still on gain-max./efficiency

[Roberto Verzola <rverzola@phil.gn.apc.org>]

 >When most of the Y2K problem was being created, few had any notion
 >that their 2 digit years would be around at the end of the century.
 >They did not intend to build permanent housing.  Your scenario
 >invokes a level of prescience that is totally unrealistic.  Hindsight
 >can always raise questions that should have been addressed.  But to
 >attribute this issue to being "blinded" by hasty, gain-max. decision
 >making descends into a polemic.

Maybe we can split the Y2K mistake into two periods: up to the 70's,
it was mostly shortsightedness. That would still have been easily
corrected as soon as the problem entered the planning horizon.

But for those who continued to make non-compliant systems, in the 80's
and 90's won't you concede that they were doing so -- or were forced
to do so -- in the context of efficiency/gain-max. considerations?

Even while we continue debate on this flaw, I would also like to move
the discussion to several other possible flaws which have been
proposed, like:

* shortsightedness (Bacon)
* the globalist instead of the modular approach (Verzola)
* money itself as the flaw (Hanson)

The latest comment by Ed Deak about the gold standard is interesting.
I think that if our rulesets very strictly tied the amount of money in
circulation to the amount of precious metals held by a government,
neither governments nor financial institutions like banks can
arbitrarily create wealth (ie, valid claims on goods) for themselves
by the simple expedient of introducing new financial instruments (like
printed money, credit instruments, etc. -- see Korten's _When
Corporations Rule the World_)

The existence today of $20 to $50 of such financial instruments for
every dollar of money that has its equivalent in real goods or
services will worsen the Y2K crisis as follows: as public confidence
in these instruments crumbles due to fears of computer breakdowns,
there will be a rush to convert them into real goods, particularly
since people also want to stock up on goods due to fears of production
and distribution breakdowns. Shortages in real goods will definitely
occur as people stock up more goods than they need, and $20 to $50 of
purchasing power bid for every dollar of real goods. The Y2K crisis
will expose the basic flaws of the global financial system and may
even bring it down totally.

As we reorganize our post-2000 societies, this is one area where the
old system should definitely not be allowed to go back to "business as
usual", and new monetary systems should be thought out, tried and
tested in practice. There have been experiments in local money in the
past. Perhaps, these can form the core of a new post-2000 monetary
system.

Comments are welcome!

Roberto