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New invisible hand? (was: Re: [ox-en] Re: herrschaft)



Hi Graham and list!

Your interesting post brings up so many thoughts on my side I decided
to reply to that one without reading the whole thread.

3 weeks (21 days) ago Graham Seaman wrote:
I've cut out everything from your mail apart from one point I want to
question... (I'm not sure if the original formulation was you/Stefan
Mz/Casi...)

It was from StefanMz.

On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, Stefan Merten wrote:

The key question is: How can a free society be self/organized, if there is
no invisible hand at all (no exchange, no money, no market, no state)?

I agree in general but I'd put it a bit differently: How *does* a Free
Society organize itself.

I always used to be very against libertarianism.

You are talking of the classical thing - not Libertarians (mostly) in
the USA. Right?

Now I'm finding the logic
of my own positions is pushing me in that direction. I'm not happy about
this, so would gladly be told why the following suggestion is wrong:

There is an 'invisible hand' in a free society.

Ok, why do people think of an invisible hand at all? I think because
in modern societies they see a very complex arrangement of human
activity and have difficulties to explain why this can happen without
human intervention on a global level - such as a five year master
plan or something.

At the moment I wonder why this question is interesting at all - at
least if not taken as a scientific question.

It doesn't work
through the medium of money, but directly through need. If I (for large
enough values of I) need some software, but that software doesn't exist
in free form, I will write it. If the software already exists in just the
form I want it, I won't bother. The supply of programmers for particular
types of program is regulated by need: this invisible hand is the hand
that scratches your own itch...

Well, when I look at this today I see that there is a hidden
presumption here: There *is* lack of something which causes a need. I
wonder how this perspective changes when you start with a society
where (at least) a good number of needs are simply fulfilled. This is
where the fun part begins and useful activity is not to fulfill a need
to *have* something but to *do* something. To be active - useful for
others or not.

I think lots of Free Software has to be understood this way.

Applying this more generally, if there is no bread available, I (again,
for large enough values of I) will learn how to bake and distribute bread
to people. And if there is no flour for me to use, I will set up a mill.
etc.

This also seem to have a hidden presumption: You are alone. Of course
this is not the case in reality.

No compulsion, and no monetary incentives;

Agree. But presumptions which I think should be questioned more
thoroughly.

where there is a perceived
need, there will (almost) always be someone who finds it fulfilling to
satisfy the need.

That is also thinking in the libertarian perspective. Why should one?
At least: Why should one fulfill a need for others if there is no
incentive intrinsic in the activity? This is exactly the point where
money / exchange / structural force / alienation starts.

I think Free Software is such a success exactly because there is an
enormous intrinsic incentive in the activity itself. IMHO this the
*big* advantage in this new mode of production.

Well, this does not answer why things work / the invisible hand of
course.

Also it seems very much a worm's-eye view to the problem. Why is the
worm's-eye view wrong? Isn't it only wrong if you want to set up a
society by a state?

If too many people are trying to satisfy a particular
need, then it will become mundane, no-one will want to do it, and the
supply of people who do will again fall off.

Only if there is an alienated incentive such as money. Why should
someone stop her activities in a Free Software project just because
there are other Free Software projects out there which do the same?

Two possible problems with the revised 'invisible hand' (only 2?? ;-):

a. Nobody finds working in a sewage farm fulfulling. Then people will have
to get together and find alternative ways of dealing with sewage that
don't require sewage farms. But maybe in some cases there are no
alternative ways?

This is an old question indeed. My standard answer is that this will
be an incentive to be active for a solution. I think this kind of
activity is far more interesting and creative than working in a sewage
farm. Also if making work superfluous does no longer mean acting
against your own interests - by removing your work place - I think an
enormous potential of creativity and innovative power is set free. Far
more than any industrial capitalist can have by any means. Things will
be very different if working towards automation actually means the
bettering of your own live instead of the worsening.

b. There is a shortage of doctors. No problem, lots of people would love
to be doctors. But it takes 10 years to learn to be a doctor...
ie. the invisible hand is, in general, incapable of planning ahead.

What I think of is more in the direction of: There will be no such
shortage for really important things.

Sometimes I think back to the thread some years ago where Benja
suggested this picture where the gold arrows indicating the money flow
simply vanish and only the green arrows stay which indicate the flow
of goods. Still I'd find it at least an interesting thought
experiment:

* Drop money completely

* For the start everyone simply continues to do what s/he did before

* Let things develop

I mean apart from the money incentive nothing would change, would it?
At this point I think people will start to become *very* innovative in
destroying the need to work where until this point the money incentive
was the main reason for some activity.

OK, apart from those two objections, is this idea too absurdly simple to
be possible? Like Adam Smith's invisible hand  turns out to be more
ideological wishful thinking than anything else, does this version too?

Well, I think we need to carefully check which hidden presumptions are
in all these ideologies. Hope I could convince you at least about that
;-) .


						Mit Freien Grüßen

						Stefan

_______________________
http://www.oekonux.org/



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