[andrenth]

Monitoring stock levels is hardly all you need to manage an economy.

You need to consider innovation, the creation of the very same information agents in an economy use to decide the actions they take. This is the entrepreneurial function. If production is ruled by coercion of a central planner, you eliminate that, and then what incentive is there for anyone to produce?

In this scenario, at the very best you get crony capitalism; at the worst, you get communism.

[ZenoArrow]

> "Monitoring stock levels is hardly all you need to manage an economy."

I didn't say it was, what I did say is that you lose no 'sales' information from removing money from the process of transferring goods from the manufacturer to the consumer. In other words, removing money doesn't make managing an economy harder.

> "You need to consider innovation, the creation of the very same information agents in an economy use to decide the actions they take. This is the entrepreneurial function. If production is ruled by coercion of a central planner, you eliminate that, and then what incentive is there for anyone to produce?"

Innovation can happen faster without the overhead of competition. What you want to encourage instead is collaboration. Innovation does not have to be a top down affair if you remove money from the economy.

Whilst it's not a perfect example, consider the development methodology of open source. Whilst there are problems with the open source approach, I'd argue that shortage of innovation is not one of those problems.

[andrenth]

> I didn't say it was

You said "One item taken = one sale, so you have the same level of information to manage the economy with." so I think you did.

> what I did say is that you lose no 'sales' information from removing money from the process of transferring goods from the manufacturer to the consumer

Money is a tool, and a useful one. It provides portability, divisibility and allows indirect exchange. How do you propose that manufacturer to be payed? Do you see a return to a barter economy? Or do does the manufacturer only gets whatever goods the central planner allocates to him?

> Innovation can happen faster without the overhead of competition.

Can you give an example of that? I'd be more inclined to say that competition is one of the major drivers of innovation. You have to provide more at a lower cost, or you lose your customers.

> Whilst it's not a perfect example, consider the development methodology of open source.

There is a lot of competition (and money!) in open source.

[ZenoArrow]

>"You said "One item taken = one sale, so you have the same level of information to manage the economy with." so I think you did."

If you think I said that, let me clarify then.

You said... "Monitoring stock levels is hardly all you need to manage an economy." ... I never claimed it was enough to run an economy, because it takes more than monitoring sales to manage an economy.

However, monitoring stock is enough to track sales, that's my point, tracking sales can be handled without money and without losing the benefits of money in tracking sales. By tracking stock you have all the sales information you need. However sales information is not enough on its own to manage an economy. Hope my point is clearer now.

>"How do you propose that manufacturer to be payed?"

Why would the manufacturer need to be paid when everything is free? I'm proposing a system without money, without a need for trade. There are many options, my personal favourites are variations on the resource-based economy ideas.

>"There is a lot of competition (and money!) in open source."

Competition yes, but largely uninhibited collaboration also.

As for money in open source, open source (or rather the free software movement) existed before the money started rolling in. Furthermore, the main benefit that the money brought was that people could work on open source full-time and enjoy a decent standard of living. If you take away the need to earn money to survive the level of activity around open source is unlikely to be diminished.

[andrenth]

Well but you did! You quoted it yourself: "to manage the economy with", but then you started talking about sales, which you didn't mention when you first replied to me. Anyway, that's besidbeside the point now.

> Why would the manufacturer need to be paid when everything is free?

He would have to be payed somehow, otherwise why would he produce anything? If everything is free, what determines how much of each product someone can have?

In the system that you propose, the economic calculus is not possible. How do you determine if allocation of resources is efficient? How do you determine if a new production model can generate more at a smaller cost? How does one save in order to improve his conditions in the future?

Does the central planner decide all this? Even if it were possible, it would reduce people to cattle.

Wrt open source, there was always money involved, even if it was just university grants. And as you said, it allowed people to enjoy good living standards.

[ZenoArrow]

>"Well but you did! You quoted it yourself: "to manage the economy with""

Consider the context, I was replying to a comment about how to know how much to produce. The implication is that money is essential for this purpose. If all you're interested in is how much is being produced and consumed, then monitoring stock levels is enough to manage an economy. It's also useful to know when innovation may be welcome in the market, however you can get that information more directly by just getting feedback from people, no money has to change hands. You also need to manage your resources, but again you just do that directly by monitoring resources, no money has to change hands. It's important to note that resource management includes consumption of goods, you want to monitor what someone is consuming, in part to guard against over-consumption.

In short, money can be removed without losing any information needed to run a successful economy.

>"Does the central planner decide all this? Even if it were possible, it would reduce people to cattle."

I've already mentioned collaboration once, why do you believe I'm describing a system with a central planner?

In a resource-based economy the only part you need centralised information on is in monitoring available resources, decision making can be handled a variety of different ways, including democratically by the citizens.

[andrenth]

> I was replying to a comment about how to know how much to produce.

Not really. My post, which you replied to, made no mention of "knowing how much to produce". It's not as simple as that. The problem is knowing what to produce, at which quantities, when to invest in capital goods, when to invest in research, when to save money for the future. And this has to be expanded to every agent in an economy. How will a consumer know how to allocate his resources if the economic is not possible?

What you're describing is a nightmare world. Guard against over-consumption? Who decides what is considered over-consumption and what is "normal" consumption? How many smartphones can a family have? How many trips a year is "over-consumption"? Pray not to have a diarrhea or you might over-consume toilet paper! What if I want to eat caviar every day? Do I get it for free? Have you even considered scarcity?

By the way, who produces those smartphones in such a moneyless economy? On what incentive? Who builds the airplanes?

So the central planner will "just" monitor available resources and then what? Order that more must produced? Whose second/third/etc order goods will be used to produce consumer goods? Do you expect people to invest and innovate in exchange for a rice quota?

It's very easy to just claim "collaboration" and not have to care about how it actually works in practice.