In my own experience, skipping a single meal or a single day is harder than multiple days. Why? After the first day, things start to actually get easier. I have made it 3 days without eating (then had to go to work). I would say it was way easier to constrain myself that way than it is to eat better meals. It also is way easier not to eat on day 2 than day 1. And by day 3 it is pretty normal. Day 1 is the big trick in my opinion. My personal biggest concern is I will make it the first time without eating, then won't be able to do it a second time (e.g. 5 days good, 2 days eating, never start 5 days again).
Regarding Europe and eating better, one advantage I already have is that I've been vegetarian for more than 20 years. On the down side, it also didn't help me lose weight since I simply ate a not very good meal. I mostly don't fall into the typical American food problems. I do agree Europe is generally easier to eat healthy, that is a bit of a backup plan.
From my previous experience in Europe a margherita pizza is not 30 Euros, more like 5-8 but for a personal size (or ~15-24 for 3). However, portion wise it is much easier in Europe to simply control yourself. These are not the super sized things that the US creates.
Failure is always an option, but the more backup plans, the more "well that didn't work, try this..." I have the more likely the overall goal will work. I think that is kinda the point of the title I have picked. It is an experiment, one which I don't know the outcome until I try. What I will say is that my efforts in the US to limit food intake work, but purely on a will power basis (fine since I'm not working), but leave me feeling weak and a bit dulled.
While in no way the only reason to retire, a major reason to retire was to basically give me back my reserve of will power being used at work, primarily to control what I said since all human interaction is politics. With that will power no longer being used, I'm putting it to use in the US. This method works, but i just is hard. I suspect not eating to be easier, I just won't do it while driving since it is a safety issue. Since I have proven to myself that this method does work, I can always fall back to it.
@jacob
I looked at Burpee and I'm not sure my wrists can take that. That being said, switch kicks and power jacks seem pretty viable. I have done jumping jacks and something like switch kicks on my own before. In the last 2 years I moved away from jumping things (like jump rope) in large part because the weight on my arches started to be too much. But I like power jacks since there is no jumping. I use to do jump rope, hitting about 100-200 jumps a day in relatively short 2 minute bursts. The biggest thing I found with exercise is it just got me eating more. How do you prevent eating more when doing more?
@unemployable I meant to address the # of calories in a pound of fat before, but forgot. My understanding is the estimates vary between 3k-5.5k per pound, depending on the efficiency of the body. I took what I think of as a middle of the road estimate.
@bigato I like those ideas behind eating less meals or during specific times. I'm not against that sort of idea. I simply don't think it will move the needle fast enough. I also have never really had a fixed enough schedule to allow that. It maybe possible in Europe that will be viable. I'll add that to my backup planning. Thank you.
Experimenting with Life
Re: Experimenting with Life
On Money:
I have been doing good on this category. On a per person basis, my predicted expenses for the "trip year" (not calendar, but based upon 12 months of travel in euro) are $11k USD. This is based upon current behavior patterns, which might not be exactly how I will behave, more on that in a minute. Another consideration is this does exclude some important off balance sheet considerations. It seems important to note these are all excluded from my estimate and are all listed on a per person basis:
- Flight to and from the US (Mostly paid with points). Maybe $1-2k?
- Some minor external fees (such as credit card fee), getting a passport, etc. Maybe $100-200 missed.
- Cost of clothing, technology, etc. that was purchased before the trip. Maybe $1-1.5k in assets if we add it all up, but the tech should last 5+ years and the clothing should last the entire trip. So perhaps another $200-300 off balance sheet.
If we take middle of the road averages of each of these items we'd be at a little less than 2k USD. If I assume I'm going to be efficient on my choice of day we fly out, we'd around 1.5k USD.
So perhaps the entire trip including flights would be $~12.5k, including all the depreciation and endpoint flights. Furthermore, if I choose to be more efficient, I probably could drop that back down to $11.5k. How? By picking cheaper countries. I'm seriously looking at Greece and other cheaper countries, which based upon my rough calculations would drop my expenses down to less than ~$10k per person, ignoring the above off balance sheet items.
