From: Emlyn \(hotmail\) (emlyn_oregan@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Jun 16 2000 - 03:35:33 MDT
(The original reply went to Randall, and Randall responded directly to me; I
meant
it to go to the list. Thus you wont have seen the messages these are
responses to.
I wont do any snipping!)
I'll respond to this message on list when I have a free moment (hour?).
Hopefully
pre-singularity.
Emlyn
----- Original Message -----
From: Randall, Randall R, SITS <randallrandall@att.com>
To: Emlyn (onetel) <emlyn@one.net.au>
Sent: Friday, June 16, 2000 4:45 PM
Subject: RE: Extropian Principle #5
> Emlyn wrote:
> > Sorry I haven't replied; I'm short on time and want to get
> > this one kind of right.
>
> No problem. :) BTW, I'll be at this address for
> several days, and you can always *reach* me here,
> but you could reply to wolfkin@freedomspace.net
> as well, if you wish.
>
> > Randall Randall wrote:
>
> > > I'd also like to take this opportunity to
> > > beg you to do more songs like "Alive". :)
> > > I love that song!
> >
> > You've made a friend for life.
>
> Um, does that mean you will?
>
You bet. Jodie and myself have been taking a break (having a second baby,
which is not really a break as such). We're hoping to get moving again in
the
second half of the year (that's soon, isn't it?). The overwhelming feedback
we've received about our music so far is
- 1 - We need an orchestra
- 2 - Sounds like it's from a musical.
We are taking steps to incorporate both of these points; ie:, write a full
musical
and stage it properly with orchestra, etc. More news as it comes to hand...
> > Thanks for your reply; I take it that agorists go for a brand of
anarchism
> > where you have only the free market, no gov't. Is this correct? Does
this
> > map over Libertarian ideas/ideals?
>
> Yes, it is correct, and agorists often call ourselves
> libertarians. In the US, using a capital L for
> Libertarian usually denotes that a person is part of
> the Libertarian Party, and most agorists would not
> be, since we would consider voting to be morally
> equivalent to using government force on others. Some
> agorists vote "in self-defense", though. :) As with
> other libertarians, there is rarely an issue that all
> agorists always agree on. In any case, there are usually
> considered to be two sorts of libertarian, minarchist
> (small government) and anarchist. Of the anarchist camp,
> some call themselves agorists, and some anarcho-capitalists,
> and the difference is nearly all in the name.
>
> > It's been instructive to read what you wrote; I've gone looking for
> > information on anarchist systems out there on the net, and can only
> > retrieve a lot of indecipherable mumbo jumbo. There are many many
> > many idiots out there who like to use the word Anarchy in their web
sites.
>
> Yes. :( In the US, the best-known group of
> people calling themselves "Anarchist" are
> violent and/or anti-technology.
>
> > I'm not sure that I agree with this. Fundamentally, you have at some
point
> > (let's say initially) a system where few people have huge wads of cash
> (big
> > capital), and the majority have relatively small wads (trivial capital).
> If
> > you remove the govt & all the intellectual property laws and the like,
why
> > will the concentrations of capital disperse from the larger holders to
the
> > marority, trivial capital holders? What mechanism will make this happen.
>
> Either the money will be invested, or it will be spent.
> If it is spent, it's obviously being put in other people's
> hands. If it is invested, then other people are benefiting
> from it, just as if it were their money (except for the
> small amount they are paying to use it: interest).
>
> > You
> > must bear in mind that capital concentrates into a small amount of
large,
> > privately held lumps because those with the capital like to keep and
> > increase their stake, and actively work to do so.
>
> This would be true if those with the capital were
> naturally better at making it in the first place,
> but *if* that were so, it would mean that they
> were better at meeting the needs of others, so that
> others are willing to pay them for it. I would
> expect, though, in the absence of force, that nearly
> everyone would be about the same in ability to make
> other people happy enough to part with their money.
>
> > Even without intellectual
> > property, limitied liability, tax favours, etc, I think I could hold
onto
> &
> > increase a major stake (say 1 billion+) at the expense of those around
me,
> > because of the weight that kind of capital carries. I'm very interested
to
> > know why I am misguided here.
>
> Here is why I think you are, anyway:
> Money cannot be made "at the expense of" those around,
> but only with their consent and approval, *unless* you
> are using force against them. If you were able to
> increase your 1 billion, it would be because other
> people were willing to pay you for whatever you were
> doing with it.
>
> > > So start your own. :) Seriously, with the advantage
> > > of large businesses being almost entirely caused by
> > > the regulations imposed by the State, businesses that
> > > got as large as most of today's corporations wouldn't
> > > last long: they can't change fast enough to keep up
> > > with an unregulated market (cf. the internet).
