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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (7865)	12/21/2005 8:34:41 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541967

That additional data would be enormously hard to figure. Not letting people bypass the system for their transactions would require strong controls. Imposing the cost entailed in that "additional data" would in and of itself amount to a large state intervention. I don't get it, a product code and amount is all that is needed. That's trivial. At the initial sale that is all that is needed perhaps, but you have to keep track of all sales forever, and determine some sort of cost for all transactions (include private transactions that normally cause no record). You have to regularly recalculate the projected cost to society and apply it to different people who at different times created, sold, owned or used some device or process or service. I don't think its possible. Its not just an issue of computer speed or network speed or storage space. Multiply them all by a factor of a billion and the system is still unworkable. And if it was workable would create the potential for serious privacy concerns. Marketplaces are not about imposing a fine based on real, potential or imagined social, environmental, or even economic costs of the future results of today's actions on to the actor. Its not a fine. Its an economic legacy. It is a government imposed cost on someone as a penalty for their actions or perhaps someone else's actions. Calling it an economic legacy might be an argument for the fine but its still a fine. It has value which might be positive or negative. Then change the wording to "fine or benefit". When I buy the shares of a company the current price clearly includes the market assessment of the companies future potential. And if they are underestimated no one comes back later and charges you extra. If they are overestimated you don't get a rebate. You have a price and decide if you want to buy. The price you pay doesn't change after you buy it (the price you pay on a future purchase is likely to be different but that specific purchase price doesn't change. If a company craters and owes suppliers, they dip into the shareholders pockets to cover their debts. Not a public corporation. Perhaps in certain types of partnerships but not in most companies. Your shares may become worthless but no one can go after you just because you own the shares. The price is always set by the present view of the situation. That is the current situation. You have a price, you pay it, and its over. If the view in a year is different I don't have to pay more or less, my purchase was already finalized a year ago. Buying a share today at price X in no way provides any safety as to what that price is tomorrow. It assures you that you paid price X, for share Y. In your system not only the future value of the share can change, but the actual price you paid. If I have $5k to spare and I make a risky investment, I might make $10k, or I might lose it all, but I don't have to worry about someone coming back later and saying "not only is your stock worthless, but we decided the actual cost is $10k, fork over another $5k. If I did have to worry about something like that I probably would not own any stock. Sure if I buy stock on margin I might risk more than my whole investment but I can be aware of the total possible cost. I can't do worse than having to pay back the whole loan plus interest. The actual price I paid for the stock does not change. Every transaction is monetorized. For all economic entities. The data would track the type of transaction, say resale, vs. final consumption. All metamoney can be traded in the marketplace. Risk or reward for any transaction is assigned only in the marketplace. You may buy or sell at any time. That really doesn't make sense. Ignoring the practical difficulties of tracking every transaction (and what about actions that do not involve money such as barter or even non-trade actions that can have an impact on the future?) there is the larger issue that the market connects willing buyers with willing sellers. Who is going to want to buy an obligation to accept the risk that some action done today might cost a bundle in the future? In certain cases you could have something like an insurance company buy the risk, but that will not be possible for most transactions. If it isn't a willing assumption of the risk then it isn't a market operation. There will always be a current market rate. You can buy or sell at the current rate. When you buy a gallon of gas, you can immediately sell the legacy, at whatever the current market rate is. The uncertainty about the potential future costs would tend to make this insurance (selling the "legacy") expensive. But its not just this cost or risk. How would you even determine the legacy. Saying "the market will" does not provide an answer. For most "legacies" there will be no demand. Even though the legacy might be positive it may also be negative. It is an assumption of risk. People get paid to assume risks they rarely pay for the privilege. (You might make a risky investment but you are paying for return and the risk is usually no more than your initial investment, or if it is more it has limit and parameters that while they may be complex are far more understandable than your system.) But that isn't the half of it. Even if you had plenty of demand for these legacies, who determines what the legacy is worth. An insurance company might assume risk for a payment, but the amount the insurance company pays out over the term will sometimes be zero, or if it is not it is a concrete amount. If I wreck my car my insurance company will write me a check for a specific amount. At some point the money gets paid out or it doesn't. If money is ever paid out it will be a specific amount, and even the potential amount has a limit, they will not have to pay me $50k for my car, they may have to pay liability but there is a limit on that as well, and at some point they will have to pay out will be determined and set in concrete, no one can go to the company 1000 years later and say they should pay out a lot more. A market can be made for risks with limited parameters. They can sell that risk to reinsurance firms. How do you insure against all the combined future effects of buying and burning a gallon of gasoline? Even after the fact people will disagree about what the effect was. Not just after I burn it, but 10 years later, 100 years later, and 1000 years later people will disagree, not just about what the future cost will be, or the costs at the moment, but even the past costs. People will never know how things would have been if you didn't buy and burn that gallon. As fond as I am of market processes this just isn't something you can easily create or run a market in. During your own life, you can constantly reevaluate your situation and take actions accordingly. Conditions are not likely to change radically on short notice, so those who stay awake, and avoid risky things, will do OK. Even in our current system this isn't entirely true. What is considered acceptable or safe today, might be illegal, or be considered damaging, and/or result in lawsuits in the future. We are at least protected (if imperfectly) by the constitutional prohibition against ex-post facto laws. But you will allow an imposition of a penalty long after the fact. If anything GDP will go up because we've created an entire new field of employment and engine of wealth: trading metamoney. If people can't know the actual price they pay for good or services, or in order to avoid the price shifting they have to pay insurance on it ("sell the legacy") economic activity will probably be reduced, and the only things that would be likely to prevent a collapse would be 1 - The black market that would develop and 2 - The fact that the law would probably quickly be repealed if it could ever take effect. Tim