I went looking for your 5 principles. • civilization is already a cooperative enterprise, it's just a matter of cooperation's extent/ubiquity
Agree. That's one of the reasons Trump's norm-breaking was so destructive. • there's nothing supernatural, so all solutions have to be built on science Agree there is no supernatural. I don't see that implies that "all solutions have to be built on science." Most of our norms are not science-based. • innovation, technology, culture, etc. are limited only by nature; so in principle the things we build (including governments) can be as big and complex as the natural world Is this controversial? • class is a cultural construct; we create it; hence we can eliminate it Is this controversial? • the spectral signature of organization sizes is present in nature and should be mirrored in society (e.g. power laws for org sizes, small-world networks, etc) Not sure what you mean by this. If you mean that it's important to be aware of advances in our understanding of complex organizations, I certainly agree. -- Russ On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 11:53 AM uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <[email protected]> wrote: > OK. If you changed that to say that one of the functions social mechanisms > like contracts happen to implement are money-facilitated transactions, then > that would've been fine. But by proposing the 5 principles I did, I was > attempting to answer your question of what a society might look like > without (or with drastically fewer) money-facilitated exchanges. I know we > can go a lot farther than we have, including relying more on co-ops and > less on for-profits, including drastically increasing contractual tools > (like the "plain language" movement), like adding ethical sections to > standard artifacts like research publications, ensuring publicly funded > research is freely accessible to the public that funded it, etc. > > Can we push that to an ultimate limit where no money is ever used? IDK. > Just because I can't yet envision its practical details doesn't mean we > can't build it up from principles. I'd enjoy doing that and Dave's provided > a good start by outlining prior cultures, even if those particular ones > don't scale. Would we want to completely eliminate money? Probably not. I > don't toss obsolete tools from my toolbox just in case they're not as > obsolete as I thought. > > The question is less about eliminating money and more about relying on a > reductive hyper-focus on money and being led by our noses into ad hoc > responses like UBI. UBI is like tossing a hammer to someone who needs to > change a tire. Wrong tool, dude. But thanks. Maybe I can trade it for a lug > wrench? > > On 5/10/21 11:35 AM, Russ Abbott wrote: > > Sounds like we're not disagreeing too much. You wrote, "By saying the > purpose of contracts and laws is to spell out additional details of > money-facilitated transactions ... that that's the purpose of laws, etc. is > putting the cart before the horse. We've gone too far, put too much > emphasis on the money and not enough emphasis on the otherwise mediated > relationships between various parties. Money is a means, not an end, a > tool, not the purpose to which a tool is put." > > > > If I said, "purpose," I should have said "function." > > > > Laws typically trump money: OSHA, etc. A company can't (honestly) buy > its way out of providing safe working conditions or selling contaminated > food. I think that's appropriate. It's not clear to me that I'm "putting > the cart before the horse" as you say. > > _ > > _ > > __-- Russ > > > > On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 11:15 AM uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <[email protected] <mailto: > [email protected]>> wrote: > > > > No, I'm not *quite* complaining about the reduction of money to a > quantifier. My objection extends further to the ability of any particular > money (e.g. wooden chits) to stand in, as a mediator, for what it helps > trade. Your espresso machine is not *merely* worth $1000. That is the > reduction I'm complaining about, a reduction that the accumulation of > capital relies on. > > > > And, as I've qualified several times, mediating value stores *do* > facilitate transactions, perhaps even to an extent that we will *never*, > could never, eliminate it. As I've said since the beginning of the UBI > thread, I don't *know* if we can eliminate money. But it would be useful if > we could reintroduce more diversity into our media of exchange. > > > > But, I object to your assertion that we have contracts, laws, etc. > to flesh out the details that money doesn't cover. That's not *why* we have > contracts, laws, etc. We have those things to support the larger > *foundations* of society. That they support money-facilitated transactions > is a symptom, not a cause. > > > > Socially responsible mutual funds are one example of reintroducing > variables into the calculus by which we accumulate capital. Pressuring > Georgia-based corporations into making public statements about voter > suppression in Georgia is *another* example. Actually attending annual > shareholder meetings for publicly traded corporations, and expressing your > opinions about the company's activities is yet another way. Carbon offsets > are yet another example. Dave's mention of shunning is another. The > examples of introducing these variables are everywhere. That you don't > acknowledge