BILL P
That’s what the current economic religion says, but I don’t believe it. The present economic system in a number of countries is based on encouraging conflict, which results in different companies expending a lot of effort simply to nullify the efforts of other companies. That is not efficient
JIM D
Bill, since you don't give any examples it is difficult for me to comment on what you say. Generally I try to see all political economy questions in terms of one individual. It's a lot easier for me to sense complicated issues if I can see them in myself, and I assume I can make them plainer, more easily understood to others in that way.
Let me quote from your paper the origins of purpose. "
A control system is a dissipated system with a continuously renewable source of energy. This allows amplification to take place, a process whereby a small cause has a large effect, achieved by drawing all the stores of energy and bringing them to bear on the creation of narrowly focused effects in the environment"
What you have described is my ability to distribute my time among various tasks. You have described distributed labor. If I cooperate with another human being we can benefit exponentially from that cooperation. It is still distributed labor. In this cooperation each of us will obtain a measure of increase more than double either of our efforts alone. The fact that I do many tasks alone does not change the fact that it is distributed labor. As one person I benefited from the assorted distribution of my efforts. So if Jim does fishing on Monday, salting of fish on Tuesday, repairing of tent on Wednesday I am effectively three different people. I have effectively outsourced. This is distributed labor. This is outsourcing. If I cooperate with someone else I have outsourced, this is no different from my being three different people on three different days. You call this amplification. You are calling distributed time, which is distributed labor, which is outsourcing, amplification. In addition to this you link this to purposive behavior and say that “this is identically the origin of life.”
I am not sure what you refer to when you say that certain countries encourage conflict. Do you speak of free enterprise where the consumer is free to spend where and how it pleases him? What are some alternatives? Yes, this certainly encourages companies to spend a lot of energy to cut costs, improve quality, and thereby nullify the competition efforts. There are certainly some negative aspects to competition. But the competition is caused by the very thing you describe in your paper. Distributed labor. It may be that it results in lower quality and poorer use of resources in the production of relatively useless gadgetry. When I said efficient I meant with respect to time in production of like quality products. The consumer will seek generally out the best cost value. This doesn’t mean that no other problems will ensue such as over population etc which will certainly impact on our sense of efficiency. It becomes a very complicated matter. Yes, we need legislation to deal with some of the negative aspects of consumer driven economy, [what do you propose] but efficiency is encouraged by competition just as if I would have to choose between competing alternatives to action if I were alone on an island. I would choose the course of least action, lowest price, shortest distance, least time, relative to the goal. As I see it, individual amplification [outsourcing] is the same as a consumer driven competitive economy.
BILL P
In the long run, as someone said once, we shall all be dead.
What I said was “over the long haul”. If I don’t distribute my labor [same function as outsourcing, amplification to you] I will be dead.
Another word for this might be self paralysis, or depression; the opposite of " identically the origin of life".