[Abundance] The "Free Market" requires scarcity

[Patrick Anderson]

Supporters of the so-called "Free Market" claim all our troubles would
be over if we could just stop the governments from handing favors to
big business.

But producers choose to limit production and destroy reserves *on
their own* because they want to keep price above cost.

The examples of this are many, but here is a video of hundreds of
Belgian farmers dumping milk in an attempt to reduce the supply:
http://YouTube.com/watch?v=pDAjMcDWDZ0

If the workers were the owners, the results would be the same.

We are fundamentally confused about the purpose of business.

We should be producing for *product* (use value), but are instead
producing for *profit* (exchange value) which cannot abide abundance.

What will we ever do to solve this paradox?


Sincerely,
Patrick Anderson
Social Sufficiency Coalition
http://SourceFreedom.BlogSpot.com

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[Chris Watkins]

On Sat, Apr 24, 2010 at 21:08, Patrick Anderson <agnu...@gmail.com> wrote:

Supporters of the so-called "Free Market" claim all our troubles would
be over if we could just stop the governments from handing favors to
big business.

But producers choose to limit production and destroy reserves *on
their own* because they want to keep price above cost.

The examples of this are many, but here is a video of hundreds of
Belgian farmers dumping milk in an attempt to reduce the supply:
http://YouTube.com/watch?v=pDAjMcDWDZ0

I'd like to dig deeper here. When this happens, I'm not sure what the actual motivation is. Is it:

• A conscious decision to restrict supply to raise prices? I still find it hard to see how my throwing away my milk will improve my own net profit. Or
  
• A response to critically low prices, where it would cost more to take the product to market than it would return in income? In this case, throwing it away, or finding a use with a better payoff, makes more sense. I suspect that's what actually happening in most of these cases, but I'm not sure.  If someone had a biogas digester capable of handling large amounts of milk, for example, this might be a more cost-effective use (even if it only turns a loss into a break-even).

There's nothing in the free market that means producers must manipulate the market to keep price above cost. If price drops below cost, it simply means that they have overestimated demand and produced too much, and need to adjust either the production (e.g. less milk, more cropping); or the demand (advertising, or finding new uses for the raw product).

Somehow supply and demand must balance. The free market is a natural mechanism for that - based on free agents making their own decisions about what they want and what they'll pay for it. There are weaknesses (e.g. externalities) but regulations have been able to rein in some of these problems, where the political will exists. If someone wants to suggest an alternative that works better than the free market, they have their work cut out, both in proving that it works better, and in convincing me to give up my freedom.

If the workers were the owners, the results would be the same.

We are fundamentally confused about the purpose of business.

We should be producing for *product* (use value), but are instead
producing for *profit* (exchange value) which cannot abide abundance.

What will we ever do to solve this paradox?


Sincerely,
Patrick Anderson
Social Sufficiency Coalition
http://SourceFreedom.BlogSpot.com

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Chris Watkins

Appropedia.org - Sharing knowledge to build rich, sustainable lives.

blogs.appropedia.org
community.livejournal.com/appropedia
identi.ca/appropedia
twitter.com/appropedia

[Nathan Cravens]

Thanks for the influence.


Community Space (Gift Culture)

Establish 'free zones' where materials are gifted to multiple smallscale community workshop (like hackerspaces) and ecovillage. The magic productivity for a group is 35 people according to Clay Shirky's experience. Kew Ecovillage's space and facilities are fit for a core group of 35 and functions well.

Business that do function on elimnating surplus to raise prices, or for any other reason, can donate to these areas. The issue with this behavior becoming mainstream is nearly obvious as it would flip the supply side issue of abundance into an issue of lacking demand, another indicator of market failure.

Commercial Space (Competitive Culture)

Make investments in flexible fabrication equipment for both engineering and architectural endevours with free space in mind world-wide as distribution channels use renuable forms of energy, production, and maintainence.

The Scaricty-Abundance Divide

We can refer to the scarcity-abundance divide as gap between 'exchange trade' and 'gift' economies that occur when pure market nor pure gift economies are stable enough in solitude. This will mean the transition will require social welfare (government spending on individuals or families), ideally in the form of a 'basic income', until the best of anarchy in terms of individualism and collectivism becomes easier to achieve in practice, such as the development in creating webspace to help supply free land and materials to create self-suffient holdings that assure individual autonomy (individualist anarchist). The same webspace will assist social networking for self or intrisically motivated decisioning to form  core groups to create structures for group use (anarchist collectivism).


