Stefan. I am disappointed by the response of major Venus project promoters to your valid and intelligent questions. It seems I will have to answer them myself. Let's begin.

 

You've asked about the calculation problem in the past. I will now address this, properly.

 

The Calculation Problem

Without prices resources cannot be rationally distributed.

 

Argument One

To make an argument I need to create some common ground by giving definitions and assumptions. Let me know if you disagree with any.

 

Definitions

Cost - Within a RBE cost is determined by the amount of resources used in a products' production.

Demand - How much people want or need something, measured using surveys and data on their usage.

 

Assumptions

1.     Price is influenced by demand.

2.     Currently demand is initially determined by cost of production, surveys and small test releases.

3.     After the products introduction demand is determined by looking for trends in data on product use (purchasing).

 

Argument

The same ways of determining a products value can easily be used within a RBE. I am disappointed that we do not have a formula for calculating value; however the basic formula is quite obvious.

Value = Demand / Cost

Products would simply be ranked in order of value to determine what to produce first. Food and shelter for example would have an infinite demand (how much people need them) and would be produced first.

 

Note that there must be a variety of products available and new products must be made available.

 

Argument Two

 

Assumptions

1.     Price is determined by scarcity.

2.     There are enough resources on this planet to provide everyone a comfortable standard of living.

3.     Processes to provide this standard of living can be mechanized.

 

Argument

I'm going to say something that nobody else supporting the Venus project will, the following sentence may be disturbing to some readers; reader discretion is advised. The Venus project is essentially communism fully utilizing current technology. Why hasn't communism worked? Simple, there are jobs that no sane person will do unless forced to do so, working at McDonalds' for instance or working on an assembly line. The system falls apart when people do not do these jobs voluntarily. Generally the state tries to correct the problem though force or incentives, a.k.a. bringing back capitalism. The Venus project is different because these jobs are going to be done by machines that will not get lazy if we don't offer them an incentive and will continue to work even without the threat of force. Thereby system collapse is avoided.

 

There are enough resources to provide an abundance of essentials and these essentials are processed and distributed by machines. What is the value of something in abundance? Zero fiat currency ($), we do not pay for air. Deciding what goes where is just a matter of asking people what they need and or using collected data to predict people's needs.

 

Conclusion

The calculation problem is solvable without traditional prices.

 

What I Think, and a Request

 

I find it difficult to comprehend all of society working like this. I do think it is possible, I will admit it is unlikely. The first step is to socialize and mechanize (mechanization is the key) all essential services. Essential services are: housing, nutrition and education/access to information. Every one will be provided a nice, but minimalistic, living through mechanization. This freeing of humanity will create a new renaissance of creativity and progress. The creativity renaissance may be precluded by a golden age of laziness; doing nothing gets boring though and people will continue to produce even if their needs are provided for.

I don't like to waste my time, if I'm going to be spending time explaining the intricacies of a RBE I want to be sure I am hitting home. Stefan, that would be you. I don't want to spend my time debating hundreds of individuals of lesser intelligence and with lesser influence then yourself. I'd like to hear more of your questions or concerns within this thread. I only request that you allow me to handle your questions on an individual basis. You can see that one question can take a while to answer, if you want a proper answer. I look forward to coming to a resolution on an ideal economic/social sytem.

"The first step is to socialize and mechanize (mechanization is the key) all essential services. Essential services are: housing, nutrition and education/access to information"

Just a mere mortal here, sorry, but you may want to clarify whether this step is taken using the state or voluntarily within a free economy

And now I disappear

.

1. Outside of basic essentials, like food (basic nutrients) and shelter you have no idea what's important to me, or anyone on this planet, so how can you possibly place these subjective demands in an order of importance for production?  Who's going to decide who's subjective wants are more important than someone elses? I don't think anyone supporting the TVP wants to live in houses,  that are near empty, or wear clothes identical to everyone elses. We're curious creatures, we like new things, I'm not talking brainwashed consumerism either. Long before Edward Bernay's, people were buying/trading different things for thousands of years, he just helped influence more purchases, among other things.

Our wants and desires are infinite, we can't place these in some arbitrary order of importance for production, though the market does it incredibly well. If we're going to offer an alternative, it has to prove that it's better, and that it works, we can't just say we believe we'll find something else and scrap what's working, that's craziness, but I'm glad you're questioning your "leaders". Peter had a chance to spill the empirical beans of TVP with Stef, one on one, but Stef had to chat with a radio host (V-Radio) who had to admit he wasn't an expert once factual evidence forced him. THis movement is highly unchallenged internally. The guy did his best, and was a nice enough fellow, but if he's a voice for the movement and can't explain a solution to the economic calculation problem, who can?

