(A french friend read my post, and it’s appear that i did a lot of error, and some sentence are maybe completely incomprehensible, sorry for that, i will take time to do something better when i will have the time.)

I think we should change our political (and then economical) system profoundly, because they are inefficient in a utilitarian point of view for many reasons, here i will try to focus briefly about economy:
before beginning i would say that i advocate bottom-up establishment of entirely new system, both for avoid violence, and test the systems in small scale before progressively augment the scale and upgrade.

I think we should abandon private property, because this lead to free market, or coercion, coercion is difficult to justifies on a deontological point of view (and then, are mostly instable and conflicts generator) and are mostly makeshifts that does not address the causes.
The mains problems of this that i see are:
- Necessity to sell (that lead to discard product, pub, programed obsolesce, limited sharing of knowledge …).
- All the social problems about inequality, and dangerous power of big company and their lobbying.
- Necessity to protect our personal property, and then a big curb on pooling.(we have empty houses and homeless).
- A big maintained desire to obtain private property, and a more strong desire for money, that lead to corruptions and crimes.

The base for private property, are much weaker that the base for liberalism when private property are accepted.
By example libertarians should not accept private property, because it’s a big coercion (this constrain all mens to not use all the things that are become the property of others, even if by example he have no way to eat otherwise and he is starving, and we can even have intellectual property !). But private property accepted, libertarians and liberals are very near.

If we don’t have private property, we will nevertheless need rules for know who can consume/use what, and when.
Then we have coercion again, but less strong, and better we have a much more flexible framework than with the private property principle.

My proposition here, is that each people save its personals preferences, for all meaningful use/consumption he would have, and its preferences for all meaningful works he accept to do and could.
Then we calculate how the repartition of works and right to use, maximize a certain utility function.

By doing so:
- We don’t have necessity to sell
- We have much less inequality and concentrated power
- We don’t have unallocated resource that nobody use (because proprietary don’t use it, but want to keep it for latter)
Symmetrically we don’t have unallocated labor force (unemployment).
- There is no money, then we have a very strong damageable desire in less.

I know there are surely also many downsides, but i think it’s worth to sharing the idea, in fact we are a small community trying to build a system like this. (but for the moment all our work is in french).

I will stop here and read what you think of this, now that the mains ideas are explained.

In order to get people to honestly tell you what they're capable of, you'd need to give them an incentive. Most people don't want to work. If you give them more stuff based on how much they produce, then you're basically back to capitalism.

This is one of the many difficulties, first our utility function is lexical utilitarism, even if we aren’t lexical utilitarism (in fact i am, but only me), this work well for these case.
Then if someone don’t work, they don’t get negative point, and because other get it, they will get little consumption.
Also for not being able to work at all (even doing the more simple things), you have to be physically or mentally ill, and if you do a work, there are great chance that you want to do a job that you like.

Also capitalism is not about giving more at people who are more productive, (above all if you count productivity like the maximization of a "greater good"):
- If you inherit and are rich, you can not work at all, and get many of the resources.
- If you work hard and are very productive, but work for someone, you can have a low salary, else you can have a low salary because you don’t know how to sell your works.
-You can create inutile frustrations for selling things, be productive at the harm of collective resources, or scam for earn money, ie, you could get money by being harmful of the greater good in the rule of capitalism, the bad thing is that people with less concern for greater good, will have less constraints in the competition for selling things.

Also even with that, in the system that i propose, you don’t have things that you want to sell (for being able to buy), you don’t have money that some people strongly want to get, and you don’t have a right of use things for a infinite duration, then there are many differences with capitalism.

I think we should abandon private property

Also for not being able to work at all (even doing the more simple things), you have to be physically or mentally ill

So forced labor replaces economic incentives. Horrible.

and if you do a work, there are great chance that you want to do a job that you like

But jobs aren't about doing what you like, they are about providing to other people what they want.

Then we have coercion again, but less strong, and better we have a much more flexible framework than with the private property principle.

To the contrary, you have stronger coercion, and whatever overconfident planner comes up with the rules for your framework is guaranteed to misallocate resources. They don't understand what people want or need, they don't understand how best to provide it, and they have no incentive to get it right.

Are you planning on keeping people from leaving? If not, other economies will reward more productive people more, so productive people will tend to leave.

Hedonic Treader wrote:

I think we should abandon private property

Also for not being able to work at all (even doing the more simple things), you have to be physically or mentally ill

So forced labor replaces economic incentives. Horrible.