--
His Most Gracious Divine Architect
Sir Christ Lord Cosmos Superior
Nathan Wilson Cravens
Infinitum Totalus Completus
Facilitator of Gods

Dean of the Autodidactic School of Polymathy
Interests: http://p2pfoundation.net/Nathan_Cravens
Microblog: http://twitter.com/nwcravens
Video: http://www.youtube.com/user/nwcravens

[Paul D. Fernhout]

Patrick Anderson wrote:
> Supporters of the so-called "Free Market" claim all our troubles would
> be over if we could just stop the governments from handing favors to
> big business.
>
> But producers choose to limit production and destroy reserves *on
> their own* because they want to keep price above cost.
>
> The examples of this are many, but here is a video of hundreds of
> Belgian farmers dumping milk in an attempt to reduce the supply:
> http://YouTube.com/watch?v=pDAjMcDWDZ0
>
> If the workers were the owners, the results would be the same.
>
> We are fundamentally confused about the purpose of business.
>
> We should be producing for *product* (use value), but are instead
> producing for *profit* (exchange value) which cannot abide abundance.
>
> What will we ever do to solve this paradox?

Patrick-

This issue you raise of managing production to meet ever changing needs is
fundamental to any economy of any scale (where production itself sometimes
varies in quality of quantity due to things like the weather that may be out
of our obvious control, and where demand may fluctuate due to other often
unpredictable seeming issues whether personal fickleness or complex system
dynamics). Here are some rambling thoughts on that.

====

For a small example, say you are having a dinner party for ten people who
you don't know very well. What to you have on hand or make for them to eat?
How do people share what is there if there is not enough of something to go
around so everyone gets as much as they want? Then, after the party, what do
you do with any leftovers (like, if half the people only ate raw foods and
you cooked a lot, and also your refrigerator failed the day before the party?)
http://www.rawfoodexplained.com/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_foodism
http://www.bio.davidson.edu/people/vecase/behavior/Spring2004/laird/Food.htm

To answer that question, you have to guess from what little you know about
the people what to serve, or even guess whether they will bring their own
food? And then when stuck with a huge container of stir-fried food, you
might just dump it if you don't want it yourself?

While these are usually painted as "economic" questions, aspects of them
quickly become *political* issues -- like who has the right to how much of a
rationed commodity, including receiving rent from something (land,
equipment) they claim to "own".

A related book:
"Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making, Revised Edition "
http://www.amazon.com/Policy-Paradox-Political-Decision-Revised/dp/0393976254
"Since its debut, Policy Paradox has been widely acclaimed as the most
accessible policy text available. Unlike most texts, which treat policy
analysis and policy making as different enterprises, Policy Paradox
demonstrates that "you can't take politics out of analysis." Through a
uniquely rich and comprehensive model, this revised edition continues to
show how real-world policy grows out of differing ideals, even definitions,
of basic societal goals like security, equality, and liberty. The book also
demonstrates how these ideals often conflict in policy implementation. In
this revised edition, Stone has added a full-length case study as an
appendix, taking up the issue of affirmative action. Clear, provocative, and
engaging, Policy Paradox conveys the richness of public policy making and
analysis. "

Anyway, many (conservative) mainstream economics types will typically simply
dismiss any process of planning as likely to have lots of problems and will
(rightfully I have to concede to some degree) talk about the use of the
market as a way for people to make their needs known. And it can be good for
that. What if you gave each guest US$50 of currency and asked them to spend
it at a virtual restaurant menu you set up, and then you made those dishes.
Presumably, everyone would get something they liked for the dinner party,
and you would have minimal leftovers, and you would have limited the amount
of resources you were willing to expend for the dinner party. Nobody does
that for dinner parties that I know of (though pot-lucks are often done in
some social groups.)

Though what is rarely talked is that in real life, the market only hears the
wishes of those with money (where everyone else is ignored who has neither
"capital" nor a job as a wage slave or one of the few entrepreneurial
situations in today's society -- so different from the Yankee farmers of 200
years ago or the Native Americans of centuries before that).

And the market can only directly provide the sorts of wishes that can be
satisfied by the economy can be purchased -- where friendship or true
community are not really purchasable commodities. Still, even than is a
little gray, since even though resources might let you build the physical
infrastructure that promotes community or have enough free time to be a good
friend.