> >
> > This is my point; I'd like to start my own, but the marketplace already
> has
> > many players who have lots of stuff - the playing pieces -
> > and I don't.
>
> The thing to do, then, is to start in a business
> that doesn't require lots of stuff. In the
> simplest case, this means hiring your skills and
> time out to others. Notice that (in the US, at
> least; dunno about Australia) the laws which have
> been passed by government, at the behest of those
> with lots of money, are specifically designed to
> keep you from hiring yourself and your skills out
> at a fair price, since you'd have to pay extra
> taxes on having your one-person business, and
> jump through lots of hoops, and even then, if you
> have the same customer for more than some certain
> percentage of the time, you're automatically
> considered to be "working for" them. All this
> has the effect of a huge barrier to entry that
> wouldn't exist without government. One identifying
> feature of agorists is that they usually have one
> or more businesses going, without most of the
> jumping through hoops. I'm no exception (cf.
> www.freedomspace.net). It doesn't take much
> money to start something like this, unless you
> actually get licenses, permits, a physical
> building (since building codes are also designed
> to make operating a business in a "residential"
> area difficult or impossible), and all the other
> stuff which is intended to drive up your costs.
> The cost of complying with that stuff is the
> biggest cost of a small business.
>
> > I'd be interested to see someone here talk about whether large orgs
> actually
> > can change fast enough to keep up. I'm sure there are structures you
could
> > build to make this work. For instance, if the enormous hierarchical
> > multi-national doesn't work in the agorist economy, why wouldn't I as
the
> > Big Capitalist just break it into lots and lots and lots and lots of
teeny
> > weeny, mostly autonomous companies? Then they should gain the same
> advantage
> > of agility, but I can keep an eye on the big picture, and shuffle my
money
> > around to make sure that where they need it, my little companies get an
> > unfair edge in terms of lots of extra capital. Why wont this work?
>
> If it does work, it will be because you're
> doing enough good to stay afloat. When you
> say that your companies get an unfair edge,
> you either mean that it's a wise investment
> for them to have more money, in which case
> your competitors would borrow to match, or
> you mean that you're simply spending money
> for a temporary advantage, which enriches
> other people at your expense. Remember,
> without using force, you can only get people
> to give you money if they think that it's
> worth it, and the easiest way to make them
> think that is to do good things for them.
>
> > > Money is only coercive when it is used to buy
> > > force.
> >
> > I say it is coercive in an economic sense; like "Sell me your
> > company for 1 billion $US, or I'll spend the same in the market
> > on aggressive competitive practices designed to destroy your
> > market share". That's coersion.
>
> I think that unless you can get a monopoly
> by other means (such as passing laws or
> getting governmental financial assistance),
> any sane businessman would laugh at your
> threat. He would know that you can only
> lose money temporarily; you will run out.
> When you do, he'll make money again, and
> he can borrow enough to hold over until then,
> when he shows your message to his banker.
> If you have to pull this kind of stunt,
> it means that you don't believe that you
> can provide the service or product at the
> same value as he can. Anyway, if he accepts,
> you've just reversed your position with his,
> and if he was worse off when you proposed this,
> then you are now.
>
> > > Agreed, but see above about large businesses. This
> > > sort of behavior wouldn't be profitable without
> > > substantial assistance from government.
> >
> > Yet again, I don't buy this argument that large business
> > works solely as a result of a favourable environment due
> > solely to the govt. I'd like to hear more about it.
>
> It isn't so much that "large" only works because of
> government, but that the larger you get, the more
> overhead there is in communication and coordination
> between the various parts. People aren't able to
> keep track of more than a few people at once, and
> to get around this, you have to have more layers of
> management, just to keep track of the same events.
> Those extra layers are deadweight, competitively,
> unless being larger gives you some other advantage.
>
> > > Um, no, that would be force. Money is just
> > > an indicator of where it would be most helpful
> > > to invest your efforts. It's a signalling
> > > system about the needs of others.
> >
> > Money is as you say. The rule of Money, is about power.
> > People accumulate really vast amounts of capital to be
> > able to exert the power that comes with those sums.
> > Exerting power, means making people do things that they wouldn't
> > otherwise do, which is also called compulsion or coersion.
>
> Hm. If a store has a sale on computer equipment
> advertised on their storefront, I might go into
> the store to check out the merchandise that I
> would otherwise have ignored. Have they used
> coercion on me? I don't think so, since if I
> buy something that I would otherwise not have
> bought, it is because I believe that I will be
> better off buying than not buying. I would say,
> therefore, that causing others to change their
> course of action is only coercion if physical
> force or fraud is involved, since in that case,
> the recipient is *worse* off than they otherwise
> would have been. The telltale sign of market
> efficiency (which correlates with the lack of
> force or fraud) is that everyone involved in a
> particular transaction believes that they are
> better off than they would have been without it.
>
> [snipped grocery store example]
> > There is a flaw in the argument above, as follows:
> >
> > Either, people only want as much as they can buy, or they
> > want more than they can buy.
>
> Okay.
>
> > If they want only as much as they can buy, then what is the
> > point of money? You need only to allow them to take what
> > they want; we do not have a situation of scarcity.
>
> One function of money is to signal that more
> production of some good will be required in
> the future. If we don't keep track of what
> people got that they wanted, then we won't
> know what to make more of tomorrow. While
> this could conceivably be tracked with a
> centralized system of recordkeeping, the
> market system (using money) keeps track with
> little overhead, and coincidentally provides
> an incentive system to perpetuate the system.
> After all, if we used the central recordkeeping
> system, what incentive would the recordkeepers
> have not to walk off the job? There might also
> be other ways of doing this. In particular,
> nanotechnology will probably reduce the
> overhead of producing all your own goods to a
> low enough level that large numbers of people
> will do that instead of participating in any
> market. I expect to be one of those people. :)
>
> > If they want more than they can buy, then their individual choice is
> > thwarted. They must choose less than they desire. So this is not
> > 100% freedom of choice.
>
> No, but it is limited by production, not
> by force. If I am on a desert island, and
> want coconuts, it is true that my freedom
> of choice is limited to either working for
> the coconuts (by climbing trees, I guess)
> or not having any. That's just the way the
> universe works, and the market reflects that.
>
> > Further, this warehouse has limited items. Suppose some
> > people want to buy the same items with their money, to
> > a point where there are not enough items to fill demand
> > of the chosen type? In the warehouse scenario, it is
> > first-come-first-served. A rather arbitrary system of
> > redistribution.
> >
> > Maybe the warehouse uses an auctioning system? That way,
> > price moves to match up supply and demand (kind of).
> > This just exacerbates my earlier point that people can
> > only get the things they can afford with their money (and
> > so are quite restricted in terms of choice).
> >
> > Finally I think the most major point here is that some people
> > have a lot more money than others. Someone could walk in with
> > enough cash to buy everything in the warehouse. Maybe they've
> > gone without from previous warehouse sales, or perhaps they've
> > just inherited ungodly wealth, which allows them to basically go
> > around taking things (by offering so much money that they always
> > get first choice, esp in an auction situation).
> >
> > A parliamentary democratic system will divide things
> > according to it's own weird and non-obvious decision
> > making criteria, but I would contend that the optimality
> > of this decision could not be shown to be any worse than
> > that in the money situation.
>
> If you divide the selling and production into "rounds"
> or "turns" for clarity, then:
>
> On the first round, the parliamentary decision-making
> will be no worse, probably, than the market system,
> since we have no idea what the starting conditions are
> (what is available, who has more money). The parliamentary
> system, though, will never get any better. The market,
> though, contains its own signalling system for more
> production in exactly the areas that are required: those
> products become more expensive when there are fewer than
> needed. So in the second round, the market system will
> be more efficient than the parliamentary system at getting
> people what they want, and every round thereafter will
> become more efficient until it is as efficient as it's
> gonna get. This level of efficiency will likely be far
> better than the parliamentary system, even if not perfect
> (because of the lag of one production-to-market cycle
> that is built in to the system).
>
> > If you now took that monopoly away from MS, they still have
> > more money than God. This means, they can poach the best
> > employees, employ highly expensive & effective marketing
> > techniques (including negative techniques for crushing perception
> > of competitor products), influence complementary businesses to
> > stop trading with their competitors, and many, many other kinds
> > of really awful competitive practices.
>
> But without being able to force people to pay for
> things that they already have, they'd just be
> spending money. In other words, they'd either
> have to become a competitive organization, which
> entails providing value for money, or they'd
> spend until it was all gone. Remember, too, that
> they don't hire people at really high salaries,
> but instead at normal salaries with high stock
> portfolios. If they no longer had a monopoly on
> "Windows", they'd have to provide other services
> to survive. The stock price would plummet, and
> they'd no longer have all that money.
>
> By the way, those expensive marketing techniques
> aren't very effective. They can only afford those
> as long as no one else can sell copies of Windows.
>
> > My idea is, no doubt, someone else's, who stole it from me
> > before I thought of it.
>
> :)
>
> > I'll post it seperately.
>
> Alright. Did you bcc this to the extropians list?
> It doesn't appear to be in the cc field. Anyway,
> feel free to forward to that list, if you wish.
>
> Randall.
> wolfkin@freedomspace.net
> randallrandall@ems.att.com
>
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