News:

Welcome to our site!

Main Menu

Cyprus woes

Started by dawiw, March 23, 2013, 09:35:15 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

DunkleSeele

Quote from: "Plu"
QuoteMangement of resources and money are two completely different topics.

Well yes, but originally money was supposed to be a measure of resource. They aren't anymore, which is kinda the problem.
Uhm, no. Money is/was supposed to be a measure of the value of goods/services/resources at a certain place and at a certain point in time. Still, this is all academic. Replace money with something else and the logic behind it still applies. As well as the problems caused by greed.

AllPurposeAtheist

Interesting take on the Cyprus debacle and why capital flow especially across borders needs reigned in. More from Prof. Krugman..
http://mobile.nytimes.com/article;jsess ... =Columnist
All hail my new signature!

Admit it. You're secretly green with envy.

DunkleSeele

Quote from: "Sal1981"Net energy is merely gross energy minus energy used; better to call it surplus energy. And it's not strictly about spending, but expenditure, i.e. a couch potato has done less to deserve their share in of the energy available than an electrical engineer. That was just an example for "each to his needs; each to his input". But I think the energy should be socialistically divided up.
I know what "net" means. My question is: how do you define the "energy used" to be substracted from the total amount of energy produced? Is it the energy used to give people a roof and just enough food to survive? Is it something different? How do you define "needs"?

QuoteThat's an imperfection, which Technocracy answers: You don't own anything at all, neither does the State except calculate and manage the energy necessary. It's about the principles about ownership and how those are applied, it would basically be about energy necessary for you to sustain yourself, which would be covered by the energy certificate. No ownership necessary, not even land or borders (except towards those nations who would want to recognize political borders).
If the energy to sustain yourself is covered by your "credits" you run into a major problem: given that those credits are issued based on the "net energy" left, you have to make sure that this "net energy" is at least as much as the energy spent to produce it, otherwise people would not be able to sustain themselves. Good luck with that.
QuoteIf you're thinking of the classical meaning, basically the State would own everything, shared with its entire populace, but this isn't strictly analogous with Technocracy's vision of ownership. You would still have possessions like a car or computer, those are just possessions. It would do away with the whole idea of one person owning agricultural land and building a golf course because he would be like "fuck all of ya'll, I'll do whatever I want", it would elevate such petty squabbles of ownership and rights to ownership to who used the land most efficiently in terms of energy, evaluated by the State.
And here you run into another major problem: state-owned economies have been shown time and again to not work. You may put it as you want, but this would still be a strictly state-controlled system.
QuoteYou're still thinking in terms of money; money just changes hands, energy certificates is about genuinely using energy, be it the energy necessary to light a light-bulb, the energy necessary to transport a goods from a field or factory to your house, and so on.
Irrelevant. Someone, be it an individual, a group thereof or the state, will still have to provide those services. Therefore, your credits will still be used exactly as money is used now.
Quote"Greed" and "power" are scapegoats. They are surmountable.
No, greed is a basic human feature.
QuoteMoney only works for small out-dated system of bartering and savings, it doesn't work for a global economy. We have an energy-dependent economy now driven by resources available. It's like using one hammer for building a skyscraper.
Wrong. Money, in its various forms throughout history, it's what has allowed our economy to shift from a highly localised, barter-based one to a more global one.

TL;DR: You can put it as you want, but goods, services and resources have a value which is highly dependant on both their availability and our personal needs/wants. Your "credit" system is just another way of quantifying that value, just like money. It doesn't solve at all our current, and very real, problems.

SGOS

Quote from: "Plu"originally money was supposed to be a measure of resource. They aren't anymore, which is kinda the problem.
I've often thought not so much that it's "kinda the problem", but that it's EXACTLY THE PROBLEM.  I don't understand how the cost of a thing reflects its actual worth.  When we used to barter, people depended on a sense of value to determine worth.  Money seems to alter our basic understanding of worth:  

"I'll give you 10 of these slips of paper with a picture of this old dead guy printed on it.  What's that you say?  You want 10 slips of paper with a picture of a different dead guy printed on them?  Sure no problem."

We've come to value money, even covet money, because we've become conditioned to value it.  We've been around it all our lives, but what is it really?  It's just paper and ink printed by our government.  It used to be backed by actual gold and silver in federal vaults, but once we became conditioned to think that the money had value of it's own, the government just sold off the gold and silver and kept printing more money, while telling us it's worth just as much as the old stuff.

I can't wrap my head around the sense in this!  Let's take it even further.  Six years ago, banks would give you enough of this ink and paper to buy a house that cost more than the value of the materials and labor in the house.  Then the banks would print another piece of paper  claiming it was worth all the value of the worthless paper given to others to buy the over priced houses.  And people were dumb enough to buy these new pieces of paper, and claim they were real smart because the paper would supposedly be worth even more in a few years.