Anyway, this is all a rambling way of saying that any productive system
needs to do these basic things:
* estimate future demand;
* produce things where the outcome is not 100% certain;
* distribute those goods and services somehow; and
* deal with excesses or shortfalls somehow.

Dinner party planners do it. Human cells do it. Cities do it. Command
economies do it. Cybernetic economies do it. Gift economies do it (with
emails and twitters instead of ration units). Market economies do it with
kanban tokens we call dollars or euros or whatever. Even networked matter
replicators and RepRaps and 2d printers will do it internally in their
software as they figure out an optimal order to make things, and may need to
deal with requests from multiple users at once.

Anyway, I think the biggest problems with market economies right now are
things like:
* the declining value of paid human labor (with the rise of robotics, better
design, and voluntary social networks)
* externalities (especially pollution and risk) that are not accounted for
in prices
* the fact that war is profitable to a few
* regulatory capture of the government regulators by the organizations they
are supposed to regulate either by corruption, group think, or human
proclivities or social dynamics (including the centralization of wealth as
the rich get richer).

I think a basic income (funded by progressive taxes and other means) to give
everyone as a human right some share of the overall systems output (and to
smooth out demand fluctuations) would help a lot with dealing with some of
this. So would taxes on negative externalities like mercury pollution from
coal plants or defense costs for fossil fuels; renewable energy has been
cheaper in the USA for decades, except that you don't pay the true price of
gasoline at the pump but with your taxes, or with electricity from coal you
pay in illness and rising health costs and not being able to eat fish, and
so on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/oil-gas-crude/461
We should see subsidies for positive externalities as well (like new open
standards that help everyone).

I could go on for a long list of these sorts of market failures and the need
for interventions to make that system work (admitting that corruption then
may arise with the interventions). Still, that does not by itself mean the
central planning for everything is better.

As our society moves to more and more abundance, I think many of these
issues will be easier to sort out. For example, renewables like wind and
solar are now about a cheap as coil (through innovation and decades of
dedicated work by engineers, scientists, tinkerers, and others, which could
have been done in any advanced society whether with money from the state or
business or individuals). So, with coals costs still huge in negative
externalities, we will see the move to renewables just from market forces.
http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/books/pb3/pb3_table_of_contents
http://www.rmi.org/rmi/
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm
Looking good environmentally is one aspect of why people invest these days,
thanks to forty years of progress in raising environmental awareness:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Eco/earth-day-2010-40-years-earth-day/story?id=10446923

Likewise, healthier organic agriculture looks like it may soon be cheaper
than conventional agriculture in the marketplace as it continues to improve
and as fossil fuel costs continue to rise -- even though, again, organic
agriculture has been cheaper than conventional agriculture for decades,
except that you don't pay those conventional costs at the supermarket, but
on your tax bill for defense spending, subsidies to conventional farmers,
and on your sick-care insurance premiums (or missing wages that go to them).

But, ultimately, I think we'll see much more than market forces fixing
things in such a broken and despairing unfair way.

I helped organize some related ideas here, including four broad scenarios
(gift economy, resource based planning, basic income, stronger local
communities and production):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobless_recovery

I think once we see broad abundance and widespread use of 3D printing, and
better understanding of recycling and material extraction (like making
plastic the same way trees make wood from air, water, sunlight, and a tiny
amount of soil) then our society will continue to change in huge ways.

I guess I've gotten to the point of belief where, ignoring war (a very real
possibility or some similar mostly self-inflicted disasters), material
abundance is coming for everyone, and soon. Maybe that isn't even such an
interesting topic for me personally anymore. :-) But, I can still see
billions suffering right now from bad diet (paying more for food that makes
them sick), from lack of community, from broken relationships, from lack of
sunlight and vitamin D, from stress over other worries, and so on. These
things are not than expensive to fix:
http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about

As was know a century ago and more:
"Fasting and Sunbathing"
http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/020127shelton.III/020127.toc.htm