2. You talk about automation as though we won't need any labour, well where are the machines that can build other machines, that can repair other machines? THis technology is no where to be found today, or in the near furutre. I'm sure the sky is the limit with robotics, but for the forseeable future, we're going to need plenty of labour to feed, cloth and house 6 billion people, even if half of Jaques's automation fantasies come true. We can never look too far into the future, which Jaques has mentioned many times, so why in the hell would he advocate building the largest infrastructure ever conceived if its entire concept could become obsolete in 20 years? What's worse, his concepts aren't even tested, let alone proven right now. We have no idea if an RBE could work, or more importantly, if people would want to live like that.

It's going to take many generations to build what Jaque wants with untold man hours, it's just a giant complicated clusterfuck absent of evidence. THere's no Venus Project test model, no working theory, and no real debate. Peter sending a talk show host to the wolves does not qualify, and neither do posts from half informed people on message boards

I'm really glad you're doing this, however, hopefully you can save a lot of gullible people time and money. I wonder how much they've receive in donations?

btw, here's a giant red flag alert. WHen Peter showed Z3 in theaters, torrents started popping up everywhere, and people were uploading the film on youtube. For a group wanting to abolish money, propertyy rights and ownership, why was there such a strong call to stop people from sharing the theatrical release online?

WELCOME!

BaloJelli:

Just a mere mortal here, sorry, but you may want to clarify whether this step is taken using the state or voluntarily within a free economy

I concurr, this is the single most important question to be answered....

In case you haven't seen it:

I can't respond to the whole thing but:

dvanex:

measured using surveys and data on their usage.

How are you going to get people to submit this data, which changes from day to day, hour to hour minute to minute, every single day?

dvanex:

Note that there must be a variety of products available and new products must be made available.

Made available by whom? For what reason? What is their incentive for innovation?

dvanex:

The Venus project is different because these jobs are going to be done by machines that will not get lazy if we don't offer them an incentive and will continue to work even without the threat of force.

Companies like Starbucks, McDonalds would be all over this even now, yet I don't see them doing it.  Talk about economic incentive, never having to pay their employees?  Yet you talk about this as if it's just going to happen.  Why? What's the incentive?

If I were a creator of robots that could sell fast food and talk nice to customers, take accurate orders and make a good burger... I'd be all over these companies trying to sell them my line of robots. Why? Because I'd make millions if not billions doing it.  But why would I do it if I don't have to work or buy anything?  Why would I do anything at all?

 Just another mere human here with a question.  I know you wanted to get a response from Stefan himself, but i guarantee you,  he will ask this same question. So why wait, you will have to deal with this sooner or later.

Your definition of cost. "Cost - Within a RBE cost is determined by the amount of resources used in a products' production"

So what your saying is your price tag (for lack of a better term) will read   X amount of labor + X amount of steel + X amount of electricity + X amount of whatever and so on till you list all the resources needed to make the item?

This seems like a very unreasonable and inefficient way to place a value on a item.

How will you know the cost of those resources if you don't put some quantitative value on them to measure it with? Measurements depend on being able to quantify what you are measuring.

You have to have some unit of measurement to make a judgment from.  There must be some quantifiable unit of measurement or calculation is impossible. You cant do math without numbers, and those number have to come form somewhere and represent something or it means nothing.

Cost can not be calculated without some kind of a quantifiable value being assigned to each of the resources used to make an item.  And...

The moment you quantify the value of any object or resource, that is price, even if you don't want to call it that.

So if you are not going to quantify the value of the resources than how will you determine their cost?

If you do put a quantifiable value on the resources needed to calculate cost, then how is it different from the system we use now except for not calling it price?

I see this as the heart of the problem. The inability to calculate an unquantifiable measurement.

Actually:

-demand is influenced by price.

-demand is determined* by profit. 

*) determined is a very strange word to use here, "communicated to producers" would be a lot better. your language betrays your assumption that products have objective value.

what's the value of a glass of water when you're at home with a functioning tap?

now... what's the value of that glass if you've been lost in the desert with no water for 2 days? 

Observations

1. we know what happens when people get communism "wrong"...

2. you claim to know how to get it "right" this time...

3. your assumptions about economics are flawed.

So it's basically communism with erroneous economic understanding (I'd consider that a pleonasm by the way) wich leads us back to observation 1. and the accompanying murder and starvation of millions...

The RBE advocates keep assuming that the culculation problem is about technological sophistication. But it's not, it's a problem about what can be known.

Edit:

dvanex:

I don't like to waste my time, if I'm going to be spending time explaining the intricacies of a RBE I want to be sure I am hitting home. Stefan, that would be you. I don't want to spend my time debating hundreds of individuals of lesser intelligence and with lesser influence then yourself. 

wow.... just wow  

I really should have reviewed the whole post in stead of just jumping into the economic errors  

 "I don't like to waste my time, if I'm going to be spending time explaining the intricacies of a RBE I want to be sure I am hitting home. Stefan, that would be you. I don't want to spend my time debating hundreds of individuals of lesser intelligence and with lesser influence then yourself."

