I created an open source barter facilitator application and I am wondering if it is the future of commerce
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I think smaller communities would be great for many reasons. But I think scale is a key to our current level of productivity. And I think it's required for building certain complicated technologies, like industrial farm equipment or computer chips. And without industrial farm equipment, farmers are less productive, so your village of 300 people might need to be mostly farmers. I think this is what was required in the past, but with the industrial revolution it opened up so people could specialize in other things.
There wouldn't need to be capitalist villages, I think that some would inevitably form. Maybe many people are okay to just do a job and get rewarded the same as everyone else, but others might prefer something closer to the current system. And assuming no one is preventing them from existing, how do you prevent someone from deciding that they would be better off in a capitalist village where they might get paid more than in the sharing village?
Maybe you're right that nuclear power is a red herring. Say we rely on solar panels or windmills. I think these are also complicated to build and require some rare materials. Who would volunteer to go to a remote copper mine if they could instead stay at home and work on something else for the same reward?
And maybe people are passionate about that sort of thing, so it'd be okay. But surely there are some jobs that are important but not as appealing. Who would clean the sewers or do something a bit dangerous like fix power lines or maybe washing windows? And I'd bet that many people might still go to 8+ years of medical school to become a doctor, but would people still do that for some less appealing careers?
So I feel like you need to offer some extra reward to incentivize people to do jobs that they wouldn't want to do. Part of why I say this is because I'm counting down the days until I can have a vacation, and eventually retire. My job is "okay" but I'd rather work on fun hobby projects, but I don't think anyone would ever pay me for them. One viable option is for me to work my normal job to make money to buy food, but then take time off to work on fun stuff that I enjoy, but no one wants to pay me for (or trade me for food).
So assuming you offer some reward to people for the less fun jobs, how do you prevent them leaving for capitalist villages which would presumably always reward them more? This is the key issue IMO. Unless getting rid of capitalism results in huge savings by not needing to advertise, compete, etc.
I mention dream technology because I feel like that can help with some of the scale issues. Maybe with unlimited power and 3D printers, a small village could produce everything they need, so you don't need to worry about struggling just to produce everything you need for survival.
The technology already exists to create food or other things at scale though without much manual labour so I disagree with that assertion.
As for how to stop capitalist villages, well that's primarily done through a mixture of education, cooperation and showing there's no advantage to capitalism. Capitalism requires a state or some kind of force in order to enforce property rights, if I can go to that village and either take objects or ideas, capitalism loses since it cannot enforce its rights on me, nor its will once I go to a non capitalist village and thus it would have no power to keep its secrets, ideas or designs. It's also done through education in that those who know more are less likely to be taken advantage of by others, especially if things like critical analysis etc are taught. Showing how well cooperation works instead of competition can be another protection against it. Also, a capitalist village will still have exploited workers. Why would they stay there when they could move somewhere where they're not exploited?
So firstly, there isn't necessarily a need to go to a copper mine, there's copper in lots of things and we could set up recycling programs to extract it from things that wouldn't be necessary under such a system, mass produced stuff, for example, things that broke and thus got thrown away etc etc. If there was a need to mine copper this could be done in part with technology, some kind of drones or other machines. Lastly, I'm sure there would be some people that wouldn't mind doing labour if it meant less in the future, people thinking only short term and only about themselves is how this current mess of a world happened, after all.
Again, non appealing jobs can be done via technology and we can redesign systems so that labour would be at a minimum, a lot of automated/semi-automated recycling plants could be used, sewers could lead into recycling facilities and places for growing plants etc. So with those things manual labour could be massively reduced, or at least the parts people would 'need' incentives for (though I don't think they necessarily would if it wasn't constant and they thought long term and collectively).
You assume capitalism always offers more, it doesn't necessarily and even if it does at the beginning over time it would merely exploit more and more people until they got fed up enough to leave, more people would do that currently if there was any place to go where they didn't have to be exploited and could live a happy life with all they needed but there isn't really anywhere like that currently.
I agree that we could very much use 3D printers etc and smaller power grids to create self-sustaining cities etc, using all kinds of renewable power since solar and wind aren't the only types.
Hope this helps!
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The technology already exists to create food or other things at scale though without much manual labour so I disagree with that assertion.