From 1911, for example, by Upton Sinclair on fasting (and changing habits
afterwards) to cure and prevent much disease:
http://www.healingcancernaturally.com/fasting-and-doctors-physicians.html
"""
Of course I realize what a difficult matter it is for a medical man to face
these facts about the fast. Sometimes it seems to me that we have no right
to expect their help at all, and that we never will receive it. For we are
asking them to destroy themselves, economically speaking. We do not expect
aid from eminent corporation lawyers when we set out to overthrow the rule
of privilege in our country; and it must be equally difficult for a
hard-worked and not very highly paid physician to contemplate the triumph of
an idea, which would leave no place for him in civilization. In an article
contributed to Physical Culture magazine for January, 1910, I stated that in
the course of my search for health I had paid to physicians, surgeons,
druggists and sanatoriums not less than fifteen thousand dollars in the last
six or eight years. In the last year, since l have learned about the fast, I
have paid nothing at all; and the same thing is true, perhaps on a smaller
scale, of every one who discovers the fasting cure. As one man who wrote me
a letter of enthusiastic gratitude expresses it: "I have spent over five
hundred dollars in the last ten years trying to get well on medicines. It
cost me only thirty cents to use your method, and for that thirty cents I
obtained relief a million-fold more beneficial than from five hundred
dollars' worth of medicine."
"""

The same thing now:
"The Pleasure Trap: Mastering the Hidden Force That Undermines Health &
Happiness"
http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness/dp/1570671508
"Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose"
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X
"Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and
Community in a World Gone Crazy"
http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Americas-Depression-Epidemic-Community/dp/1933392711
"Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life's Ordeals"
http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Nights-Soul-Finding-Through/dp/1592400671
"Treating Disease With Vitamin D"
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
"A Decade Of Vitamin D Supplementation Would Save $4.4 Trillion Over A
Decade; Would Save $1346 Per Person Per Annum"
http://www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi111.html

This is not to dismiss all of modern medicine, just to say that it is
probably needed only 10% or so of what it is used for now, which is almost
entirely to just patch over using pills and surgery the systematic failures
of our productive system that is slowly killing people through excess of
junky food (and other junky stuff) creating a pleasure trap of "supernormal
stimuli". An example is how today, if someone has pain from their
gallbladder, the medical system will want to remove it (even if the problem
might eventually reoccur), than seriously help that person make changes to
their life (especially diet) that might help permanently remove the problem,
as Herbert Shelton suggested 50 years ago.
http://www.rawfoodexplained.com/surviving-hospitalization/questions-answers.html
"""
According to Dr. Shelton, imprudent eating and heavy eating of fatty foods
by the enervated and toxemic, and a lack of exercise, are chief among the
causes that produce gastrointestinal and biliary irritation leading to stone
formation. They do not develop in healthy individuals, but in those who have
broken down their health by years of wrong living. Nobody would ever have
gallstones if he lived right. Referring to the gallbladder operation, Dr.
Shelton says, "In my opinion there is no necessity to operate for
gallstones. Normal nutrition is not restored by removing an effect of
impaired nutrition. The great and growing army of postoperative invalids
attests to the fact that operations on organs of the body do not restore
health. Too many organs are removed that could be saved by the simple
expediency of draining them by means of the fast. "Instead of surgically
draining the gallbladder, a fast will enable the body to perform an
excellent job of drainage and do it in a way to leave the gallbladder intact
and unharmed."
"""

Patch Adams said related things in the sense of trying to focus on whole
people, not parts of people, wanting to peak into cupboards and closets and
talk to people about their lives as the bigger context for their health:
http://www.patchadams.org/
"Thinking Outside the Box: Re-Design our Health Care System"
http://www.patchadams.org/hci_olympia2010

Most disease can be prevented (and treated) with lifestyle changes (eating
more raw foods, moderate exercise), adequate vitamin D, and some other
changes to our infrastructure and social patterns. Many people know how to
help others do this and lead much better lives. Example of a "blue zone",
which is by the standards above, fairly timid but has yielded enormous benefits:
http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about

Those sorts of things that are very cheap compared to the US$2.5 trillion a
year or whatever the USA spends on its current sick care disaster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States

I know of this now from extensive reading from what others have known for a
long time and been willing to share from their abundance with everyone
through the internet gift economy. In years to come, others will learn these
things too. I can hope it will be like the environmental movement. I maybe
saw it a little sooner than some, but certainly decades or even centuries
later than others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Alchemy_Institute

