Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions

On Wed, 04 May 2005 17:29:27 -0700, Don Geddis wrote:

> Why does all labor have the same value, in your mind? Haven't you
> encountered programmers who seem to be ten times more productive than
> other programmers?

The cost of labour I mentioned is intended to be an average used to figure
what cost a product has. Of course it may vary from individual to
individual and I'd have no problem at all with someone getting greater
rewards for being more productive than average or getting fewer rewards
for being less productive.

Does that generally happen in our society? No, funnily enough, usually
people are paid approximately the same rate according to their rank.
There's exceptions, but it's pretty rare people will be individually
rewarded for being more productive other than getting moved up rank,
possibly into a job they'd rather not do like management. Of course low
productivity always has the threat of getting fired.


> Second problem: you haven't accounted for the allocation of scarce
> resources on the demand side. If you fix prices in this way, you'll find
> that some items are vastly more popular than other items, despite costing
> the same to create.

There's two popular solutions that I know of (though there's probably
others I don't know of). First is to allow price fluctuations
according to demand and supply while costs of labour in those sectors stay
close to average. The idea is that without huge gaps between rich and
poor, demand is less likely to be fickle as it is when a few people are
excessively rich and, say, order more iPods than they use.

The other is a scarcity index. Each production site simply maintains an
index of their supply relative to demand. When a consumer notices
one of it's suppliers scarcity index drop indicating less supply (eg
unexpected drop in natural resources) or increased demand, it simply takes
that into account in its orders. It can check with the supplier to get
an idea of whether the change is likely to be temporary or long term and
determine if it can get by on reserved stock or it needs to investigate
the feasibility of alternative supplies.

Of course there's still going to be situations where supply simply can't
meet demand in which case some sort of rationing is needed. That
happens even now. So how is that problem currently solved? Purchasing
power forms a sort of rationing - that needn't change though with the
abolishing of non-labour forms of income and fairly standard wages no
longer would there be the problem of ridiculously rich people hoarding all
they can get. Also producers simply impose rationing by saying things like
"X items per person" or "first come first serve". Nothing much need change
there either. Finally, in extreme cases right now the government might
step in to impose rations. I'd argue such decisions would be better left
as a collective decision by the people affected.

So it seems to me that scarcity wouldn't form any bigger problem than it
is already.


> And don't forget that you'll have a huge black market problem, since
> people are willing to pay far, far more for the limited item then the
> offical state-sanctioned price.

Where do you get the idea that a state has to be anywhere in the equation?

I don't see where the "problem" is with having a black market but feel
free to fill me in if I've missed it. It seems to me if demand becomes
such a problem that people are reduced to having to spend much more than
cost price for an item they desperately need then so be it. As determined
by my above suggestions black markets need be no more (and more likely
less) ubiquitous than they are now in helping fix problems of scarcity. So
the costs of a black market would remain the same as the costs to the
individuals suffering their predicament in the current system. The current
system also whines about the black market because of lost taxes but I
don't advocate taxes anyway, so if taxes are abolished black
markets would actually be less of a "problem" than they are now.


> Sure. Unregulated free-markets have well known failures. Externalities
> is one of them. (Others include "tradegy of the commons", monopolies,
> etc.) Nobody is arguing for unregulated markets. But once you account for
> the very few modes of free market failure, what you get with floating
> prices and competitive manufacturers seems to be about as good as anybody
> has ever figured out.

Those modes of market failure aren't few and certainly not negligible. You
also forgot to mention problems of unemployment, labour exploitation, and
irrational inequalities of wealth and power to name a few. I've offered
just one well-known alternative to market economics; one which I've yet to
see proven to introduce additional problems and which avoids the market
problems of a profit-centric system of production. The market's better
than a lot of other tried systems, but unless you judge something's worth
soley by how currently popular it is (as market advocates are wont to do),
it's far from the best figured out.


>>> 2. Somebody still has to decide the relative worth of various jobs.
>> (+ production-costs
>> (* price-of-labour average-hours-of-labour-in-production))
>
> So, the more efficiently that I work, the less money I make. Nice!
>
> Apparently, I do best by being really, really, really slow and lazy. Then
> I get paid the most!

No. As I've explained before, I don't advocate society letting you take
without giving back. I'd encourage that you being left to fend on your
own. Also, as I mentioned previously in this post, price-of-labour is a
population average which can be permitted to fluctuate between individuals
but according to productivity rather than rank.


>> You could I guess argue that "the majority" might become tyrannical but
>> that's a different debate.
>
> I disagree with you about this too. Let's try a different quote:
> "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." The best thing about the US
> Constitution is the _limits_ on government: two houses of Congress, checks
> and balances between three branches of government, and most especially the
> Bill of Rights, providing large protections to individuals.

Those limits are good, but you still have a government run by a group of
individuals which are far from representative of the total population.
Most if not all of them have gotten to their position by paying for hugely
expensive campaigns either by being excessively rich to begin with and/or
by being backed by rich corporate sponsors. So whose interests do you
think such a group of like minded people are going to favour? Wealthy
people of course.

And you're always going to have such problems in a representative system.
When you're provided with a group of people to select a ruler from, you
have to ask who's selecting that group of people. Then you know who the
government's really working for. And that's where tyrrany of the MINority
sets in.


> "Majority rules", like you seem to suggest, is a terrible idea. Do you
> support slavery in the 1700's in the US? Lynchings of blacks in the US
> south in the late 1800's? These kinds of things had majority support of
> the local population.

In general, a small group of people selected at random from the total
population will have approximately the same proportion of alternate
convictions as the total population as simple statistics dictates. So if a
government were randomly selected there wouldn't be much difference in how
much tyranny they get up to except that given the population of the ruling
class is drastically reduced they're in a much better position to bargain
with eachother and cooperate for their own gain at the expense of the
population. So a small group of people with control over the decisions
affecting everyone has on average the same amount of tyrrany as letting
everyone have a say in their decisions in addition to the increased
probability of corruption and vested interests inherent in a small group
of rulers. So in the average case, small groups of people in power is
always inferior to full democracy.

I'm not an American so American history is pretty uninteresting to me, but
from what I understand the requirement of being a governmental
representative at that time was that you had to own property (as in land).
The mentality at the time was that property owners were fully matured
adults and anyone else was a servant and considered a child and not given
rights such as voting. I may have read this amongst some falsehood-ridden
propaganda but it's 04:00 in the morning here and I don't have time to
check up on this properly. Feel free to see if you can find any sources on
this and let me know if I've been mislead or correctly informed. But if
this is true then one implication is that all we know of majority opinion
at that time is quite possibly skewed as it would only include the
opinions of white, property owning males. Also, as I said I don't know
much about American history and I'm rushing it now, but I'd hazard a guess
that the property owners of the northern states were at an economic
disadvantage compared to the property owners of the southern states who
were benefiting from slavery. So it's possibly there was a selfish
incentive to trigger an action in favour of higher moral ground.


And now it's time for me to sleep. Goodnight everybody.

.

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