Preventing the Emergence of Crypto-Currencies Before Post-Scarcity

[Skyhilist]

Ok so for arguments sake, lets imagine a revolution has happened. There will be some items that it will take some time to make non-scarce. An example would be items that we have the raw materials to make to meet peoples demands, but not enough machines/factories processing these materials to produce enough to meet peoples demands. This item will remain "scarce" until more machines/factories are built so that the output of this item can be large enough to meet demand.

In the mean time, there will be scarce items, even if a revolution prevails. For non-scarce items we needn't worry about who gets what. But for scarce items during this time period, there must obviously be some type of rationing system. General plans for rationing scarce resources tend to fall into the following camps:

A) Every worker (and non-workers who physically can't work at all for whatever reason) receives a certain number of "points" for working to their abilities. Points can't be transferred person to person. Scarce items would "cost" a certain number of points based on how scarce they were, and their ecological cost. This enables people to choose which scarce items they want most in times where they may not be able to have everything that they want.

B) There are "lines" or "waiting lists" to receive scarce items. One version of this is that signing up for these lines is on a first-come first-serve basis. Another is that you also get a certain number of "points", and can use these points to get in certain positions in a line to receive a scarce resource. For example, you can be in the top 1% of the line to receive item x for 1000 "points" or the 50% mark in the line for 100 "points". Again these points would be non-transferable.

C) Labor credits. You get credits based on how much work you contribute, and use these problems to buy scarce items. This is often seen as problematic because it violates "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need". In other words, the people that were born most able-bodied or fit to complete their jobs would earn more than people less fit for their jobs, even if the people less fit for these jobs were born or raised that way and it wasn't their fault. This, many in radical politics would say, could recreate inequality.

D) Market socialism in transition to post-scarcity. Non-scarce items are (hopefully) still free, but all other items are sold by the worker-collectives that produce them. Critiques of this are similar to those in category C) and also include the fact that markets might end up maintaining artificial scarcity, making them pointless as a transition phase towards post-scarcity.

Upon first glance, options A) and B) seem the best by far in accordance with communist principles. However, perhaps there is a hidden problem. In these approaches, everything possible is done to avoid markets - and rightfully so. However, this ultimately means there must also be safeguards to ensure that black markets don't develop.

Some might say, "approaches A) and B) are fundamentally wired so that there would be no incentive for a black market". I'm not entirely sure that this is correct though. Suppose we've got the vestiges of reactionary ideology still lurking within many members of this post-revolutionary society (as we most certainly will). This causes people to want more than what they can reasonably have prior to the achievement of post-scarcity, while simultaneously maintaining equality. A handful of people might say, "I'm not happy with what I've got, I want another boat and another flatscreen, I don't care if I've depleted all my points." These people would likely be a minority in any post-revolutionary society with widespread class consciousness - or at leas they'd start that way. Suppose the minority of people decides to create a cryptocurrency - something along the lines of bitcoin or dogecoin, or whatever. They could also make use of anonymous browsers like Tor. Then, they could set up markets where people could buy in excess of what would be possible to maintain relative equality. People with special skills or who were especially good at manipulating could use those skills to attain this cryptocurrency and then use this cryptocurrency to simply buy the things that it had been decided they couldn't have. This is not unrealistic - in fact we see this today (that is, people simply buying things they're told they can't have) with underground markets like Silk Road 2.0, Agora, and Pandora, all of which enable people to buy forbidden goods. As I mentioned earlier, a society that went with options A) or B) for rationing scarce resources would need some mechanism to defend against the development of these markets. Personally, I still feel that a non-market format for distributing scarce goods is far superior to one involving markets and/or labor credits. However, I could certainly see how this could become a problem in some instances. If even the U.S. government has been unable to stop this due to the anonymity of web browsers like Tor, how could we possibly stop this in a post-revolutionary society where rationing of scarce goods was done without markets?

[tuwix]

All your plans miss the obvious solutions: booking. You don't have to posses an airplane to fly. So you don't have to posses anything scarce to use it. You could book using it, as you book a flight or hotel room.

Besides all points labor credits are just another form of money.

