VoiceOfRa

I'd be even more suspicious of someone telling me that it's not that simple.

One interesting point, not expanded up on, is this:

One writer chalks this concern up to a bunch of “conspiracy theor(ies)”.

Balding dismisses this by citing Premier Li Keqiang, but I think this objection illustrates a deeper problem with the way the phrase "conspiracy theory" is used. It's frequently used to dismiss any suggestion that someone in authority is behaving badly regardless of whether an actual conspiracy would be required.

Let's look at what it would take for Chinese economic data to be bad. The data is gathered by the central gov... (read more)

Recently moridinamael wrote about diswashers: As a pampered modern person, the worst part of my life is washing dishes. (Or, rinsing dishes and loading the dish washer.) How long before I can buy a robot to automate this for me?

Imagine what it was like before the dishwasher.

Wikipedia for example creates a lot of value with being structured as a network.

Which fails completely when the subject is in any way political or controversial. And by fail completely, I mean produces articles which anti-correlate with reality.

Yeah, part of what I was intending in the scenario would be that everyone realizes that we could make much faster technological advances (At least, that's the theory) if we didn't bother with keeping track of who owes who.

Except you need to keep track of who (or which algorithm if we want to be sufficiently abstract) is doing the most to contribute and being most efficient so that his success can be repeated in other parts of the system.

It's not stable. The problems I mentioned are getting worse.

Informationally equivalent = plays a role in the flow of information within the system that is equivalent to the role of money in the flow of information within economy.

Ok, I don't see how that applied to the examples in question unless you expand the meaning of "equivalent" so broadly that it becomes meaningless.

This for example.

My point is that in the "whole world adopts anarchy" scenario the warlords wouldn't be able to use trucks. Heck, without the NGOs' money they probably wouldn't be able to use trucks.

Could you define what you mean by "informationally equivalent"? Merely writing a word in bold all caps does not grant it magical powers.

Note that the Somali warlords don't extract or refine gas themselves, they barter for it from better organized nations. Heck, according to the article the vehicles were paid for by misguided foreign NGOs.

Cells certainly utilize a variety of currencies, mostly energy in various forms.

Energy is a resource, not a currency. Cells don't trade amino acids for energy with each other.

I'm pretty sure an anthill or a termite mound has some feedback systems which control the foraging of ants and termites.

Probably, although we don't fully understand them. Also feedback systems =/= currency.

My interpretation of Xyrik's question was more like "Imagine that by some unspecified magic we have solved that problem, so that everyone willingly pitches in to do their bit. What are the drawbacks then?"

Depends on the nature of the magic. Most of the obvious ones I can think of basically require the destruction of all individuality.

Well, if what you want to accomplish is motivating large groups of people into supporting you and using them to conquer a large empire, you should study what they did and how they did it.

A lot of problems that the establishment has been ignoring for decades, e.g., illegal immigration, out of control PC policing, pensions for government employees crowding out other spending, are starting to become critical and the seasoned politicians don't know how to address these problems. In fact they probably can't be addressed without upsetting established interests to whom the seasoned politicians are beholden to.