Re: Goodbye Ruby - Hello Earth

Free market wants cheap transaction cost, which is partly information cost.
Data processing cat help with that, but won't magically. It is one of the
ironies of our era that the fastest way to get a free market and keep it is to
eliminate large corporations, establish rules requiring 100% worker ownership,
establish Georgist land and tax reforms, and generally set everyone at close to
the same level of income, all things best done by government. Without people
working at similar levels of scale and in a fair system, you just won't get
there anyway, so just opt for real democratic socialism, which at least
mitigates the greatest excesses of totalitarianism of any stripe and allows some
market workings which really help. All the crap from the Reaganites was just
bate and switch, and they have conned us to the tune of tens of trillians of
dollars with it.

I think Ruby will help cheapen information, but the real problem isn't with
ruby, but with the rules of ownership and the legacy of power owned from spoils
rather than merit activity. Money is a poor reflection of merit, especially
nowadays, and the biggest resource wasters are not those raising taxes, but
those who cut them so they could waste more resources personally. The greenest
among us are the homeless people, so it makes most sense that others should be
massively taxed to subsidize the homeless people to do some real savings.

All that is beyond the intent of this group and I think the discussion should
therefore be taken elsewhere. I hope ruby wins and merit wins and that I can
now go back to using this list as a ruby technical resource.

Sincerely, Xeno

Todd Benson wrote:
On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 6:23 PM, Chad Perrin <perrin@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 05:58:21AM +0900, Tom Cloyd wrote:
Free market idealism...ah, yes. In the USA, and, as a consequence, in
world in general, we are presently enjoying the rewards of market left
entirely TOO free. Wild pigs with the social morality of your average
two year old took over, uprooted a lot of the garden and many of the
fruit trees, and as a result many of us are more than a bit worried
about how we're going to feed ourselves in the coming months.

I've been avoiding this thread, but what the heck...

A so-called "free" market economy, I'm sorry to say, is not the utopia
you think it would be. You can worship Mr. Smith all you want, but
people simply aren't pawns in a giant chess game. What I mean is that
Adam (and other likewise economists) makes some severe logical leaps;
some terribly skewed assumptions about human behavior.

You will continue to have, and indeed _must_ have, some semblance of
intervention at the ruling party level. It's simply a check against
what you think would be a balance.

Todd




--
The best way to save resources is to tax away the rich and invest in real social
democracy with full citizen involvement, full truth and disclosure, and justice.

.

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