A critique of RBE on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTebSMayyoc. I've been engaging with "bitbutter" on Youtube, who - to his credit - calmly and clearly makes his points about the shortcomings of the RBE idea as he sees them. No ranting and raving. Others please note!

There isn't a lot of space on the Youtube comments fields to comment in a nuanced way, so I'll try here. By the end of the 9:36 video a 6 point list has built up on the screen (with some sub points), so I'll follow that scheme.

1. "As long as human desires remain unfulfilled, a state of scarcity exists."

I haven't got much of a problem with this statement, as it stands. I just don't think it is saying much. Resources are finite (that is a given), so if the some total of 'human desires' adds up to more resources than exist, we have a problem. I assume bitbutter would argue that money is the device that would allocate the resources amongst the populus. This leads to the problem RBE-ers have with money. Suppose money were introduced across the planet today. How would it be allocated? Would we attempt to allocate it to each according to his/her needs?

The monetary as in operation system creates more scarcity. If a resource becomes more scarce, its price goes up, and more money is made by those who control that resource. Therefore increasing scarcity is good in the monetary system. In an RBE we look to minimise scarcity.

If we started from my idealised 'fair' distribution of money, how would people go about getting more? They'd have to control a resource and limit access to it (own it, in effect).

RBE-ers are talking about the scarcity that is created by the monetary system in this way, but accept that the planet has finite resources and that human desires can exceed the resources available (and they do). Economics cannot solve the problem of total demand exceeding total supply. There have to be losers. There plainly are losers, dying of disease and starvation in their millions.

2. "Needs are just wants that are felt particularly strongly". When I distinguished needs as in water, air, nutrition, warmth, from wants as in luxury goods, bitbutter responded: "Prolonging one's life is not a universal goal, nor is it a goal considered equally important by all who hold it, so it's an error to imply that such as thing as a universal human need exists." In that case, I think "needs" by my definition are in bitbutter's terms wants that arise from the desire to survive. I think this is mainly if not entirely a semantic difference, but if I say needs and wants, it presmably adds up to the same thing in bitbutter's terms.


RBE-ers are (I think, I don't speak for them all) looking to to preserve and enhance human life on this planet sustainably. That might not include living a long life at the expense of quality of life, but it faces up to the fact that the sum total of needs and wants cannot be fulfilled beyond the resources available, even though at the moment the planet's population acts as though resources can grow indefintely, like money does.


3a. "Money allows trade to happen". So it does, but an RBE is not looking to facilitate trade, just the fair and sustainable distribution of resources equitably to all the planet's inhabitants.

3b. "Money allows prices, which allows profit / loss accounting". Where would we be without profit / loss accounting? This seems self-referential. Money is a construct. Accounting (of money) is a construct around a construct. The fact that one depends on the other is not really relevant. The only thing that everything (even accounting) depends on are the life-sustaining resources of the planet. In an RBE we would "account for" how much of an actual usable resource we have. Money only represents resources (and not very well).

4. "The assumption that long term technological unemployment exists is unwarranted". I don't think bitbutter is claiming that technological unemployment is not a historical fact, and I don't think he thinks it will stop. I believe his position is that there will be more things for humans to do to fulfil (ever increasing) human desires. The RBE position is not that different. It is technically impossible to use more resources than exist to fulfil human desires, so some may have to remain unfulfilled. In an RBE, when technology is used to the maximum, there will almost certainly be things that need doing that can only be done by humans. RBE-ers hold that humans will be motivated to do those things in the same way they are motivated to do things for non selfish reasons now. 

As to things that humans may want to do, with maximised automation they will have more time and energy to do them, and provided they are sustainable (and not socially destructive), RBE-ers have no objection.


6a. "Surveys cannot take the dynamic nature of value scales into account." Nor do they want to. The value of (say) an apple does not change because its price does. I'm sorry if I'm not understanding 'value scales' correctly, but in an RBE, we look to knowing how much of necessary / useful resources we have. That is probably not easy to do comprehensively, but the total amount of money bears no relationship to the total value /utility of the resources we have available, and money does not tell us anything other than about itself. It is abstract. 


6b. "Surveys cannot feasibly take marginal utility into account". Not really sure what marginal feasibilty is, but it is a term from economics. When I look in my fridge for tomatoes, I don't take into account their marginal utility, because it isn't relevant. 

I think this point illustrates and sums up the tenor of bitbutter's position, which I think boils down to "RBE is incompatible with economics, and therefore is wrong". There's a name for this logical fallacy, but I can't think what it is. The problem is that there's an underlying assumption that economics is right. There's a great big glaring IF missing. IF economics is right then RBE is wrong. If RBE is right, economics is wrong. The assumptions on which both are built have to be tested against real world actual physical facts and evidence, not against the assumptions of a though system like economics.