At $10k per person, that is nearly Jacob efficient, with less money going to housing and more money going to food and travel. If I could stay in a country longer than 3 months I'd save ~$1k, putting me very close to Jacob. Again, I admit it excludes costs of the laptop I'm writing on, etc., but not bad over all. If food bills were cut by another $~1.5k, I think I'd be at Jacob's level. I really appreciate all the lessons all you folks have given over the years. I hope my small amount of give back adds to the treasure.
On Health:
In Florence I spent 30 days walking nearly 2 miles nearly every day. I also spent 1-2 hours standing in a bus and often several hours standing looking at art, statues, etc. Often we got groceries which were about 40 min bus trip from our location. That meant carrying 10ish pounds for an hour or so. It would seem to be relatively high exercise, but I noticed no major weight change.
In Rome I got sick and still have some side effects, a minor cough. I didn't walk nearly as much, and the groceries were much closer. Maybe a 10 minute walk for the near by place and a 20 minute walk for the distant place. Still carrying most of the weight, but I'd guess I averaged no more than a mile a day and probably more likely 1/2 a mile. Still no obvious weight change using things like belt size as a measure.
Regarding eating, I'm now eating/drinking a mix of the following:
- Apples
- Grapes
- Nuts
- Gelato
- Margarita Pizza (European size, shared)
- Spaghetti
- Caprese salad/sandwich
- Sandwich (Lettuce or other greens, Cheese, bread)
- Minestrone (By bag and by fresh ingredients including Lentils
)
- Soda
- Water
- OJ
- Apple Juice
- Milk
- Broccoli (1-2x noodles in portion), noodles, cheese
- McVities Biscuits I have intentionally not started the starvation phase, I figured that would start in my next location, in about 20 days.
So sure, maybe I've lost a few pounds of weight or gained a few pounds of muscle, but it doesn't seem to have moved the needle much.
On Time:
I have spent my time working on a variety of projects, as well as the traveling around I mentioned above. One project I will talk about is actually something that might be valuable here.
I've been working on a command line app that takes in a set of investment data and a configuration file, allowing you to simulating investing in various styles. For example, you can adjust your investment portfolio based upon CAPE, or have a glide path moving from bonds to stocks. It is meant to be agnostic to the data set, so you can use anything from Big ERNs to Tyler9000s. I'm working on making this presentable to the community and plan on open sourcing it soon (next 10-30 days, I'm working on documentation now). I hope it provides someone some sort of value, but even if not, I certainly have found it enjoyable to build.
I have been doing good on this category. On a per person basis, my predicted expenses for the "trip year" (not calendar, but based upon 12 months of travel in euro) are $11k USD. This is based upon current behavior patterns, which might not be exactly how I will behave, more on that in a minute. Another consideration is this does exclude some important off balance sheet considerations. It seems important to note these are all excluded from my estimate and are all listed on a per person basis:
- Flight to and from the US (Mostly paid with points). Maybe $1-2k?
- Some minor external fees (such as credit card fee), getting a passport, etc. Maybe $100-200 missed.
- Cost of clothing, technology, etc. that was purchased before the trip. Maybe $1-1.5k in assets if we add it all up, but the tech should last 5+ years and the clothing should last the entire trip. So perhaps another $200-300 off balance sheet.
If we take middle of the road averages of each of these items we'd be at a little less than 2k USD. If I assume I'm going to be efficient on my choice of day we fly out, we'd around 1.5k USD.
So perhaps the entire trip including flights would be $~12.5k, including all the depreciation and endpoint flights. Furthermore, if I choose to be more efficient, I probably could drop that back down to $11.5k. How? By picking cheaper countries. I'm seriously looking at Greece and other cheaper countries, which based upon my rough calculations would drop my expenses down to less than ~$10k per person, ignoring the above off balance sheet items.
