> I confess that I don't have the knowledge to understand the reasons for that.
You want the technical, mathematical, reason for that? The short version is that for society as a whole, prices are information. How many fields should be filled with grain plants? How many with flowers? How many factories should make cars? Phones? Tv furniture? How much fuel goes to heating? How much to transporting old people to the hospital and back?
I hope that can explain, if "society" gets that information more than a tiny bit wrong ... very bad things will happen. VERY bad things. People will die, lots of them, and quickly, if you get it wrong.
I hope it also makes it clear that for society as a whole, money isn't a "real" limit. Rather it's a tool that makes the actual limits clear. If we make 50% more bread, how do we make that not affect how many heart surgeries can be done?
Capitalism has many advantages, the strongest of which, in my opinion, is that it simply imposes a cost on lying. You can lie about production, about prices, but it'll cost you. It is resilient against the bane of so many other systems: it is extremely resilient against people trying to sabotage it, because everyone has an incentive to undo or bypass sabotage. In other systems like communism or slavery the people doing work have an extreme incentive to lie, and the only break on that is violence against workers. But the state fundamentally has no idea if you're lying or not, so that violence will be mostly random. It can't be directed against the people actually causing problems in society.
Thanks for taking the time to answer, I really appreciate that. About the pricing, isn't that the same as managing scarce resources? In a supposed AGI utopia, why would society still need it? To be clear, I get your point. I'm not against capitalism, I just don't get why it would be needed when resources are unconstrained
You want the technical, mathematical, reason for that? The short version is that for society as a whole, prices are information. How many fields should be filled with grain plants? How many with flowers? How many factories should make cars? Phones? Tv furniture? How much fuel goes to heating? How much to transporting old people to the hospital and back?
I hope that can explain, if "society" gets that information more than a tiny bit wrong ... very bad things will happen. VERY bad things. People will die, lots of them, and quickly, if you get it wrong.
I hope it also makes it clear that for society as a whole, money isn't a "real" limit. Rather it's a tool that makes the actual limits clear. If we make 50% more bread, how do we make that not affect how many heart surgeries can be done?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem
Capitalism has many advantages, the strongest of which, in my opinion, is that it simply imposes a cost on lying. You can lie about production, about prices, but it'll cost you. It is resilient against the bane of so many other systems: it is extremely resilient against people trying to sabotage it, because everyone has an incentive to undo or bypass sabotage. In other systems like communism or slavery the people doing work have an extreme incentive to lie, and the only break on that is violence against workers. But the state fundamentally has no idea if you're lying or not, so that violence will be mostly random. It can't be directed against the people actually causing problems in society.