January 28, 2015

The Price is Right

Proposed: Instant Externality Price Integration- AKA, Put Everything Good About Life into the Price, or PEGALIP.  Money is, certainly, an extremely archaic abstraction ("See, Grok, it shiny!") whose mathematical and political idiosyncrasies create titanic and often horrific mismatches between needed efforts of labor and capital and  beneficial outcomes in a social utilitarian sense.

Market systems do not, and normatively must, integrate the costs of irreversible and deleterious consumption or destruction of external, un-priced benefits, from clean water, air, food, to  peace, gross human happiness, social harmony, equality and justice, to spiritual or moral aspiration, to health, to art, to love, to joy, and to the maintenance and growth of the great diversity of life on earth beyond 100 years.

And it's not just actual harm- who knows how big the opportunity cost is for missed beneficial externalities. That is a tragedy of eons. But keep on like we have, and everything that is good and right and beautiful will shrivel up and die forever, and also fairly soon.

So how about a new monetary and trading system with constantly, digitally updated integration of externalities - again, air, water, peace, art, a living earth, love, social justice, etc-  using a combination of market demands and experts monitoring into what you might call constant-adjustment externality-integrated pricing? Hire 100,000 international  academics in all fields- using the latest social media application!- to price in all discernible externalities directly into all trading systems, in instantly and constantly updated adjustments to prices - taxing external costs and subsidizing external benefits.

Example: Selling gas hog truck? The externalities market peeps charge you an extra 47% today, based on awesomely great metrics of some sort. Creating an unheard-of, wind-driven cargo ship? 23% off in the next 8 minutes, from the Department of Not Erasing Life on Earth as Quickly as Humanly Possible. But regulatory experts, cross-check your smack for other problems, and soon. Also, democracy soon.

"Inbox: Notice: The Department of Love Externalities is adding a 58% surcharge on your diamond rings, because you have sucked up crass materialism around monopoly price enforced stones of all things, into the most intimate displays of affection, eroding the value of honestly and difficultly expressed feelings of desire. XOXO"

Yes: Amazon socialism.  If we can price everything instantly, we can price it right instantly. If you like markets because they are fun, you can have fun incentivizing the identification and correct pricing of externalities with a market for THAT.

I'm sure someone has proposed this. But did they copyright it? Please pay me $746.00 for this excellent idea that will save millions of lives and bring great peace and happiness to all forms of sentient life on earth, thank you.

1 Comments:

Blogger The Other Front said...

This is pure unadulterated genius. I am sure that the utility you derive from my sincere appreciation almost exactly offsets the "all-in" price of your innovation, obviating the need for cash settlement.

Well done.

January 28, 2015 at 6:06 PM  

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