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"When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."
That's the phrase that popped into my mind last night at a brainstorming
session with some fellow transhumanists. It seems like every solution to
every problem we came up with revolved around delegating the decision making
power to some sort of market. In a large part, the conversation wasn't even
about economics. We were talking about things like traffic lights, bandwidth
allocation on network routers, Idea Futures, and improved ways of assigning
seats on airplanes.
This means one or more likely both of the following--
1. Markets really are close to the best possible method for allocating
resources and arbitrating disputes.
2. All my buddies and I have markets on the brain and are overlooking the
shortcomings of markets, as well as the strengths of possible alternatives.
Not that I can see any flaws in our reasnoning... but that's exactly what
I would think if I had blinders on.
BEFORE YET ANOTHER FLAME WAR COMMENCES ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT LIBERTARIANS SUCK,
READ THE REST OF THIS MESSAGE:
Overall, I believe markets *are* better than centralized planning. I
doubt that at our current level of technological and economic
development we're going to come up with something that's better accross
the board. However, I think everything can be debugged, and that's what
I'm trying to do with the concept of free markets. I'm not good at
noticing bugs in this case, because I'm so immersed in free market
think. I'm hoping to get some input from others on...
a) Flaws in how other market systems were implemented.
b) Problems that are inherently intractable to market solutions.
c) Is it a binary axis of markets versus central planning, or are there
conflict resolution and resource allocation systems that are completely
different from both approaches.
d) Are there any books or essays that anybody would recommend for a rational,
constructive critique of market systems?
I'M TRYING TO START A RATIONAL, PRAGMATIC DISCUSSION. PLEASE TRY TO KEEP
EMOTIONS AND MORAL AXIOMS OUT OF THIS. PLEASE TRY TO KEEP THIS AT AN
ABSTRACT LEVEL AND AVOID INVOKING EMOTIONALLY LADEN ARGUMENTS.
In other words, I'm trying to address this at the level of 'How best to
divide up finite resource XXX between agents A, B, and C under
conditions YYY?' rather than 'Should ruthless sleazy factory owners be
allowed to steal food from the mouths of unemployed single mothers with
AIDS?'.
- --
Ruby Ridge terrorism handgun
Why are the above words in my signature? Check out:
http://www.echelon.wiretapped.net
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:36:54 MDT