[a.cyborg]

Exact.

User Another_Someone has insufficient information about market.

Cyborg analysis: Logically insufficient that humans earn on acting irrationally in market.

Yet, human being do act irrationally, but because of biological reasons. Human action is most often based on irrational premises, or premises based on insufficient information.

[sooyeah]

With regards to TECHNOCRACY I really don't wanna live in a mall. []   

[a.cyborg]

Have hard understanding human humor.

TECHNOCRACY is high-energy civilisation based on ENGINEER MANDATE and ENERGY ACCOUNTING, not "mall".

[sooyeah]

Yes mall, a huge building with shops and schools to house everyone equally, in which everyone lives in a cell/block apartment. That would probably have no windows etc.

Energy accounting, ok but I can't see people going for it, your giving a monetary value to, and sharing out, units of energy, evenly to everyone. It's a nice idea but I just don't think it would work in practice. However, you might be able to join it to the current system and somehow gain an overall benefit for everyone.

Robots doing all the work, that could happen but at the same time some would resist it(the Luddites for one), it would also be boring I enjoy working.

I take it your also removing international trading as the system supports itself?     

[another_someone]

Well wait then, if the market has to be irrational, is it not the case that a person would have to act irrationally and think irrationally, to be and work with-in it?

No - it simply means that humans cannot predict the outcome of their actions upon the market.  A market that is capable of being rationally controlled by a single player within the market, or a small group of players in the market, is a broken market.

[another_someone]

Rule of entropy: Chaos and disorder tend to increase in closed systems without sufficient countermeasures. Since world market is closed system, entropy would eventually increase. Humanity cannot expect to survive by utilising resources inefficiently and in interests of unnecessary expansion of consumption.

Definition: Unsustainability.

So do you think it is within our power to break the laws of nature, and prevent the increase in entropy?

Ofcourse, all systems are unsustainable in the long run - and it is naive to believe that humans, in any shape or form, are immortal, either as individuals or as a species.  The question is not whether the systems we have in play are indefinitely sustainable (nothing is), but whether they are the best we have at present, and whether in the end the system will live longer than we shall (i.e. any doctor does not claim you will never die - he merely tries to ensure that what you die of is something other than what he is treating you for, and if the ailment you have is something that will kill you in 40 years, and you are already 70 years old, he may consider the ailment not worth the effort to treat at all).

As earlier stated: Human bio-processor is insufficient to utilise such complex information in optimal way. Enhancements are advised.

Computer systems are increasingly used to predict market behaviour - they still get it wrong - and can do so even more spectacularly than humans do.

Computers can react much faster than humans, but they cannot do anything that humans have not programmed them to do.

[another_someone]

Energy accounting, ok but I can't see people going for it, your giving a monetary value to, and sharing out, units of energy, evenly to everyone. It's a nice idea but I just don't think it would work in practice.   

I have a serious problem with energy accounting - it seems to argue that everything other than energy has zero value (that includes human beings, land usage, and much else).

The monetary system does place a value on energy, but it places a value on much else as well - it does does make energy the exclusive unit of value.

Ofcourse, you can argue the balance of value between energy, human life, land usage, other materials, is wrongly balanced; but I would be loathed to argue that only energy has value.

[a.cyborg]

Since when is human being some sort of trading good? In slavery perhaps?

Do you think slavery is positive? I do not understand.

Energy accounting is not exchange system, but distribution system. All individual units would be receiving an equal share of the production capacity, to use to satisfy their needs.

That requires that all infrastructure within self-sufficient territorial base should be united under one administration.

Such administration is in making.

It will be called CYBORGIAN TECHNATE.

[another_someone]

Since when is human being some sort of trading good? In slavery perhaps?

OK, let me give you an example:

A human being may be expected to live 70 years - that equates to about 613603 hours.  If you buy my labour at £25/hour, that values my entire life at £15,340,075 - although you have yourself may only bought a very small fraction of that life.

OK, I will freely admit that the calculation is simplistic (you may be willing to pay me £25/hr today, but you would not have paid me that sum when I was a child, and you would necessarily pay me that later in life - so the total lifetime value of my labour might well be less than that, but all that means if that the £50 you may pay me for 2 hours labour today may represent an even higher percentage of my total lifetime labour value).

I will also accept that there are other ways that we can value a life, and the value we apply is by no means consistent - how much money are we prepared to pay to protect a life? 

Valuing human life is a complex and often contradictory exercise, but nonetheless we do place a value upon life.

Do you think slavery is positive? I do not understand.

That is whole other matter - I was not talking about slavery as such (although I think slavery as a system has gotten an unfortunate name because of certain abusive implementations of slavery, but that is another topic altogether).