Then some alert citizens realized the new pieces of paper printed by the banks weren't worth anything because the houses that started the whole thing weren't actually worth the paper that the banks originally gave to people so they could sort of "own" the over priced houses.  Then everyone started asking each other, "What the fuck just happened?"  And as far as I can tell, no one seems to know, or at least collectively, no one can agree on what the fuck just happened.

Sal1981

Quote from: "DunkleSeele"
Quote from: "Plu"
QuoteMangement of resources and money are two completely different topics.

Well yes, but originally money was supposed to be a measure of resource. They aren't anymore, which is kinda the problem.
Uhm, no. Money is/was supposed to be a measure of the value of goods/services/resources at a certain place and at a certain point in time. Still, this is all academic. Replace money with something else and the logic behind it still applies. As well as the problems caused by greed.
Then change the game of greed. Social engineering, sorry, education, could very well do away with greed; hell, find the gene sequence that causes the proficiency for greed and switch it off.

Plu

#20
On its most basic level, money represents the value of an object. But when you factor in economy, money means nothing. It's just some sort of void entity that can be used to barter stuff with, that appears out of thin air, vanishes into thin air again, and that people pretend is really important and permanent.

And it'll continue to work as long as people believe it's still a real thing.

QuoteThen change the game of greed. Social engineering, sorry, education, could very well do away with greed; hell, find the gene sequence that causes the proficiency for greed and switch it off.

Don't switch it off. Greed is really important to progress. It's the thing that makes us want to do more with less.
What is needed is a way to switch it so the object coveted is something that will benefit society if you collect more of it. Right now, piling up money doesn't help anyone. We love people who are so greedy they design a car that does a hundred miles to the gallon. We need them. Now lets give them something that will make them come up with something even better, instead of something that will make them stop working or motivate them to make something worse because they get a better reward from that.

(The whole concept of "sell crappy shit so we make more money off of support" model.)

SGOS

To get back to Cyprus, part of the problem was that Cyprus banks bought pieces of paper printed by the Greeks.  But the paper turned out to be just paper.

DunkleSeele

Quote from: "Sal1981"Then change the game of greed. Social engineering, sorry, education, could very well do away with greed; hell, find the gene sequence that causes the proficiency for greed and switch it off.
Social engineering was already tried in some places. Look up Soviet Union. It failed.

You really don't want to see the basic problem, do you? All these experiments you mention ("credit" system, social engineering, genetic engineering, etc.) must be imposed by someone on the rest of the population. Now, who controls those who are in power?

Sal1981

Quote from: "DunkleSeele"
Quote from: "Sal1981"Net energy is merely gross energy minus energy used; better to call it surplus energy. And it's not strictly about spending, but expenditure, i.e. a couch potato has done less to deserve their share in of the energy available than an electrical engineer. That was just an example for "each to his needs; each to his input". But I think the energy should be socialistically divided up.
I know what "net" means. My question is: how do you define the "energy used" to be substracted from the total amount of energy produced? Is it the energy used to give people a roof and just enough food to survive? Is it something different? How do you define "needs"?
It's an engineering calculation, and quite a complex one. Do you want me to account for all the energy that is produced and used by a nation? I can do that, just would take some time. IOW; it's an engineering issue, technological.

As for needs, it would be the surplus energy, divided evenly to the nations population.

Quote from: "DunkleSeele"
QuoteThat's an imperfection, which Technocracy answers: You don't own anything at all, neither does the State except calculate and manage the energy necessary. It's about the principles about ownership and how those are applied, it would basically be about energy necessary for you to sustain yourself, which would be covered by the energy certificate. No ownership necessary, not even land or borders (except towards those nations who would want to recognize political borders).
If the energy to sustain yourself is covered by your "credits" you run into a major problem: given that those credits are issued based on the "net energy" left, you have to make sure that this "net energy" is at least as much as the energy spent to produce it, otherwise people would not be able to sustain themselves. Good luck with that.
Why, thank you.

Quote from: "DunkleSeele"
QuoteIf you're thinking of the classical meaning, basically the State would own everything, shared with its entire populace, but this isn't strictly analogous with Technocracy's vision of ownership. You would still have possessions like a car or computer, those are just possessions. It would do away with the whole idea of one person owning agricultural land and building a golf course because he would be like "fuck all of ya'll, I'll do whatever I want", it would elevate such petty squabbles of ownership and rights to ownership to who used the land most efficiently in terms of energy, evaluated by the State.
And here you run into another major problem: state-owned economies have been shown time and again to not work. You may put it as you want, but this would still be a strictly state-controlled system.
The conditions aren't the same. Besides, only the energy calculation of how much everyone gets to use, is calculated. How people spend those goods and what they wish to produce is entirely up to them.

