The Economy

[kandrathe]

Can we eliminate the problem of scarcity? No.

We can lower demand.

Can we develop mechanisms for resolving conflicts that are relatively stable in the long run? Maybe. I hope so.

If you look at the mechanisms for our societies, from employment, to schooling, to commuting, to even health care, aging and dying, we are locked into systems designed around competing with each other. This has been at least a twenty year discussion I've had with various people, but if you have the ability to step back and look at our "systems" they mostly focused around the notion of survival of the fittest. Or, the one who fights the hardest wins the most (my wife calls this the P_nis factor). We tend not to trust systems built around team work, and instead decompose risk and reward to an individual level. I guess I started thinking this way from computational research into cooperative systems modeling, and building free roaming, actor/rules based simulations.

So here is the weird part of me the Libertarian... I believe in high levels of social cooperation, just not anything where any level of government is involved (which I equate with "force"). More local and private, than State, and more State, than Federal. I guess you might call that voluntary socialism, or libertarian socialism, although unlike Chomsky, I'm not an advocate of anarchy. Although I would favor anarchy over Fascism. I do believe in the limited federal government envisioned by the framers of the US Constitution. One reason that I fear China economically is that they have a societal understanding of the multiplying power of cooperation.

Edit: Afterthought, this made me think of old Chester I. Barnard and his writings about "organizational theory" as well. We tend to try to order things as hierarchies, yet other structures may be more efficient and effective.