An intellectual's review

[Blake]

Originally posted by Asmodeous


With the fact that resources are currently incredibly limited in all aspects, I'm not really certain that Cooperation > Competition.

My goodness.

Why do people find it SO HARD to break out of black and white thinking?

Cooperation AND competition!

There's no OR in there!!!

They're meant to complement each other!!!!

Good grief. It's not that difficult a concept.

Most human problems stem from idealism, saying that one EXTREME, is in fact IDEAL. Much more often the middle way will be correct - not taking extremes and finding a balance.

The idea that an extreme can be ideal is damn near absurdity, I can't quite fully rationalize that (without more reflection), but it's pretty evident to me. I think it stems from the difficulty of finding *any* extreme which is actually more ideal than a less extreme position which allows it's complement in.
Take for example "Killing is wrong". Sounds good.
What if a person is in an awful lot of pain and are never going to get better and are pleading to be put out of their misery? Isn't killing them okay?
Any right-minded non-ideological person is going to say "...yes. Killing them is okay. It's merciful".

The "correct" stance is that "Killing should be only done for the most compassionate of reasons", it's an awful lot harder to find a counter to that then an absolute like "Killing is wrong".

[Blake]

Originally posted by Petrus2
Just rambling a little maybe, but how does this credit system work when someone dies, leaving either a + or - balance? What about the person who has a - balance and says screw it, I'm outta here? Does everyone left pay a penalty to make up the negative balance just lost?

This is correct, as per the "**** happens" clause.

It's worth noting that all transactions in such a system are negotiated and mutually acceptable. Part of being acceptable, involves making it DIFFICULT to cut and run. If someone is felt to be untrustworthy, people would tend to not for example sell them fungible goods, sure maybe help them clean up their garden or something, because that remains a permanent benefit for the community.

Have you ever used an on-line auction site like ebay? These are reputation-driven trading systems, the reason that cutting and running is an acceptable risk in a LETSystem, is the same reason that people are willing to use reputation-driven trading systems. There is always the possibility that someone will take your money and not deliver the goods, but there are ways to mitigate this risk, like by not buying expensive things from people without a good reputation.

You accept that the benefits of using the auction system outweigh the possibility you'll be left out of your cash with no goods to show for it.

So the mitigation involves not letting people run up large negative balances before being proven to the trustworthy, and doing less fungible things for them. When they do cut and run they are of course blacklisted from other systems, they'd have to work HARD to ever get back into one.

It's actually an equally valid question of:
What happens when someone leaves with a POSITIVE balance. They have left with credits unspent, making it more difficult for others to pay off their negative balances.

The first solution is this; people are VERY encouraged to clear their balance before leaving.
The second is simply wiping the balance and spreading it over everyone.

That's an interesting thing, if one person gets cheated, everyone pays a little bit - it's not like traditional currency in that way. The risk-mitigation insurance is built into the system.

Likewise someone who leaves with a positive balance basically makes a donation to the system as a whole.

Failure to properly account for people leaving results in inflation or deflation. Mutual Credit Currencies, when managed well, are immune to inflation.

I don't think that the whole LETS thing is bad, just not practical. If the world economy failed, then it would be used by necessity. Not because it is better.

I think it can be helpful to understand just to understand how wealth is really created, not at a mumbo-jumbo level but at a nuts and bolts level.

I think that an advanced LETSystem would be very popular, however it requires two things:
1) A sizable population using it (probably ~1000)
2) Painless to use. Meaning, electronic transactions with swipe cards, probably.

The utility of the system increases with participation and with ease of use.

It would be a very awesome system for new eco villages and such, where the infrastructure can be built in.

Otherwise, come the next major recession it is likely that these things will spring up and grow large, and may endure afterwards also, especially if economy of scale allows them to be made very easy to use.