But, in such a future world of healthy abundance, would people still be
stuck with too much of something in one place where it was not wanted and
there did not seem a reason to move it, like too much milk? Probably. If
that happened less and less, it will, in a world of abundance, be reduced
purely for aesthetic reasons. :-) The short story by Theodore Sturgeon, "The
Skills of Xanadu" gives a fictional example of how you can have a dynamic
system where shortages tend not to occur based on some notion of demand
creating a vacuum people's interests then push into using some peer-to-peer
computer network for load balancing:
http://books.google.com/books?id=wpuJQrxHZXAC&pg=PA51

Still, consider that most of our land is taken up related to livestock in
the USA (and likely similarly though less so in Europe):
"The Truth About Land Use in the United States"
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm
And if you look at a link from the first site mentioned above (which I do
not agree with 100%, see the Bonobo link above to show a value to dietary
complexity), you can see just a hint of the problems with milk, which
questions devoting so much of our arable land to it on planet Earth:
http://www.rawfoodexplained.com/the-basic-four-diet/should-we-drink-milk.html

And ideas for something better:
http://www.rawfoodexplained.com/the-basic-four-diet/the-life-science-basic-four-food-group-diet.html
"""
If you want to divide your diet up into categories and serving amounts,
let's apply your knowledge of an optimum diet to do so. Here are the four
food groups that a Life Scientist should be concerned with:
1. Fresh and dried fruits.
2. Raw vegetables (excluding onions, garlic, hot peppers).
3. Raw nuts and seeds.
4. Sprouted grains and legumes.
...
Let true hunger dictate the number of "servings" you eat from each of these
groups. I suggest you eat no foods that are not in these groups, and avoid
all meat, dairy, and processed food products.
"""

So, some people at websites like that one might argue that those farmers
were probably saving lives by dumping the product of probably stressed-out
and drugged-up cows. But even "organic" milk from well-treated cows has
issues in their eyes. Joel Fuhrman, MD, suggests focusing on getting about
80% of your calories from raw foods and meeting people half-way:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kTKzjBfPkM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_foodism
"Dr. Joel Fuhrman, author of Disease-Proof your Child, says there may not be
enough vitamin B12, enough vitamin D and enough calories for a growing child
on a totally raw vegan diet. Fuhrman fed his own four children raw and
cooked vegetables, fruits, nuts, grains, beans and occasionally eggs.
However, this nutritionist has made it clear in his books that he advocates
80 percent of our food should be raw, vegetable based, and that more than
ten per cent based on animal produce is to increase the risk of disease."

I think a diversity of organic foods along those lines Dr. Fuhrman is
probably going to bring most people into fairly abundant good health (even
with 10% of calories from milk or other animal products, which we should
study a lot more to understand any real health benefits from based on
diversity). With that said, no one is perfect, and no doubt his
recommendations may have issues too, even if they are way better than most,
which we'll know more about if we did more research on these basics, not on
more food additives. Unfortunately, because he sells products on his site,
his advice is to some extent now in a conflict of interest zone (though that
does not mean he is totally wrong. :-)

For reference, I just fasted for an extended period of time (my sixth fast
over the last few years), have bought some of Dr. Fuhrman's books and a DVD
among much other stuff in the past, and am trying to shift my diet to
something much healthier. And that may be getting even easier from other
directions leading to abundance. For example, it would sure be nice to have
one of these Thermomix devices, but they are hard to get in the USA: :-)
"Thermomix"
http://www.vorwerk.com/thermomix/html/
"Thermomix - Kitchen Revolution "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJTOn03FbeI
That device shows how healthy cooking may be getting easier and easier for
people to do, and also, cheaper in the sense that one appliance can replace
twenty others. And likely we will see the cost for that to fall if demand
continues to rise for them, or such devices continue to improve with better
technology (even more robotics). And, also, there goes the need for a lot of
service jobs in the food industry. (That device has been around for about 40
years, but it's easier to learn about now, and videos mean it is easier to
explain than the current marketing model of in-home demonstrations.) Still,
you don't really need one of those if you focus mostly on raw vegetarian
foods. :-) We just got something at one-fiftieth of the cost as a variation
of something Joel Fuhrman and his wife demonstrate in a video:
"Progressive International Fruit and Vegetable Chopper"
http://www.amazon.com/Progressive-International-Fruit-Vegetable-Chopper/dp/B000F9JP3O
And we already had something that can steam with a stainless steel bowl:
"Stainless Steel Rice Cooker Model ME81"
http://www.amazon.com/Stainless-Steel-Cooker-Model-Formerly/dp/B000PC3G7M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1272174815&sr=1-1
And we have a cheap blender. Not to say it would not be nice to have an all
in one thing that could do even more and took up a lot less space. :-)
Something that stirs while it heats is not common (although the raw foods
advocates might suggest it unnecessary.) By the way, something funny about
what happens when you have a contest between advanced cooking technology and
stylish (faddish?) consumer electronics: :-)
http://www.blendtec.com/willitblend/videos.aspx?type=unsafe&video=ipad

