The solution to economics

You heard it here first - finally a solution to bridge the divide between the economic left and right.

Neutrality:

How do I know that the right are in favour of my solution?
For one, there is a common sentiment shared by the rich that success is not all just about being monetarily well off, it’s about a much broader spectrum of success and freedom, for example to do good for society by enabling valuable goods and services to be available to many more people than would otherwise be able to access such things. Perhaps there’s also an individual element of satisfaction derived from challenge, maybe to get the most out of yourself or against competition.

Just to help diffuse any doubt here, allow me to draw upon a quote by the US’s very own current president (as of the time of writing this post) that echoes the above values:

The right generally share a preference to not have these goals infringed upon or compromised, as is commonly the goal of the left - via means such as taxation, which I believe can be done away with.

How do I know that the left are in favour of my solution?
There is a way to resolve the apparent conflict between the loss aversion of the right and the distribution of wealth favoured by the left, which can be done by first identifying some unquestioned assumptions about “currency”. Rather than getting rid of money altogether, as has been proposed by some branches of leftism, the benefits of having a standard benchmark against which to value all goods and services can be held onto. But there is a critical disadvantage to currency, which is that interfering with the flow at any specific points affects the flow of the whole thing - you can’t localise and pinpoint things like taxes without the effects being displaced and flowing around the whole economy. For example, the effects of a sales tax aren’t restricted to proportionally affecting the most lavish of spenders more than the most frugal among us. Prices can just be raised to absorb the extra cost, or jobs cut, to allow employers and shareholders to afford just as much as they felt entitled to before, whilst employees and non-shareholders still have to pay more for the same thing even if they don’t have a job at all after business expenditure cuts to pay for higher taxation. Working in itself can in this way be penalised by a tax intended only to affect spending.

If this cornerstone of modern economic theory was overcome, the left wouldn’t need to be so concerned about effects like these on the less economically fortunate - so they would surely support my solution as well.

Get to the point:

We achieve this via a disconnect in the continuous flow of currency around the whole economy. Money given doesn’t necessarily have to equal money taken. Better still, the role of standard benchmark that money currently plays can be maintained by simply funding spending deficits with surpluses.
But why would anyone want to pay a surplus, I hear you ask?
I refer back to the common sentiment of the rich. Surplus can be kept track of and an individual non-exchangeable “score” can be kept - and even published. Want to demonstrate your social value? Want an official measure to go by to compete against yourself or others? Want to advertise the integrity and benevolence of your company to attract consumers to the best and most successful of all the competition? A simple number that won’t be taxed can do that for you objectively, just as it can land you a position working for the best companies. Just like before, the only way you can build this score is to first sell well and earn well before you can spend well - and as a top “giver” in society that such a person can afford to be, you receive the price you sell at regardless of how much is paid for it, and who you sell to, due to this “disconnect” in the continuous flow of currency at the point of exchange.

Unlike with tax, nothing is lost to “penalise” buying, selling or even working - and no consequences are passed messily throughout the whole economy to places they weren’t intended to reach.
Yet like tax, the less economically fortunate are paying less, funded by the more economically fortunate but without the more economically fortunate losing out and allowing them to maintain what they are really after in just the same way as Trump.

Since there are no downsides to this solution, it can be entirely optional. Businesses can continue to operate as normal, perhaps sticking to cash, or exchanging money any way that my solution doesn’t track. They don’t have to pay any surplus and they get no “score”, and without one they prove to everyone that they are staying off the radar for whatever reason. Perhaps their revenues aren’t enough to cover their costs because they’re inefficient or don’t offer good enough products and/or services? Perhaps they want to hide something by steering clear from a simple and objective measure of goodwill? Perhaps you’re only rich from inheritance (which will be decreased in the same way as a big spender spending on anything) and you want to hold back from giving it to society - avoiding this simple objective measure will prove this to everyone. There’s no need to keep track of deficits and negative “scores”, because otherwise a bad start in life can result in a lifetime of endlessly paying your way back up no matter how generous and socially valuable and successful you are in later life, which is unfortunately like things are with today’s economic model. Being socially in credit at any point in life can be rewarded in this way without ever being taken away at a later date. Equally this gives a much better chance for new businesses, since they can start out paying deficits until they are in a position to run an efficient company selling high quality goods and/or services that gets them on the leaderboard even if the company remains small. You can’t fake social utility without giving back to society and you also won’t be penalised if you aren’t in a position to give back to society for any reason.

