It was emergent; it wasn't a government's idea. It emerged because it occured to someone that that was the most efficient strategy, and it was allowed by law, so they used it. Nobody set up the system specifically to allow it.

I'd agree; I can't imagine any other way of trading that does not eventually lead to our current Economics v3.

He was, in the 1920s, wrong. Russia of the time did not have the physical and social technologies for communism to work; they were, IOW, not based on an information economy.

[Citation needed]

There are entire industries based around things like "factoring" and other financial instruments. Vast portions of our economy are based on things that do not exist, such as film, music, and video games. (The latter of which brings in billions of dollars alone)

The 40-hour work week is sticking around for legacy reasons, from my understanding. Don't ask me why, I don't actually know.

You'll be extreme socialist, then? :P

It does; otherwise nobody will use it.

Monopolies, or psuedo-mopolies AFAIK, introduce more problems than they solve. We have to be very careful about regulating how people are paid, as the dynamics of which people are in which jobs will change significantly. Not to mention the upper-class accountants simply rearranging the numbers to earn cash above the limits.

(I am immediatly wary of the words "true democracy" or anything like them; Arrow's theorem states that what most people would call "true" democracy is mathematically impossible.)

Also, both of the viable options you mentioned seem to rely on the government being a strong regulator. This isn't necessarily true, and even one government having a fault can cause big problems for even a perfect IRS. IIRC, there have been instances of multinationals telling two countries they operate in that they pay taxes to the other. As you can imagine, it took a very long time for that to be discovered.

I can't see an immediate reason why this can't work on its face, though it's also not necessarily the best way to do things. Although abstract "states" and "cities" can co-operate, and this co-operation will be mostly sucessful for the exact same reasons altruism is succesful in the first place, every layer of abstraction increases complexity. I also fear this increase in complexity would be "non-linear;" doubling the number of interactees increases the implementation cost (i.e. time, resources) by more than double. If we are really unlucky, the complexity increase will be exponential, and doubling the number of 'cities' that constitute one 'state' will decrease that state's ability to make good decisions by four, eight or as many as sixteen times over.

(Though I actually like the idea of organising world government like this, for entirely "cool!"-type reasons. You'd have to ask people far more experianced than me whether or not it oculd work, though. Above is what I'm guessing based on what I know about how generic self-interested agents interact.)

But this is where the system gets broken, as demonstrated in this graph. You would funnel all the extra wealth gained fairly among the less fortunate... which will be 100% of nothing at all, because nobody is going to earn over the cap, or they will stop earning when they think it is no longer worth it. I remember trying this myself with an income tax system based on hyperbolic curves, (where taxation increases exponentially with income) and accidentally found that there was a maximum net income; gross income beyond that point was taxed more than directly at the point, leaving less net.

Don't most countries already implemeent such things? (Albiet with varying boundaries) The Beatles actually wrote a song about the fact that Britain's tax rate at the time on income >£1,000,000 was 95%. It's rather biting.

AFAIK, $1m gross is middle-class in places like London and NYC. Whether it is "pretty adequate" depends entirely on its purchasing power, IMO.

You can also define quite loose goals with the correct value system, and let the computer do what it does best: second-order prediction. Locking cows in cages is profitable, sure, but it's not good PR, and a logic engine with the ability to predict umpteen times over will realize that bad PR will negatively affect profit margins, and therefore value PR. (Perhaps it may not value PR as highly as you would want it to, but it knows that you'll think that, and has already prepared...) This is the difference between human and truly "logical" thinking; humans are rubbish at predicting knock-on effects, like the negative impact of environmental damage on PR.

Oh no, middle class? How awful :xD:

The title to this thread should now be called,"Occupy All Them Bi**hes!" Because now Brazil is rioting. :O

You see, this is what happens.

People try to make a point, they try to make reasonable demands and tell simple, real life stories to get those points across, and they become disillusioned when they realise that the government, the police, the people at the top won't listen to any of it, instead happy to batter and forcively remove anyone in the way. Thus, violence breeds violence and the whole thing decends into chaos for all parties concerned. Trust is lost further between these groups, the gap between the 1% and the 99% grows larger, the feeling of disloyalty grows stronger and society suffers further, as a result.