I also suspect it would be the best way to do things like on a mars colony or something. Obviously in such a case a fiat currency is going to be unwieldy - and people are REALLY going to question where that money is actually coming from (the source is not all obfuscated), but you still want to keep track of work people are doing. Making money = time, is the sensible way to do it.

[wodan11]

Correct me if I'm wrong Blake, but the LETS does not necessarily include a mandate in regard to personal ownership and/or hereditary credit/debt. The former is the simple concept of being able to own property. Some ivory tower theories talk about a more communistic plan, and where no one person is even able to own property or goods, that each person puts into the society according to his or her ability. The latter is the simple concept of whether your descendants inherit either your property or your debts (or both).

Anyway, what I'm leading up to is I think we're starting to get these things confused with each other. They are not necessarily tied together. Nor are they mutually exclusive.

Wodan

[Asmodeous]

Originally posted by Blake


My goodness.

Why do people find it SO HARD to break out of black and white thinking?

Cooperation AND competition!

There's no OR in there!!!

They're meant to complement each other!!!!

Good grief. It's not that difficult a concept.

Most human problems stem from idealism, saying that one EXTREME, is in fact IDEAL. Much more often the middle way will be correct - not taking extremes and finding a balance.

The idea that an extreme can be ideal is damn near absurdity, I can't quite fully rationalize that (without more reflection), but it's pretty evident to me. I think it stems from the difficulty of finding *any* extreme which is actually more ideal than a less extreme position which allows it's complement in.
Take for example "Killing is wrong". Sounds good.
What if a person is in an awful lot of pain and are never going to get better and are pleading to be put out of their misery? Isn't killing them okay?
Any right-minded non-ideological person is going to say "...yes. Killing them is okay. It's merciful".

The "correct" stance is that "Killing should be only done for the most compassionate of reasons", it's an awful lot harder to find a counter to that then an absolute like "Killing is wrong".

You're pigeonholing, Blake, and it's a straw man that has no substance, you are, in fact, also forming a false dichotomy that either a person believes in "black and white" so to speak, and that you can only have Cooperation OR Competition, or that you believe the two must be equal.

So in essence you are doing exactly what you are claiming I did, however I did no such.

You must favor one or the other. Obviously the two must blend into a market in order for goods to be produced, product to be sold, and on and on and on. People must cooperate on all levels in order to form a cohesive Product, regardless of what that product is.

However, you need to favor Competition or Cooperation when the Product hits the market, the two on equal footing will lose you too much market share and your business will bust.

So then it comes down to what do you favor? Competition or Cooperation with your competitors?

Well, that is of course going to depend first and foremost on the Product in question and the market you are attempting to move into. In something such as the energy market, you are obviously going to favor cooperation over competition, as Energies are a necessity and therefore working together ensures better market saturation as well as better pricing for the vendors. However pure cooperation will not work, either, you only want to favor it, as you will want to be able to find a source of the energy you sell that will be cheaper than a competitor's source to attempt to edge the price off with them a bit. Innovation here is spurned by necessity (limited energy supply), not by competitive needs to defeat an "opponent" so to speak. Price is the only thing in this market affected by competition, in most cases.

Then again, if you are in something such as the superconductor market, let's be more specific and go with CPUs, competition will be far more favorable to you than cooperation within that market, as the Competition will spur you into further innovation as you continue to try to top your adversaries, and it will also drive down cost of production, and therefore cost of product, which helps both the vendor and the consumer. Why? Because these are luxuries.

Now, obviously, straight up pure competition is not going to do it in that market either, you need to blend it with some form of cooperation with your competitors, otherwise you will either completely outstrip them in innovation, be completely outstripped, or one company or the other will go belly up and the lacking competition will ruin innovation and thusly ruin your market (no innovative new processors? Why would anyone buy another one?). Therefore you set up a cooperative market that X months after a release of a new technology, that technology development is made available to your competitor, and vice versa, so that the two are, in essence, both competing and cooperating in advancing the market.

Yes, I just used real world examples.