Tax becomes obsolete since the poor are supported yet the rich are also rewarded without limit for doing good. Left and right both win.

The math:

Last year I began exploring the mathematics of all of this with the first two posts of this thread, where I introduce the mathematical model that I would propose to use to pull off the above solution to all our current economic problems. It’s based around the 80-20 rule, or “Pareto Principle”, to maintain economic inequality at an “optimal” rate - to make sure that success is rewarded at all levels of wealth. After the first 2 posts, I began talking about using a Sigmoid function to mimic the “Elo rating system” (as used in chess etc.) that adapts the 80-20 Pareto Distribution. I decided to scrap that since Elo doesn’t achieve the afore-mentioned “disconnect in the continuous flow of currency” that solves everything, whereas the initial 80-20 curve does (upon application to what I explained above).

The curve that I’m using to model this principle follows the form of (f(x) = L/e^{-k(x-x_0)}), where (L) is the curve’s maximum value, (k) is the growth rate (steepness of the curve) and (x_0) is the midpoint of the curve.
For population “(p)”, when (L) is roughly (\frac{\sqrt{22}}{110}), (k) is roughly (\frac{7.7}p) and (x_0) is (\frac{p}2), we get the 80-20 properties (the larger (p) gets) where the mid point of the y axis is the price, and the x axis tracks the relative historical “rate of expenditure” by any given individual or company. Like any personal bank account, your individual outgoings can be tracked throughout your life, placing you somewhere along this x axis, and you use the curve to read off the proportion of the price you pay for any item you want to buy from the y axis. There can be one set of data for individuals and a separate set of data for businesses.

Some facts:
Only the top 9% of spenders will be paying a surplus that will pay off the entire deficit incurred by the remaining 91%, making it no social shame to not have a particularly high score if any at all and affording all the more glory for achieving one.
The very highest spender will only be paying a maximum of 2200 times more than the very lowest spender.
The average person will be paying about 47 (the square root of 2200) times more than the very lowest spender (and therefore obviously about 47 times less than the highest spender). The difference between how much average spenders spend compared to one other is minimal - it’s only when spending gets very high that significant differences emerge (as is characteristic of exponential curves such as the 80-20 one).

You’re wrong.

I solved this years before your incorrect post. Mine is the best worlds of capitalism and reasonable distribution, and democracy proper.

viewtopic.php?p=2770262#p2770262

Yours is absurd.

I edited the equation in the above post because initially I accidentally wrote the equation for the sigmoid curve, which differs only from the intended equation by adding 1 to the denominator.

I could further simplify the equation by substituting in the actual numbers as something like (f(x)=\frac{\sqrt{22}}{110e^{7.7(\frac1{2}-\frac{x}p)}}), but I don’t know if that makes it look any nicer. Ultimately it’s nothing more than a simple exponential equation modified by specific coefficients to give it the 80-20 properties.

You see how the above contains absolutely no useful content whatsoever, just a few rather strangely severe dismissals with no direct justification at all?

At best there’s an indirect suggestion that my solution is wrong because yours is right, in some kinda weird false dilemma, but even if it was merely an “either/or” choice, you say nothing at all to back anything up.

I see this non-approach taken too often on this place - don’t do that. Explain yourself, provide reasons.

In this linked post you briefly outline a version of the policy known as “maximum wage” - a kind of inversion of the “minimum wage” policy we hear about all the time.

If you wiki “maximum wage” you’ll see that the idea has been around since the 16th century, having been proposed in various forms at various points in history across all sorts of countries, including the US, Sweden, France and even quite recently in Switzerland - but it doesn’t seem to have taken much hold anywhere except to some extent in the expected places like the Soviet Union, Venezuela, and currently Cuba.

So I don’t think you can really claim that “you” solved economics with this idea - perhaps it came to you independently without you being aware of its history, like I’m sure it has to many others. It’s been something I’ve already thought about plenty myself, and honestly I’m personally fine with the idea. But the main problem with it is shown perfectly in the very next post on the thread - it has absolutely no appeal to those on the right wing, hence why such policies keep failing to win out in the developed world, even though we all need them.

And that’s where you’re going to fail when you propose things like this, every time.
There’s countless leftists out there already proposing similar solutions to distribute wealth in some way or other, as they have done for centuries. It doesn’t matter how correct they are, they’re getting nowhere because they’re giving insufficient thought about how to effectively preach outside the choir.

