From: Eric Watt Forste (arkuat@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Dec 05 1996 - 13:55:14 MST
Joel "Twisty" Nye wrote:
>It has got to be possible for us to create a system which more
>accurately models supply and demand on our planet. Just as our old
>"have / need" society has changed to a "see / want" culture, we
>have even greater need to revise our monetary system.
Sure it's possible. But you may be jumping the gun. Much of the planet
is still organized on a precapitalistic basis where the person who
controls the most armed men gets the resources. And this military-based
(note that I do not strongly distinguish between military and police)
command-and-control system still disposes with about 50% of the
production in, for instance, the United States. (That's a mix of
confiscation and mandate... if you think the number is less than
50%, perhaps you are failing to take mandates into account.)
If the market-based monetary short-hand for value were actually
the medium through which 80% or 90% of the world economy flowed,
I'd be a lot more interested in the line of thought you are
drawing out. But I think it's premature to worry too much about
how to improve on monetary-based trade when we still have so much
room in which to improve on coercion-based mandate and confiscation.
-- Eric Watt Forste ++ arkuat@pobox.com ++ http://www.pobox.com/~arkuat/
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