At $10k per person, that is nearly Jacob efficient, with less money going to housing and more money going to food and travel. If I could stay in a country longer than 3 months I'd save ~$1k, putting me very close to Jacob. Again, I admit it excludes costs of the laptop I'm writing on, etc., but not bad over all. If food bills were cut by another $~1.5k, I think I'd be at Jacob's level. I really appreciate all the lessons all you folks have given over the years. I hope my small amount of give back adds to the treasure.
On Health:
In Florence I spent 30 days walking nearly 2 miles nearly every day. I also spent 1-2 hours standing in a bus and often several hours standing looking at art, statues, etc. Often we got groceries which were about 40 min bus trip from our location. That meant carrying 10ish pounds for an hour or so. It would seem to be relatively high exercise, but I noticed no major weight change.
In Rome I got sick and still have some side effects, a minor cough. I didn't walk nearly as much, and the groceries were much closer. Maybe a 10 minute walk for the near by place and a 20 minute walk for the distant place. Still carrying most of the weight, but I'd guess I averaged no more than a mile a day and probably more likely 1/2 a mile. Still no obvious weight change using things like belt size as a measure.
Regarding eating, I'm now eating/drinking a mix of the following:
- Apples
- Grapes
- Nuts
- Gelato
- Margarita Pizza (European size, shared)
- Spaghetti
- Caprese salad/sandwich
- Sandwich (Lettuce or other greens, Cheese, bread)
- Minestrone (By bag and by fresh ingredients including Lentils
) - Soda
- Water
- OJ
- Apple Juice
- Milk
- Broccoli (1-2x noodles in portion), noodles, cheese
- McVities Biscuits I have intentionally not started the starvation phase, I figured that would start in my next location, in about 20 days.
So sure, maybe I've lost a few pounds of weight or gained a few pounds of muscle, but it doesn't seem to have moved the needle much.
On Time:
I have spent my time working on a variety of projects, as well as the traveling around I mentioned above. One project I will talk about is actually something that might be valuable here.
I've been working on a command line app that takes in a set of investment data and a configuration file, allowing you to simulating investing in various styles. For example, you can adjust your investment portfolio based upon CAPE, or have a glide path moving from bonds to stocks. It is meant to be agnostic to the data set, so you can use anything from Big ERNs to Tyler9000s. I'm working on making this presentable to the community and plan on open sourcing it soon (next 10-30 days, I'm working on documentation now). I hope it provides someone some sort of value, but even if not, I certainly have found it enjoyable to build.
Re: Experimenting with Life
While lying down something just hit me, something of a simplification about how two different economic systems work in an overly simplified way, but in a way that explains so much of the debate about economics. I know this will be controversial, but my point is not to say x is better than y but to compare and contrast two systems. These systems are Keynesianism and Austrian economics. What I'm not sure about is if these simplifications are in fact reasonably useful or if they generate more garbage than value. That is why I'm writing this out here to be challenged about 'general accuracy'. So on with the show.
Meta note: I'm posting this here rather than in Money as I think it has a bit too much politics in it and I also get the feeling in some sense I'm exploring a sort of moral relativism via economics in this and that maybe more personal than generalizable to all.
In essence both systems agree on everything but what is the most valuable (or of any value) signals we can use to determine what would be good activities to perform. All in all, they agree that this goodness involves economic transactions and that more wealth over the long run is better. Who owns the wealth and how that wealth is distributed... we'll get to that.
Both agree on the following signal proposition:
Violence >= Price
This might be violence of the state or violence of individuals, but both agree violence in general beats price signals, although it can equal it. That is to say, sometimes you can pay to stop violence, but not always and violence will signal control of wealth over price. An armed guard who applies sufficient violence will outstrip the desire for getting to the bank's money in most cases. The state's threat beats out the desire not to pay taxes. Etc. I'm sure some Austrians would say violence even has a price, but given the assumption of rules of law and contracts, I don't think that is the direction most would go. Since the rule of law requires a monopoly on violence, I think my above equation is pretty safe.