I find this quite insulting.

If this is the case then why did you not have this conversation in a private email unstead of a public board?

But , if you want to play that game, then I want answers from the leaders of the VP and TZM themselves . Not you. Anything else would be a waste of my time. I'm done with you.

PW Gemstone:

 "I don't like to waste my time, if I'm going to be spending time explaining the intricacies of a RBE I want to be sure I am hitting home. Stefan, that would be you. I don't want to spend my time debating hundreds of individuals of lesser intelligence and with lesser influence then yourself."

I find this quite insulting.

If this is the case then why did you not have this conversation in a private email unstead of a public board?

But , if you want to play that game, then I want answers from the leaders of the VP and TZM themselves . Not you. Anything else would be a waste of my time. I'm done with you.

Wow I didn't catch that part, else I wouldn't have even responded.

Nathan:

PW Gemstone:

 "I don't like to waste my time, if I'm going to be spending time explaining the intricacies of a RBE I want to be sure I am hitting home. Stefan, that would be you. I don't want to spend my time debating hundreds of individuals of lesser intelligence and with lesser influence then yourself."

I find this quite insulting.

If this is the case then why did you not have this conversation in a private email unstead of a public board?

But , if you want to play that game, then I want answers from the leaders of the VP and TZM themselves . Not you. Anything else would be a waste of my time. I'm done with you.

Wow I didn't catch that part, else I wouldn't have even responded.

btw, Peter Joseph's arrogance manifests itself in strange ways with his flock. That guy spent an hour talking in circles "reviewing" Stef's 20 minute review of his film, then allows  some radio host to be fed to Stef in a "debate" when he had a chance to speak one on one, what a coward.

We can all pretty much answer for Stef in regards to the calculation problem, or anything else he talked about in his criticisms of Z3, but no one in the ZM seems to be able to explain how the Venus Project is going to work, when properly challenged. They eventually defer to more qualified people who don't appear to exist. I'm assuming Peter and Jaques will be those that can offer an answer, but so far they haven't, I think we all know why;)

 We don't have to call this group a religion, but there's a alot of faith going in Zeitgeist land!

vincent:

The RBE advocates keep assuming that the culculation problem is about technological sophistication. But it's not, it's a problem about what can be known.

This is the one, fundamental concept Zeitgeisters do not understand.

It is an utter waste of time to argue with their 1,000 word descriptions of "how things could work". 

I wish everyone would emulate Vincent by ignoring their science fiction jabberwocky and focusing on their failure to understand Economic Calculation Problem.

Not only that, but if this is possible, then why do they invent one of these computers so that they can then go bank on the stock market? Because people have been trying to figure out a way to predict the demands or people to make it big in the stock market for a long time now.

dvanex:

Stefan. I am disappointed by the response of major Venus project promoters to your valid and intelligent questions. It seems I will have to answer them myself. Let's begin.

 

You've asked about the calculation problem in the past. I will now address this, properly.

The Calculation Problem

Without prices resources cannot be rationally distributed.

Argument One

To make an argument I need to create some common ground by giving definitions and assumptions. Let me know if you disagree with any.

 

Definitions

Cost - Within a RBE cost is determined by the amount of resources used in a products' production.

Demand - How much people want or need something, measured using surveys and data on their usage.

...

Value = Demand / Cost

 

Let's just stop right here, no point in goint further really.

Value is ordinal, rather than cardinal.  If you make an equation with value in it, you've done something wrong.

How can you take action, which is inherently inequal, of selecting one thing and setting aside all other, and fit it to a system of equations and equalities?

"Human Action" by Mises is really helpful to get economic ideas all in a row.

But back to calculation. I'm not sure exactly that the venus project would suffer from it in the late game. One of the calculation problems is that labor is heterogeneous, where resources are also heterogeneous but less so, (mabye a dozen basic categories). So it would be possilbe to divide evenly all resources as claim check after *needs* are spent.  However thier ratios would not be valued in accordance with thier abundance, but with thier utility so that thier ratios or prices in terms of another could not be fixed.  So you need trade here to manage which resouce harvest was increased the most. Now this would be a monetary system (at least being a barter system) albiet without interest or debt allowed. 

So far minor problems, but nothing that Mises would find impossible. Yet there remains one more choice. Should we save or spend and how much. Should capitilazation grow at .25% or 25%.  This is a calculation problem that the Venus project cannot overcome as it is adamant about having no interest.

Anyways by the time you get to the point where everything could be automated, I don't think hunger, sickness, or homelessness would be large issues. Sometime between now and then I believe we'll have that these problems will be cheaper for people to solve than to manage and that it will be donet partly or mostly by market mechanisms.

