Our Fear of Abundance
Profit requires Scarcity. And most Investors require Profit as Return for the risk they take. So it would seem we *must* seek Scarcity - for how else could we repay our Investors? ... There is a special group that could accept Product as the Return for their risk. This special group already pays all the Costs of production anyway, AND they also pay Profit (Price above Cost) because they buy the Product late. This special group are the people the Product is supposedly being made for, and yet they must continually beg the Owners to do the right thing. And yet those owners really *cannot* do the right thing for the pleading Consumers because their Investors have conflicting goals. ... So imagine a scenario where Consumers invest and become the co-owners the Means of Production for their own, mutual benefit. This is different from a traditional cooperative because the Product is not sold and so there is no chance for Price to be above Cost. Profit is *UNDEFINED* when Product is ROI because there is no sale. The final transaction does not occur because the Product is already in the hands of the person who will Consume it. This short-circuit across the usual need for trade is a optimization in that the Product is "pre allocated" to the person who needs it so there is no need to buy or sell that Product since it is already in the hands of the person who will Consume it. Governments cannot tax or interrogate the missing transaction. See http://Wikipedia.org/wiki/Imputed_rent for a subset of the issue.
participants (1)
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Patrick Anderson