From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Wed Mar 12 2003 - 22:27:24 MST
> (Mike Lorrey <mlorrey@yahoo.com>):
>
> > Seems to me you're describing good old free market capitalism: people
> > earn money only to the extent that they do things or produce things
> > others want to pay for voluntarily. Why should people be rewarded
> > for
> > acting according to their "true nature", if, for example, they are by
> > nature predators and not honest traders?
>
> Well, no. A predator will find a niche as a hunter. Free market
> capitalism strikes a balance between individual desires and communal
> demands. I can make 1000 gizwhats a day if that makes my life
> fulfilled, but if everyone else only wants 100 a day, I'm gonna have to
> either find something else to do with the rest of my time or else
> figure out a way to generate all the income I need to live from just
> 100 a day.
>
> The karma market previously described takes absolutely no consideration
> for the desires of the producer and only acts as a signal of the
> desires of the consumer. It is therefore an initiation of force against
> those which produce that which the karma assignors are evaluating.
>
> Free market capitalism is a negotiation of the desires of both. A truly
> free market karma system would balance a rating by the author of a post
> of how fulfilling it was to write the post, to how fulfilled the
> readers were upon reading the post.
Nope, you're missing the point entirely. The free market /allows/
you to do whatever the hell you please, but it still only /rewards/
you for what others are willing to pay for, without exception. The
only difference is the medium of exchange: green paper notes with
vague promises or database records of approvals.
> Thus, if a writer achieves total fulfillment writing a post, and
> everybody in the reading pool achieved zero fulfillment reading it,
> there is net zero karma, just as a writer who only wrote things which
> gave total fulfillment to everyone else but none to themselves would
> achieve zero karma. You get positive karma when both sides gain
> fulfillment, and negative karma when both sides lose fulfillment.
No, you gain karma /only/ when consumers are satisfied, just as in
the free market where one can quite easily grow rich doing something
you personally don't like. I know this well--I played poker for a
living for a while, and it was extremely fulfilling; and I was poor.
Now I write software that prints your cable bill, and they throw
money at me. It's still my choice which road to pursue, but it's
not my choice which one gets paid more--that's the consumer's choice.
> How you equate the value of fulfillment of the one writer to that of
> the many readers is a value judgement that is entirely subjective to
> your prejudices.
The value of the fulfillment of the writer is /his/ choice to make.
The value of the /money/ he gets from the writing is the choice of
the consumers. The writer must judge for himself how he values his
own satisfaction and therefore choose his course of action, but he is
choosing from inputs that are not under his control. It makes not one
whit of difference what the particular currency is, the market works
the same way: personal satisfaction may come from doing your own
thing, but wealth always has and always will come from doing what the
market wants.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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