And that’s why my solution is so significant.

Not only is it original and unprecedented, it solves the crucial historical problem of putting off the right wing.
Your solution provides no incentive for the right to want to consider it. All they are going to see in policies like “maximum wage” are things like infringement on the wealthy making money that’s “theirs”, and “not being allowed/free to succeed” etc. The reason why my solution is so much more sophisticated than yours is that I actually solve this problem. You’re all about win-win realities, right? Why in the world would you be against a solution that would actually achieve one, like mine? Is it because it wasn’t you who thought it up? Why is it absurd/wrong? Do you understand it? If so, try and explain it back to me in your own words in a way that I’d agree with.

I take the exact words the right are using, and transform them into something that the left would want as well by challenging fundamental assumptions about currency that haven’t been sufficiently challenged before. Using my solution, the right get to keep all their same freedoms of decentralised markets, the use of money, inequality of money and success, individualistic self-interest - and they even maintain the freedom to measure it all in an objective way that now rewards them like never before for spending money investing in the rest of their society to help them succeed financially and socially even better than ever. For the first time, the right will actually want to share their wealth in the same way that the left wanted all along. They don’t even need to pay tax anymore!

It’s simply wrong, incorrect and absurd to call this breakthrough of mine “wrong”, “incorrect” and “absurd”.

So a Left/Right divide, is a ‘solution to economics’… what has political leanings got to do with it?

What aspect of Economics are you trying to solve?

I’d recommend reading the post if you want the answers to these questions.

The first sentence alone says I’m solving the left/right divide on economic matters by bridging it, the exact opposite to solving economics with a left-right divide.
I’m sure you’re aware that the political right and left traditionally differ in their economic policies, intentions and goals.

Bridging that gap in the way that I explain in the rest of the post solves that aspect of economics.

Thanks for the explain… I’ll give it a read… might be interesting.

Silhouette,

The only reason that every mega corporation in the United States is still ‘solvent’ is because of corporate welfare! Taxpayers pay for their bankrupt golden parachutes, taxpayers even pay for their taxes! The ultra rich incur no cost and no risk.

My solution is perfect because it creates ACTUAL capitalism. Yours? No!

i don’t think your idea would have much pull with the “right”, either (you mean rich capitalists I am sure, and not moms and pops with high moral standards out there in the sticks)

cuz you know what’s better than a fabricated number that means nothing but status?
the kind of number you can use to buy stuff
nothing says status quite like a 130ft boat

Anarcho-capitalism won’t work because capitalist systems are so wrought with conflict, they cant be sustained without artificial support by government.

The circle of life here - to put it in Elton John terms - looks like this:

Capitalist parasite class hijacks the government and forces it to assist it in its exploitation of the host working class. But what makes this so dumb is that the host class is paying the government so it can pay the capitalist parasite to… exploit them more efficiently.

This arrangement is so retarded I almost have no sympathy for the working class for allowing this to happen.

what’s so wrong about letting conflicting systems collapse?
law of nature

When I say I’m bridging the divide between the economic left and right in my opening sentence, I’m not directly intending to solve the social issues that might be more of a concern to “moms and pops with high moral standards out there in the sticks” or whatever other demographic that might be more concerned about social issues than economic ones.
However, it’s more than likely going to be the case that my economic solution will indirectly affect social issues in a particularly positive way. How many social issues are directly correlated to economic issues? A great many without doubt. In this way, the model that I’m suggesting ought to appeal to all types of Rightists just as much as to all types of Leftists.

And what makes you think that 130ft boats will be off the (water) table as a result of what I’m suggesting?

The consequences of my solution will be one of two possibilities - or perhaps a combination of the two:
On one hand, the sense in which the biggest spenders pay a surplus might make superyachts even more of a luxury than before, and therefore even more of a status symbol.
But on the other hand, my solution will bring about market forces to reduce the prices of luxuries such that the companies who provide them can maintain their market share - and this incentivises investment in the technologies that are required to supply luxuries: to more efficiently source the parts and enable the labour required to put them together - which is a positive force for technological advancement, which more quickly depreciates outdated technologies, making them more quickly available to the masses who are now more rich and more able to buy them.
And remember, the very richest person buying a boat is only paying less than 50 times the price that the average person would pay - and in doing so helps enormously with paying off the deficit incurred by the 91%, on top of gaining a huge amount of social credit “points”, as well as ending up with a huge tax free status symbol.

Where’s the downside here?

