red team
9th August 2006, 07:28
This is a repost from my post in the Technocracy forum technocracy.ca concerning my idea for preventing the abuse in hoarding productive assets. A prime feature of Capitalism which allows for their power over ordinary workers.
I think this is an important topic since even if technocracy becomes realizeable through super-productive technologies the legal code will have to be revised to prevent the abuse of hoarding of material wealth and the subsequent indirect coercion caused through artificial scarcity that this would inevitably lead to.
As I said before, no matter how productive technologies become if the legal right to hoard everything that cannot be immediately used for personal purpose still remains valid then we cannot say that Technocracy wouldn't be a short step toward TechnoTyranny. Think about this for a while. If strategic resources like mines and factories can be kept idle from the legal ownership of those who own them then what's to stop the influence of behaviour through economic blackmail for those who have no part in the decision making of how these strategic resources will be used (or not used)?
For this problem abuse of the Technocracy system for those who want to use it for controlling purposes and also for gluttonous ownership of consumer items in which more items are acquired than can possibly be used personally I propose a scarcity tax. That is a tax on both resources and consumer items that are acquired, but left idle by those that acquired it which leads to artificial scarcity. There's simply no valid reason for things to be left idle even if done legally through the act of purchase. The fact that this situation does remains legal simply demonstrates the current cultural fetish for material ownership as a "sacred" extension of one's personality than it does for any rational utilitarian conception for using material wealth for the betterment of one's life. Think about this for a moment. Why would you care about how much you "own" so that you can legally exclude a given object's use to others even if it meant having something that you "own" left idle because you can't immediately use it? Even for self-serving hedonistic purposes of enjoyment seeking it doesn't make sense. Under an environment of abundance ownership laws must change to reflect utilitarian usage of an "owned" object or service, otherwise it would just seem pathological.
For the scarcity tax I propose it would be simply calculated as a fee upon the person "owning" a resource that is left idle by determining the difference in cost of energy for securing an alternative resource. This makes logical sense since if an object is "owned" then that means the person that doesn't own it would have to secure a more costly alternative or wait to have that alternative to be produced when the ideal outcome would be to have the idle object be put to immediate use. So the scarcity fee can be calculated using Technocractic concepts as being:
The average society-wide energy expenditure in consumer purchases in the time it takes for an alternative to be produced plus the difference in energy cost between the production of an equivalent alternative and the currently owned, but idle item.
This follows Technocracy concepts in terms of costs to consumption that have been lost due to artificially introduced scarcity and inefficiencies. Questions? Is this a good idea?
I think this is an important topic since even if technocracy becomes realizeable through super-productive technologies the legal code will have to be revised to prevent the abuse of hoarding of material wealth and the subsequent indirect coercion caused through artificial scarcity that this would inevitably lead to.
As I said before, no matter how productive technologies become if the legal right to hoard everything that cannot be immediately used for personal purpose still remains valid then we cannot say that Technocracy wouldn't be a short step toward TechnoTyranny. Think about this for a while. If strategic resources like mines and factories can be kept idle from the legal ownership of those who own them then what's to stop the influence of behaviour through economic blackmail for those who have no part in the decision making of how these strategic resources will be used (or not used)?
For this problem abuse of the Technocracy system for those who want to use it for controlling purposes and also for gluttonous ownership of consumer items in which more items are acquired than can possibly be used personally I propose a scarcity tax. That is a tax on both resources and consumer items that are acquired, but left idle by those that acquired it which leads to artificial scarcity. There's simply no valid reason for things to be left idle even if done legally through the act of purchase. The fact that this situation does remains legal simply demonstrates the current cultural fetish for material ownership as a "sacred" extension of one's personality than it does for any rational utilitarian conception for using material wealth for the betterment of one's life. Think about this for a moment. Why would you care about how much you "own" so that you can legally exclude a given object's use to others even if it meant having something that you "own" left idle because you can't immediately use it? Even for self-serving hedonistic purposes of enjoyment seeking it doesn't make sense. Under an environment of abundance ownership laws must change to reflect utilitarian usage of an "owned" object or service, otherwise it would just seem pathological.
For the scarcity tax I propose it would be simply calculated as a fee upon the person "owning" a resource that is left idle by determining the difference in cost of energy for securing an alternative resource. This makes logical sense since if an object is "owned" then that means the person that doesn't own it would have to secure a more costly alternative or wait to have that alternative to be produced when the ideal outcome would be to have the idle object be put to immediate use. So the scarcity fee can be calculated using Technocractic concepts as being:
The average society-wide energy expenditure in consumer purchases in the time it takes for an alternative to be produced plus the difference in energy cost between the production of an equivalent alternative and the currently owned, but idle item.
This follows Technocracy concepts in terms of costs to consumption that have been lost due to artificially introduced scarcity and inefficiencies. Questions? Is this a good idea?