A form of society that is based on a social contract where the rules (like the rules of e.g. democracy) are constructed in such a way that
individuals are (monetarily) rewarded if they take more responsibility (for other people basically) in a way that a doubled responsibility leads to a unit increase in reward (with a unit reward for taking responsibility for one self).
sub groups can make individual decisions and take local responsibility (and e.g. distribute the reward according to the rules)
there is an increase in power with group size but limited in a mathematically precise way
optional: Limitation of private property to that which you can actually regularly use.
Thus there is a limit to income in a mathematically precise way (logarithm of total social product).
ADDED: Construct this in a way that it can be embedded in existing society (via existing contracts) such that it can grow from a small set of members to all.
I don’t understand why you would want this. It doesn’t take exactly X times as much effort to provide X times as much productivity, but its a way better approximation than a log scale. Is the goal to discourage commerce, and promote self sufficiency?
Another problem would be, that unless this system suddenly and magically got applied to the whole world, it would not be competitive. It can’t grow from a small set of members because the limits it imposes would hinder those who would have contributed the most to the size and power of the economy. By shrinking your economy, you will become less competitive against those who don’t adopt this new system.
If you have precise operational definitions of “responsibility”, “reward” , “power”, and “social product” that are amenable to public calculation, please share them. Getting agreement on the formulas should be a piece of cake if you can get agreement on the linear measures.
The operational definitions that I used when I toyed around with this idea were:
reward is just monetarily income (or an equivalent thereof). I really should have made clear that this is imagined to be compatible with normal economics)
(amount of) responsibility is
a) the number of persons you make decisions on behalf of with respect to (a subset of) the rules of the society. This responsibility can be agreed on (e.g. if you have a job where your decisions affect other people) or implicit (e.g. responsibility for yourself of your children)
b) the monetary value of goods that you affect by your actions (again as agreed on or implicit),
** both can be fractional if responsibility is shared
Hmm. I don’t think that works (or maybe you’re just describing capitalism). If individuals have control over money, you can’t have a societal design that contradicts their spending choices.
Currently, individuals are rewarded linearly for the amount*degree that they “take responsibility” (=sell products or provide service) for someone who has money to pay. This is a direct result of the operation of monetary transactions.
Currently, sub-groups can incorporate in order to make individual-like actions.
There is an increase in power with group size, but there’s no simple definition of “power” that makes it feasible to calculate. I’m sure it is mathematically limited, though.
(optional) private property can be taken if powerful groups (governments usually) think they need it more than the owner.
Capitalism allows unlimited private property with all the consequences for concentration of capital. If you don’t want that you have to let go of something. Approaches that come to mind (and have been suggested) are
taxes on capital (which basically takes property away)
taxes on on income that approach 100% and thus limit income
limits for incorporation (anti-trust laws)
contracts that structure how income can be used (e.g. trusts are often highly structured in their spending)
Basically I’m suggesting very general contracts that effectively change the linear reward effect you mention first to a consistent sub-linear one.
I fear some people will quickly learn how to game the system. No wonder our current society is so complicated, every time a group came up with a simple and brilliant way to create the perfect utopia, it always failed miserably.
(also, try selling your idea to the average voter, I would love to see their faces when you mention “logarithm of total social product”)
Sure telling people that logarithms are involved will probably not help :-)
Also oversimplification probably wouldn’t work either.
One key point is that—at a suitable level of abstraction—you can actually prove invariants of the system like limits to individual income/property/power. Invariants that you might or might not want to have.
Yes. I kind of assumed that me leaving out formal definitions would prime people to think of plausible ones on their own—not that there are none or that I implied informal ones only. I gave some in the other comment.
Or are you suggesting that a) there are no formal definitions or b) that there is no useful relationship between formal and informal definitions?
There are formal definitions but even through a country like North Korea doesn’t like free markets it has Black markets in which people can earn income.
In times of high taxes in France, rich people for example started to aquire a lot more art because art doesn’t have an easily measureable and thus easily taxable value.
Today it’s possible to have assets in cryptocurrency.
The idea also isn’t to take property away from people. They don’t like it...
The idea is to a) embed a better system in the existing society and b) to use basically existing and working means a systematic way, e.g. via contracts a la the viral GPL. If the system is better it will grow and eventually absorb the rest of society not by taking things away but by outcompeting.
I’m asking to imagine such a system and what rules it works on. And don’t tell me the current system is perfect.