Energy accounting is not exchange system, but distribution system. All individual units would be receiving an equal share of the production capacity, to use to satisfy their needs.

If you are not talking about a system of trade, then what you are talking about is simply rationing - there is nothing new in rationing, but it has never been effective as a long term mechanism, although it can be expedient in times of crisis.

Are you then suggesting that all trade should be suppressed, and resources be divided purely on the basis of rations (this is indeed exactly the Marxist ideal)?

[a.cyborg]

ENERGY ACCOUNTING: Total resource base production capacity of technate is divided into shares between all individuals living in area of technate. All individuals "own" their share of production capacity, and are free to use it as they like. Individual orders something, and it's share of production capacity (energy credits) are diverted to that area of production. Individual receive what it have ordered. Therefore, it is not rationing.

ENERGY CREDITS: Energy credits are units of information so technate could keep track on consumption. Therefore, they may not be saved over production cycle. When production cycle is over, the energy certifikate is reloaded. Energy credits cease to exist in disposable form when used.

Trade will not be suppressed. But it will not be profitable any more.

Technate will be so large and so advanced that it could produce anything cheaper than price system competitors.

[a.cyborg]

We would not need chips in our heads for that only, but in order to PROGRESS. We have passed point when nature takes its toll on us and drives our evolution. Now it is time that HUMAN RACE itself takes commando. Or it will degenerate into oblivion.

[another_someone]

ENERGY ACCOUNTING: Total resource base production capacity of technate is divided into shares between all individuals living in area of technate. All individuals "own" their share of production capacity, and are free to use it as they like. Individual orders something, and it's share of production capacity (energy credits) are diverted to that area of production. Individual receive what it have ordered. Therefore, it is not rationing.

Ofcourse this is rationing - you are saying each individual is allocated a ration of energy, this ration being nominally non-transferable - how is this different from (for instance) petrol rations (nobody says which car the petrol is used in but you still ration the petrol).  OK, so the accounting of the rations is more sophisticated, but it is still rationing.

As I said, it will almost certainly only be nominally non-traded, since in practice, I cannot see how you can prevent me from using my own energy ration for a purpose that benefits another person, nor prevent me from bartering that energy ration for something else that I desire from the other person.

ENERGY CREDITS: Energy credits are units of information so technate could keep track on consumption. Therefore, they may not be saved over production cycle. When production cycle is over, the energy certifikate is reloaded. Energy credits cease to exist in disposable form when used.

This itself is dangerous - current period accounting makes it impossible to do long term planning, and means that any energy I do not use within the current accounting period must be traded if I am not to lose its value altogether.

Trade will not be suppressed. But it will not be profitable any more.

Ofcourse it will be profitable.

Let me give you a very very crude example - a pretty girl has a high energy demand, so she is willing to offer her sexual favours in exchange for the use of their energy credits.

But there are ofcourse other things, besides sexual favours, that might also be traded.

Beyond that, if you allow trade in energy, but make energy credits a perishable comodity, the you are inadvertently also promoting an energy futures market (e.g. I don't need all of my energy credits in the current period, but expect that I will need more energy at a future date; but I know that Joe Bloggs needs more energy today, so I trade my energy credits that I have today for a promise from Joe Bloggs that he would give me his energy credits at a future date).

The reality is that there has never been a rationing system that has not stimulated a black market behind it (OK, if you do not prohibit the trade in energy credits, then you may argue that the market is more grey than black).

[a.cyborg]

Fact: In technate, there will be no scarcity. Therefore, technocracy wont prohibit bartering, but bartering will not be very popular. Besides, for energy "ration", individual could order what it want to be produced.

Yes, it is gone, but when new period comes, it will be reloaded to level corresponding to new period's production capacity.

When you are trying to give energy credits to someone else, they will dissapear in thin air. Therefore, the examples you said wont work as you say it. Of course, human being could try to trade (out of irrationalism or childish defiance) but who wants to trade when all needs could be satisfied without trading?

Read about technocratic movement on wikipedia. Educate yourself.

[a.cyborg]

You could now join technocracy at http://technocracy.forumcircle.com/portal.php [nofollow]

[another_someone]

Fact: In technate, there will be no scarcity. Therefore, technocracy wont prohibit bartering, but bartering will not be very popular. Besides, for energy "ration", individual could order what it want to be produced.

What do you mean by 'no scarcity' (apart from this sounding somewhat utopian)?

If you mean there is no scarcity of energy then there would be no need to ration it, so one must assume that there is a scarcity of energy.

How do you avoid the scarcity of land, or the scarcity of sex (see above example)?

When you are trying to give energy credits to someone else, they will dissapear in thin air.

You totally missed what I said.