Where things break down is the following:
Price > All other signals sans violence
The Austrians seem to feel that the price signal is the most important signal. They reject generic systems like GDP and CPI. that is to say aggregate numbers because the important thing is individual decisions that impact pricing. They would say that contract law is how individuals agree on things and the market is what decides what things are worth. Allow me a quote:
I think Lord Keynes would not dispute prices generate information, but that they don't generate the only style of information nor is it clear to me that there is an equation for which one style of information is better than another. Let me give an example that the Austrians would say 'yes' to but Keynes would not:
Voting < Price
If this was not true, then the Austrians wouldn't object to voters voting in politicians who put in place CPI metrics or use GDP numbers. "The voters know what they are doing" is the sort of argument a pro-democratic system supporter would argue. Maybe Austrians wouldn't object to voting over moral issues like the death penalty, where price is not obvious, but it is hard to know what a Austrian would say about voting over the cost of a speeding ticket. Of course this does get into the entire problem of prices paid outside the market, like pollution The Austrians would argue that these ideas can be priced via market mechanisms, be it price for pollution or paying for the right to pollute. One might have "get out of jail" tickets that can be bought when you get a speeding ticket to determine the market price with scarcity leaving those with the least value in jail. Alternatively maybe they'd say you shouldn't have speeding tickets as that isn't something you can make a market around?
So what does Keynes say about voting? It would seem Keynes would see his ideas more as a policy, a sort of methodology for better outcomes, not an absolutist system. Keynes can't tell if Voting <, >, =, ~= or != Price regarding signals. His systems are technocratic. However, this is about signals, so where does Keynes propose signals come from? Keynes appears to believe aggregate outcomes generate signals. If GDP is going up, then things must be improving over all in all. Keynes says in bad times it is better to keep people alive and with hope than to ensure prices clear and to wipe out those entities damaging the economy. However, to be clear, Keynes also must, in his heart of hearts, have thought voting to be overrated because voters don't listen to global signals like GDP, they respond to local concerns. Think inflation in the supermarket, not CPI.
That being said, Keynes argued that his theory was in some sense about improving the lives of the citizenry:
Keynes would argue that the signal isn't just the price, the signal is a mix of the effort and the output. We know effort doesn't always matter, but this is about reasonably efficient effort. The effort can matter by itself in regards to the idea that full employment is possible, even without real wealth generation (e.g. breaking windows to replace them). Output in Keynes's world is connected to effort in the sense of how many windows are generated requires human effort. As an aside, if complete automation ever showed up, Keynesian ideas would be in trouble. The output in Keynes's mind can be generalized into GDP as a way of measuring output from effort. Productivity metrics would be the effort for generating a certain level of output.
These two things, effort and output, seemed to create a sort of behavioral shift in Kaynes's mind, which is perhaps the third signal, the mental model of others. How you measure that is circularly the effort people think they are making and the output they are generating often measured via prices. Thus Keynes would say in the 1930s that a businessman would say it wasn't worth the effort to run the business (his hurdle rate wasn't being met, even if he was technically profitable) and thus would close up shop, lowering GDP. This could keep circularly happening until no one thought it was worth the effort to do anything. Animal Spirits are when this mindset magically changes, not specifically when it becomes clear hurdle rates have improved. Mindset maybe the difference between pre and post WW2: It isn't clear business prospects would be massively improved, but they clearly were based upon outcome.
Pragmatists everywhere then wish to attack these two perspectives. It is obvious that the Austrian system is a "heartless system" in that price is king and no consideration of people. See the luddites responding in non-economic ways when the system becomes too heartless. Other more moderates might point out the Graeberian challenge of BS jobs. Depending on the reading they might say that BS jobs shows how companies hire too many people-- price/profits is less of a signal that it would otherwise appear or they might say that while the companies do profit, that price doesn't generate correct estimates of "value" as those who do the work can attest to. Or you could attack Keynesianism just the same way saying that over time the gov't will end up having more and more useless jobs as the government props up companies that shouldn't otherwise exist(*). Yet one last attack is that either system may possibly end up with one entity that will end up controlling everything (think Amazon, totalitarianism, fascism or communism). If you buy Anirban Chakraborti's coin flip experiments, it seems prices are not enough to prevent this problem. It is equally obvious that if everyone is just digging useless holes for the government eventually those holes will become useful graves from starvation. So some sort of compromise is needed.