Resources are useless without labor. There is no computer that can find resources as well as trained professionals because we work imperfect data and must use human bias to approach a sensible answer.  I have to laugh when Zeitgeisters think a computer can correctly estimate a resource.  I work as a geologist in the oil industry.  I can stand 2 miles above a spot I know where the oil (resource) is.  It takes the combined knowledge and labor of 100's of people to drill, stimulate, and produce an $8+ million dollar oil well.  Also we need capital, the excess labor of 100's of people to raise the money.  If we make the correct assesment the market rewards us with profit, and if we're wrong we are quickly exposed as being poor decision makers and inneficient.  We use prices everyday, hundreds of them, the price of oil, the price of labor, equipment, materials, we utilize dozens of contractors who each specialize in a specific part of the drilling/completing/producing procedure.

dvanex:

The Calculation Problem -- Without prices resources cannot be rationally distributed.

No, that's not the calculation problem. The calculation problem is: without exchanges of private property, there are no prices; and without prices, there is no information that anyone can use to compare the costs and benefits of some action with the costs and benefits of some alternative action.  It concerns the INPUTS that one relies on in order to make informed decisions about what to produce and what to consume.

Economic calculation is the process of deciding what action you can take that will result in a state of affairs at some point in the future (whether that's 5 seconds or 50 years from now) that YOU find more-preferrable to some other state of affairs.  It's about predicting what the results of action will likely be, based on the existing alternatives, which are constantly changing.  Those inputs include everything that everyone else is doing or not doing.  That's what makes an economic system complex.  

So, economic calcuation is not primarily about "distribution of resources."  The process of everyone engaging in economic calculation is one component that affects how resources end up getting distributed, but the Economic Calculation Problem is much more fundamental than that. 

dvanex:

Demand - How much people want or need something, measured using surveys and data on their usage.

No, that's wrong, too.  I have always thought that "demand" is a poor word for what it really describes.  Demand is not just "what people want."  "What people want" is purely hypothetical and abstract.  Desire is imaginary.  It is what you might be able to have if things were different than they are now.  None of that matters in economics.  Economics is concerned with what actually is. 

Demand is really just a matter of preferences -- preferring some outcome more than some other outcome.  It is therefore entirely relative.  It can only be seen when you put two (or more) REAL alternatives next to each other and choose one over the other. 

This is what people mean when we say that "subjective value is ordinal."  That's just a complicated way of saying that demand (in the economic sense) is a matter of exercising one's preferences.  Every thing one wants is either higher or lower on the list of wants -- either more-preferred or less-preferred than something else.

As a result, demand for some economic good can ONLY be measured by what each individual person is willing to FOREGO in order to get it. 

This cannot be measured by surveys, because surveys cost nothing.  It makes ZERO economic difference whether you answer a survey asking for X amount of stuff or 10,000X.  It costs the same amount of time, ink and energy to ask for X as it does to ask for 10,000X.  A survey therefore measures nothing meaningful. The only true measure of demand is what people are willing to forego in order to get something.  That may be money they're willing to part with, goods they give away (or don't buy), labor to expend, leisure to avoid, time spent doing X instead of Y, whatever.

dvanex:

Every one will be provided a nice, but minimalistic, living through mechanization. This freeing of humanity will create a new renaissance of creativity and progress. The creativity renaissance may be precluded by a golden age of laziness; doing nothing gets boring though and people will continue to produce even if their needs are provided for.

Have you paused to consider why you are attracted to this as your ideal vision of the world? Put aside the economics for a moment, and think about you and your own life and situation.

It sounds to me like you are describing what YOU want -- to be provided a nice-but minimalistic living, just for being you, which you'd probably use at first to do little or nothing, and perhaps followed by some artistic work you find personally fulfilling. 

It sounds like the dreamy fantasy of a 20-something soon-to-be or recent-graduate who hates the idea of entering the workforce full-time, and wants to have the life of relative leisure and artistic exploration that is possible when you are being provided stuff by others.  This "other" has merely taken on the form of robots and computers, as a proxy for parents, the State, etc. 

It also sounds positively awful.  Have you visited housing projects?  Section 8 apartments?  They are filled with people whose "minimalistic" needs are met by the welfare system.  They have food, clothing, shelter and medical care provided to them, and remain unemployed.  It results in depression, suicide, drug abuse, and general apathy and destruction of any kind of planning and foresight.

dvanex:

I don't like to waste my time, if I'm going to be spending time explaining the intricacies of a RBE I want to be sure I am hitting home. Stefan, that would be you. I don't want to spend my time debating hundreds of individuals of lesser intelligence and with lesser influence then yourself. I'd like to hear more of your questions or concerns within this thread. I only request that you allow me to handle your questions on an individual basis. You can see that one question can take a while to answer, if you want a proper answer. I look forward to coming to a resolution on an ideal economic/social sytem.

Good luck with that.