Re: Jericho style rationing

On 8 Apr 2007 18:49:24 -0700, "CanopyCo" <Junk74020@xxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Apr 8, 10:39 am, Robert Sturgeon <rstu...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 7 Apr 2007 21:19:58 -0700, "CanopyCo" <Junk74...@xxxxxxx>
wrote:

("Socialism In Action" snipped)

Think of a survival community as a large family.

No thanks! I prefer an economy functioning with VOLUNTARY
trade, using media of exchange chosen by the participants in
a market environment.

Exactly what I described.

Not at all.

If you do not volunteer to do work that benefits the community (the
chosen media of exchange chosen by those that have what your are
wanting to trade for) then the community will not give you what you
want.

"the community"? Or the leadership of the community? You
know - it always comes down to some leader or leaders
deciding. And for them to outperform the free market, they
have to be omniscient. They never are.

In a true survival situation, there is seldom extra goods that can be
traded off.

If there aren't extra goods, there can be no trade, and the
result will be starvation - or coercion. But the farmer
will have extra food; the tinker will have extra pots; the
weaver will have extra cloth. That's the basis of trade.
Assuming that no one will have "extra" is nonsense. Even
the Indians traded widely among themselves.

There is typically barley enough to keep everyone alive that is
working to keep everyone alive, so if you are laying around your cabin
and doing nothing to help the community, they will likely not be
interested in giving you any of the moonshine they distilled to burn
in the generators that the rigged to burn it.
Or dig out the built that hit you during the last raid where you
fought off the raiders single handed.

Stuff like that.

Right after a society falls, there is no universal media of exchange.

There is plenty of media of exchange laying around right now
- gold and silver, bottles of whiskey, .22 ammo, etc. -
which wouldn't suddenly disappear overnight. People using
the free market will easily choose things to use as media of
exchange. The safest assumption is that the same sorts of
things will be used as have always been used - mostly gold
and silver. People who are seriously preparing for such a
dismal future include some of that in their stash.

Therefore it is totally barter.
And barter only works if those offering have something the others
want.

It has been said that those who beat their swords into
plowshares will plow for those who don't. It is equally
certain that those who have no gold or silver will plow for
those who do. Got any???

What we would have (in a post SHTF
situation) is a choice between socialism, controlled by
force by the leaders, and some sort of anarcho-capitalism.

There is also the choice of a voluntary socialism similar to the
tribal setup of the American Indians.

I won't be volunteering.

Is this type of situation, everyone works together because they know
that is what it will take for everyone to survive.

Not I, nor any other liberty-minded people. We just don't
have the hive mind.

I know which one has the better chance of creating goods and
services, and putting them to good use, and it isn't
socialism. Of course, I understand that is what the sheeple
would want, so the rest of us (the liberty-minded) would
have to be prepared to secede from and resist their efforts
at "fairness." This is where a population of like-minded
individuals, with plenty of firepower, would be critical -
both to create the means of living AND to resist the
depredations of the "let's all share and share alike"
socialists who will try to take it by force.

You been snorting brown brown (coke & gunpowder) again?

Never tried it. Any good?

What I am suggesting would simply ignore you in your bunker while the
rest of us worked together in the same manner as the American Indians
did.

So long as the collectivists are willing to leave the
individualists alone, that will be just fine. But since the
individualists will be much more productive, and the
collectivists will have that entitlement mentality, they
will inevitably try to steal from the individualists.

Of course, we would not be wasting time helping you defend yourself
from the roving bands of thieves, so you would likely not last as long
as a group of people working together would.

Just leave us alone - that's all we'll want from you. But
YOU will be those roving bands of thieves, out to steal the
results of the more productive people who don't volunteer
for your socialism.

Or are you suggesting that your bunker would be housing more then just
you?

What bunker?

If so, what would you pay them with for helping you survive?

In a free market, people arrange their trades and productive
activities as they wish. They may be making payments using
some media of exchange. They may reach agreements to work
together on a project and share the results. They do as
they see fit - without "the group" deciding for them how
they must proceed.

What would they pay you with for housing them in your bunker?
Whose stove and fuel would they and you use to cook your food?
What would be the standard pay for that irreplaceable fuel?

Free markets don't rely on some omniscient being deciding
how things should/will happen.

What you are describing is exactly the situation the members
of the Plymouth colony found themselves in. They started
out with a "share everything equally" system, and they
damned near starved to death, because there was no incentive
to be productive. Those who goofed off were as well fed as
those who worked hard - not very well. After a while, they
realized their error and divided the land up into individual
plots, with each family allowed to profit from its own
productivity. Then they thrived. Under your "share
everything" system, controlled by force by leaders, you'd
soon have starvation too. It is contrary to human nature,
and it won't work. The command economy, whether in a small
town in Kansas, or in the USSR, is bound to fail. The
reason, in short, is that the leaders never can know what is
needed, how much of it is needed, how it should be produced,
how it should be distributed, etc. Only a free market of
free producers and consumers can be successful at
determining those questions.

Actually, it is more like what the members of Plymouth colony found
the American Indians doing.

I suggest you read up on those Pilgrims.

If you did not work and provide value to the tribe, then you did not
get a share of the tribes goods.
The people that were not as good a shot with a bow helped herd the
buffalo toward the hunters.
The hunters killed the buffalo while the old folks watched the kids,
skinned out the buffalo and jerked it for storage.
Then everyone would get some buffalo for there food supply.

I have no interest in living like a bunch of Indians. Some
of my ancestors were Indians. I thank the "Great Sky
Spirit" that I don't have to live like they did - the poor
wretches.

People like you who laid around back in your bunker saying "if you
won't pay me what I want I won't help you hunt" would just be ignored
and left to starve.
Just like the rest of the Plymouth colony types like you, who thought
that they could just buy all that they needed until they discovered
that there money either ran out or those that would take it ran out of
goods to sell.

Huh??? Given the scenario, why would I NOT produce more?
Why would I merely sit around living off my previous
accumulation of wealth? That would be slow suicide.

The problem is often called "the arithmetic problem,"
referring to the impossibility of doing the calculations
required to figure HOW to command an economy. In Jericho,
neither the mayor nor any group of leaders can possibly know
who should be working at the hospital,

Do you have medical training?
If yes, then I would think that would indicate that person should work
at the hospital.

Who would decide this?

who should be doing
guard duty,

Are you generally useless in almost every other area, but still
dependable enough to watch for incoming people and sound the alarm?
As in stand in the tower and ring the bell if they see someone coming?
Then that would indicate a good candidate for guard duty.

Who would decide this?

who should be growing food,

You own a working farm?
You generally healthy and capable of doing manual labor while also
being generally useless in almost every other area?
That sounds like a farmer to me.
Guards would not need to be generally healthy or capable of manual
labor.
Just not blind.
And farmers helpers would not necessarily need to be dependable to
work unsupervised.
Supervising them would be the job of the professional farmer.

Who would be assigning all these people these positions in
society? I prefer the free market, wherein people decide
for themselves how they can best seek their livelihoods. We
have had plenty of history of both systems: coercive
collectivism, and (sorta) free markets. We KNOW which works
better. You are welcome to use the excuse of a societal
collapse to regress back to primitive collectivism if you
wish. Just don't assume you can drag me and like minded
people along with you. We ain't volunteering for THAT
disaster.

(Rest snipped.)

--
Robert Sturgeon
Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
http://www.vistech.net/users/rsturge/
.