Next straw man please. :P

Me.

Edit: More to the point, if it wasn't clear from the dissertation, when I say "I am not convinced that Cooperation > Competition in a market full of limited resources," what I'm saying is that until we move closer to an unlimited set of resources, we are much better off favoring Competition over Cooperation in order to further improve innovation in a competitive market, not that we should just ditch the concept of cooperation altogether. That would be absolute lunacy.

[Asmodeous]

...furthermore, Blake, you skipped the whole meat of my post and just focussed on an off-the-cuff summation of it without any of the supporting facts.

:P

Me.

[Blake]

You're kind of missing the point; that's it's co-operation at a human level, not at a company level.

It's a system designed to enable work at a micro-level, where there is low demand and low supply, for one off transactions and stuff. Where's there is no real scope for competition. It's a system immensely suitable for enabling that kind of work.

This isn't about displacing competition, it's about filling in the holes. The fact that you even compare cooperation and competition means you aren't really "Getting" it, that's why I focused on that aspect.

This is a system which complements how the existing economic system works, it creates more net wealth than is possible with fiat currency alone. It eliminates many of the problems associated with maintaining artificial scarcity in a market.

[Asmodeous]

Actually, I get it quite well. You should not assume.



The people level is what I started with then advanced to the company level. So let me state the beginning of it again (I could just copy/paste.. in fact...)

Obviously the two must blend into a market in order for goods to be produced, product to be sold, and on and on and on. People must cooperate on all levels in order to form a cohesive Product, regardless of what that product is.

In order to create a product of any sort, people must work together. Whether it's in a community (such as the example of tribal society I gave earlier) or in a company (for instance: Intel), the entities are not able to do it without the existance of human cooperation. It's a blanket necessity.

Even back in Tribal Society, there was still inter-tribal competition, much like within corporations now. In fact, if you look within corporations today and individual tribes prior, you have very similar structures within, with obvious varients of course, and the removal of "it takes a village to raise a child." You have the typical castes (worker, elder, hunter/gatherer, etc), and the entities themselves work on the same basic concepts (sacrifice the good of the few for the good of the many. You give up YOUR time and energy to make certain that your company prospers, and the company compensates you directly).

The more things change, the more that they stay the same. The problem lies in how far do you want to extend such a concept? If you break it out of the corporate level and return it to the local societal level, then what do you end up with? Groups of people competing for resources. What did you give up? Groups of people competing for resources.

Certainly, you can (and likely would) give forth the argument that as a business, the business works for itself, and not for "society as a whole," but where is the difference in that and smaller societies working for themselves and not humanity as a whole? You're exchanging one problem for another, similar problem of the same exact kind.

You are falling into the same exact trappings you're claiming everyone else is, you're pointing to an ideal (the concept that cooperation and competition should work hand in hand for the betterment of all, and not for the betterment of sub-sects of the whole), which is just as unattainable.

In a communal society, as nice as the whole "working on reputation" thing is, will still run into a similar problem because human nature dictates that the majority will not watch another suffer, even at fault of their own.

Meaning that if one individual has a poor reputation and others refuse to deal with him and he is left to starve, they will offer him food for free, they will offer him housing for free, he will live off the hand-offs of society, and again you are left with the same problems you have with the current currency-based societies.

The barter system is not something that is efficient or worthwhile. How do you value goods? Is this computer worth more or less than a bushel of oranges? More? Why? Oranges are a food, and a food high in many vitamins the human body needs, and takes a great deal longer to produce, shouldn't that increase its value? But it doesn't, why? What about when you trade your bushel of oranges to one individual for, say, a bushel of corn, and then you trade another bushel of oranges to some other individual for, say, two bushels of corn because that person has a greater need? Do you then get the other bushel of corn from the first person? Are you SOL? If you flipped it around and did the trades in the other order does the individual have the right to demand they receive a second bushel of oranges?