Quote from: "DunkleSeele"
QuoteYou're still thinking in terms of money; money just changes hands, energy certificates is about genuinely using energy, be it the energy necessary to light a light-bulb, the energy necessary to transport a goods from a field or factory to your house, and so on.
Irrelevant. Someone, be it an individual, a group thereof or the state, will still have to provide those services. Therefore, your credits will still be used exactly as money is used now.
The producers would be in large part be a workforce necessary to surpass sustainable energy. Basically production-side. They would not get anything for their work (because there's no money) except for an energy certificate, that is evenly distributed from surplus energy from the overhead energy calculation.

Quote from: "DunkleSeele"
Quote"Greed" and "power" are scapegoats. They are surmountable.
No, greed is a basic human feature.
Then we change it.

Quote from: "DunkleSeele"
QuoteMoney only works for small out-dated system of bartering and savings, it doesn't work for a global economy. We have an energy-dependent economy now driven by resources available. It's like using one hammer for building a skyscraper.
Wrong. Money, in its various forms throughout history, it's what has allowed our economy to shift from a highly localised, barter-based one to a more global one.
And it has time and again resulted in economic disparities, boom & bust, and what have you, in a global economy. It doesn't work currently.

Quote from: "DunkleSeele"TL;DR: You can put it as you want, but goods, services and resources have a value which is highly dependant on both their availability and our personal needs/wants. Your "credit" system is just another way of quantifying that value, just like money. It doesn't solve at all our current, and very real, problems.
You're half-right. It's re-quantifying value itself on what it really is based on; Joules.

Sal1981

Quote from: "DunkleSeele"
Quote from: "Sal1981"Then change the game of greed. Social engineering, sorry, education, could very well do away with greed; hell, find the gene sequence that causes the proficiency for greed and switch it off.
Social engineering was already tried in some places. Look up Soviet Union. It failed.

You really don't want to see the basic problem, do you? All these experiments you mention ("credit" system, social engineering, genetic engineering, etc.) must be imposed by someone on the rest of the population. Now, who controls those who are in power?
The people of course.

DunkleSeele

Quote from: "Plu"On its most basic level, money represents the value of an object. But when you factor in economy, money means nothing. It's just some sort of void entity that can be used to barter stuff with, that appears out of thin air, vanishes into thin air again, and that people pretend is really important and permanent.

And it'll continue to work as long as people believe it's still a real thing.
I don't disagree with this. The problem is, replace money with something else and you can run into exactly the same problems. Even a basic barter economy will succumb to greed and deception. Ask the ancient priests who were accumulating goods and resources in exchange for other "services" (a supposed link to the gods of the day), impoverishing the rest of the population.
Quote
QuoteThen change the game of greed. Social engineering, sorry, education, could very well do away with greed; hell, find the gene sequence that causes the proficiency for greed and switch it off.

Don't switch it off. Greed is really important to progress. It's the thing that makes us want to do more with less.
What is needed is a way to switch it so the object coveted is something that will benefit society if you collect more of it. Right now, piling up money doesn't help anyone. We love people who are so greedy they design a car that does a hundred miles to the gallon. We need them. Now lets give them something that will make them come up with something even better, instead of something that will make them stop working or motivate them to make something worse because they get a better reward from that.

(The whole concept of "sell crappy shit so we make more money off of support" model.)
Excellent, in theory. Now, who will decide what benefits society?

EDIT: Fuck yeah, I'm Satan!  :-D

Sal1981

Quote from: "Plu"On its most basic level, money represents the value of an object. But when you factor in economy, money means nothing. It's just some sort of void entity that can be used to barter stuff with, that appears out of thin air, vanishes into thin air again, and that people pretend is really important and permanent.

And it'll continue to work as long as people believe it's still a real thing.

QuoteThen change the game of greed. Social engineering, sorry, education, could very well do away with greed; hell, find the gene sequence that causes the proficiency for greed and switch it off.

Don't switch it off. Greed is really important to progress. It's the thing that makes us want to do more with less.
What is needed is a way to switch it so the object coveted is something that will benefit society if you collect more of it. Right now, piling up money doesn't help anyone. We love people who are so greedy they design a car that does a hundred miles to the gallon. We need them. Now lets give them something that will make them come up with something even better, instead of something that will make them stop working or motivate them to make something worse because they get a better reward from that.

(The whole concept of "sell crappy shit so we make more money off of support" model.)
I was being facetious.

Greed isn't the only game in town. Education is, in my mind, the cornerstone of our civilization. Without education and the spread & search for knowledge, we'd be impulse driven greedy, short and malnutritioned cavemen. Somewhere along the line we figured shit out and improved our lives, by just figuring out stuff, like, it was a bad idea to shit where we eat.

Plu

QuoteExcellent, in theory. Now, who will decide what benefits society?