Don’t worry, this is not the case ^^.
I just tell that for "not being able to work at all, you have to be physically or mentally ill" what is true, not that "we will force people to work if they are not physically or mentally ill". (i was unclear sorry, i wanted to point out that lie on competences was unfounded, or you will have to lie on your health)
If people don’t work, as I said, they will only get less right of consumption, because of the utility function.

Hedonic Treader wrote:

and if you do a work, there are great chance that you want to do a job that you like

But jobs aren't about doing what you like, they are about providing to other people what they want.

Yes, but by doing what you "like"(what you more like and are useful), you provide people what they want.
The inconvenient of working have to be compensate by the well-being that the production will bring, if not, the utility function will not "request" you to do that work.

Hedonic Treader wrote:

Then we have coercion again, but less strong, and better we have a much more flexible framework than with the private property principle.

To the contrary, you have stronger coercion, and whatever overconfident planner comes up with the rules for your framework is guaranteed to misallocate resources. They don't understand what people want or need, they don't understand how best to provide it, and they have no incentive to get it right.

I think you thought this system lead to stronger coercion, because you believed that we will force people to work by the use of violence, but that not the case.
We have less coercion because with private property you have coercion for preventing someone to use something even if nobody else use it (but somebody are proprietary), here we only need coercion when many people want the same thing at the same time, i think it’s the only case where we need coercive rules.

We don’t have planer that try to understand what people want or need, and try to provide it, we have people telling what they want and need, and a calculus which tells us what it’s the best repartition of right to use and work.

DanielLC wrote:Are you planning on keeping people from leaving? If not, other economies will reward more productive people more, so productive people will tend to leave.

No, we are not building a authoritarian regime.
I think people will don’t leave because of all the social and economical shared advantage of this system.

We have less coercion because with private property you have coercion for preventing someone to use something even if nobody else use it

Right, of course the inforcement of property rights is a form of coercion. But the institution of property rights themselves are a coordination principle that track preferences and provide incentives to be productive.

You can't replace that with central planning, even if you call it different names, such as "calculus" or "utility function". It's still central planning. Someone has to do the calculating, and someone has to define the utility function, and so on.

With property rights and consent-based markets, you get the matching between preferences and incentives to meet those preferences. It's a bottom-up process rather than a top-down process.

I think people will don’t leave because of all the social and economical shared advantage of this system.

People don't follow the shared advantage of society, they follow their individual incentives. Most people care far more about themselves and their families and close friends than about any other person in society. Otherwise you'd see far more donations, and socialistic systems of the past would have worked far better.

If you could literally change human nature (genetically engineer the perfect altruist), and build a society of only those could work. But human nature is given, and any real system has to recognize that.

Sophia Lamb wrote:Utopia cannot precede the Utopian.

You can't replace that with central planning, even if you call it different names, such as "calculus" or "utility function". It's still central planning. Someone has to do the calculating, and someone has to define the utility function, and so on.

Someone has to define the utility function, but people can go in the system with the utility function that they like, or the utility function can be decided democratically.
That someone has to do the calculating is really not a problem, because all people can do the calculating, we are even in a better case than for election (where someone have to count the vote, but all can count), because :
the cost of reproduction of the calculus is very less that the cost of reproduction of the vote, we don’t need central trusted organization for do the calculating.

It seem to me that you use a very large definition of what is "central planning", i can also tell that:
Private property is central planning, someone has to define what is private property, how we become owner of the owner-less things, we need central organization for record who own what (when litigation appear between two peoples), and so on.

Central planning with such a large definition don’t have the same problems that central planning in the narrow definition.

With property rights and consent-based markets, you get the matching between preferences and incentives to meet those preferences. It's a bottom-up process rather than a top-down process.

I think i don’t understand, it seem to me that we always have incentives to meet our preferences.

People don't follow the shared advantage of society, they follow their individual incentives. Most people care far more about themselves and their families and close friends than about any other person in society. Otherwise you'd see far more donations, and socialistic systems of the past would have worked far better.

If you could literally change human nature (genetically engineer the perfect altruist), and build a society of only those could work. But human nature is given, and any real system has to recognize that.

I agree, but apart for those which would be rich in the actual system, i think that living in a system like this is better even in a personal point of view.
Quantity of consumption that you can have is not the only thing that count, frustrations, stress, probability of being attacked, mood of his fellow, group cohesiveness, count also, and can be better in the type of system i propose.

Sophia Lamb wrote:Utopia cannot precede the Utopian.

Given my english level, i can’t understand speaking english.

I think i don’t understand, it seem to me that we always have incentives to meet our preferences.

Our preferences include not working, and doing things that require other people to work. If we can choose between working and not working, all else being equal, we won't work. If we can choose between using stuff and not using stuff, all else being equal, we'll use stuff.