Barter systems only work if the items you are trading have arguably equivalent values, the problem is that nothing is valuable to everyone, and everything is valuable at different levels to someone.

You claimed earlier that I don't understand the nature of money, another assumption on your part, which seems to be a common method of dismissing arguments you don't really seem to like ("You don't get it" "You don't understand" "You're missing the point"), whereas that isn't necessarily the case. I understand the nature of money. Money is a "thing", it's a tool. It is no different than a hammer. What people do with money and how they handle it is what dictates whether or not money is viewed as "bad" or "good", but intrinsicly the money is nother. It just is. The nature of money is to provide an equalizer of sorts. A measurement that can be spread across the board of intrinsic "value" in a product of any sort.

That's what its purpose is, and its nature, it oftentimes is abused (for instance, the Diamond Cartels sitting on piles of diamonds to artificially inflate the intrinsic value of a rather common rock in order to increase the income) and oftentimes it is quite the opposite (for instance, the Red Cross and other such charities, or more specifically www.mondonation.com ). That does not change what the nature of money is, a tool and unit of measurement.

I'm starting to shift topics a bit, that's another discussion, I think.

Me.

[Adam Weishaupt]

Here's a crazy idea. How about instead of treating economics like religion -- with a dogma that dictates particulars of right and wrong are preferable without any regard for the specific circumstances -- we treat economics like a discipline where the details matter? Asmodeus asserts that there must be a preference for competition over cooperation or vice versa. I do not believe I misinterpret him to mean that is to be a general preference, rather than a preference as applied to some real world specific instance.

I would argue that we should adopt those preferences only in response to the specifics of real world situations. If airlines are necessarily hobbled by a host of safety and security measures, prices rise while quality of service plummets, and yet major carriers are more likely in a given year to ask for a government bailout than turn any sort of profit, perhaps the time has come to stop running major airlines for profit. It seems as if the federal government could have simply bought them all outright many times over in the past three decades of financial assistance provided at taxpayer expense. Yet the same ineffective institutions operating in the same counterproductive paradigm remain. I see this as an instance where the public interest is more compelling than private interests hunting for profit in this arena.

Yet I also believe this should be based on reality rather than ideology. If I am mistaken -- if major carriers have in fact turned decent profits in modern times and government bailouts have never amounted to a significant share of the value of those major carriers, then nationalization becomes less appealing. If competition is producing positive results that outweigh the improvements to security and safety that public ownership could provide, then let those results be reflected in a policy of continued private ownership here and privatization abroad wherever the market might support fragmentation of a government-owned carrier.

Of course there is much nuance to consider as well. Hugo Chavez took a lot of criticism for nationalizing Venezuelan oil extraction operations. What was going to happen -- private operators were going to invent a new kind of oil? In the United States, private operators are presently skipping out on billions of dollars in royalty obligations related to the extraction of oil from publicly owned land even as they collect billions in subsidies to supplement profits that are already enormous.

Certain aspects of the oil industry, including exploration intended to unlock additional resources, do involve risk and thus ought to generate real reward for successful efforts. Bringing the power of the market to bear in those niches is no excuse for letting corporations rake in obscene amounts of money for work that has nothing at all to do with innovation. In fact, by influencing the government to subsidize them so generously (and to avoid subsidy of rival enterprises in the energy sector) they are actively obstructing innovation. This is capitalism turned upside-down. Not everything Hugo Chavez does is wonderful, but nationalizing oil production operations is a clear case of recognizing where no worthwhile interest is served by a for-profit paradigm while the public interest is actively obstructed.

To say that domestic oil production, as a distinct entity from exploration, should remain privatized is pure ideology that drags down the entire American economy in service to a very small number of speculators and tycoons. None of that speculation or ownership adds a speck of value to the economy, yet it takes away a tremendous amount of raw wealth while also raising prices in a particular area of sensitivity. Almost all goods must be shipped and driving is part of the American lifestyle. Just about every other industry suffers substantially to prop up the bogus profiteering ongoing in that particular industry.

