Economic Calculation under Natural Law - Resource Based Economy

[Ledur]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9FDIne7M9o‎

This was a conference in Berlin a couple of months ago.

The video is long, it starts with an introduction to RBE; later Peter Joseph tries to explain practical implementation of RBE (production/distribution/labour), how a RBE would work, etc... but then he gives an introduction on how the economic calculation problem could be contoured under his system.

Do you think that it's a calculation in kind approach? Any other worthy ideas about the economic aspects of RBE?

[BTW, RBE means Resource Based Economy, the system proposed by The Zeitgeist Movement and The Venus Project - there are other threads here that discuss mainly other aspects than economy]

[argeiphontes]

It's some kind of technological utopianism. Some of it is gibberish AFAI can tell. "Private property is necessary because of price." "Price is just a cultural consideration." Um, yeah, whatever.

I guess it shows that you can create your own job by combining a bunch of buzzwords together, though.



The Huffington Post (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Huffington_Post), The New York Times (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times), The Palm Beach Post (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Palm_Beach_Post), Globes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globes), TheMarker (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheMarker), and Reason magazine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason_magazine) have reported the critical reaction to various aspects of the Zeitgeist movement, including: (a) utopianism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopianism), (b) reduced work incentives (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_motivation) in their proposed economy, (c) practical difficulties in a transition to that economy, and (d) subscribing to 9/11 conspiracy theories (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_conspiracy_theories) in Zeitgeist: The Movie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeitgeist:_The_Movie). Peter Joseph responded to the criticism by saying that practical difficulties could be overcome and that Zeitgeist does not believe in utopia but advocates updating society's notions of economics and politics continuously, re-aligning them with new scientific and technical discoveries, while keeping workers motivated. According to Mr. Joseph there is no direct association between the conspiracy theories in the first Zeitgeist documentary and the movement.

An article in the Journal of Contemporary Religion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Contemporary_Religion) described the movement as an example of a "conspirituality," a synthesis of New Age (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Age) spirituality and conspiracy theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory), asserting that Zeitgeist: The Movie claims that "organised religion is about social control and that 9/11 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11) was an inside job."The movement said that the article paints an "incorrect, misleading, offensive and defaming picture of the movement," and that the conspiracy narratives in the first movie are unrelated to the movement.

In Tablet magazine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablet_magazine), journalist Michelle Goldberg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Goldberg) criticized Zeitgeist: The Movie as being "steeped in far-right, isolationist, and covertly anti-Semitic conspiracy theories," and called the Zeitgeist movement "the world's first Internet-based cult, with members who parrot the party line with cheerful, rote fidelity." Zeitgeist said the accusations were "erroneous, pejorative, derogatory, and intended to silence the movement's message," and that the movement does not blame international bankers, corporate leaders or politicians as individuals, but rather the global socioeconomic system that supports their values.

[Ledur]

Sorry argeinephontes, but I was talking about economic calculation, not the movement itself, I stated that earlier. This specific forum is about economics.

If you haven't watched it, there are some interesting technical formulae regarding the economic calculation under a Resource Based Economy, which is basically a calculation in kind economy... a lot of people here might be interested on that.

In fact, every socialist should be interested in a system that generates abundance, works around use-value (instead of exchange value), and tries to promote a free access moneyless economy.

Main points:

Scarcity Assessment: a scale from 1 to 100, where 50 is average scarcity

Value Measure: [f]unction of (Scarcity, Labour Complexity)

Macro Calculation: all products are [f]unctions of optimized (design, production, distribution, recycling) efficiencies.

Design Efficiency
- Strategically maximized [durability, adaptability, standarization of genre components]
- Strategically integrated recycling conduciveness
- Strategically conducive for labor automation

Production Efficiency
- High demand? Fixed automation process
- Low demand? Flexible automation process

Distribution Efficiency
- High demand? Mass Distribution
- Low demand? Direct Distribution

Recycling Efficiency
- Regenerative Protocol

[argeiphontes]

Right, and my point was that he's just a charlatan. He's living in a buzzword economy with a profound scarcity of anything relevant to say about economic calculation. ;)

There's no equation or calculation algorithm. He just presents a list of criteria that basically say "It's good to be efficient in these ways" but not how he's going to be calculating it. Because, you know, he doesn't want to get into that because it's complex and for engineers to figure out... :laugh: and maybe he can outsource it to you because "it's an excellent think-tank project" :laugh:

[ckaihatsu]

[A] Resource Based Economy, which is basically a calculation in kind economy... a lot of people here might be interested on that.

In fact, every socialist should be interested in a system that generates abundance, works around use-value (instead of exchange value), and tries to promote a free access moneyless economy.


