Re: [ox-en] Re: Role of markets
- From: "Patrick Anderson" <agnucius gmail.com>
- Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:09:16 -0600
On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 3:13 AM, Paul Cockshott <wpc dcs.gla.ac.uk> wrote:
What is the point of these hypothetical situations.
If economics is valid when social complexity is high, and if social
complexity is a continuum, then when does the study of economics
become invalid?
When complexity is 'medium'? medium-rare? middlin? less, 3rd World,
fair, some, little, low?
One has to deal with
concrete social formations and the processes of transformation of these
social formations under the influence of specific configurations of
technology.
Yes, but how many people on a planet before 'economy' (especially
Capitalism) occurs?
And what developmental stage or 'age' must those civilizations be in
before their activities can be labeled 'economic'?
You say 2 people on an island is not complex enough, and I think you
may be right.
It will take at least one more to create real competition when
offering goods or services, so a 3 person economy has more complexity.
4, 5, 10, 20, 100, 150, dunbar
What if there were only 1000 people on earth? Could we get together
to become productive and economic?
After the invention of industrial technologies which need the co-operation
of a large group of people using expensive equipment to produce things,
there are only three possible forms of property relations that can reproduce
themselves:
1. Private capitalist industry
2. Publicly owned industry
3. Producer Co-operatives
What about Customer Owned Co-operatives?
When customers own enough capital, price == cost and profit == 0.
What would you say about a Market-Form that caused price to approach
cost as profit approached zero, and where scarcity and destruction and
overconsumption are not benefits, but are problems in need of remedy?
Patrick
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