3DN sets of relationships
David Frayne said:
- as long as you don't take any of this personally, I will keep poking. :)
Please keep poking. That is my goal here - as it was on O.net - to find the "words" to explain how I see things fitting together. Once we can talk about "reality" as a set of relationships instead of a set of objects - solutions to seemingly insolvable problems become clear.
- Where the market fails, imo, is by rewarding the creation of artificial scarcity.
To the extent one has the economic power to create scarcity of a good or service in the market, that would be rewarded. In today's global market that kind of market control is less and less likely - I think. I was referring to the fact that one must produce a product that sells for more than the cost of production to stay in business - unless there is a subsidy - as in the case of food. Farmers regularly produce more of a crop than the market requires. Which means that they would all be bankrupt without government subsidy.
- Surely you aren't suggesting that everyone should grow food and mine iron ore. Perhaps you are talking about altering the size of the self-sufficient groups?
From the Theory of Relationships:
- Most design discussions take place at the national or international level or conversely, at the individual or family level. Neither of these levels easily lends themselves to the design of stable structures. Except perhaps in the case of the family farm, the family is too small to establish the necessary relationships with an ecosystem for long-term stability. The set of relationships that make up national and international systems is too complex to be able to implement an effective design. (Note the failure of most "utopian" schemes). At the national level, any proposed change will benefit some subcomponents of the nation system and pose hardship for other subcomponents.
- The current system we live in is not stable. We rely on fossil fuels and we know we will have to change that. Huge numbers of human beings do not have the necessary relationships to lead stable productive lives and we know we will have to change that. The question is how? There are examples of nations and communities that have made progress. We need to find a design that works for people who are still left out.
My best shot at that is the Self-help Corporation model. That model does support the production of basic goods and services including food, clothing, shelter, education and health care. There is no reason that such a structure could not mine iron ore - I have not looked at the competitive advantage. However, the model is not about competing in the market - it is about using unused resources to meet unmet needs within a given locality.
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