You might be able to force people to work, but there's no way to tell if they're working as hard as they can. If you properly incentivize it, you don't need to. They'll make sure they're working as hard as they can. Or, if they prefer, they'll slack off a little and make up for it by not using as much stuff.

Utopia cannot precede the Utopian.

That means that you can't create a perfect government without perfect citizens.

The free market is a good way to distribute resources, but what's really nice about it is that it's a resilient way to distribute resources. It doesn't fail due to corruption. In fact, it relies on corruption. It doesn't fail due to incompetence. It automatically removes incompetent people from power. It doesn't even fail due to complete government collapse, since it's a natural system that doesn't require government involvement.

It does fail due to public goods (things that help everyone, instead of just the one who pays for it, such as roads), and, to a lesser extent, monopolistic goods (things that only have to be payed for once before any number of people are allowed to use it, such as software and music). Even then, it's generally better to just mess with the market than to try to use central planning. For example, if oil use is causing the greenhouse effect, rather than only letting the government produce oil, you can just tax oil and let the market deal with it.

DanielLC wrote:Our preferences include not working, and doing things that require other people to work. If we can choose between working and not working, all else being equal, we won't work. If we can choose between using stuff and not using stuff, all else being equal, we'll use stuff.

I agree it’s generally the case.

DanielLC wrote:You might be able to force people to work, but there's no way to tell if they're working as hard as they can. If you properly incentivize it, you don't need to. They'll make sure they're working as hard as they can. Or, if they prefer, they'll slack off a little and make up for it by not using as much stuff.

The economical system we propose deal well with this point, we don’t force people to work, but we provide good incentives.
Thanks, i now understand what he said, but capitalism is not the only one system that get the matching between preferences, and incentives to meet this preferences, in fact, in some (many ?) case it don’t.

DanielLC wrote:That means that you can't create a perfect government without perfect citizens.

Ok, i agree, but there are certainly better governments that others.

DanielLC wrote:The free market is a good way to distribute resources, but what's really nice about it is that it's a resilient way to distribute resources. It doesn't fail due to corruption. In fact, it relies on corruption. It doesn't fail due to incompetence. It automatically removes incompetent people from power. It doesn't even fail due to complete government collapse, since it's a natural system that doesn't require government involvement.

I don’t agree in many points here, free market fail to appropriately distribute resources (and seriously fail to this, some resources are not distributed at all, some have billion, and others fight to eat).
It fail to corruption, corruption is about break the system rules, like the political and the economical rules, you can’t relies on something that destroy your bases. Nothing can relies on corruption.
I agree that it’s can remove incompetent people from power, but it don’t remove egoist or sadistic people from power.
"It doesn't even fail due to complete government collapse, since it's a natural system that doesn't require government involvement."
I don’t know what "natural system" means, but i agree with the rest, a preference based economy has the same advantages.

DanielLC wrote:It does fail due to public goods (things that help everyone, instead of just the one who pays for it, such as roads), and, to a lesser extent, monopolistic goods (things that only have to be payed for once before any number of people are allowed to use it, such as software and music). Even then, it's generally better to just mess with the market than to try to use central planning. For example, if oil use is causing the greenhouse effect, rather than only letting the government produce oil, you can just tax oil and let the market deal with it.

This system is seriously sensitive to many factors, not only public goods and monopolistic goods.

I think we should not fail in status quo bias. Capitalism is a system that had emerged from a particular situation, it is evidently not the best system, mostly if we want well-being and not only survival.
Finding better system is a very good way to improve things, if we have security for don’t let worse systems be created.

The economical system we propose deal well with this point, we don’t force people to work, but we provide good incentives.

What are the incentives? I didn't notice anything about it. You seemed to want to eliminate inequality. Incentives will be eliminated with it.

It fail to corruption, corruption is about break the system rules, like the political and the economical rules, you can’t relies on something that destroy your bases.

There are a few basic rules that need to be upheld, but the government generally does a good job of making sure you're better off upholding those rules. As long as you stay within the rules, the only way to help yourself is to help others.

I agree that it’s can remove incompetent people from power, but it don’t remove egoist or sadistic people from power.

It relies on egoists. Sadistic people will manage to make it bad for other people, but very few people are willing to pay a price to hurt others.

