Originally Posted by makeinu
So don't measure it in dollars, measure it in man hours. It really doesn't matter what the units are. I could destroy all the rulers in the world, but I'd still have a 1.5" tire.
You asked "If 'defense' were unnecessary, what would you vote to devote several trillion dollars worth of resources to?". My answer was that I would devote the resources to the widescale democratic negotiations that would have to take place instead and I asked you to estimate how much resources these negotiations would require. Use whatever units you like. I just thought dollars would be a convenient unit since we're comparing it to the resources used for "defense" (which you cited in dollars).
I don't feel like I'm being contrary and I don't feel like you're giving poor explainations. I feel like you're skirting the question of how much resources the operation of the ideal utopian democracy would require and how it compares with the resources required for the operation of the capitalist system. Every time I ask you just point to how vast the resources required for the operation of the capitalist system are. However, you haven't given any reason to believe that the resources required for the operation of the ideal utopian democracy aren't equally vast or worse.
I'm inclined to think that the overhead of the ideal utopian democracy would be greater than that of the capitalist system. Of course, that's not necessarily a bad thing. If mankind has the extra resources then why not use them to build a more pleasant society? In my opinion, one of the flaws of capitalism is that, although it's extremely productive, it never stops to enjoy the produce. However, you seem convinced that your ideal utopian democracy is not only more pleasant, but also more efficient (due to a lower overhead). I'm asking you why you think the latter is true. I'm not being contrarian. I just want to understand how you came to this conclusion.
Okay, fair enough. Maybe my problem is that I don't understand what you mean by "overhead" as it relates to a stateless, money-less socioeconomic system administrated from the community level, or maybe to me it just seems obvious. Rather than a collection of huge top-down hierarchical power structures each composed of millions of full-time workers plus support personnel, and all the material resources that this represents, that are in competition with each other to amass wealth, we would have small part-time community committees making decisions on the community level. In the event, and only in the event, of community level decisions that require a more general level of cooperation, that is, beyond the community, would a single delegate be elected to represent the community in a more general administrative body. So all these millions of workers would be free to engage in productive activities that benefit the community.