Subject:
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Re: Preaching to the Choir
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 11 Aug 2004 17:24:23 GMT
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Viewed:
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1672 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Frank Filz wrote:
> Hmm, how do you enforce this? What happens when my decrepit neighbor is so
> desperate to find a hole digger that he offers me his Lexus AND a 1 man-hour
> "dollar bill" to dig holes in his back yard?
I guess your main point is that _some_ services will have greater demand than
supply and the free market provides a method of allocation. Off hand (though
I'll continue to think about this) I would leave it to the individual suppliers
to determine which contracts they take. When a person attempts to subvert the
system through graft (which is what offering more for a scarce service would be)
I guess something would have to be done. My first inclination is to treat them
psychiatrically to help them overcome the misanthropy that caused their greed to
get the best of them (and yes, I realize the service in question could be
life-saving surgery, and somehow that doesn't seem so bad as just wanting
frivolous goodies, but I don't think (right now) that it changes anything).
> Will the labor police come and
> take the 1000 man hour Lexus away from me?
I guess it would really depend on the situation.
> This of course brings up the
> issue of how do you price manufactured goods? How do you factor in the man
> hour cost of the machinery? The raw goods are obvious. How do you figure in
> transportation costs?
I really don't see any of this as particularly problematic. I think, for
instance, that Ford knows exactly how much the mean cost of manufacture of a
Bronco is and the more or less exact cost of delivering it to various points.
Manufacturing machinery costs a certain amount (in man hours) to build, right?
And a certain amount per year to service, right? And you can divide the former
over the units of production across the working life of the equipment and add
the latter and come up with a number. And in the worst case, open books and an
audit of the company over a time period would determine if the company is
operating in good faith.
> I think I'll assert that you would eventually find an economy just like
> today's. In other words, I think we started from a 1 man hour economy. Then
> we started bartering goods. Then someone came up with the clever idea of
> using some kind of token to represent "a favor owed" and money was soon
> born. Once you have these tokens, their value quickly will get divorced from
> real resources (natural resources and labor).
Natural resources are merely a physical manifestation of labor if you assume
land to be public, so let's just keep it simple.
> As soon as people have a way
> to value different goods differently, they will also value different
> services differently.
Not if they're helped to understand the benefits of not doing so and if needed
punished when they do.
> What happens when two people need holes dug in their yards. One guy needs a
> lot done, and he doesn't want his trees damaged. Another guy just wants some
> stuff dug up randomly. The first guy probably wants a more careful,
> efficient, methodical person and probably is willing to pay more "per hour."
I don't think so. He will merely require more hours of labor because he wants
to hire a slower, more careful excavator.
> The second guy may not care if the digger spends half his time redigging a
> hole because he tossed dirt from the second into the first, plus he takes a
> 2 minute break every 10 minutes to puff up (ok, you could require him to
> work a total of 75 minutes to get one man hour of pay - or maybe even 150
> minutes because of his inefficiency - but once you do that, you're changing
> his hourly wage).
Do you accept that there is some sufficiently small unit of time that could be
used (minutes, second, nanoseconds, whatever) that discreppencies in work time
could be measured accurately? Let's say we use manminutes instead of manhours
and we don't cound time off on smoke breaks. Satisfied? You can't change their
per unit time wage.
There is, as is the case in our modern economy, a certain amount of accepting
that people will be doing their best. My manager does not keep constant track
of my minute by minute doings. Actually, my progress is tracked, I think, on a
roughly week by week level of granularity. I write fairly small web apps. If I
turn out a new product in a week or a somewhat more complicated tool in a month,
I don't get any greif. (But I'm on the clock right now, while typing to y'all.)
If you want to find faults with the socialist alternative, find faults that
don't exist in the current system.
Chris
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Preaching to the Choir
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| "Christopher Weeks" <clweeks@eclipse.net> wrote in message news:I2ALon.22wt@lugnet.com... (...) needs a (...) some (...) hour." (...) wants (...) True, that's a lot of it, but not all. He wants to hire the most efficient excavator, because he knows (...) (20 years ago, 11-Aug-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Preaching to the Choir
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| "Christopher Weeks" <clweeks@eclipse.net> wrote in message news:I2AH9I.13p2@lugnet.com... (...) not (...) of (...) Tercells (...) Lexus (...) almost (...) never (...) or (...) enough for (...) should (...) to pay (...) a (...) hour (...) Hmm, how (...) (20 years ago, 11-Aug-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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