In 48, Kith Town, no longer surrounded by a city, is a robotically maintained museum usually visited virtually although the service centre includes sleeping quarters. We remember earlier historical periods of Kith Town in Chapters 10 and 21.
In 49, the Envoy crew are in their fifth year on the planet Harbor in the Tau Cetian System where Nansen has founded the Venture League and the director of the League academy, Chandor Barak, has contributed a "...substantial sum." (p. 464) That phrase, "substantial sum," seems inconsequential but is highly significant because it means that human civilization on Harbor still has a money economy, unlike Earth. Nansen thinks that the crew should be free to apply their knowledge to make money, then spend that money as they see fit. Yes, you can have that freedom in a money economy and other kinds of freedoms in other kinds of societies.
There are also Seladorian missionaries on Harbor. Each chapter adds a new instalment to a very long future history. Have we seen the last of the Kith?
15 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Of course money would exist! All economies needs some kind of monetary unit/currency for calculating the value of all kinds of goods and services, and the costs of providing them.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Of course money need not exist. There is none on Earth at that time.
Even if currency is used for exchange, it need not become a commodity in its own right that can be accumulated, hoarded and used to invest in the labour of others and to control what is produced. A handful of individuals now control most of the world's wealth. Technological production and distribution need not be organized in that way in future.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I disagree with your economics. Esp. the discredited labor theory of value. The value of anything is determined most accurately by the marginal utility theory of value worked out by the Austrian school.
All you are offering is Utopianism.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I stand by the labour theory of value which is not discredited but I do not see what that has to do with the issue at hand.
It is not Utopian to point out that advanced technology can produce abundance and can enrich everyone, not just a minority class. When implemented, this will change social relationships and individual psychologies.
You seem to be compelled to argue against these ideas instead of just acknowledging that that there is a difference of opinion here. There are bound to be many different opinions on such matters. We will be able to debate all the differences fully when we have a level playing field and are no longer locked into a deadly struggle to control economic resources.
Poul Anderson shows a society without money on Earth in STARFARERS.
Paul.
Sean: "Austrian school."
I recall reading some works by or about the Austrian school.
I was rather disturbed by the insistence on working from derivation from assumed axioms with no reference to observation & experiment. There has since been some work on (IIRC) 'behavioral economics', checking on whether the assumptions about human behaviour of economic theory are actually true.
In any case I would regard Austrian School economics with some skepticism.
Jim,
I am more than skeptical of economic theories that merely accept the existing economic system as a given and try to give an account of it. The theories do not clarify but mystify.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Paul: We are not going to agree. Because I don't believe in the realism of what you want. Free enterprise economics works and nothing else has, in the real world and real history.
Jim: I was thinking more of the insights given us by Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk and Ludwig von Mises. Briefly, in the marginal utility theory of value there could be two pottery shops, both of whom offer vases and other ceramics for sale. A customer sees two vases, one in each shop, and has to make a choice. Rationally he will select the vase whose quality, workmanship, and price marginally pleases him more than the other. It does not matter how much labor the creator of the vase not chosen put into it if the buyer does not want it. That is the essence of the Austrian marginal utility theory, the value placed by purchasers in what they buy. The more goods and services there are, the wider the range of choices.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We are not trying to agree. I believe in the realism of what I want. Free enterprise will be redundant when technologically produced wealth is abundant. It will cease to be necessary to compete for raw materials, trade routes, markets or profits. Society will enter an entirely new phase. What has happened in the past and what happens now need not happen in the future. Life changes. Society changes.
These exchanges have floundered and repeated themselves endlessly. Will this continue? It should have been possible to state conflicting views once, not the irreconcilable disagreements and move on from there. Instead, you repeat that free enterprise works and always has worked, then I repeat that free enterprise will be redundant when wealth is abundant and that the future will be different from the past and the present.
Is anything gained or learned by this repetition? You seem to think that we are trying to agree. Quite obviously we are not trying to do that.
Paul.
"not" should be "note."
Every time we have been through this again, I have hoped that we have reached not agreement but at least a recognition that we will not need to go through it all yet again. It is as if there is a forgetting of previous exchanges.
Nothing has absolute value.
Take a shoemaker in an isolated village; he takes leather and nails, applies his skill and labor, and makes a pair of shoes. Someone in the village gives him a watch or a goat for it.
OK, then he goes mad, and makes a hundred pairs of shoes for everyone in the village. They all contain the same labor-time, same skill, same raw materials -- but are they of equal value?
Of course not. They're worthless, or nearly so -- nobody needs 100 pairs of shoes; in fact, they'd just take up space for ordinary people.
Same shoe, same raw materials, same labor... violently different value. Value isn't inherent, it's bestowed at the point of -consumption-.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: I agree we are going to have to agree to disagree--however strongly I believe myself to be right.
Mr. Stirling: Ha! Amusingly put. Heck, I only have two pairs of shoes (plus a pair of boots for snowy weather). I don't need another 97 pairs of shoes!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I also believe myself to be right! You always try to sign off somehow with a claim to rightness.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
It goes back to how humans are naturally competitive.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We should keep competition out of discussion.
Again, I say that I "believe myself to be right" in response to your saying that. What I really think is that each of us needs to be aware out of how little we know. I can quote recent cases of something that I had thought to be true turning out not to be the case. I am learning. Andrea says that, scientifically, most of what we think we know is probably wrong - although technology works so current scientific theories cannot be completely wrong.
I am longer replying to argumentative points about twentieth century revolutions because we have been through all that more than once before and got nowhere.
I have never before engaged in extended arguments with someone who:
adamantly refused to question any of his own presuppositions or to give serious consideration to any alternative viewpoints;
repeated word for word previously used phrases, paying no heed to any objections or counterarguments presented in the meantime;
ignored or summarily dismissed detailed counterarguments;
wound up effectively saying that he was right and I was wrong.
I think that that entire approach is very wrong.
Paul.
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