As for how to stop capitalist villages, well that's primarily done through a mixture of education, cooperation and showing there's no advantage to capitalism. Capitalism requires a state or some kind of force in order to enforce property rights, if I can go to that village and either take objects or ideas, capitalism loses since it cannot enforce its rights on me, nor its will once I go to a non capitalist village and thus it would have no power to keep its secrets, ideas or designs. It's also done through education in that those who know more are less likely to be taken advantage of by others, especially if things like critical analysis etc are taught. Showing how well cooperation works instead of competition can be another protection against it. Also, a capitalist village will still have exploited workers. Why would they stay there when they could move somewhere where they're not exploited?
So firstly, there isn't necessarily a need to go to a copper mine, there's copper in lots of things and we could set up recycling programs to extract it from things that wouldn't be necessary under such a system, mass produced stuff, for example, things that broke and thus got thrown away etc etc. If there was a need to mine copper this could be done in part with technology, some kind of drones or other machines. Lastly, I'm sure there would be some people that wouldn't mind doing labour if it meant less in the future, people thinking only short term and only about themselves is how this current mess of a world happened, after all.
Again, non appealing jobs can be done via technology and we can redesign systems so that labour would be at a minimum, a lot of automated/semi-automated recycling plants could be used, sewers could lead into recycling facilities and places for growing plants etc. So with those things manual labour could be massively reduced, or at least the parts people would 'need' incentives for (though I don't think they necessarily would if it wasn't constant and they thought long term and collectively).
You assume capitalism always offers more, it doesn't necessarily and even if it does at the beginning over time it would merely exploit more and more people until they got fed up enough to leave, more people would do that currently if there was any place to go where they didn't have to be exploited and could live a happy life with all they needed but there isn't really anywhere like that currently.
I agree that we could very much use 3D printers etc and smaller power grids to create self-sustaining cities etc, using all kinds of renewable power since solar and wind aren't the only types.
Hope this helps!
The technology already exists to create food or other things at scale though without much manual labour so I disagree with that assertion.
It exists now, but it is complicated to produce and maintain, let alone develop from scratch. I don't think it can be done by a village of 300 people, even if they have access to all the information they could need and education and all that. Even if they had all the knowledge needed, the infrastructure required to produce it is large and expensive. Maybe a village could specialize in producing tractors, but I don't think they could also make their own cell phones. And they only need so many tractors for themselves, so what would they do next? Either sell the additional tractors they build to another village, or change their production lines to make something else-- though they may need more tractors suddenly in the future.
A lot of what you're saying relies on efficient recycling and automation. Once we have this, then sure maybe a sharing utopia would be possible. But I'm not convinced that we're close to that. A lot of companies are trying to develop self driving cars, a lot of money stands to be made from that over paying truck drivers/taxis/etc. But it's hard. Japan is investing a lot in automation because of their aging population causing future labour shortages. We're making progress but it takes a lot of time, and it's not clear if it will ever be completely possible. So currently it is basically "dream technology".
You assume capitalism always offers more, it doesn’t necessarily and even if it does at the beginning over time it would merely exploit more and more people until they got fed up enough to leave, more people would do that currently if there was any place to go where they didn’t have to be exploited and could live a happy life with all they needed but there isn’t really anywhere like that currently.
Have you read about the history of the Soviet Union? The number of people fleeing from East to West was significant enough to build a wall to keep them in. Fleeing in the other direction was almost unheard of. I don't think simply "giving up capitalism" is all that we need to create a better life, I think there still needs to be some way of deciding how to allocate resources that are used for different things. Historically it seems like the answer to that is either having a centralized government make the decisions, or having a capitalist free market do it. Both can be corrupted, make bad decisions, and result in shortages of food and other essentials. Both can cause some polarization of wealth. I don't think there's a third option of "everyone just be better", since once you reach a certain point, it only takes a few people taking advantage of a system to ruin it. I would happily just "be better", but I don't have enough faith in others to do the same. I'd only have to observe a few people taking advantage before deciding that the system is doomed and I'd be better off in a different economic system.
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Hello my name is Daniel Hanrahan and I created a barter facilitator application and do you think it is the future of commerce: https://github.com/Daniel-Hanrahan-Tools-and-Games/Barter_Facilitator
Sincerely,
Daniel HanrahanYou might be interested to learn some history of societies without state-issued currency. The book "Debt: The First 5000 years" by David Graeber has lots to say about pre-modern systems of account. I'm aware there are some criticisms of the book so I don't want present it as absolute truth - but it is an interesting on read, and it cites lots of anthropological studies.
