[NKS Ways of Thinking of Price] - A New Kind of Science: The NKS ForumA New Kind of Science: The NKS Forum
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NKS Ways of Thinking of Price
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Posted by: John Gelles
To some degree, economics is all about price, including not just the price in money of things but the price in things of money.
Perhaps an NKS way of using price might begin with a directory of SKU (stock keeping unit) data bases. It would proceed with the data bases themselves. In each would be the SKU, the description of the priced item, the price, and as much logistical data as possible on inventory, pipelines-in, orders, and pipelines-out, etc. They would be an economic information territory encompassing everything priced for use or trade.
A distribution by value would bring order to the databases that put the largest inventories first and the smallest last. A second view of the bases might put the most critical items first and the least last.
The point of all this territorial information would be to make sure we would suffer as few shortages as possible and have as little excess inventory and capacity as possible.
Visualizions of the territory would be designed to reveal how an economy was performing in fact -- not just who was making money in the stock and bond markets. [Possibly to be continued]
Posted by: Karl Smith
Thats a noble task.
Two problems we might have though are
1) Getting people to give up that data. They are notoriously stingy about valuable information
2) A lot of important things don't have a price we can easiliy measure.
For example: Kind words from your children. You can impact the level of it, all be it stochasticaly, by spending more or less quality time with your kids. But that has a price assocaited with it.
Posted by: John Gelles
You are too kind in initially seeing just two problems.
Information as property could, I believe, be satisfied-- our current tax laws demand so much and punish us after we give it.
I believe the NKS way might put an end to taxes -- certainly if they are unnecessary.
As to priceless values like love, etc., they are, in my view, the reason for applying economics to material need.
One of the problems I see is identifying for voter approval good reasons to want information to augment the simple notion that market price, unfettered by national strategy, can allocate economic effort in the national and collective individual interest.
If market price cannot, and if markets, as such, would have to be perfectly organized for that notion (called laissez-faire) to make sense, then there is a need for real information to guide decision ahead of price.
The point is quickly reached, when thinking like this is attempted, when monograph and book-length treatment is necessary. Yet I see some value in breaking away from conventional acceptance of markets and prices to imagine solutions to poverty, etc., by industrial powers who can travel to the moon and return with human and robotic crews.
There appears to be a disconnect between economics and both science and common sense.
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