I don’t know what "natural system" means

I mean that it will arise on its own if you don't try to do anything to the system. A preference based economy requires strong government oversight, and will break down without a strong and nice government. Capitalism requires little government oversight, and it will continue without the government. It will be easier to break the rules, and it won't function as well, but it will not stop working.

it is evidently not the best system

What evidence is there of a better system? Is there a country that doesn't use capitalism, and succeeds because of it?

some resources are not distributed at all, some have billion, and others fight to eat

In this case, it's better to use some kind of welfare. Unfortunately, countries are against giving welfare to people who live in other countries, so the better-off countries do next to nothing to stop this. There is nobody in America, for example, who has to fight to eat.

Is your plan to have a government that significantly supports people who are in other governments?

DanielLC wrote:What are the incentives? I didn't notice anything about it. You seemed to want to eliminate inequality. Incentives will be eliminated with it.

The incentive is: how many you work for the society, how many you will get from the society.
About the same incentive that capitalists proclaims capitalism have, but with which i do not entirely agree.
The two main reason i don’t agree is that:
- There are common properties (like atmosphere, global ecosystem, etc), that lead to the "Tragedy of the commons".
- You have strong incentive to sell, not directly to satisfy your customer: There are other factors that comes into account for selling things: how many strong will be the frustration you succeed to create inside your potential customer, or how will not last the type of product you sell.

DanielLC wrote:There are a few basic rules that need to be upheld, but the government generally does a good job of making sure you're better off upholding those rules. As long as you stay within the rules, the only way to help yourself is to help others.

Some men in government generally does a good job until they have a strong incentive to let you break the rules, this is what corruption is about.
The power giving by private property and money undermine its own rules.

DanielLC wrote:It relies on egoists. Sadistic people will manage to make it bad for other people, but very few people are willing to pay a price to hurt others.

You can relies on egoism only if you are certain that in your system, people can’t get more by doing bad things, and that egoists will not get the power to break the rules of the system.
Also i think you are optimist about sadism.

DanielLC wrote:I mean that it will arise on its own if you don't try to do anything to the system. A preference based economy requires strong government oversight, and will break down without a strong and nice government. Capitalism requires little government oversight, and it will continue without the government. It will be easier to break the rules, and it won't function as well, but it will not stop working.

I agree that capitalism arise on its own, but you don’t need a government in a preference based economy, you only need people agreeing to the basics rules (like in capitalism), then they can do, and verify, the calculations themselves.
You don’t need government to plan your work or tell you how to do this work, you tell the society what you are able to produce, what you like to do, and what you like to get, then you get things to do after the calculus, more you do this work, more you get the things you wanted.
No government involved to be able to take original decisions, only shared commons rules.

DanielLC wrote:What evidence is there of a better system? Is there a country that doesn't use capitalism, and succeeds because of it?

I don’t have evidences, i think this, because its seem improbable to me that we get the best possible system in a first try (especially in such a complex context), and i see many bad consequences of capitalism.
Then yes, my "evidently" was too much.

DanielLC wrote:

some resources are not distributed at all, some have billion, and others fight to eat

In this case, it's better to use some kind of welfare. Unfortunately, countries are against giving welfare to people who live in other countries, so the better-off countries do next to nothing to stop this. There is nobody in America, for example, who has to fight to eat.

Is your plan to have a government that significantly supports people who are in other governments?

I want this, but this is not really the goal here, i think governments can help other governments in whatever economical system that don’t entirely collapses.

The goal is more that if this system work, people from other country can see it, and adopt this system, then upgrade their own economy.

Another point, is that in capitalism, machines becoming able to do more things is see as a bad things by many, because this destroy jobs.
We need a system where destroying "jobs" is seen like a really good thing.

I think we should abandon private property

I think we should abandon private property

Every time someone says this, a kitten dies potential investor marginally reduces his or her probability of investment.

I am for a system in which there is a free market but with a strong emphasis on labor rights and employees own and manage their businesses, or at least have a large say in them. This way, people are still free to start their own businesses, work where they want to work, and there is still some profit incentive, but people have the power to improve their own working conditions with going on strike or collectively bargaining, and there could be a greater sense of community in businesses.

I know this probably works better on a small scale, but there are cases where this has worked in larger companies.

Existent wrote:I am for a system in which there is a free market but with a strong emphasis on labor rights and employees own and manage their businesses, or at least have a large say in them. This way, people are still free to start their own businesses, work where they want to work, and there is still some profit incentive, but people have the power to improve their own working conditions with going on strike or collectively bargaining, and there could be a greater sense of community in businesses.

This may make sense as a voluntary model, but it makes no sense for government to ban other models and employment contracts. You generally don't make people better off by banning forms of voluntary collaboration.

That's true. I think a better way to instigate change is through a gradual social transition, so it would be encouraged, but not forced. The government could play some role in it but the main goal would be to make it popular.