[ 15/7/20 ]
We would need to stop using markets to measure value.
Markets measure exchange value.
Exchange value always has a scarcity component.
Air has no exchange value, as we all have all we need. Does anyone think that air has no value.
It is the insanity of our age that we attempt to arbitrage all different values into a single scarcity based metric – money. The internal incentive structure of doing that is driving poverty for the majority.
Automation allows us to meet the reasonable needs of everyone for all the essentials of life with very little input, but the demands of the money system prevent that from happening.
Human beings are complex beyond the capacity of anyone to appreciate in detail.
Our money system is complex to a degree that takes considerable familiarity with complex mathematics and logics and systems to begin to understand.
The necessity of oversimplifying complex systems in order to reach some sort of conclusion in the time and energy available means most people think that things are far more simple than they actually are.
The major key to going beyond scarcity, with security, is to have individual sapient life as one’s highest value, followed by the freedom of all such individuals to do whatever they responsibly choose – where responsibility means making reasonable efforts to avoid any risk to the life or liberty of others (which by implication means the environment that supports us all) from the reasonably foreseeable consequences of one’s actions.
In this sense, freedom without responsibility is necessarily self terminating.
So that can only work if everyone who wishes to claim a freedom has done the work required to be able to make such reasonable assessments reliably. As one moves up the levels of abstraction and awareness available, communication and assessment of such things gets exponentially more difficult.