[Skyhilist]

Good point, I wasn't considering that things could just be used by numerous people. This seems plausible for a lot of things, like planes obviously as you mentioned. Suppose there are more people who want to go on a flight though than there are seats on that flight. Or suppose we're talking about an item that you'd never just use temporarily and then share, like say a tattoo or a new house that was bigger than your old one. It seems like at some point rationing would. Still be necessary, however I agree that the amount of reliance on a "points" system could be significantly decreased by just having people book periods of time to use a resource and/or using a resource communally.

[tuwix]

^^"According to needs" but not according to wants. One should meet requirements for bigger house. Tattoos are not to be services in scarcity. And yes, there are sometimes not enough seats in plane. But booking solve this problem. Who is first, s/he has a seat. There are millions wanting to live in white beaches of Seychelles? Then it's needed to exchange houses in hotels and book place for temporary living there.

If the basic needs are met, the scarce things can be solved by booking.

[Skyhilist]

^^"According to needs" but not according to wants. One should meet requirements for bigger house. Tattoos are not to be services in scarcity.

Ok the tattoos were just an example of something that can't be shared, it could really be any non-shareable item - certainly some of them will be scarce. A better example might be if I want, say, diamond earrings or a golden ring, or some other highly personal possession or accessory. Idk maybe these are bad examples, but regardless it seems like the would be at least a few items that would be both scarce and not really shareable.


There are millions wanting to live in white beaches of Seychelles? Then it's needed to exchange houses in hotels and book place for temporary living there.


What if it's not some big house in the Seychelles, what if I just want to move into a roomier house in my neighborhood? Suppose I'm having kids and my living quarters are no longer sufficient, but I live in an area with few vacant houses and many people who would like to fill them. Simply "booking" a bigger house for a few weeks is no solution to that problem. This concept of "booking" works for many things, but certainly not everything. And when it's not applicable, you need some other form of rationing scarce resources - the only way to do this it seems without having markets is to create some mechanism causing people to prioritize what they want and thereby lowering demand for an item until it's as low or lower than the supply of that item.

[tuwix]

^^In the case of bigger house, there is needed to fulfill requirements. As well, as to get Food Stamps. You have many children, then you met requirements. That's all. Simple process that can be done by machines.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I think most of these problems could be solved using first-come-first-serve distribution for smaller and easily-perishable objects (if there is a shortage of feijoas, your local distribution centre will receive, say, 10 feijoas, and if someone takes them all before you do, well, tough luck) and limited (so you can't get 10 monitors per month), weighted (so that cancer patient will get morphine before you do) waiting lists for other scarce objects and services.

Market "solutions" presuppose that there exist autonomous firms that can sell and buy, which means society is far from socialism.

I wouldn't worry about "black market currencies" too much. Seriously, even assuming I really want a second HDTV, what are my options? I can put my name down on a waiting list and wait, or I can pay some fictional money that I got God knows how to some other idiot who will then presumably not screw me over even though he has no problem screwing over the rest of society by not playing according to the rules. And then I just have to hope the entire process will take less time than it would have taken me to get an HDTV by the usual means.

Also, discouraging this sort of stupidity would be the easiest thing ever. If you're detected someone pushes a special "fedora-wearer alarm" and your name mysteriously ends up at the very bottom of every list ever.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

If there is an excessive demand on a particular item to the extent that it becomes scarcely available, what's to stop those on a waiting list from organizing their own production of that item? Assuming the scarcity isn't the result of environmental constraints, people will have the capacity to resolve these issues on their own without having to rely on an unaccountable black market.

[ckaihatsu]

If there is an excessive demand on a particular item to the extent that it becomes scarcely available, what's to stop those on a waiting list from organizing their own production of that item? Assuming the scarcity isn't the result of environmental constraints, people will have the capacity to resolve these issues on their own without having to rely on an unaccountable black market.


Yup, agreed -- the idea of 'scarcity' tends to right-away cause anxiety, but on further reflection we may realize that time and resources will continue to exist into the future, and so shortfalls can be turned around by increasing production:





The rule-of-thumb for a post-capitalist mode of common production would be to 'increase capacity' -- for *any* given example, we'd have to ask if existing material conditions are being *unduly* constrained in any way.

For this example of yours, I'd have to ask if the commune is really that isolated and cut-off from the larger world population, and if there wouldn't be some kind of social ties, or outreach, to a greater society of material resources -- wouldn't a commune exposed to harsh winters have access to *electricity*, and other fuels, as for heating -- ? And, if not, wouldn't they be actively looking farther afield to *make that happen* -- ?