People are starting to lose it with each other, because the lower feel a victim of the higher demands of their 'masters' and the upper become more content to tke such action, because they begin to see their 'slaves' as nothing more than a disrespectful riotous mob.

All that needs to happen is that people need to start listening to each other.

http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot...18340517_n.jpg

btw i just threw this in here because i think it's funny and somewhat relevant to the topic

It really boggles the mind how someone can be opposed to Occupy Wallstreet, seeing as most people are like me and don't care about things that don't directly concern them, but why would someone be rooting for the rich? That is something I simply can't fathom.

They say you can't win an argument with idiots because they just drag you down to their level and beat you with experience, so I present you someone who basically argues with idiots for a living, so maybe he speaks the same language.

That is hilarious... because it's true :D

Blaming the economy on some nebulous '1%' is rubbish - it's more like 50%; people who take out bad mortgages and credit card debt they can never pay off, and those who sell and provide it to them and then trade it off amongst themselves are equally responsible. It's ironic that the people who call themselves '99%' as if that was some kind of good thing are actually just as proportionately a source of the problem as anyone else, if not more so.

im no expert on this topic but this is SO TRUE.

I agree that some people do get themselves into a lot of mess and all..
Though what about children who would be growing up and find out that they could never manage to buy a house with an average salary? Like in Sydney. Is it their fault?

I used to think financial crisis was caused by everyone being greedy and wasteful until I watched the film Inside Job.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_Job_(film)

This actually sounds a little like victim blaming. If your financies are secure enough that you know you can pay off your mortage/loan, then there's less chance you need a loan in the first place.

As much as I despise the word itself and how it is used, I tend to agree, because one can't justify the evils of others by saying that it was the fault of those who needed money. Who in this world doesn't need money? I guess that would be those who have most of it, a minority.

There's a whole lot of ignorance surrounding this whole subject, but it's not like I know all that much better than anyone else, but at least I try not to assume too much.

Sorry to be off topic, but that photo is hilarious, I think it's gonna be a facebook status. Also, it's probably got some truth behind it.

Clarke, I'd like to wrap up this discussion as it gets a bit exhaustive and time consuming, so I will try to answer the most controversial points at the cost of the minute ones. One remark in advance - I get the impression that you write the replies while you read my post. May I suggest reading the whole post and THEN reply? This would avoid you replying to something in a way that makes it obvious that you have not read the additional information a few lines later.

That whole issue about Milo and the eggs - Milo is in that book a "parody of an extreme capitalist" who just does whatever the market allows him to and he can get away with. Milos or capitalists behaviour may be like that, but the 2homo economicus" of economic theory is not real. There is plenty of literature on this, but probably you do not want to read it. Maybe you want to spend some time and see the BBC documentaries by Adam Curtis (Especially "The trap" and"all watched over by machines of loving grace"). He makes quite a few good points about how consumerism and modern capitalism came to be and what there is to the idea that all humans are merely looking for their own gain - and the dangers of making this the foundation of an economic system.

What I get from your replies is that you firmly operate within the present economic system and culture. Many of your statements are simply statements about how things work within this system or you assume things about humans from their behaviour within this system. I do not speak about what is or can be within this context. I think the system is wrong and peoples actions are distorted when they live in a broken culture or economic system. Peoples actions are dictated by this system and in that sense they are not free. Of course there has to be an agreement of how a society works, but I do not see the present day economic system as the only system that works. In fact I think that there can be other systems and cultural agreements that much better suit human and environmental needs. I think it is an error to trust of the emergent properties of a runaway economics but instead people will have to actively seek a more egalitarian structure - it will NOT come by itself.

