertically integrate and depend on a multitude of suppliers so copiers have a harder time discovering how to replicate their production process.

If the 2nd event is of concern to you I would argue that you needn’t ever be concerned about this at all because essentially your lamentation is that these people will not work for free or will work for some discounted return. People will incur the costs of producing socially valuable stuff when they have an expectation of profit, when expectation of benefits is tenable then there is no reason to expect people to generate value at high cost to them for the benefit of others. If you just decided to wait for people to invent stuff and then you used the state to take it I would submit that people would simply stop producing so you would still essentially be in the same position as before except that these things that you wish to take would not be available to anybody.

MockingGods wrote:

My only concern is the practice, not the economic side-effects. I'm of the opinion that it slows, or in some cases, inhibits discoveries that could radically change our world for the better. I wonder for instance, if all medical research was shared openly, how much further along the science would be. Or energy research. Things that really matter, not a soft drink formula per se.

But my argument is that if you removed the possibility to profit from these efforts you simply would not see the innovations. So the side effects is actually inhibition of discovery bcs it is to costly to somebody to do the research as the researcher no longer becomes the primary beneficiary of the research but other people do. If we want research done that really matters we should incentivize people to do it and reward them when they do. The expectation to profit is a signal that we want more of this or that.

The question is what is more wastefull, having multiple firms conducting identical research or nationalizing research and all the perversities and enclosed market operations that entail from that. Remember just because your nationalized research doesn't mean firms dont' profit off it. They do, they must be paid for their services. We can't insulate ourselves from the profit motive.

The Learned Joined: Jan 11, 2008 Posts: 109

What i forgot to mention in regards to IP is that individuals who obtain benefits from their stuff, ideas, and property should have to pay for the cost of protecting these things. The system , as it exists, allows people to profit from stuff they do, however the protection of their ability to continue to profit is socialized to 3rd parties who may also benefit or may not. But to what degree do they benefit ? we can't know this until this sort of analysis is monetized, until then, it's kleptocratic asymmetry.

The egalitarian principles of enlightenment should require us to re-evaluate monopoly privilege and socialism.


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