John Robbins (heir to the Basking-Robbins ice cream fortune) was one of the
first people I heard speak publicly a quarter century ago on these issues in
a big way like the problems with milk products or other animal products from
various perspectives (though others have been doing it, like Herbert
Shelton, for much longer).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Robbins_%28author%29

It's sad to have to compromise in the huge broken market system we live in,
where conflict-of-interest (or the perception) is almost impossible to
avoid. You can look at Herbert Shelton's life (and hard times) for some
insights into that:
http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/shelton.bio.bidwell.htm

I'm thinking more and more that our society already produces several times
as much stuff as two or three billion humans in the North need to be happy
-- although much of that stuff is of the wrong kind or quality, starting
with food and moving to power, cars, infrastructure, information, and so on,
and we are unhappy in part because of all that abundance of the harmful
sort. Others may genuinely need more in the South still, as long as their
culture can be sustained despite the technology changes (or if they adopt a
"schooling" model for education).
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/006005.html

And the USA may still need to make more stuff for its residents, but of a
different quality and with different goals in mind. From Albert Einstein:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
"""
For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are
related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such
objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capabIe, and you
will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and
the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that
knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One
can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be
able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations.
Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the
achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing
to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to
argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only
by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge
of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a
guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the
aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the
limits of the purely rational conception of our existence.
But it must not be assumed that intelligent thinking can play no part in
the formation of the goal and of ethical judgments. When someone realizes
that for the achievement of an end certain means would be useful, the means
itself becomes thereby an end. Intelligence makes clear to us the
interrelation of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of
the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and
valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual,
seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to
perform in the social life of man. And if one asks whence derives the
authority of such fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and
justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy
society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations
and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something
living, without its being necessary to find justification for their
existence. They come into being not through demonstration but through
revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not
attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly.
"""

In that Einsteinian sense, we need a religious movement towards Earthly
abundance for all. And maybe we already do have one, and have had one for a
long time.

And there are others it will eventually link up with; example:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/opinion/18kristof.html
"""
But there’s more to the picture than that. In my travels around the world, I
encounter two Catholic Churches. One is the rigid all-male Vatican hierarchy
that seems out of touch when it bans condoms even among married couples
where one partner is H.I.V.-positive. To me at least, this church — obsessed
with dogma and rules and distracted from social justice — is a modern echo
of the Pharisees whom Jesus criticized.
Yet there’s another Catholic Church as well, one I admire intensely. This
is the grass-roots Catholic Church that does far more good in the world than
it ever gets credit for. This is the church that supports extraordinary aid
organizations like Catholic Relief Services and Caritas, saving lives every
day, and that operates superb schools that provide needy children an
escalator out of poverty. ...
So when you read about the scandals, remember that the Vatican is not the
same as the Catholic Church. Ordinary lepers, prostitutes and slum-dwellers
may never see a cardinal, but they daily encounter a truly noble Catholic
Church in the form of priests, nuns and lay workers toiling to make a
difference.
"""

And, whatever the religious tradition is rooted in from Christian, to
Muslim, to Pagan, to Native, to Humanistic, or whatever, there is that other
lense to use when looking at abundance and what it means for people, and how
to share it, whatever the origins or the methods. And I think there is some
hope there (even as organized religion has caused an immense amount of
problems too). In the Netherlands, Dutch capitalism (where it was invented
to a big degree) only worked as well as it did (and only for locals) because
of shared social and religious values that led to charity and so on (even as
the more anonymous society we have now as far as individualism makes that
quite a bit tougher).

Anyway, that's all much deeper issues that worrying over a little spilled
milk. :-)

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
====
The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of
abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity.