I'm not opposed to any 'resource-based' approach, but I will note that they tend to *only* deal with the *logistical* side of things, and so are definitely 'technocratic' -- not really *political*.

Here's from a past critique of 'energy accounting':





[I'm] noting that much would be out of the hands of the people themselves. It [...] doesn't describe how the decision-making over basic needs would be handled, or for other kinds of production.

If decisions over production are taken out of the hands of laborers then the plan is effectively *substitutionist*, no matter how well designed and engineered it may be.

I'll also note that there's no procedure provided for the allocation of energy resources for mass *public works* projects, particularly those that may be more exploratory and controversial. There's no reason to think that a society's energy usage would be, or should be, a fixed thing, so the need for flexibility in ongoing assessments of it requires some kind of accountability to the public and decision-making *from* it.

[tuwix]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9FDIne7M9o‎

This was a conference in Berlin a couple of months ago.

The video is long, it starts with an introduction to RBE; later Peter Joseph tries to explain practical implementation of RBE (production/distribution/labour), how a RBE would work, etc... but then he gives an introduction on how the economic calculation problem could be contoured under his system.

Do you think that it's a calculation in kind approach? Any other worthy ideas about the economic aspects of RBE?

[BTW, RBE means Resource Based Economy, the system proposed by The Zeitgeist Movement and The Venus Project - there are other threads here that discuss mainly other aspects than economy]


I don't really think that anyone knows how will it really works. I can say that approach is very interesting and if central planning could ever work, it can work this or in similar fashion. But there are still many doubts. Will machines predict accurately a demand and solve the problems of it? Or will they ignore it and will we have another dictatorship and lack of goods as it was in state capitalism.

[ckaihatsu]

I don't really think that anyone knows how will it really works. I can say that approach is very interesting and if central planning could ever work, it can work this or in similar fashion. But there are still many doubts. Will machines predict accurately a demand and solve the problems of it? Or will they ignore it and will we have another dictatorship and lack of goods as it was in state capitalism.


We don't need to be *beholden* to the Soviet system of the past -- I think people tend to conceive 'central planning' as having to be an elitist bureaucratic, top-down method, or else we're stuck with capitalist markets, and there's no other way.

It's no wonder that, with this mindset, the next logical step in this thinking is that we should just hand everything over to computers to "solve" -- all-too-easily ignoring that computers, like any machinery, only do what they're *programmed* to do.

I'm reminded of similar subject matter from past threads, so here they are, f.y.i.:





[I]magine the difficulties [soviet planners] had to face to change and adapt a specific aspect of a Five-Year Plan with fragmented or delayed data, and without any possibility of virtually simulating the impact any adaptations might have in the plan as an all.





I'd like to take issue with this premise, just as I would take issue with *any* kind of top-down, pre-optimized, blueprint-type approach to the topic of mass productivity planning.

We shouldn't imagine the process as being like a giant Jenga (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenga) tower, where any changes or removal of the pieces within might cause the whole edifice to topple. This is precisely the problem with any market-socialist approach since it will depend on some kind of material-exchange ratios, or 'prices', which then creates a layer of abstraction that requires resolving -- per the faulty premise.

Once we relieve ourselves of the need for abstract 'pricing', we can instead keep the realms of liberated-labor and material-fulfillments *separate*, since communism is supposed to be 'direct distribution' and 'free access', anyway, by definition.

I think a post-capitalist political economy would be handling issues of materials-sourcing in a conscious, hands-on way, as a matter of daily political life -- computer technology is good for *tracking* items and *showing* the birds eye view of everything, but it would still fall on *human* decision-making to ultimately decide what-goes-where, and for what purposes.

Here's a model that may serve to illustrate the overall situation:


Multi-Tiered System of Productive and Consumptive Zones for a Post-Capitalist Political Economy

http://s6.postimage.org/ccfl07uy5/Multi_Tiered_System_of_Productive_and_Consumptiv.j pg (http://postimage.org/image/ccfl07uy5/)


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A hierarchy of priority would involve consumers continually having to make lists of millions of goods according to desirability, then be aggregated, and thus is not feasible.





Got to contend this one, Tim -- you're making it sound like this would be a logistical nightmare and just too technically demanding to be done.

I'll note that many people may typically reuse their grocery shopping lists from one week to the next, because not much may change on a week-to-week basis. So, likewise, if someone's list was in a text-file or spreadsheet, it would stay intact, ready to be sent along, until modified as a newly updated version.

We shouldn't hold consumers responsible for a hyper-extended grand *social planning*, which is what you're saying here with your "continually having to make lists of millions of goods". Consumers should only request what they actually *want*, on a regular shopping list, and have that be a standing order.

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