[geodesic 00141] Re: cosmic accounting
Bob Burkhardt
There are lots of aspects to the production goods and services: labor,
capital, energy, space, know how. Just focusing on energy seems to go
against Bucky's dictum of comprehensiveness of outlook leading to more
suitable solutions. Energy might be better than what Bucky was dealing
with when he formulated these ideas, which was gold. Prices have an
important information content, and unnecessary variation makes things
more difficult. If they are expressed in terms of one commodity, the
variability in its price affects all of the prices of the other
commodities and can make decyphering relative prices more difficult. For
energy, which is such a pervasive component, this is not such a drawback
as with gold, but it seems better to express the prices in terms of a
weighted average of all commodities, which is something like what we
strive for now, at least in the U.S. (Gold was in its time a great
improvement over the inflationary solution of just printing paper with no
commodity backing or knowledgable management for the general welfare.
Knowledgable management is a very exacting discipline though perhaps it
could be more automated with benefit, the benefits being time savings and
independence from special interests.)
Some references and even credits would have been helpful for the video.
Obviously whoever scripted this delved into some books. The video brings
out some of Bucky's socialist ideas which seem rather suppressed these
days, but were popular in Bucky's younger days. This is the only thing
of value I see in the video, is it brings out an aspect of a complex
human being which the promoters tend to sweep under the rug. But it is
hard to tell how garbled the representation of that aspect is.
Bob
On Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:36:07 -0700 (PDT) Dick Fischbeck
<dick_fi...@yahoo.com> writes:
> Tim- Please explain. I'm not clear on your meaning.
>
> I think there is still an information accounting system of pure
> information in Bucky's proposal of cosmic accounting. The difference
> is the units are based on energy, not what we have now (what ever
> that is).
>
> Dick
>
>
> > Tim Tyler" <t...@tt1.org>
> > Message-ID: <4906B8A7...@tt1.org>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> >
> > Joe S Moore wrote:
> >
> > > This is the clearest explanation of "Cosmic
> > Accounting" that I have ever heard--even from Bucky:
> > >
> > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0Hw8m3yDV4
> > >
> >
> > A /very/ bad idea. Energy is difficult to move about,
> > whereas information
> > is easy. This would represent /huge/ friction on the
> > global economy, and
> > would collectively cost the planet billions.
> >
> > A "real" currency /would/ make forgery harder -
> > but that's not a big
> > problem,
> > and ultimately, we know how to deal with it using
> > cryptography if we
> > need to.
>
>
>
>
>
--
Bob Burkhardt
http://www.freewebtown.com/bobwb/ts/synergetics/photos/