One of the points of the book - and I see there are also other anthropologists who take this view - is there is no evidence that there has ever been a barter economy. Economics curriculum typically talks about prehistoric barter as an introduction; but it looks like the barter story may have been made up by Adam Smith. Smith's "Wealth of Nations" is highly insightful, and even predicts problems with capitalism that we currently face. But he probably didn't have the anthropological background to write authoritatively about economies of prehistoric societies.
Graeber does claim that there have been times when barter has been a stop-gap when there is a problem with money supply. So that's a case where something like your app might come in,
When barter has appeared, it wasn’t as part of a purely barter economy, and money didn’t emerge from it—rather, it emerged from money. After Rome fell, for instance, Europeans used barter as a substitute for the Roman currency people had gotten used to. “In most of the cases we know about, [barter] takes place between people who are familiar with the use of money, but for one reason or another, don’t have a lot of it around.
These were temporary situations. The fall of Rome probably seemed like the end of the world to some people at the time. But new societal structures and currencies filled the gaps.
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I understand what you are trying to say but however though every single currency or mostly every single currency is going to become worthless like the Weimar mark or the Zimbabwean dollar. I am basing that on both what I see on the news and what is happening to people all around me.
I am basing that on both what I see on the news and what is happening to people all around me.
what news sources are you consuming?
because if you're getting the message from the news that economic collapse is imminent and all currencies are going to be worthless and we will need to fall back to a barter-based economy...that is a function of choices you've made in your news diet, much more than it has anything to do with anything actually happening in the real world.
and what specifically is happening to people around you that you're referring to? do you have a pen-pal in Weimar-era Germany who you're communicating with through a time portal? or are you talking with other people who have the same news diet as you do and forming a self-reinforcing worldview?
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The technology already exists to create food or other things at scale though without much manual labour so I disagree with that assertion.
It exists now, but it is complicated to produce and maintain, let alone develop from scratch. I don't think it can be done by a village of 300 people, even if they have access to all the information they could need and education and all that. Even if they had all the knowledge needed, the infrastructure required to produce it is large and expensive. Maybe a village could specialize in producing tractors, but I don't think they could also make their own cell phones. And they only need so many tractors for themselves, so what would they do next? Either sell the additional tractors they build to another village, or change their production lines to make something else-- though they may need more tractors suddenly in the future.
A lot of what you're saying relies on efficient recycling and automation. Once we have this, then sure maybe a sharing utopia would be possible. But I'm not convinced that we're close to that. A lot of companies are trying to develop self driving cars, a lot of money stands to be made from that over paying truck drivers/taxis/etc. But it's hard. Japan is investing a lot in automation because of their aging population causing future labour shortages. We're making progress but it takes a lot of time, and it's not clear if it will ever be completely possible. So currently it is basically "dream technology".
You assume capitalism always offers more, it doesn’t necessarily and even if it does at the beginning over time it would merely exploit more and more people until they got fed up enough to leave, more people would do that currently if there was any place to go where they didn’t have to be exploited and could live a happy life with all they needed but there isn’t really anywhere like that currently.
Have you read about the history of the Soviet Union? The number of people fleeing from East to West was significant enough to build a wall to keep them in. Fleeing in the other direction was almost unheard of. I don't think simply "giving up capitalism" is all that we need to create a better life, I think there still needs to be some way of deciding how to allocate resources that are used for different things. Historically it seems like the answer to that is either having a centralized government make the decisions, or having a capitalist free market do it. Both can be corrupted, make bad decisions, and result in shortages of food and other essentials. Both can cause some polarization of wealth. I don't think there's a third option of "everyone just be better", since once you reach a certain point, it only takes a few people taking advantage of a system to ruin it. I would happily just "be better", but I don't have enough faith in others to do the same. I'd only have to observe a few people taking advantage before deciding that the system is doomed and I'd be better off in a different economic system.
I don't see the point in discussing this any more. You seem utterly convinced that things cannot work any other way, and are comparing a statist history to a non statist future.
Hope that things get better for you.
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Hello my name is Daniel Hanrahan and I created a barter facilitator application and do you think it is the future of commerce: https://github.com/Daniel-Hanrahan-Tools-and-Games/Barter_Facilitator
Sincerely,
Daniel Hanrahansure is a lot of weird negging going on in this thread
cool app idea, i am going to try and compile
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sure is a lot of weird negging going on in this thread
cool app idea, i am going to try and compile
Thank you
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You might be interested to learn some history of societies without state-issued currency. The book "Debt: The First 5000 years" by David Graeber has lots to say about pre-modern systems of account. I'm aware there are some criticisms of the book so I don't want present it as absolute truth - but it is an interesting on read, and it cites lots of anthropological studies.
