>Communism is an example of a simplestracted society; the government exists as
>an additional link between producer and consumer. A true communism requires
>much less computing power to keep track of; the vast, tangled networks of
>inter-consumer links are replaced by single links to and from the centralized
>government. Capitalism is streamlinked, having direct links to and from
>consumer - with attendant improvements in feedback quality, response time,
>efficiency, and direction. Capitalism still requires far more computing
>power, however.
It's not clear that Communism "requires less computing power." Obviously
it does less good computing (of what to do and how), but remember that
the people who live in a communist world still have to figure out where
their next meal is coming from, what to do at work, where to live & how
to arrange that, how to live within or work around the rules, etc. My
guess would be that the more crazy the situation the more computing has
to be done, just to get by. The simplicity is false.
Maybe a better example of simplestraction is mass production. Like the
Model T that was available in "any color as long as it's black." There
there was actually a savings in complexity over individually-made cars.
With mass vs. custom production people are making a real choice between
simplicity and cost.
--Steve
-- sw@tiac.net Steve Witham web page under deconstruction "These blues ain't nothin' like the blues I had before I paid a little debt I owed. When I get these blues I just look back down that road." --Jimmy Dale Gilmore