ORB Visualization
(soon)
Notes on Brad Cox’s economic theory
And the concept of
a Rural Safe Net
3/3/2004 7:47 AM
It is hard for us to know what to do with this conversation. But it is an important one to a future National Project. We ask for individual support expressed through membership in the BCNGroup.
Brad,
Bill Smith and I have been talking about a related issue and perhaps he will give his perspective on what you have to say and what I have to say. Mike McDonald has taken on responsibilities for advising several projects at the federal level as to how to create resilient communication systems that are operational particularly when there is an unexpected social crisis, such as occurs when a natural disaster occurs. Michael Lissack and I have been talking specifically about a situation we observe to be occurring that hides the decisional making process over Federal funding decisions, those decisions leading to costly procurements of intelligence vetting software with no learning occurring from past mistakes. (I am saying this as briefly as possible and appeal to the reader to have or acquire a background on these issues and to forgive me if, the reader believes that, I have said something improper or not perfectly clear.)
I have thought, for a day, about how to reply to your previous notes [*] .
From my mediations on this, I have come to feel that it is important to talk about how in some cases two things can happen at the same time.
I will explain what I mean as an experiment to see if you and I can come to some new understanding. We are very much in debt to the notions of object oriented programming and information-based intellectual property. We want your support and understanding.
I have come to believe that you are deeply committed to a Newtonian-type theory of economics. I characterize my awareness of your thoughts in this way. I know that there are subtleties in your thought that for you take care of standard intellectual objections to a pure Newtonian model of economics. But I do not personally see how the problem of hidden control and monopolies is functionally addressed in your mind. I do not see how your notion of super distribution would reduce the pollution that we all experience as advertising and marketing of additive products such as porn and alcohol.
I am not saying anything about the undesirability of porn and alcohol, only about the undesirability of a type of advertising race to the bottom driven by forces that NO ONE has any control over. I make no judgment about the products being sold, but only about the means used to sell them. This is a careful distinction that is important to me and to others who believe in freedom of action (but within some notion of mental and social health). [*]
A real system that corresponds exactly to Newtonian theory would cause a reconciliation of the price of pork bellies in such a fashion as to super distribute the cost of the feed taken in the production of a pig.
Some economists believe that a Newtonian system would develop IF all economic transactions occurred in a pure market with perfect knowledge. As you point out, Hayek addresses the distributed consequence to a market with pure knowledge and brings the notion of knowledge (of the value of things) into his theoretical consideration.
This belief is an ideal, and if the ideal were achieved we may find that the ideal has left out the property of emergence – but this is a side issue.
What arises, to question the completeness of this model, is a version of the problem of other minds. (I respectfully suggest.) To address the question of completeness we need to address the issue of consistency. We know that a trade off exists between completeness of description and consistency from theoretical consideration related to the foundational of formal system theory.
Thus, if this argument is allowed, I can return to the issue of having two systems co-existing but with two (independent) internal system dynamics and a common environment. In this “complex case” we have complexity and no ability to have perfect knowledge of value (either present or future value) because of the emergence of things from the internal system dynamics (an expression of free will – for example) .
A system model for the proposed Safe Net is given in a side note [*].
The two systems might be a
1) Closed environment with almost perfect knowledge (transparency) for communication between members of a community who have chosen the communication environment BECAUSE it is advertising free and free of market manipulation forces. Embedded micro transaction instrumentation within the software components constructs a real time surface level flow of communication within the Safe Net. The information provides a global view of the event space, much like the national weather service. It does not look inside the houses.
2) The natural system such as our complete society with many ways to express and with great freedom to market or otherwise conduct commerce.
With the Safe net, a knowledge sharing ecology that co-exists in a complex fashion separate from the natural economic system and yet depending on the economic system as a tool that provides opportunities such as the free sharing of knowledge between individuals and communities without the pollution and confusion and even harm from hidden marketing efforts.
For me, this is what Tim Berners Lee is envisioning in the concept of a two sided semantic web. The one side is a computer - to - computer process where the Safe Net would be one of many type of environments to choose from. On the other side is a human - to - human process where society is whatever society is.