[extropy-chat] economics of scarcity to economics of plenty

[Jeff Davis]

--- spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:

> Whoooooohoooo, I get so turned on with this kind of
> talk.

Yeah, me too.  But I'm seriously suspicious.
 
> He's absolutely right you know.  

"Absolutely'?  Strong wording that.  True believer
stuff.  Tread carefully.

While the world is awash in opportunity, there are
problems.  I'll list three.  

Our culture does NOT make a focused effort to train
people to be economically savvy, to recognize the
abundance of opportunity and to make it work for them.
  
In the old days a son or daughter would be at their
father or mother's side and learn the necessary life
skills.  Our culture has no plan -- our education
system is an unfocused corrupted pile of crap -- for
preparing people to be economically competent.  When
people succeed, they do so IN SPITE OF the culture's
failure to do its duty and prepare them.  Almost
without exception the preparation for success comes
from the family, from the individual realizing what
he/she needs to do, or from blind luck.  And
family influence is so crucial a factor, that economic
incompetence (from which comes poverty) is virtually
an inherited familial legacy.  

I wonder whether people see this, because to me it
seems that successful people who know "how to get
there from here" do it naturally, like breathing,
without thinking and without realizing that it's
something you need to know how to do.  And
unsuccessful people, the chronically indigent, are
paralyzed by the absolute certainty that there IS NO
WAY OUT, 

   **********here's where I left off********
     **********so I'll continue**********

nowhere in their experience is any success or training
for success or any hint that success is possible 
                 ***FOR THEM***.

Second, the economic world is very dynamic, constantly
changing.  The successful enterprise of yesterday may
be a dead end today, and today's success may fade to
unviabilty at any moment.

Third, humans are despotic creatures.  Given the least
little chance, they will steal, cheat, or rig the
system.  To the legions of the corrupt (which is to
say, potentially, all who are human), honest work is
for suckers.  This ancient problem is today alive and
well and strappingly robust and penetrates to the very
core of all things human.  Most pointedly, the wealthy
use their wealth to buy the government, which then
makes rules to help them get wealthier at the expense
of those who don't have their resources,... to buy the
government.   

> I know of folks who
> have made a living out of nothing, merely buying
> antique motorcycles, taking them apart and selling
the pieces on eBay.  New parts cannot be had in most
cases, or if so they cost a fortune.  Guys that still
have the old bikes need the parts.
> 
> No particular expertise is needed, a decent small
> biz can grow out of a hobby.  The pay isn't great in
> most cases, but higher than minimum wage, and
doesn't
> require a "will work for food" sign.  The internet
has created new opportunities all over the place.  One
need not be a young person to jump on them.
> 
> Capitalism, my friends, is the answer to poverty. 

I absolutely agree,... except that capitalism has a
dark side -- a side that caters to human despotism. 
Concentrations of wealth and power become a feedback
loop of psychotic addiction, until megalomania and
unbridled corruption turn the level playing field into
a corpse-littered battlefield.  This can be a
commercial -- ie business is war -- battlefield with
corpses in the form of the shattered lives of
ruthlessly exploited workers, or a literal battlefield
with literal corpses.  Is this not clearly the record
of history?

The world of Johnny Rocco.  (From the movie Key Largo,
with Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson) A world
of mafiosi who always want 'more' but who can never
get enough.

> Compare poor people in capitalistic nations with
> elsewhere.  Notice the poor people in New Orleans. 
> They looked pretty well fed, did they not? 

Shame on you, spike.  I love you like a brother, but
there is way more to life than a full belly.  

                         "...What is a man,
    If his chief good and market of his time
    Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
    Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
    Looking before and after, gave us not
    That capability and godlike reason
    To fust in us unus'd." 

> Competition breeds excellence. 

No honest man can compete with a mafiosi, without
either being killed or becoming a mafiosi.

> It doesn't make losers, everyone wins.

If you have a system that protects the little guy from
the depredations of the wealth-addicted despot, and is
robustly armored against the unrelenting assault of
the mafiosi in all of us, yes.  But when the mafiosi
take over, everyone loses.   

Best, Jeff Davis

"No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental
ills of society. If we're looking for the sources of
our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we
should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and
love of power." - P. J. O'Rourke


		
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