> Ian Goddard wrote:
> > I would say that if the allocation of
> > resources and commodity pricing is dir-
> > ected by consumer demand and recourse
> > supply, and if such is defined as FMC,
> > then FMC approaches 100% decentralized.
> > There may be capitalist enterprises,
> > the internal structure of which con-
> > form to a centralized set of rules.
> > However, those enterprises are sub-
> > ordinate to supply and demand.
>
> 'Government' is defined by the people - even the most totalitarian of
> governments was and is defined by the people. Free-market Capitalism
> is 'dynamic centralism' - although the point(s) of control may change
> far more quickly than other centralist systems, they still exist. If
> you were to take a single moment in time of an FMC system, you would
> clearly see the consumer majority gathered around the supplier
> minority. Currently we can't feel the collective benefit of our
> actions, so we've created capitalism. With money you can immediately
> feel the benefit of anything you do. However, the 'benefit' is
> centralist because it must be defined.
>
> A decentralised economy would be a network, which allowed the
> collective benefit of any action to be felt in real-time, with no
> centralised entity defining that benefit. Soon information will be
> transmitted through an open network with enough speed to not require
> the need of a capitalist system to relay the benefits. Physical
> things may take a while to catch up, but eventually we could have a
> 100% decentralised economy.
Ah, so you are referring to a central banking system as the point of
central 'control'. This is an accurate assessment.
However, it is not apparent that this is a 'bad' thing, at least not
currently. As the 1920's demonstrated, failing to impose any form of
negative feedback on a system will cause that system to quickly cycle out
of control as any competent engineer can tell you (like oversteer on a
truck steering system). Currently, there are no large scale natural forms
of negative fedback that can effectively counteract the hysterical/panic
tendencies of individuals engaging in trade in a commodity level market.
This was why the SEC, the Reserve System, and other controls were imposed
back then in the wake of the Crash, and why there are currently controls
on computerized trading. You might ask how a computer can get hysterical?
If it is programmed to reproduce the same trading behaviors that a
hysterical trader would take, it can act 'hysterical' at least in a
trading sense..
One natural form with the potential to act as negative feedback is open
information. As Robin Hansen has discussed previously, two trading agents
both operating with perfect knowledge of all elements in a trade
invariably come to an accurate valuation and price for the item of trade.
When there is imperfect information, the agents will attempt to operate
as such Bayesian traders, but the less accurate the information available
is, the extrapolations and expectations of the respective traders will
tend to diverge, leading to a speculative market. The more speculative a
market is, the more likely it is to succumb to the sort of buying
hysterias and selling panics that can be seen in many markets that
protect the secrecy of information that is relevant to a trade.
This situation is analogous to the sort of circumstances which lead to
armed conflict. Military historians generally agree that wars occur when
two potential adversaries with a point of conflict cannot agree on who
holds the superior military position/numbers.
Back to the money system though. Alan Greenspan, a noted Randite
currently running the Federal Reserve Board, has stated that he can
forsee circumstances in which entities like the Federal Reserve will no
longer be necessary. We can assume that this will involve the
availability of computing capabilities which enable one trader to develop
an extremely accurate estimate of the opposing traders information based
on only a small sampling of information. When this occurs, secrecy in
financial transactions between parties, and fraud as a result, will
become extremely difficult to perpetrate. This sort of technology will
also be usable as information 'veradicators' which can assess the
accuracy of any given point of information, to determine whether that
information is truthful or merely disinformation.
This sort of technology will also apply to your proposals for "One True
Open Network", in that you will not need to keep constant surveillance of
everyone. The small discrepancies will give away the lie. While we as
humans today might not catch the contradictions inherent in such minor
information, given time, such information veradication systems will act
as our spies, without violating anothers privacy. How? Say you go into a
closed room. Such information veradication systems will be able to
accurately estimate what you were doing in that room based on your
actions prior to entry and following your exit from the room. They would
not necessarily need to know exactly what you did there, but based on
what the system does know about you, it can come to a rather accurate
conclusion as to what you were doing there, and conduct tests to
determine its accuracy.
-- TANSTAAFL!!! Michael Lorrey ------------------------------------------------------------ mailto:retroman@together.net Inventor of the Lorrey Drive MikeySoft: Graphic Design/Animation/Publishing/Engineering ------------------------------------------------------------ How many fnords did you see before breakfast today?