The collapse of conflicting systems is not without collateral damage. Naturally they will collapse by themselves anyway, yes, but it’s better to help them along their way to minimise said collateral damage. That’s the advantage that humans have over other life-forms - they are able to figure out how to mitigate suffering and speed nature up or down, whereas everything else has to wait for nature to run its course. That’s what civilisation is - and why Anarcho-capitalism is such a suboptimal option.

I know all this already.

In what way does “maximum wage” create ACTUAL capitalism? It’s overtly a restriction on capitalism. I’d be down for the policy you’re supporting too if it were actually possible to sell it to the economic right, but so far it hasn’t been for obvious reasons. The super rich have the Western developed world held to ransom - and leftist economic policy is struggling so much because it’s not offering those in power with enough of a gain, and it’s making them feel threatened by too much of a loss. You don’t get that much power unless you have their level of individualistic loss aversion. That’s why I’ve specifically catered my solution towards offering them a scenario where they have everything to gain!

And I don’t even have to affect Capitalism much at all to pull it off. All economics needs is an incentive for the rich to want to distribute their wealth, and the solution is simple: separate the money aspect from all the other gains of being successful and powerful. Look at “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs” - the most basic stuff is the only part that really requires money. The higher needs don’t when they come into affect from the lower needs already being satisfied, but up until my solution, money was the only way to sufficiently measure the success of the higher needs. Your solution is still concerned only with tinkering about with money, which misses the whole point, and it’s why Leftism has always struggled so much despite policies like maximum wage being so obviously beneficial for everyone. There’s nothing about my solution that doesn’t achieve what yours does, but your solution lacks the key ingredient to make it appealing for enough of the right people to actually make it become a reality.

My solution is the best of both worlds because it’s extremely hard to make 10 million dollars a year (still capitalistic!). If you want a 100 foot yacht, you need to get support from another 10 people to do it. That’s called a co-op economy (my definition)

Every mega rich person is a psychopath. There is no compromise for psychopaths. Your plan is delusional.

The people need to stand up and say “enough”! And rewrite the laws.

Pleasing a psychopath is impossible. “Incentivizing” charity is laughable to them.

Silhouette, please play out a few scenarios to illustrate the praxis of what youre talking about.

I find the arguments for it convincing but haven’t understood how this works in practice, other than suspecting it means that on the whole, the rich pay more for the same goods than the poor, though not so much as to annihilate the advantage of their wealth.

Long-winded solutions are never the answer… same as bad sex.

…and no, I’m no expert on bad sex or sex in general, as I rarely indulge. Only lowly minds would think otherwise, because they cannot think contrary to that which is exposed to them, and so think all manner of things that their mind allows and opens them up to.

Welcome to modernity.

MagsJ,

I’ve had sex exactly 15 times in my life. I’m 43.

Most 43 year olds have had sex 6000 times in their lives.

I always cared about truth more than sex.

My life is a testament to this. Even the sex I did have: I fucked up. This human species is not fit for sex! It’s a nice fantasy that they are; no bearing on truth whatsoever!

sounds an awful lot like progressive taxation
no?

suffering sucks but how many layers of comfort are we going to add to the existing comfort (in the 1st world at the cost of plenty of suffering in the 3rd world) before realize that the whole thing is artificial af and that what we are really doing is postponing the suffering so that we can have it all at once at some point in the future?
just let people die
people fucking die it’s natural
we do not need any more people eating and shitting on the planet and making 5 pounds of garbage per year for 100 years
and till the fuck out of the earth and then spray poison on it to produce enough corn to feed all of this goddamn people we allowed to live for 100 years by pumping them full of antibiotics and spraying them with alcohol
fucks sake

we don’t need any more busted systems to fix busted systems
we need less!!!

I do wonder what goes on in Silhouette’s mind/the mind of Silhouette… :-k

He talked of elegant systems, but his solutions are anything but… they are clumpy and clumsy, at best.

Fuck outta here!

Why’s man getting literal, as opposed to philosophical though?

Um… the Thread title says it all. :-s

Oh it is philosophical … and aside from the thread title, I’m responding to YOU!

If I knew at 16 years old what I know now, I’d never have had sex!

I took the hits for my sex (spiritual), I both cringe and chuckle at what you folks have to go through.

Like the John Lennon song, I was blessed (Cursed) with ‘instant karma’. I feel bad for all of you. Seriously. It upsets me to know your fates.

Tee hee hee :icon-rolleyes: