From: delriviere christophe (mich@thehzone.tzo.org)
Date: Tue Aug 03 1999 - 08:22:56 MDT
De : Freeman Craig Presson <dhr@iname.com>
>On 2 Aug 99, at 14:22, delriviere christophe wrote:
>[...]
>> In what kind of society would we live if for each financial transaction,
>> how little it is, a small percentage of this transaction was assignated
to
>> a zero sum lottery ? you buy a car, a TV, a gsm, a chocolate, a fruit, a
>> house, a beer, a service, wathever, a small percentage of the price is
>> invested in a permanent and fast lottery for you in an automated way.
That
>> would be totally enforced by law.
>[...]
>
>- For one thing. we'd live in a society where every little transaction was
>monitored by some bureaucracy. We're too close to that now.
>
>- One criticism of free capitalism is that wealth concentrates, since them
>that has, gets. This idea would have the virtue of stirring the pot, and if
>it could be truly (modulo modest operating expenses) zero-sum, would seem
to
>have some invigorating effect on the economy and society.
Yes, in a more fluid economy, with massive and almost free computational
architectures, this would represent few problems. The only bureaucracy would
be the execution of simple algorithms.
Probably cryptography would make this process safe. Of course I was
interested in the fact that this would use the human being appetite for
money and love of game (really addictive ;) to augment the quantity of
economical transactions and then the working of the global society.
>However, in a free
>world there would be a free market in lotteries, which would have exactly
the
>same effect without forcing anyone to participate.
>
Yes, point well taken, I should choose my words better here.
In a free world, I was wondering if such kind of systems, *if really
efficient*, would not be massively adopted by people who are interested by
charity but do want also to give themselve a good chance to survive in
correct conditions if something goes wrong. Your wealth becoming linked to
the wealth of the people playing this game. Example : if your buziness is
not friendly to human being, you don't give to charity or are not willing to
give me a good chance to survive in the future, then I will probably not buy
your product because it has not this essential feature for me... free of
"taxes" buziness would then become after a little time the domain of AI or a
few minority of human beings ??
>> P.S
>>
>> an interesting and fun side effect would be to select the Darwin way a
>> more lucky society, for sure we really need it for the future ;)
>
>There's no evidence for "luck" as an attribute of individuals, and I don't
>see any plausible way to posit a mechanism for it. Sounds a lot like "Psi."
>If either were proved to exist, that would be a huge scientific revolution,
>completely aside from possibilities of natural or sexual selection being
used
>to enhance any such abilities.
>
of course ;) I was just kidding, I've read Ringworld some little time ago,
and one of the person in the book is choosen for a quest just because of her
extreme luck.
delriviere
christophe
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