What are Alternatives to the Price System?

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   rakubaposted 13 years ago

   What are Alternatives to the Price System?

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      thooghunposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      A barter system? My butter for your salt?

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      smcopywriteposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      how about everything everywhere absolutely free. it can work but would anyone buy into it? in order for this to work everyone would have to buy into it. i have always had the thought that the internet should be free. you shouldnt have to pay for access to this information anywhere on the planet. you shouldnt pay for servers or providers. everything should be free and lets start with internet and access to it.

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         wildernessposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         I like it!  I presume you will be purchasing all the physical equipment needed to support the web as well as the technicians to keep it going (you will have to maintain salaries as slavery is illegal)?  And then maintaining it forever so that everyone can have free access?

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            uncorrectedvisionposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            Free of cost is a completely imaginary thing.  Everything has some kind of cost.

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               wildernessposted 13 years agoin reply to this

               That was my point.  If we ignore the technical cost of my effort to inform smcopywrite of my computer address and that I need hook up there is still a huge cost to be paid.  By her, not by me, but still a cost.

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         Peter Owenposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         If everything is free, noone would have to work. But if noone worked, nothing would be produced. So what would you be getting for free?

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      uncorrectedvisionposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      None.  The price regulated free market sets in place a means of controlling for the most immutable characteristic of all material things - scarcity.  The allocation of resources, pursuing alternatives, opportunity costs are all accounted for in a price regulated system.  In a price regulated system hording, scarcity and surplus are all less likely.  In fact, even if there were no measured means of exchange - dollars, euros, pesos - than an ersatz currency would be created - one chicken equals a dozen eggs and a half pound of butter and so on.  Even a barter system eventually becomes a psuedo-price driven economy.
      
      One need only look at prisons where cigarettes have been used as currency.  The military in war zones where rations, goods from home, chocolate and nylons have been. famously, used as currency.  It is a price regulated economy that staves off the chaos that lurks below the surface - looting after any kind of disruption, anyone?

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   knolyourselfposted 13 years ago

   They have now some kind of Internet coin for
   participants. And some say we don't need money any more as everything could be done with computers. However I can't quite imagine this.

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      wildernessposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      While we may or may not need the physical presence of paper and metal money, we will always need the concept represented even if it is simply bookkeeping by computers.

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