(*) I don't think Graeber would agree with this perspective in that he noted high powered, high income jobs like lawyers also were doing BS work, see "goons".
As a brief aside, let me address communism. The clearest issues with communism is that wealth must be concentrated in order to produce efficiently and that when credit/blame are distributed to groups, chances of things going wrong increase[citation needed, but I could have sworn I read some studies on the subject before]. Generalist Tribes < Specialist Factories for producing general wealth(*). Thus "time saving" ideas like TV dinners are generated to keep people from having to think about cooking for themselves, keeping their mind and time on their factory work. But someone has to have the concentrated resources to build that factory. Surely the state can do that, but we know that state managers don't know enough about what goes on elsewhere to make good choices on what factories to build, where or when to conclude an idea or theory was wrong, etc. They also often have ways to avoid blame for bad ideas via clever politics since words have a less clear score than capitalists with assets/money/price systems seem to. Maybe AI or computers can solve it, but that is an open question for now.
(*) Obviously ERE-efficacy has some level of opinion on price as the only measure of value.
This is where the problem comes in, as there is no signal or even clear group of signals that the two theories agree upon for consistently generating value nor does communism generate any light on how to solve the problem. Each system has at least in some cases broken down, meaning their signal is sometimes noise. Thus it becomes a choose your own adventure and eternal debate. This is where everything goes from economic theory to economic politics, the politics of how to arrange the economy, including how to decide on politics.
My question is, what have I gotten wrong in general? Have I miss-characterized one viewpoint or another? Is the Austrian view in some deep sense more than prices? Is the Keynesian view more than a sort of personal and social "Is this worth doing?" behavioral overlay of classical economics along with some general, broadly measurable state based signals? Do any of these systems actually survive themselves when run in a pure fashion for a long time? If not, is there an economic way to decide how much of any given system to use, a sort of governor that either exists or has been seriously proposed? Last but not least, are these systems just value systems hidden behind a veneer of money and logic? Is preference of any given economic system just a mix of personality test, class/power/monetary position and value system rather than a genuine effort to guide the world towards "plenty for all"? What do you value and if you can answer in the meta sense I'm asking, why?
References:
Austrian's on Voting: https://mises.org/wire/why-voting-doesn ... eally-want
Austrian's on Environment: https://mises.org/library/austrian-theo ... -economics
Austrian's on Pricing: https://mises.org/library/source-prices
Keynesian's on Voting: https://www.econlib.org/book-chapters/c ... tics/#nn13
Old book on theory that by 2000 we'd all be run by entity, written in 1800's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Backward
Anirban Chakraborti's coin flip experiments: https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... nevitable/
Communists trying out computerized command and control economics before being killed off, in part by the US; Probably one of the most interesting but least relevant links included here: https://www.damninteresting.com/nineteen-seventy-three/
Keynes's book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gener ... _and_Money
Graeber's book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
Meta note: I'm posting this here rather than in Money as I think it has a bit too much politics in it and I also get the feeling in some sense I'm exploring a sort of moral relativism via economics in this and that maybe more personal than generalizable to all.
In essence both systems agree on everything but what is the most valuable (or of any value) signals we can use to determine what would be good activities to perform. All in all, they agree that this goodness involves economic transactions and that more wealth over the long run is better. Who owns the wealth and how that wealth is distributed... we'll get to that.
Both agree on the following signal proposition:
Violence >= Price
This might be violence of the state or violence of individuals, but both agree violence in general beats price signals, although it can equal it. That is to say, sometimes you can pay to stop violence, but not always and violence will signal control of wealth over price. An armed guard who applies sufficient violence will outstrip the desire for getting to the bank's money in most cases. The state's threat beats out the desire not to pay taxes. Etc. I'm sure some Austrians would say violence even has a price, but given the assumption of rules of law and contracts, I don't think that is the direction most would go. Since the rule of law requires a monopoly on violence, I think my above equation is pretty safe.