Virtual value - a value that is defined only by what people are willing to pay for it is a product of human culture and economics. It is very much detached from reality and I do not think that this is in any way a positive step. Within this ecomonics of course an egg is only worth as much as someone is paying for it and a forest is only worth something if it is turned into timber or if it provides some "ecosystem service". But EVERYTHING has an intrinsic value in my view of the world. And maybe that is what makes us different and impossible to agree upon. For me, the value of something is not what someone is willing to pay for it. If I see trees I do not see dollar bills and truckloads of 2x4s - I see a living forest that wants to be. An egg is a number of valuable things - it can become a living breathing being or it can be food for someone. That is its value in the real world. Anything else is an assigned value. What is problematic I think is if we let that assigned value, which entirely is created by humans govern society instead of human society taking control of how we WANT to value things. Our economics have surrendered to the idea that for some reason a system that humans created but that is not planned will somehow inherently become just and create wealth and a good standing for everyone, seemingly relieving humans from doing planning. While I certainly think this kind of logic applies to the natural world which has developed and evolved over millions of years into a complex system that is cyclical and provides a place for all species - it cannot apply to human society or economics. Mainly because the latter is a system created by humans in only a short time but also because that analogy would, if thought to the end, means that human people would end up in "economical niches" that have certain requirements. The difference between species in an ecosystem may be that they are small or large, live short or long and generally differ a lot. Applied to socioeconomics, one would end up with an inherent class or caste structure in which there is a "niche" for underpaid unskilled workers, predatory rich people, short-lived chemical plant workers - which is what we see now. But unlike in ecology where we value diversity, in respect to our own species, the wish is to provide all people with some sort of egalitarian opportunity and to avoid vast differences within the social fabric. This is why we cannot just hope for some self-regulating market to create a socioeconomic system that is experienced by humans as just and suits them, but instead humans have to take control over this and shape the reality of their society.

Another problem with virtual value of course is that it can be lost instantly. And that in that, the real world is affected, not just virtuality. So that virtual value does in the end have real implications. For example you write about people going hungry because the transport of food to them costs money and someone has to pay for it. Fact is, that the main reason for humans to suffer starvation and hunger is mainly that they do not have money to pay for the grains that are produced within the own region, because these prices are part of the virtual global economy and are subject to the prices that people halfway aroudn the globe are willing to pay for them - and if these people have the money to buy food to prices that are above what the local people can afford - and then use that food to make ethanol for cars, then that makes complete sense int he insane economy we live in today, but undoubtedly this is in no way connected to reality or in any way to something that is valueing humans in general.

Well so I guess you are talking about the level at which planning takes place. Obviously parts of capitalism has been planned (artificial scarcity and planned obsolscence), while what is missing is an overall control of the people over the economy, which basically is what I argue. That people should take control over their own creation - the economy. Capitalism in its pure form in a way is the absence of control - and as with all human creations that are not controlled it creates quite some destruction or in the end destroys itself.

Do you really think that making a profit is the only incentive of humans to create something good? This is the image that neoliberal economics wants us to believe but one does not have to go far back in time to find many other incentives. Darwin did not make his discoveries because there was a profit in it. Certainly the great artists usually were far from rich. Herein lies a major problem - we have come accustomed to money being the universal incentive. But given the chance, people will make good art, good music, good science and good objects because they want to make good things for themselves, the people around them or humanity. But by putting people into the context of having to earn money and by rewarding them with superficial material wealth for screwing others over, of course they will behave according to these rules...
And even if you use money as the incentive - I never said that all people whould have the same income no matter what they do. It would be allright to have all people getting a certain basic income and then add to that some additional income as a reward for some things.

It is here because capitalism demands it, because we rely on infinite growth and because the economy needs to have competition to keep wages low.

That is one option. Another would be to empower people and encourage them to form alliances to do the regulation. Or to create an economic system that disallows the formation of these big monopolitarian corporations.

... ctd @ Clarke:
Re the democratic system I described:
Oh definitely - A truely democratic system like this would indeed not scale up to a global government level. It would discourage by design the formation of large organizational structures. And I personally think that this is a good thing overall because scale is a major problem. It does not make large projects impossible, but it would make them rather hard because more people would have to agree. But this does reflect reality much more than to appoint a few people making decisions over the heads of many others.
What such a system would quite possibly not allow is to create a space program that puts a man on the moon within a decade - it might take a lot longer than that, but once it is done, it would be done in a way that does not mean that thousands of people have to suffer to make it happen. And I think this is crucial.

Well, then it is a self regulatory system, that is fine. The point of higher taxes for the rich is not so much to actually have rich people that pay these taxes, but to create a financial distribution that places people in the middle of that curve.
Yes, but the gap has deliberately been increased in the past decades. Incidentially during times when the boundaries were rather "extreme" (with 95% Tax on very high incomes), the overall happiness of the society was at a peak, while with a widening gap, the dissatisfaction was rising until now it is 99% versus 1%...