A) Every worker (and non-workers who physically can't work at all for whatever reason) receives a certain number of "points" for working to their abilities. Points can't be transferred person to person. Scarce items would "cost" a certain number of points based on how scarce they were, and their ecological cost. This enables people to choose which scarce items they want most in times where they may not be able to have everything that they want.


I *object* to any arbitrary 'points'-type approach because the actual *criteria* are never spelled-out for this kind of formulation, and I'd think that the determination of the 'points' system could easily precipitate an endless bitter politics.





B) There are "lines" or "waiting lists" to receive scarce items. One version of this is that signing up for these lines is on a first-come first-serve basis. Another is that you also get a certain number of "points", and can use these points to get in certain positions in a line to receive a scarce resource. For example, you can be in the top 1% of the line to receive item x for 1000 "points" or the 50% mark in the line for 100 "points". Again these points would be non-transferable.


Same objection -- note the vagueness of the criteria involved here.

The 'waiting list' conception, though, is pretty much the same as the 'timesharing' approach that's been discussed, which I have no problem with.





I think the quick, administrative answer might be basically 'first come, first served' -- even if it has to measured to a microsecond-point accuracy. One possible option might be a calendar-year timesharing, if the requesters are open to that.





C) Labor credits. You get credits based on how much work you contribute, and use these problems to buy scarce items. This is often seen as problematic because it violates "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need". In other words, the people that were born most able-bodied or fit to complete their jobs would earn more than people less fit for their jobs, even if the people less fit for these jobs were born or raised that way and it wasn't their fault. This, many in radical politics would say, could recreate inequality.


Agreed that this is too problematic, since this is basically the same as the 'points' approach above.

For the record, though, I'll note that I have a certain labor-credits approach that's *different* -- it's at my blog entry:





A post-capitalist political economy using labor credits

http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?bt=14673





D) Market socialism in transition to post-scarcity. Non-scarce items are (hopefully) still free, but all other items are sold by the worker-collectives that produce them. Critiques of this are similar to those in category C) and also include the fact that markets might end up maintaining artificial scarcity, making them pointless as a transition phase towards post-scarcity.


Yup. This political ethos would just encourage a village mentality, *everywhere*.





Upon first glance, options A) and B) seem the best by far in accordance with communist principles.




However, perhaps there is a hidden problem. In these approaches, everything possible is done to avoid markets - and rightfully so. However, this ultimately means there must also be safeguards to ensure that black markets don't develop.


Agreed, for the following reason:





My framework [...] addresses the *outer reaches* of what a strictly moneyless communistic 'gift economy' could conceivably cover. Some on the revolutionary left have suggested that perhaps a *remnant* of the former markets could exist within a post-capitalist social order, to cover luxury / specialty production, since such might be *unaddressed* by the more mass-oriented mainstream gift economy.




However, a regular market-based approach to luxury / specialty production could very well be more cumbersome than it's worth -- it would be tolerating a kind of exchange-values-based 'black market' within an otherwise free-access social paradigm.

My 'labor credits' is meant to acknowledge a post-capitalist liberated-labor on its own terms, without resorting to backsliding to any system of exchange values.





Some might say, "approaches A) and B) are fundamentally wired so that there would be no incentive for a black market". I'm not entirely sure that this is correct though. Suppose we've got the vestiges of reactionary ideology still lurking within many members of this post-revolutionary society (as we most certainly will). This causes people to want more than what they can reasonably have prior to the achievement of post-scarcity, while simultaneously maintaining equality.


Yup -- well put.





A handful of people might say, "I'm not happy with what I've got, I want another boat and another flatscreen, I don't care if I've depleted all my points." These people would likely be a minority in any post-revolutionary society with widespread class consciousness - or at leas they'd start that way. Suppose the minority of people decides to create a cryptocurrency - something along the lines of bitcoin or dogecoin, or whatever. They could also make use of anonymous browsers like Tor. Then, they could set up markets where people could buy in excess of what would be possible to maintain relative equality.


Yup.