I did not say that the authorities would notice a transfer of credits.  If I want to buy a new motor car, and it costs 100 credits, and I only have 20 credits left, then I can go to Fred Smith and trade something Fred Smith wants (land, sex, or a promise of future credits) in exchange for which he will order the motor car for himself, and then transfer the title of the motor car to me in exchange for whatever he himself desires.  There is no official transfer of energy credits, but there is a transfer of the benefits obtained from the energy credits.

You might say that in your world there would be no shortage of motor cars either, but then what value would the the energy credits have at all?

[a.cyborg]

Land would not be owned under technate, and sex is no commodity, but personal issue.

And yes, what is wrong with utopianism? Utopianism is what brought us here today. You seem not to have read wikipedia article.

[another_someone]

Land would not be owned under technate, and sex is no commodity, but personal issue.

Any prostitute will tell you that sex can be turned into a commodity, just like anything else that a human being might desire.

Whether land is owned, or simply rented, or however its use is allocated - it is still a finite resource that must be distributed in some way (simply arguing that one can distribute land on the basis of an energy value is meaningless unless that land happens to have an oil well sitting on it).

And yes, what is wrong with utopianism? Utopianism is what brought us here today. You seem not to have read wikipedia article.

I had not had time until today to do so, but that has been remedied - but not convinced me that it is any different from a variant of communism (as highlighed by Veglen's "Soviet of Technicians").

The problem with all utopian social constructs is that the simplify human beings as if they were crude robots, and take regard only of the relationship between the human individual and the central authority of society, and take no account of the relationships between human beings that occur outside of their relationship with the social authority.  Interpersonal human relations carry with them their own power play, and also satisfy human needs just as much as the material needs you believe you have totally controlled by the relationship between the individual and the centre.  If you have a need, then it has a value that is associated with it, and is no less important (nor may be separated from) the material needs embodied in the relationship between the individual and the centre.

[another_someone]

No - it simply means that humans cannot predict the outcome of their actions upon the market.  A market that is capable of being rationally controlled by a single player within the market, or a small group of players in the market, is a broken market.

I think we are looking at it very differently.
By irrational I am actually talking about damage and the non-sustainability of the market itself; not control of but the consequence of the market. How the whole affects the world and its peoples.

Damage is a subjective and contextual issue.

As I said before, sustainability is impossible, no matter what you do.  Any action one undertakes will come to a point where sooner or later you have to choose a different course of action, but that does not make that course of action wrong for the time you take it, nor does it imply that if you had taken a different course of action, it would be any more sustainable.

No animal (human or otherwise) has ever acted in an infinitely sustainable manner.

The nature of markets is not to look at sustainability but to look at what the best action is within the immediate context, and assume that when you change context so the market will force a change of action to reflect that change of context.

The question is not whether the systems we have in play are indefinitely sustainable (nothing is), but whether they are the best we have at present, and whether in the end the system will live longer than we shall (i.e. any doctor does not claim you will never die - he merely tries to ensure that what you die of is something other than what he is treating you for, and if the ailment you have is something that will kill you in 40 years, and you are already 70 years old, he may consider the ailment not worth the effort to treat at all).

Yeah, I see what you saying but the market has to account for those that will be here in the future and not just those that are here now; The reality that the market currently does not, is in itself irrational, to my mind.

On the contrary, the market does as nature has always done, it optimises the immediate.

All evolution is by its nature short term - it fills the immediate niche.  All that the markets undertake is to create an evolutionary environment where the actions of the players simply seek to survive within their niche, but in doing so they move the whole market forward, which then changes the niches, which then changes the behaviour of the players in order to adjust to the changes in the market.

What happens in markets is what happens in life.  A species seeks to maximise its immediate survival within nature, but in doing so it creates an unconscious feedback within the natural system, which changes the environment that it and other species must learn to adapt to or perish.  Nature is ofcourse sustainable, but no single natural environment is ever sustainable, but is merely the environment of the instant.

It is naive to believe you can ever create a sustainable natural (or market) environment, since that is to suppress natural development.

The point about markets is that they are adaptable, not that they are sustainable - and that which will sustain itself indefinitely will by its nature lack the ability to adapt.

[a.cyborg]

Land is not rented. All land is under administration of technate. People own production capacity, not means of production.

[another_someone]

Land is not rented. All land is under administration of technate. People own production capacity, not means of production.

So where do people live?  All forms of habitat that I am aware of utilise land in some way, and the people who inhabit a dwelling must somehow have a right to use the land the dwelling is built on as a natural consequence of having a right to use the dwelling itself.

Somehow this allocation of the right to occupy a dwelling must be distributed by some means, and with it comes right to the land upon which the dwelling is built (even if they are shared right, such as in a tower block, they still are rights that the occupier has, that non-occupiers will not have.