New Commerce
Sorry for the long wait… I just <inserts usual excuses>. Actually I happen to be on vacation in Portland. I have been spending quite a bit of time recently trying to “learn CS5″ with limited success… I dislike e-books. I learned about flex because it came with CS5 (ouch). I have tried the learn flex in a week tutorial and the flex 4 bible and I’ve learned the most doing what I am now… winging it trying to made a random word generator for conlangs. Should have just gone back to my roots, i.e. poke around until it does what you want.
I started thinking about inventing a new “economic system.” Considering how complex existing economics seem to be, this is a monumental task. I have a copy of “naked economics” from Powell’s books which I have not yet read, hopefully this will provide insight. To invent said system I would first have to define the specifications and constraints.
One of them is “incorporating environmental value” into economics. I learned about this idea in environmental studies, and it sounds nice but what does it mean? In the past money was backed by gold, modern community scrip is sometimes backed by an hour of labor, the fiat system is backed by moonbeams and wishes. So does this mean money is backed by square feet of nature? There’s a lot of gray area in “environmental value,” too. Prices are based on a slue of different factors, and not necessarily their actual value to us.
I have to say that I’m not sure if I’ve got the definition right, but here’s the solution from communism: micromanage everything. In other words, mutually assured services on a large scale. MAS is a term I use for a tiny-community system where everyone has an agreement to provide one another with their services if the other provides theirs. A supply of goods, like food, is a service. But according to Charles Wheelan, the soviet union failed because micromanaging was too difficult on a large scale, and there was also corruption.
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My economic system would solve these problems, remove money, remove corruption, and have a highly efficient and powerful system.