Where things break down is the following:
Price > All other signals sans violence
The Austrians seem to feel that the price signal is the most important signal. They reject generic systems like GDP and CPI. that is to say aggregate numbers because the important thing is individual decisions that impact pricing. They would say that contract law is how individuals agree on things and the market is what decides what things are worth. Allow me a quote:
"Prices are a market phenomenon. They are generated by the market process and are the pith of the market economy. There is no such thing as prices outside the market. Prices cannot be constructed synthetically, as it were....
Prices of the market are the ultimate fact for economic calculation. Attempts to eliminate monetary terms from economic calculation are delusive. No method of economic calculation is possible other than one based on money prices as determined by the market.
The pricing process is a social process. It is consummated by an interaction of all members of the society. All collaborate and cooperate, each in the particular role he has chosen for himself in the framework of the division of labor. Competing in cooperation and cooperating in competition all people are instrumental in bringing about the result, viz., the price structure of the market, the allocation of the factors of production to the various lines of want-satisfaction, and the determination of the share of each individual."
- Ludwig von Mises
I think Lord Keynes would not dispute prices generate information, but that they don't generate the only style of information nor is it clear to me that there is an equation for which one style of information is better than another. Let me give an example that the Austrians would say 'yes' to but Keynes would not:
Voting < Price
If this was not true, then the Austrians wouldn't object to voters voting in politicians who put in place CPI metrics or use GDP numbers. "The voters know what they are doing" is the sort of argument a pro-democratic system supporter would argue. Maybe Austrians wouldn't object to voting over moral issues like the death penalty, where price is not obvious, but it is hard to know what a Austrian would say about voting over the cost of a speeding ticket. Of course this does get into the entire problem of prices paid outside the market, like pollution The Austrians would argue that these ideas can be priced via market mechanisms, be it price for pollution or paying for the right to pollute. One might have "get out of jail" tickets that can be bought when you get a speeding ticket to determine the market price with scarcity leaving those with the least value in jail. Alternatively maybe they'd say you shouldn't have speeding tickets as that isn't something you can make a market around?
So what does Keynes say about voting? It would seem Keynes would see his ideas more as a policy, a sort of methodology for better outcomes, not an absolutist system. Keynes can't tell if Voting <, >, =, ~= or != Price regarding signals. His systems are technocratic. However, this is about signals, so where does Keynes propose signals come from? Keynes appears to believe aggregate outcomes generate signals. If GDP is going up, then things must be improving over all in all. Keynes says in bad times it is better to keep people alive and with hope than to ensure prices clear and to wipe out those entities damaging the economy. However, to be clear, Keynes also must, in his heart of hearts, have thought voting to be overrated because voters don't listen to global signals like GDP, they respond to local concerns. Think inflation in the supermarket, not CPI.
That being said, Keynes argued that his theory was in some sense about improving the lives of the citizenry:
"If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the banknotes up again" ..., there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing". - The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
Keynes would argue that the signal isn't just the price, the signal is a mix of the effort and the output. We know effort doesn't always matter, but this is about reasonably efficient effort. The effort can matter by itself in regards to the idea that full employment is possible, even without real wealth generation (e.g. breaking windows to replace them). Output in Keynes's world is connected to effort in the sense of how many windows are generated requires human effort. As an aside, if complete automation ever showed up, Keynesian ideas would be in trouble. The output in Keynes's mind can be generalized into GDP as a way of measuring output from effort. Productivity metrics would be the effort for generating a certain level of output.
These two things, effort and output, seemed to create a sort of behavioral shift in Kaynes's mind, which is perhaps the third signal, the mental model of others. How you measure that is circularly the effort people think they are making and the output they are generating often measured via prices. Thus Keynes would say in the 1930s that a businessman would say it wasn't worth the effort to run the business (his hurdle rate wasn't being met, even if he was technically profitable) and thus would close up shop, lowering GDP. This could keep circularly happening until no one thought it was worth the effort to do anything. Animal Spirits are when this mindset magically changes, not specifically when it becomes clear hurdle rates have improved. Mindset maybe the difference between pre and post WW2: It isn't clear business prospects would be massively improved, but they clearly were based upon outcome.