Sure, America has better oversight of its corporations than some underdeveloped nations and perhaps even a few modern nations. Yet most of our largest corporations have successfully shed any semblance of regard for the public interest. Where once corporate leaders saw the power under their control as a means to accomplish real good in the world, now hypersensitivity to the myopic perspective of Wall Street prevents any greater philanthropy than serves public relations purposes. If nothing else, a couple of big moves like nationalizing no-profit nationwide airlines or no-innovation domestic oil producers would send a strong signal to the entire economy that the free ride is over. From here forward, the "privatize everything" gravy train is no more, and sufficiently large enterprises must be managed in such a way that there is real usefulness coming out of private control if that private control is to be perpetuated.

I believe the end result of such an approach would be a much more vital and productive economy than we find ourselves experiencing at present. However, to get there we need to recognize that a preference for competition or a preference for cooperation should be born out of the real specifics in a given industry. If they are instead born out of some pontifications on the nature of human beings, they will surely serve us poorly. After all, what baseline exists to use as a frame of reference to make our entire species "too" inclined toward any particular behavior? Are not "greedy" and "helpful" both terms that are only meaningful relative to a human average? If we wipe away propaganda, what we are left with is reality. I can't think of a better place to start when framing questions of economic policy.

Regards,
Adam Weishaupt

[ZEE]

WTF does any of that have to do with Civ though?

[Asmodeous]

I most certainly see the fnords.

Yes, Adam, you read me correctly, and in fact if I didn't know better I would think you just went into further explaination of what I was getting at.

Me.

[ZEE]

i dont. he is spamming his blog-post ideas on us using Civ as a tool for his rants.

[Blake]

Originally posted by Asmodeous
Certainly, you can (and likely would) give forth the argument that as a business, the business works for itself, and not for "society as a whole," but where is the difference in that and smaller societies working for themselves and not humanity as a whole? You're exchanging one problem for another, similar problem of the same exact kind.

You are falling into the same exact trappings you're claiming everyone else is, you're pointing to an ideal (the concept that cooperation and competition should work hand in hand for the betterment of all, and not for the betterment of sub-sects of the whole), which is just as unattainable.

Where did I say "Betterment for all?" The system I "promote" is firmly directed towards betterment of a local community.

In a communal society, as nice as the whole "working on reputation" thing is, will still run into a similar problem because human nature dictates that the majority will not watch another suffer, even at fault of their own.

Meaning that if one individual has a poor reputation and others refuse to deal with him and he is left to starve, they will offer him food for free, they will offer him housing for free, he will live off the hand-offs of society, and again you are left with the same problems you have with the current currency-based societies.

But he will live more poorly than those who partake honestly in the system. And where have I claimed that this will solve all problems of humanity? Indeed, I've claimed it solves the problem of:
When there are people who are willing to work, when there is work which needs to be done, and the only thing getting in the way is a lack of money in the community. "Everyone is poor".

The barter system is not something that is efficient or worthwhile. How do you value goods? Is this computer worth more or less than a bushel of oranges? More? Why? Oranges are a food, and a food high in many vitamins the human body needs, and takes a great deal longer to produce, shouldn't that increase its value? But it doesn't, why? What about when you trade your bushel of oranges to one individual for, say, a bushel of corn, and then you trade another bushel of oranges to some other individual for, say, two bushels of corn because that person has a greater need? Do you then get the other bushel of corn from the first person? Are you SOL? If you flipped it around and did the trades in the other order does the individual have the right to demand they receive a second bushel of oranges?

Barter systems only work if the items you are trading have arguably equivalent values, the problem is that nothing is valuable to everyone, and everything is valuable at different levels to someone.

What does the barter system have to do with this?