them when they're pointed out is worriesome. You asked how we > can trade contracts without money. I provided an answer. You go on to cite > a definition of money. Weird. It's like a laser-focused attention on money > to the exclusion of all else. > > > > Anyway. My only point, here, is to push against the tendency to do > what you've just done. By saying the purpose of contracts and laws is to > spell out additional details of money-facilitated transactions ... that > that's the purpose of laws, etc. is putting the cart before the horse. > We've gone too far, put too much emphasis on the money and not enough > emphasis on the otherwise mediated relationships between various parties. > Money is a means, not an end, a tool, not the purpose to which a tool is > put. And like any tool, it sits in a (large) equivalence class of > particular tools, each of which can play the role. And which tool you > choose biases what happens as a result. And if you don't deliberately > *choose* the tool, just fall into using it by accident, then you'll be > biased in a cryptic way. > > > > If you still don't see how a complex society can get along with > *fewer* money-facilitated transactions, then I'm tilting at windmills. How > many fewer? I don't know. But some, at least. Asserting that because we > can't eliminate it all doesn't argue that we can't eliminate most of it. > The perfect is the enemy of the good. > > > > > > On 5/10/21 10:34 AM, Russ Abbott wrote: > > > As a medium of exchange, I think of money as something like a > ruler. You can use it to measure things, to compare the measurements, and > to exchange things for tokens of units of such measurements. Certainly, > such a measurement is not a complete description of the thing measured. Is > claiming that a measurement of a thing is equivalent to the thing itself > what you are referring to as reduction? I doubt that anyone would take that > position. So if you are arguing against that, I think it is something of a > red herring. No one seriously takes such a position. > > > > > > Still, money is extraordinarily useful for facilitating exchanges > that would be very difficult to arrange otherwise. Of course, if it's a > complicated exchange one generally needs more than a ruler. That's why we > have contracts, laws, etc., to spell out the additional details. I > certainly agree with you about that. But I still don't see how a complex > society can get along without something like a money-like ruler as a way to > establish basic comparisons as at least the starting points of many if not > most exchanges. > > > _ > > > _ > > > __-- Russ Abbott > > > Professor, Computer Science > > > California State University, Los Angeles > > > > > > > > > On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 9:21 AM uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected] <mailto: > [email protected]>>> wrote: > > > > > > Using wooden chits *and* US dollars limits overly reductive > conceptions of money. It's fine to play word games and point out ambiguity > in the usage of the term "money". But it should be clear that, like with > languages, having diverse types of money is less reductive than 1 type of > money. I'd no more want to rid the world of Yen than I'd want to rid the > world of, say, Farsi. Here lie many of our disagreements about hooking one > nation's money to another nation's money. > > > > > > Options are contracts. You can trade contracts without money. > We do it all the time with, say, "quit claim" deeds. While the overwhelming > majority of these trades use money, my claim is that money isn't > *necessary*. Of course, it may be effective and efficient. > > > > > > This conversation is about the accumulation of capital and UBI > as a band-aid to help maintain a society under the tendency to accumulate > capital. In that larger conversation, reduction to a singular, grand > unified measure like a single money, like USD, washes away the variation in > ways to store value. Storing value in Yuan, as opposed to Euros, actually > means something (at least Putin thinks so). Similarly, storing value in a > .25 acre plot of land with a fairly maintained building on it is different > from storing value in gold. Although they can all be *thought of* as money, > only a capitalist does so. The rest of us think, say, our espresso machine, > is different fundamentally from our pickup truck. > > > > > > On 5/10/21 8:22 AM, Russ Abbott wrote: > > > > As you say, your alternatives are "money writ large." So how > does that eliminate money? It just changes its form. > > > > > > > > I don't understand how options further your position. How do > you trade them without something like money? > > > > -- > > ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ > > > > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam < > http://bit.ly/virtualfriam> > > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com < > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com> > > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ < > http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/> > > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ < > http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/> > > > > > > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > > > > -- > ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ > > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ >
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