It's not just "a decision", just a different approach to wealth. People have some sort of intrinsic reason to do what they do. If you don't have a lot of money; getting money is a good motivator. But if you have a billion dollars, "getting more money" seems an unlikely final goal. There must be something else behind it that is really triggering them to spend time obtaining even more money. (Could be something as simple as power, really. Or maybe attention.)

Now we need to figure out a way to give that to people who do something truly beneficial. If we rated artists by who was the most charitable instead of who we'd prefer to bone the most (or, heaven forbid, the art they put out!) then we'd see completely different artists.

In the end, money is just some digital construct that we pass around. But it's not the final motivator for people who already have a bunch of it. They're getting something else, and we should aim to change who we give that to. It might motivate them to use their resources differently to obtain it.

I hope I'm still making sense, I shouldn't be thinking philosophically while I'm also at work :P

DunkleSeele

Quote from: "Sal1981"
Quote from: "DunkleSeele"I know what "net" means. My question is: how do you define the "energy used" to be substracted from the total amount of energy produced? Is it the energy used to give people a roof and just enough food to survive? Is it something different? How do you define "needs"?
It's an engineering calculation, and quite a complex one. Do you want me to account for all the energy that is produced and used by a nation? I can do that, just would take some time. IOW; it's an engineering issue, technological.
Wrong, it's a social issue. Calculating energy is easy, defining people's needs isn't. You didn't answer my question.
QuoteAs for needs, it would be the surplus energy, divided evenly to the nations population.
No, that's what you'd give them, not necessarily what they need. Again, you didn't answer my question.
Quote
Quote from: "DunkleSeele"If the energy to sustain yourself is covered by your "credits" you run into a major problem: given that those credits are issued based on the "net energy" left, you have to make sure that this "net energy" is at least as much as the energy spent to produce it, otherwise people would not be able to sustain themselves. Good luck with that.
Why, thank you.
I see that your "ideal system" isn't well thought out. No, schratch that, it isn' thought out at all.
Quote
Quote from: "DunkleSeele"And here you run into another major problem: state-owned economies have been shown time and again to not work. You may put it as you want, but this would still be a strictly state-controlled system.
The conditions aren't the same. Besides, only the energy calculation of how much everyone gets to use, is calculated. How people spend those goods and what they wish to produce is entirely up to them.
"Besides, only the value in dollars of how much everyone gets to use, is calculated. How people spend those dollars and what they wish to produce is entirely up to them". Yup, sounds exactly the same!
Quote
Quote from: "DunkleSeele"Irrelevant. Someone, be it an individual, a group thereof or the state, will still have to provide those services. Therefore, your credits will still be used exactly as money is used now.
The producers would be in large part be a workforce necessary to surpass sustainable energy. Basically production-side. They would not get anything for their work (because there's no money) except for an energy certificate, that is evenly distributed from surplus energy from the overhead energy calculation.
Yup, sounds like Soviet Union. Ask those people how it worked out.
Quote
Quote from: "DunkleSeele"No, greed is a basic human feature.
Then we change it.
How? With genetic engineering? "Social engineering" (aka indoctrination)? "Education" (which can again turn into indoctrination)? It was tried, it failed. And it failed because those in power of "engineering" the society had full control on it. Your "Technocracy" bears exactly the same risks.
Quote
Quote from: "DunkleSeele"Wrong. Money, in its various forms throughout history, it's what has allowed our economy to shift from a highly localised, barter-based one to a more global one.
And it has time and again resulted in economic disparities, boom & bust, and what have you, in a global economy. It doesn't work currently.
Each and every economic system mankind has tried has resulted in disparities, impoverishment of many and enrichment of a few, etc. It's human nature, unfortunately.
Quote
Quote from: "DunkleSeele"TL;DR: You can put it as you want, but goods, services and resources have a value which is highly dependant on both their availability and our personal needs/wants. Your "credit" system is just another way of quantifying that value, just like money. It doesn't solve at all our current, and very real, problems.
You're half-right. It's re-quantifying value itself on what it really is based on; Joules.
I may be half-right, but you're completely wrong. You can't objectively quantify the value of goods, services and resources, be it in dollars, joules or chickens. Each of us places different values on the same thing, and you cannot excape that unless you turn the whole world population into mindless robots. No thanks.

DunkleSeele

Quote from: "Sal1981"
Quote from: "DunkleSeele"
Quote from: "Sal1981"Then change the game of greed. Social engineering, sorry, education, could very well do away with greed; hell, find the gene sequence that causes the proficiency for greed and switch it off.
Social engineering was already tried in some places. Look up Soviet Union. It failed.

You really don't want to see the basic problem, do you? All these experiments you mention ("credit" system, social engineering, genetic engineering, etc.) must be imposed by someone on the rest of the population. Now, who controls those who are in power?
The people of course.
Yeah, just like people in Soviet Union had full control over those in power. Don't make me laugh.