pol, thinking
However, a completely free market will never survive because there is an existential factor: death. If you have to work, or die, you don't have a choice - allowing corporations to consolidate power.
Having necessities such as food, water, shelter, and decent healthcare covered by the government, a truly free market could still exist, and in fact be more successful than an unregulated free market.
cc @p wonder what you think of this.
@mewmew @p I sorta agree with healthcare, because you can't really pick the best hospital when you get hit by a car and are lying unconscious.
However arguing with need is highly is immoral. You HAVE to work or die, it's the natural human state. Go to a forest and try arguing that with a tree or a rabbit.
@mewmew @p
I don't like this work or die extreme as that only works with the atomized individual. In reality you have your family, charities and the welfare state.
Yes, division of labor is a key to civilization, but why do you need to divide it equally? Not everything needs the same amount of man power. And with so many people, it's impossible to plan it centrally, so the only way to figure out how to divide that labor is through what people buy and that includes necessities like water and food.
> a top-down distribution for things that people need
List the things people need. Be specific. Define the boundaries. Ensure that this list is universal.
This is, of course, impossible. Whether you agree with the decision or not, some people will happily forego things that you consider a necessity, and some people will insist that they need something that's not on your list. "Taking care of everyone's basic needs" requires a consensus on what they are. Some people would rather eat nothing for a week to be able to afford an anime figurine or a stack of Bibles to send to a village somewhere or a guitar or a bottle of whiskey or a Christmas present for their kids.
If only, instead of central distribution of resources, we had some kind of...abstract representation of value to exchange for goods and services...and then people could make their own decisions about what they want to do with it.
So let's talk about price-gouging. People evacuating Florida to avoid the hurricane found that gas stations were charging $20, $50, $100 for a bottle of water as stock dwindled. So the president is outraged, the governor is outraged, the people are outraged. Naked profiteering! The prices are fixed next time. Now, where there would have been a $100 bottle of water, only purchased by people that were damn sure they really needed that bottle of water (and couldn't fill up a few jugs on the way out of their house, for some reason), there was nothing but bare shelves. Nobody's going to buy a case of water in every truck stop they go through if that truck stop is charging $100 per bottle.
> Yes, division of labor is a key to civilization, but why do you need to divide it equally? Not everything needs the same amount of man power.
Yeah, and two things make it even worse: some types of work are unique, and there is no centralized value system. If you want to divide the creation of art equally between everyone, you'll find out in a hurry that not everyone writes The Godfather, some people write The Room. We'll also not all agree on what is necessary work and what is recreational.