I've pointed out that it's not barter. The values are negotiated. You can't claim that values can't be negotiated. A good starting point is using the hours invested (say hours invested x 10), but that is not a mandate. People may choose any price which is mutually acceptable. As long as they can agree, the transaction and work can proceed, if they can't agree, it doesn't. You don't need to definitely say that "An hour of yardwork is worth $X", if Bob has some free time and Jill has yardwork which needs to be done, and they agree on a credit rate they both find acceptable, then the work can proceed and the transaction recorded. Why is that confusing? Why is that confused with barter?

You claimed earlier that I don't understand the nature of money, another assumption on your part, which seems to be a common method of dismissing arguments you don't really seem to like ("You don't get it" "You don't understand" "You're missing the point"), whereas that isn't necessarily the case. I understand the nature of money. Money is a "thing", it's a tool. It is no different than a hammer. What people do with money and how they handle it is what dictates whether or not money is viewed as "bad" or "good", but intrinsicly the money is nother. It just is. The nature of money is to provide an equalizer of sorts. A measurement that can be spread across the board of intrinsic "value" in a product of any sort.

That's what its purpose is, and its nature, it oftentimes is abused (for instance, the Diamond Cartels sitting on piles of diamonds to artificially inflate the intrinsic value of a rather common rock in order to increase the income) and oftentimes it is quite the opposite (for instance, the Red Cross and other such charities, or more specifically www.mondonation.com ). That does not change what the nature of money is, a tool and unit of measurement.

A restrictive textbook understanding of traditional fiat and precious-metal backed currencies maybe. But is your mind open to other kinds of money? Or do you just keep talking about traditional fiat and precious metal backed currencies and barter without actually reading what I'm talking about? I have reason to suspect the latter.

Especially like, since you talked about barter .

Everyone does that, everyone starts talking about barter.

It's half the reason I rarely bother even attempting to explain this.

"Oh you mean barter, but that doesn't work because blah blah blah blah blah blah"

edit: (Apologies if I attributed misunderstanding you don't have because you copy-pasted something irrelevant into the discussion - it's not clear if you CnP'd or not).

[ZEE]

Originally posted by Blake

edit: (Apologies if I attributed misunderstanding you don't have because you copy-pasted something irrelevant into the discussion - it's not clear if you CnP'd or not).

QFT and i have actually showed great restraint in putting up with this nonsense.

[MJW]

Any good EyesOfNight (Adam Weishaupt) thread needs to have an inane MJW comment:

"Diplomacy breaks all non-duel mp games."

The rest of this is rant that is likely inane.

This is because an 80% strong empire is almost as good as the strongest empire. The skill level it takes to get 80% as strong depends on the game. In Civ4 it is low and in Civ2 it is high. But it is still there.

In SP Civ4 diplomacy does not break the game because the AI does not play ball. But the fact the ai does not act in its own self-interest breaks the game. It makes the game about exploiting the AI rather then building up your empire.

This also does major damage to duels. They had to make land very overpowered in order for it to matter at all due to the overpoweredness of diplomacy. This makes the non-mirror map maker making very imbalanced maps for duels. Mirror map duels also suffer because Civ4 is not made to 'mirror' gameplay.

In Civ2 (and maybe Civ3) the game makers got 'lucky' and made the game so broken that it the community forever to solve. But this did not happen in Civ4 because Firaxis actually made a game that was not broken (before people found out about slavery and cats).

The only real solution is to build duel games (1vs1 or group) in order for the game not to be overwhelmed by the overpoweredness of diplomacy.
---

Oh and Blake -- you are ether a theist or a Nihilist. Anything that is powerfull enough to make infinite life after death and not been seen would be so powerful that it would have to be called a 'god'.

[Blake]

Oh and Blake -- you are ether a theist or a Nihilist. Anything that is powerfull enough to make infinite life after death and not been seen would be so powerful that it would have to be called a 'god'.

Sorry? What is that in reference to?

Regardless I can state with absolute confidence that there is no infinite life after death.