People with special skills or who were especially good at manipulating could use those skills to attain this cryptocurrency and then use this cryptocurrency to simply buy the things that it had been decided they couldn't have. This is not unrealistic - in fact we see this today (that is, people simply buying things they're told they can't have) with underground markets like Silk Road 2.0, Agora, and Pandora, all of which enable people to buy forbidden goods. As I mentioned earlier, a society that went with options A) or B) for rationing scarce resources would need some mechanism to defend against the development of these markets. Personally, I still feel that a non-market format for distributing scarce goods is far superior to one involving markets and/or labor credits. However, I could certainly see how this could become a problem in some instances. If even the U.S. government has been unable to stop this due to the anonymity of web browsers like Tor, how could we possibly stop this in a post-revolutionary society where rationing of scarce goods was done without markets?


Correct -- it's always going to be a valid concern, because even a *syndicalist*-type of social arrangement (limited-area collectivist control) would be *backsliding*, compared to a *whole-society* collectivist political economy.





All your plans miss the obvious solutions: booking. You don't have to posses an airplane to fly. So you don't have to posses anything scarce to use it. You could book using it, as you book a flight or hotel room.


Agreed. (Also called 'timesharing'.)





Besides all points labor credits are just another form of money.


Yup, agreed -- the 'labor credits' described by Skyhilist are more-correctly termed 'labor vouchers', and my critique of that is here:





Labor vouchers imply a political economy that *consciously* determines valuations, but there's nothing to guarantee that such oversight -- regardless of its composition -- would properly take material realities into account. Such a system would be open to the systemic problems of groupthink and elitism.




http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?bt=14673


Pies Must Line Up

http://s6.postimg.org/erqcsdyb1/140415_2_Pies_Must_Line_Up_xcf.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/erqcsdyb1/)





Good point, I wasn't considering that things could just be used by numerous people. This seems plausible for a lot of things, like planes obviously as you mentioned. Suppose there are more people who want to go on a flight though than there are seats on that flight. Or suppose we're talking about an item that you'd never just use temporarily and then share, like say a tattoo or a new house that was bigger than your old one. It seems like at some point rationing would. Still be necessary, however I agree that the amount of reliance on a "points" system could be significantly decreased by just having people book periods of time to use a resource and/or using a resource communally.





I think most of these problems could be solved using first-come-first-serve distribution for smaller and easily-perishable objects (if there is a shortage of feijoas, your local distribution centre will receive, say, 10 feijoas, and if someone takes them all before you do, well, tough luck) and limited (so you can't get 10 monitors per month), weighted (so that cancer patient will get morphine before you do) waiting lists for other scarce objects and services.


[10] Supply prioritization in a socialist transitional economy

http://s6.postimage.org/9rs8r3lkd/10_Supply_prioritization_in_a_socialist_transi.jpg (http://postimage.org/image/9rs8r3lkd/)





Market "solutions" presuppose that there exist autonomous firms that can sell and buy, which means society is far from socialism.


All of these paradigms are *relative* to each other -- even today, under the most expansive empire of private property in human history, there are still areas of 'public' (state) property, which could be viewed as an embryonic form of actual social control over production, of a sort -- so, by extension, a worldwide workers revolution *could* be very definitive, but it could still retain areas of 'old ways' that would continue to be a concern for the new society.





I wouldn't worry about "black market currencies" too much. Seriously, even assuming I really want a second HDTV, what are my options? I can put my name down on a waiting list and wait, or I can pay some fictional money that I got God knows how to some other idiot who will then presumably not screw me over even though he has no problem screwing over the rest of society by not playing according to the rules. And then I just have to hope the entire process will take less time than it would have taken me to get an HDTV by the usual means.


This is some very light reasoning on your part, unfortunately -- *any* mode of production is basically concomitant with a socio-political 'buy-in' on the parts of all of those involved in it. So capitalism works for those who benefit from it because all participants are 'on the same wavelength' as to how it works and what reasonable expectations can be for it.

(Likewise, socialism would work for those who do actual labor because the general expectation would be one of *commonizing* all of the outputs of everyone's work.)





Also, discouraging this sort of stupidity would be the easiest thing ever. If you're detected someone pushes a special "fedora-wearer alarm" and your name mysteriously ends up at the very bottom of every list ever.


Yeeeeaaaaahhhhhhh, real fun -- you're not helping the cause any with this kind of bureaucratic-nightmare Stalinistic cliche.