A form of society that is based on a social contract where the rules (like the rules of e.g. democracy) are constructed in such a way that
individuals are (monetarily) rewarded if they take more responsibility (for other people basically) in a way that a doubled responsibility leads to a unit increase in reward (with a unit reward for taking responsibility for one self).
sub groups can make individual decisions and take local responsibility (and e.g. distribute the reward according to the rules)
there is an increase in power with group size but limited in a mathematically precise way
optional: Limitation of private property to that which you can actually regularly use.
Thus there is a limit to income in a mathematically precise way (logarithm of total social product).
ADDED: Construct this in a way that it can be embedded in existing society (via existing contracts) such that it can grow from a small set of members to all.
I don’t understand why you would want this. It doesn’t take exactly X times as much effort to provide X times as much productivity, but its a way better approximation than a log scale. Is the goal to discourage commerce, and promote self sufficiency?
Another problem would be, that unless this system suddenly and magically got applied to the whole world, it would not be competitive. It can’t grow from a small set of members because the limits it imposes would hinder those who would have contributed the most to the size and power of the economy. By shrinking your economy, you will become less competitive against those who don’t adopt this new system.
If you have precise operational definitions of “responsibility”, “reward” , “power”, and “social product” that are amenable to public calculation, please share them. Getting agreement on the formulas should be a piece of cake if you can get agreement on the linear measures.
If.
The operational definitions that I used when I toyed around with this idea were:
reward is just monetarily income (or an equivalent thereof). I really should have made clear that this is imagined to be compatible with normal economics)
(amount of) responsibility is a) the number of persons you make decisions on behalf of with respect to (a subset of) the rules of the society. This responsibility can be agreed on (e.g. if you have a job where your decisions affect other people) or implicit (e.g. responsibility for yourself of your children) b) the monetary value of goods that you affect by your actions (again as agreed on or implicit), ** both can be fractional if responsibility is shared
social product is just gross national product ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_national_product )
yes, power is left vague. Choose any of (structural limit on) income or responsibility as above.
I’m not sure which So8res was using in his quest
but I assume that he also had operational definitions and also operational mechanics in mind.
Hmm. I don’t think that works (or maybe you’re just describing capitalism). If individuals have control over money, you can’t have a societal design that contradicts their spending choices.
Currently, individuals are rewarded linearly for the amount*degree that they “take responsibility” (=sell products or provide service) for someone who has money to pay. This is a direct result of the operation of monetary transactions.
Currently, sub-groups can incorporate in order to make individual-like actions.
There is an increase in power with group size, but there’s no simple definition of “power” that makes it feasible to calculate. I’m sure it is mathematically limited, though.
(optional) private property can be taken if powerful groups (governments usually) think they need it more than the owner.
Capitalism allows unlimited private property with all the consequences for concentration of capital. If you don’t want that you have to let go of something. Approaches that come to mind (and have been suggested) are
taxes on capital (which basically takes property away)
taxes on on income that approach 100% and thus limit income
limits for incorporation (anti-trust laws)
contracts that structure how income can be used (e.g. trusts are often highly structured in their spending)
Basically I’m suggesting very general contracts that effectively change the linear reward effect you mention first to a consistent sub-linear one.
I fear some people will quickly learn how to game the system. No wonder our current society is so complicated, every time a group came up with a simple and brilliant way to create the perfect utopia, it always failed miserably.
(also, try selling your idea to the average voter, I would love to see their faces when you mention “logarithm of total social product”)
Sure telling people that logarithms are involved will probably not help :-)
Also oversimplification probably wouldn’t work either.
One key point is that—at a suitable level of abstraction—you can actually prove invariants of the system like limits to individual income/property/power. Invariants that you might or might not want to have.
You can prove limits to formal income/property/power but not to informal income/property/power.
Yes. I kind of assumed that me leaving out formal definitions would prime people to think of plausible ones on their own—not that there are none or that I implied informal ones only. I gave some in the other comment.
Or are you suggesting that a) there are no formal definitions or b) that there is no useful relationship between formal and informal definitions?
There are formal definitions but even through a country like North Korea doesn’t like free markets it has Black markets in which people can earn income.
In times of high taxes in France, rich people for example started to aquire a lot more art because art doesn’t have an easily measureable and thus easily taxable value.
Today it’s possible to have assets in cryptocurrency.
The idea is not to not have markets.
The idea also isn’t to take property away from people. They don’t like it...
The idea is to a) embed a better system in the existing society and b) to use basically existing and working means a systematic way, e.g. via contracts a la the viral GPL. If the system is better it will grow and eventually absorb the rest of society not by taking things away but by outcompeting.
I’m asking to imagine such a system and what rules it works on. And don’t tell me the current system is perfect.