[Kevin Carson]

On 4/24/10, Patrick Anderson <agnu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Supporters of the so-called "Free Market" claim all our troubles would
> be over if we could just stop the governments from handing favors to
> big business.
>
> But producers choose to limit production and destroy reserves *on
> their own* because they want to keep price above cost.
>
> The examples of this are many, but here is a video of hundreds of
> Belgian farmers dumping milk in an attempt to reduce the supply:
> http://YouTube.com/watch?v=pDAjMcDWDZ0
>
> If the workers were the owners, the results would be the same.

Possibly--if all other variables were held constant. But what are
some of those variables?

Are there, for example, market entry barriers making it artificially
difficult for just anyone to start raising cattle and selling milk,
without some sort of government certification, or some sort of
expensive government inspection or licensing fees that limit the
number of people competing in the market?

Might some of the problem be overproduction for large, anonymous
commodity markets in which production is divorced from demand and
organized on a supply-push model, instead of being geared to local
demand? Might some of it be, as Chris suggested, the market power of
middlemen who drive down the price primary producers can receive for
their commodities, to the point where they can only be sold at a loss?

> We are fundamentally confused about the purpose of business.
>
> We should be producing for *product* (use value), but are instead
> producing for *profit* (exchange value) which cannot abide abundance.

I don't think there's any confusion about the fact that people in
business *want* to make money. What they want to do and how they want
to do it, and what they're *able* to do, though, are two different
things. I think there may be some fundamental confusion here about
what makes them able to do it. Destroying product in order to reduce
supply and drive up the price is just great--if you can stop anyone
from entering the market and selling for closer to production cost and
undercutting you. If there's no restriction on access to the dairy
market or on permission to produce milk, pouring milk down the sewer
would be a pretty stupid thing to do.

On the other hand, we may be fundamentally confused on what being a
consumer is all about. Wal-Mart is flooded with customers seeking the
lowest possible dirt-cheap price on everything, even if it's produced
by Chinese slave labor (and lots of people who shop for nannies and
gardeners from foreign countries who will work without FICA payments).
How would that change if customers owned the sweatshops?

If there's a conflict of interest between workers and consumers, why
won't it work both ways? Isn't it just as much in the interest of
consumers to get workers to work for as little as possible? Most
people are both wage-workers and consumers, so it's hard to imagine
them going from being total utility-maximizing, price-gouging
shitheels as producers, and then transforming into Gandhi or Mother
Theresa as consumer-owners.

I repeat, consumer sovereignty is great for the portion of the day
that you're a consumer. But for the portion of your life that you
punch a time-clock and become a serf, it's not so great. The greatest
source of misery in many people's lives is the hours they're working
under the orders and direction of someone else.

--
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html

[Chris Watkins]

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 11:10, Kevin Carson <free.market.a...@gmail.com> wrote:

Might some of the problem be overproduction for large, anonymous
commodity markets in which production is divorced from demand and
organized on a supply-push model, instead of being geared to local
demand?  Might some of it be, as Chris suggested, the market power of
middlemen who drive down the price primary producers can receive for
their commodities, to the point where they can only be sold at a loss?

 
Actually I suggested it's a joint action problem, of the producters. The middle-men may or may not play a role in encouraging it.

>  We are fundamentally confused about the purpose of business.
>
>  We should be producing for *product* (use value), but are instead
>  producing for *profit* (exchange value) which cannot abide abundance.

I don't think there's any confusion about the fact that people in
business *want* to make money.  What they want to do and how they want
to do it, and what they're *able* to do, though, are two different
things.  I think there may be some fundamental confusion here about
what makes them able to do it.  Destroying product in order to reduce
supply and drive up the price is just great--if you can stop anyone
from entering the market and selling for closer to production cost and
undercutting you.  If there's no restriction on access to the dairy
market or on permission to produce milk, pouring milk down the sewer
would be a pretty stupid thing to do.

On the other hand, we may be fundamentally confused on what being a
consumer is all about.  Wal-Mart is flooded with customers seeking the
lowest possible dirt-cheap price on everything, even if it's produced
by Chinese slave labor (and lots of people who shop for nannies and
gardeners from foreign countries who will work without FICA payments).
 How would that change if customers owned the sweatshops?

Certainly it should improve transparency and require more people to take ownership of the actions. And most people are not psychopaths. I'd be hopeful that this would lead to an improvement for the workers.

Chris

--
Chris Watkins

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