As in the XKCD comic to the left, sometimes I just can’t resist a good rant. I hope you’ll indulge me. Scott Adams has put a post up on his blog that contains a large number of wrong-headed notions. In fact, they’re so wrong-headed that I wonder whether or not he’s engaged in one of his periodic efforts to wind his readers up. Nevertheless, some criticism follows, possibly including naughty words.
Background
Adams is outlining some ideas for “Cheapatopia”, a planned community that minimizes cost-of-living while maximizing quality of life. Now, right off, this is stupid. Not stupid in the sense of being an unworthy goal, but stupid in the sense of being thought of as an unusual goal. The cost/quality tradeoff is one that everyone makes every day, and one in which cost (for some measure of cost) is always being minimized for a given quality (for some measure of quality). The tricky bit is (a.) picking the metrics, and (b.) dealing with the fact that each person will prefer a different tradeoff. Even the planning part isn’t as unusual as it should be.
Planning
Like any good Heyeck (or Hayek), I hate central planning, and the following quote is a reason why:
Imagine that Cheapatopia uses money just like the rest of the world, but for convenience, cash is banned. All payments are made by a credit/debit card (the same card).
Ah yes – for “convenience”, the planner wants to ban something that every society in history has found maddeningly useful. Do you find cash convenient? Well, according to the planner, you’re wrong, and you don’t get a choice.
Redundant
Adams continues:
Beyond regular money, the citizens of Cheapatopia would have a barter system whereby they earn what I will call Karma Points for services performed. For example, if you babysit for a neighbor, or walk someone’s dog, you get some Karma Points that you can later spend to pay a neighbor to mow your lawn. You can still buy all of those services with regular money too, so this is just an option.
This is nonsense. The proposed “Karma Point” system is really just a parallel system of currency, except that it can only be used to buy and sell certain things. It’s as if someone proposed the adoption of the Euro for all agricultural purchases in the United States. But, you know, you could still use dollars, if you preferred.
Lousy Commie
This is the best part of the “Karma Point” plan:
The key to making Karma Points work is a robust Internet-based service that sets prices for various services and keeps track of who has how many points.
I love the blatant proposal for the centralized setting of prices. This is, of course, the strategy that made the Soviet Union the economic powerhouse it is today, and represents perhaps the most widely discredited element of socialism/communism. Now, since this would only affect the parallel currency (that no one would use anyway) it’s more laughable than pernicious, but it still represents a shocking failure to learn from the economic basket cases of the 20th century. And this is from an M.B.A., no less.
Communitarianism
Of course, all this sillyness is in the service of a higher purpose:
The real purpose of this system is not just the convenience of getting stuff done, but the social interaction it causes.
Sure, you’ll be inconvenienced by arbitrary restrictions, parallel currencies, and irrational prices, but think of all the connections you’ll form! (Mostly while bitching to your neighbors and plotting revolution.) This overlooks, of course, all the connections that people form while going about their business every single day.
In Summary
Well, I feel better. Remember: Central planning is dumb, especially when done by cartoonists. (I suspect Adams would agree with at least 50% of that statememt.)