Pragmatists everywhere then wish to attack these two perspectives. It is obvious that the Austrian system is a "heartless system" in that price is king and no consideration of people. See the luddites responding in non-economic ways when the system becomes too heartless. Other more moderates might point out the Graeberian challenge of BS jobs. Depending on the reading they might say that BS jobs shows how companies hire too many people-- price/profits is less of a signal that it would otherwise appear or they might say that while the companies do profit, that price doesn't generate correct estimates of "value" as those who do the work can attest to. Or you could attack Keynesianism just the same way saying that over time the gov't will end up having more and more useless jobs as the government props up companies that shouldn't otherwise exist(*). Yet one last attack is that either system may possibly end up with one entity that will end up controlling everything (think Amazon, totalitarianism, fascism or communism). If you buy Anirban Chakraborti's coin flip experiments, it seems prices are not enough to prevent this problem. It is equally obvious that if everyone is just digging useless holes for the government eventually those holes will become useful graves from starvation. So some sort of compromise is needed.
(*) I don't think Graeber would agree with this perspective in that he noted high powered, high income jobs like lawyers also were doing BS work, see "goons".
As a brief aside, let me address communism. The clearest issues with communism is that wealth must be concentrated in order to produce efficiently and that when credit/blame are distributed to groups, chances of things going wrong increase[citation needed, but I could have sworn I read some studies on the subject before
]. Generalist Tribes < Specialist Factories for producing general wealth(*). Thus "time saving" ideas like TV dinners are generated to keep people from having to think about cooking for themselves, keeping their mind and time on their factory work. But someone has to have the concentrated resources to build that factory. Surely the state can do that, but we know that state managers don't know enough about what goes on elsewhere to make good choices on what factories to build, where or when to conclude an idea or theory was wrong, etc. They also often have ways to avoid blame for bad ideas via clever politics since words have a less clear score than capitalists with assets/money/price systems seem to. Maybe AI or computers can solve it, but that is an open question for now.(*) Obviously ERE-efficacy has some level of opinion on price as the only measure of value.
This is where the problem comes in, as there is no signal or even clear group of signals that the two theories agree upon for consistently generating value nor does communism generate any light on how to solve the problem. Each system has at least in some cases broken down, meaning their signal is sometimes noise. Thus it becomes a choose your own adventure and eternal debate. This is where everything goes from economic theory to economic politics, the politics of how to arrange the economy, including how to decide on politics.
My question is, what have I gotten wrong in general? Have I miss-characterized one viewpoint or another? Is the Austrian view in some deep sense more than prices? Is the Keynesian view more than a sort of personal and social "Is this worth doing?" behavioral overlay of classical economics along with some general, broadly measurable state based signals? Do any of these systems actually survive themselves when run in a pure fashion for a long time? If not, is there an economic way to decide how much of any given system to use, a sort of governor that either exists or has been seriously proposed? Last but not least, are these systems just value systems hidden behind a veneer of money and logic? Is preference of any given economic system just a mix of personality test, class/power/monetary position and value system rather than a genuine effort to guide the world towards "plenty for all"? What do you value and if you can answer in the meta sense I'm asking, why?
References:
Austrian's on Voting: https://mises.org/wire/why-voting-doesn ... eally-want
Austrian's on Environment: https://mises.org/library/austrian-theo ... -economics
Austrian's on Pricing: https://mises.org/library/source-prices
Keynesian's on Voting: https://www.econlib.org/book-chapters/c ... tics/#nn13
Old book on theory that by 2000 we'd all be run by entity, written in 1800's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Backward
Anirban Chakraborti's coin flip experiments: https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... nevitable/
Communists trying out computerized command and control economics before being killed off, in part by the US; Probably one of the most interesting but least relevant links included here: https://www.damninteresting.com/nineteen-seventy-three/
Keynes's book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gener ... _and_Money
Graeber's book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs