Comment by __MatrixMan__

Yeah sure, the scarcity is not gone, but its also no longer the only logic that's influencing the direction of the system.

I'm not asking people to behave according to some social norms. I'm expecting them to already have such norms and to use them to decide on a direction in which to shove the market. We've got plenty of horsepower, what we're lacking is a compass. I might not agree with the choices that get made, but I'm still in favor of them being choices that had humans at the helm, rather than the whims of an irrational market.

Whereas with a strictly scarcity based system, our preferences only half matter. It has created a dangerous blindness to outcomes. As long as the number goes up, we keep our foot on the gas, never mind the cliff over there. There are a variety ways to steer an economy:

- say yes/no to a transaction...

-- based on expectations about the value of what is being bought/sold

-- based on whether the transaction will enable the buyer to help/harm the seller or visa versa

I suppose that's 8 buttons to push. But we're currently ignoring the third dimension which reduces it to just 4. We haven't provided people with an expressive enough control panel to act rationally. Not enough input to make a good decision, and outputs that don't carry enough information to be used as actionable feedback, it's just flattened to a yes or a no.

> Prices show up in optimization whether you want them to or not.

Yes but they could carry more information, such as why you're getting a good or a bad price, which might lead one to change their behavior so that more people are more willing to work with them and they therefore get a better price.

> that's more opaque and harder to understand

Well yes, a car with only an engine and no steering wheel is indeed easier to understand than one with both, but I'd still prefer the latter.

Which is why I'm saying we need to start now. We can't wait for scarcity to be gone, we need to actively make space for something else to grow. Not so the new thing can replace scarcity, but so it can find an equilibrium with it.