One of the points of the book - and I see there are also other anthropologists who take this view - is there is no evidence that there has ever been a barter economy. Economics curriculum typically talks about prehistoric barter as an introduction; but it looks like the barter story may have been made up by Adam Smith. Smith's "Wealth of Nations" is highly insightful, and even predicts problems with capitalism that we currently face. But he probably didn't have the anthropological background to write authoritatively about economies of prehistoric societies.
Graeber does claim that there have been times when barter has been a stop-gap when there is a problem with money supply. So that's a case where something like your app might come in,
When barter has appeared, it wasn’t as part of a purely barter economy, and money didn’t emerge from it—rather, it emerged from money. After Rome fell, for instance, Europeans used barter as a substitute for the Roman currency people had gotten used to. “In most of the cases we know about, [barter] takes place between people who are familiar with the use of money, but for one reason or another, don’t have a lot of it around.
These were temporary situations. The fall of Rome probably seemed like the end of the world to some people at the time. But new societal structures and currencies filled the gaps.
Yes but however though from 476 to 1476 approximately in europe around 95% of people used barter because they did not have any currency at all and pre-1543 Japan had a barter system to some extent.
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I am basing that on both what I see on the news and what is happening to people all around me.
what news sources are you consuming?
because if you're getting the message from the news that economic collapse is imminent and all currencies are going to be worthless and we will need to fall back to a barter-based economy...that is a function of choices you've made in your news diet, much more than it has anything to do with anything actually happening in the real world.
and what specifically is happening to people around you that you're referring to? do you have a pen-pal in Weimar-era Germany who you're communicating with through a time portal? or are you talking with other people who have the same news diet as you do and forming a self-reinforcing worldview?
I am seeing the value of my money go down and down in real time, I am seeing and hearing in my neighborhood that homelessness is going up and up. The news sources I use is philosophical gamer, Robert Kiyosaki and heresy financial. Those are just some of my sources.
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The technology already exists to create food or other things at scale though without much manual labour so I disagree with that assertion.
It exists now, but it is complicated to produce and maintain, let alone develop from scratch. I don't think it can be done by a village of 300 people, even if they have access to all the information they could need and education and all that. Even if they had all the knowledge needed, the infrastructure required to produce it is large and expensive. Maybe a village could specialize in producing tractors, but I don't think they could also make their own cell phones. And they only need so many tractors for themselves, so what would they do next? Either sell the additional tractors they build to another village, or change their production lines to make something else-- though they may need more tractors suddenly in the future.
A lot of what you're saying relies on efficient recycling and automation. Once we have this, then sure maybe a sharing utopia would be possible. But I'm not convinced that we're close to that. A lot of companies are trying to develop self driving cars, a lot of money stands to be made from that over paying truck drivers/taxis/etc. But it's hard. Japan is investing a lot in automation because of their aging population causing future labour shortages. We're making progress but it takes a lot of time, and it's not clear if it will ever be completely possible. So currently it is basically "dream technology".
You assume capitalism always offers more, it doesn’t necessarily and even if it does at the beginning over time it would merely exploit more and more people until they got fed up enough to leave, more people would do that currently if there was any place to go where they didn’t have to be exploited and could live a happy life with all they needed but there isn’t really anywhere like that currently.
Have you read about the history of the Soviet Union? The number of people fleeing from East to West was significant enough to build a wall to keep them in. Fleeing in the other direction was almost unheard of. I don't think simply "giving up capitalism" is all that we need to create a better life, I think there still needs to be some way of deciding how to allocate resources that are used for different things. Historically it seems like the answer to that is either having a centralized government make the decisions, or having a capitalist free market do it. Both can be corrupted, make bad decisions, and result in shortages of food and other essentials. Both can cause some polarization of wealth. I don't think there's a third option of "everyone just be better", since once you reach a certain point, it only takes a few people taking advantage of a system to ruin it. I would happily just "be better", but I don't have enough faith in others to do the same. I'd only have to observe a few people taking advantage before deciding that the system is doomed and I'd be better off in a different economic system.
I don't think it can be done by a village of 300 people
These things take an order of magnitude more companies today to build. Not only could 300 people not build the board inside one of the machines used for manufacturing, but 300 companies of hundreds to thousands of employees couldn't either. Each component is usually created by one company that specializes in that specific component and only that component because of how complex these things are to manufacture individually.
For that to work, you'd need villages to specialize in what they produce and export, but then this leads to a completely different kind of society than what you two are discussing here.
