Related: consume, proc, rent, root, worker
Users are also known as 'Consumers'. Users either buy objects or rent physical sources.
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Feb-28-2007:
"N B" writes:
> Dude, it's been a while since I've bumped into you. Did you guys end up
> moving to CA? I thought a lot about our conversation that one night, and
> tried to further refine it, but kept on running into major problems. It's
> a tricky thing. Your pecan farm idea was a pretty good one, if you could
> pull it off. Those sucka's are incredibly expensive!
Thanks for the letter. Sorry for the slow response.
I'm glad you have been thinking about this tricky thing.
I would like to concentrate on defining the problem, but to do so requires us to do something that most people find too boring or irritating: we must decompile and even disassemble the meanings hidden in the words we tend to use without enough care.
For instance, you say:
>> Those sucka's are incredibly expensive!
The word "expensive" here refers to the price Consumers pay after production is complete.
"Price" is a composition of "Cost" + "Profit".
"Cost" includes things like:
. Capital Investment: baby trees, tools, water rights, land.
. Wages to pay Workers to plant, tend and harvest the trees.
. Recurring costs of fuel, oil and wear on the tools.
"Profit" is what the owners are historically 'entitled' to take from the production and is based on the combination of the vulnerability of both the Consumers and the Workers.
The potential for "Profit" is therefore a measure of the power Owners hold over non-Owners. It describes the non-Owners' dependence on Owners.
It may seem obvious then, that "Profit" is a problem that we should just try to eliminate. But the sad thing is that the success of a corporation is defined as the amount of Profit they are able to extract from us. So as "Price" approaches "Cost", a business approaches failure.
Another way to think about "Profit" is to understand it as a plea from Consumers to Grow and have Control. The Consumer is saying "I can't get bread any other way, so am willing to pay the Owner more than it really Costs to produce it because I am in a bind.".
In this way we see the amount called "Profit" would (in a better world) be an automatic investment for that Consumer in the Sources of production needed to create more of that kind of Object. The Consumer should become a partial controlling shareholder in the Means of Production for that Object according to the amount he pays above real costs, so, after each iteration, Consumers will move closer to being Owners in the Sources of the things (plants, tools, water, land, etc.) that are required to insure their future needs are met.
But, since people's tastes change, this should be an incremental and continuous process that happens anytime an Object changes hands.
Of course you know that if you Own a nut tree yourself, and are the only Consumer of the Objects of that tree, that "Price" == "Cost", and "Profit" is meaningless. That does not mean you must be the worker. We very much want division of labor and specialization; and in many cases doing the work yourself is impossible because you simply don't have the skills. Ownership and labor is already separated in Capitalism, so this is no change at all.
As Object Users become Source Owners, employment can be safely minimized and there is no reason to hope other producers fail, as abundance is always good, and scarcity is to be avoided. This is the positive-feedback that can close the loop on an economy and cause it to finally stabilize.