Dukasaur wrote:You're addressing an issue about the relative prices as exemplified by the various values of using humans, and this approach becomes incorrect when framed in absolutes (e.g. 'excess wealth', or implied as 'either All of this, or All of that').
I frame nothing as absolutes. I'm a scientist at heart, so I never expect to find that anything is more than 95% of this, or 5% of that. Still, some of the 5% things might as well be zero. When's the last time you worried about the rising cost of toothpicks, or HB pencils, or vinegar?
I disagree because as will soon be shown, you are framing some things as absolutes. If you dropped the luxury v. necessity distinction, and the genuinely poor concept, then I'd agree.
It could be the case that we're both in agreement, but I hesitate at this because of how you frame such distinctions in obviously absolute terms--while simultaneously discarding them (e.g. the emperor-wino story).
(Also, re: the Matrix, it's not so much about the efficiency argument which is interesting, but rather it's about the persuasion of fiction--in comparing the ultimate end of humans as something so mundane as a battery. That allegory is remarkably effective. That's what I appreciate about it).
Dukasaur wrote:BigBallinStalin wrote:I'm not a fan of post-scarcity economic scenarios because its largely a waste of time, and its fans don't understand the implications of 'post-scarcity'. Decisions are always constrained by time (thus an opportunity cost arises) unless you can attain goals simultaneously and instantaneously, which is impossible--except through creative fiction, which can be entertaining but not at all useful analytically. Resources would also face constrains, thus are scarce, because the quantity of resources and the competing ends of resources are finite due to the constraint of time and the various costs of the means employed.
In a post-scarce world there would be no need for economics because there would be no need to economize. You could instantaneously satisfy all desires without giving up anything; there would be no opportunity cost. Postulating in this manner is nonsensical, which is why I don't find it useful.
That's a misrepresentation of what post-scarcity economics is all about. Nobody is thinking that constraints will disappear or that the costs of anything can ever be reduced to zero, or that wants could be satisfied instantanously. It simply means that costs are so small relative to income that they do not need to overshadow anyone's thoughts.
You buy a coffee on the way to work without worrying about whether it's $1.60 or $1.80, because the amount involved is just too trivial for you to give up valuable real estate in your brain worrying about it. The coffee isn't free, and it never will be, but the amount is just so small that you aren't going to cross the street looking for a better deal.
Two hundred years ago, a coffee was a luxury good, something expensive enough to require major sacrifice. Today it is a fart in the wind. As productivity continues to increase, and needs do not, it is fairly certain that other goods will eventually move into the realm that coffee is in now.
Then obviously, they don't understand the full implications of 'post-scarcity'. It's a faulty model based upon erroneous ideas of scarcity. Your scenario and even your recent story about coffee are simply stories conducive to economic analysis, thus no fancy flights of post-scarcity are even needed.
Your story about coffee is an example of decision-making on the margin, a.k.a. marginalism. Couple that with subjective valuation and relative prices, and you get a huge chunk of economics (not 'post-scarcity' economics). For example, I'm sure you'd agree with me that if one's budget was reduced by 90% then buying Starbucks coffee becomes much more relatively costly--compared to one's previous budget. The same analysis applies vice-versa; this is elementary economics. Therefore, post-scarcity flights of fancy are analytically useless and, if correctly described by you, are completely mislabeled.
Dukasaur wrote:Nevertheless, your scenario is analytically useful and entertaining, but it still faces the fact that time and resources are scarce since there remain benefits and costs of maintaining and producing the machines and of domesticating humans (due to the time and resources required for doing so). 'Excess wealth' is a vacuous concept. The totality of one's attained goods* is one's wealth--the optimal amount and mix of which varies per individual. I don't see how cats can be viewed as an outcome of 'excess' wealth because people of a vast range of incomes have cats, thus they are 'excessively' wealthy (reductio ad absurdum).
If people were
genuinely poor, they would eat their cats. The fact that in our society even the poorest people can afford cats is just an illustration of the fact that our society is productive enough that even the poorest can afford luxury goods. The wino on Yonge St. can go into an emergency shelter and get better nutrition and better medical care than what was available to a medieval emperor.
I agree with the comparison between modern winos and past emperors. It's good reasoning to frame modern poverty with the relative wealth of the past elite; it clearly shows the implications of what we have and whittles many of the allegedly dire implications of inequality in wealth of modernity (in the US).
Still, my point stands about the intellectual bankruptcy of concepts like 'excess wealth', and this is why thinking in absolutes is problematic. People then revert to words like 'genuinely' poor, or 'real' poverty. They then require this false distinction between 'luxury' and 'necessary' goods, which again isn't useful because 'necessary' goods are substituted on the margin, thus some can become less necessary than others--which contradicts the idea of
necessary goods. These would be goods that are always required--yet somehow are substituted away
in marginal amounts for other 'necessary' goods. It's all about relative prices, and that's what I'm saying here.
To a degree, you agree with me, yet in other aspects, your words don't reveal that agreement because your approach is clearly leaning upon absolutes.
Here's another example:
Dukasaur wrote:Maybe you mean that the value of cats is less compared to the value of a sufficient stream of food consumption to keep oneself from starving to death.
I mean that cats are a luxury good, and one couldn't afford to keep them if one couldn't afford to first keep oneself. (Okay, we all know about the crazy bag ladies that are exceptions to that rule, but oddball statistical outliers don't mean anything.)
Cats are a 'luxury' good for nearly all people of the US--relative to the prices of goods faced by people in Chad, but within the context of the US, cats for nearly everyone are not luxury goods. This is why this dependence on absolutes (luxury v. necessity) becomes misleading because it doesn't hold when applied consistently. Instead, either cats are viewed as worth the price, or they are not worth the price--it depends on one's opportunity cost of buying cat (what alternative opportunity is forsaken when buying and maintaining a cat?). For example, you may even find poor people in Chad who view having a cat as a 'necessity' since the benefits offset the costs (e.g. rodent control). But "no way! cats are luxury goods!" one may exclaim. Again, this is why the luxury v. necessity distinction and any other absolutist reasoning is misleading and erroneous.
Another example with "genuinely poor." People would eat their cats if they were genuinely poor, but 'genuinely poor' is as a vacuous concept as 'excess wealth'. It doesn't explain anything, but it can definitely be applied arbitrarily (thus becomes misleading). For example, there are 'genuinely' poor people in Chad who according to the logic must eat their cats, yet some amount of families own their cats. Why? "Well, those cat-owners are not genuinely poor" (no True Scotsman fallacy). It's not because of 'genuine' poverty and what not; it depends on the alternative uses of cats (food or rodent control and/or warm and fuzzy feelings of love)--given some budget constraint; therefore, even poorer families in Chad can afford cats as a 'luxury' good, which contradicts the 'genuinely poor' requirements and yada yada. Note the difference between speaking in the language of false, absolute distinctions and speaking in the language of economics--with its relative prices, alternative competing ends, and so on.
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