The Optimum Society

I was thinking about traffic flows as part of some cogitation about the perfect society, and I started thinking about measurables for the optimum society.

I thought of "time from work to home"; the optimum society would have an average travel time of zero, obviously, for maximum efficiency.

What other things might be measured to identify the efficiency of society?

I was thinking
- waste percentage (recycling)
- unemployment (but a slightly different measure that takes into account people doing unpaid work)
- supply chain measures (stockpiles being bad)

I'd like more ideas so I can keep developing my 'utopia'. If you're lucky you may get to read about it here.

re unemployment/unpaid work - paid work isnt always beneficial work just like spending on ciggies has a negative effect.

Perfect society? less lawyers?

Well part of my "perfect society" involves enhancing efficiency and reducing "societal friction."

What I need to do is think about all of the potential measurables so I can identify ways to improve them.

Hrm, you're right about paid work not always being beneficial work but it'd be impossible to measure to that level of granularity...

do you plan to put any constraints on your objective to maximize efficiency?

Whether stockpiles are good or bad, will depend entirely on the dynamic of the market. I would let "it" determine what is good and bad when it comes to stockpiles.

I mean you are taking something that is already highly efficient and attempting to curb (using a command and control style mentality) what may actually be required.

If goods become stockpiled it may represent a downturn in consumer demand, what do you do then? force consumers to purchase the goods? In most cases "says law" is sufficient in dealing with a general glut. I.e. simply cut prices and watch the stockpile disapear.

note to self: must avoid any vads thread with "society" in the title

Well I was actually using a free market mentality here... just in time logistics and all that. Surely the optimum (if unachievable) system is that a good is produced so that it is available to a consumer at exactly the time required, and that no goods are produced that are not demanded? As with distance to work, that's the optimum and unachievable, but it's still one end of the graph

I'm just thinking of measurables rather than solutions yet. BTW things like "print on demand" are close to perfection...

Does your society have a goal/aim? I mean it could be efficient in production but have zero value placed on personal will/happiness.

Im guessing you value production of real goods but what about other things that are less tangible?

While improved construction/production methods and technology are reducing the time taken, in-between the demand for and delay of a good being produced and handed over, I'm not sure every sector of an economy could ever achieve such instant gratification. Think of a reseller for instance, of urban street trends perhaps? The catalogues they receive are dictated by the labels and seasons. They do have some say in the matter of course, and will order in specific quantities, based on available store space, backroom storage, expectations of consumer demand, and various annualized sales statistics, in order to supply their store inventories.

But as we observe every year, not all of the goods will be sold, hence why you see 50% off stands, trying to get rid of old seasons clothing. So for this to work, most industries would require a store to be out the front of the production factory, which is inefficient if you think about space/land lease, costs et al. It would probably be better to have multiple stores and one factory for instance, possibly even outsourced too. And this is depsite the fact that predicting individual consumer preferences will never be an exact science.

An important point I wish to make is that the market may not seem perfect, but the price adjustment process will often correct any supply and demand problems by itself. This is one area of economics that is greatly underestimated in my opinion. That is ‘prices also serve as signals’. It's like the market has its own self correction mechanism built in as an inherent feature. This can often become distorted though by government interference in the economy.


Good example, another one that comes to mind is getting a key cut. But despite such examples, there is still technology and parts involved in the production process, especially certain materials, which will not always be in use and will hence need to be stockpiled, ready for when the customer walks in. There will even be intervals where such equipment may remain idle for some time, before a customer does request the applicable good or service.

I have to say, I have always been pessimistic that society could achieve such an optimum level theorized. Imperfect information and all that jazz.

exactly

you need to have a vision, and I'm not convinced you have one, beyond "efficiency"

that is a very robotic ambition for human society

Mountain out of a molehill

Re-read my original post

What I'm after are potential measurables within the society. Not solutions. I haven't mentioned a goal yet. What I'm after are ways to improve SOME aspects of human society while considering the effect on others.

A perfectly efficient transport system, for example, would increase our amount of time for leisure activities. Isn't that a worthy social goal?

it sounds like you want a society geared towards more "harmony" and less stress

you are looking to reduce social friction eg stress

that is a worthy goal I suppose!

Consider a world where...
- we all work from home
- production processes produce zero waste

(those are just two potential measurables)

Straight away you can see some major gains (potentially) for both social activities and the environment.

Now if we're also at zero unemployment, then we're also maximising work force utilisation and potentially productivity as well.

Still after some more measurables!!

I have similar discussions sometimes with friends who are completing degrees in Political Science. There seems to be a consistent trend of where their ideals do not always take certain aspects of economics into the equation. You like them, seem to focus on a certain ideal, without taking into consideration that the consumer is what dictates and will allow some of these aspects to occur. I had a discussion on Saturday night about how if we were all allowed an additional day off every fortnight, our export prices might go up, we will be less competitive with a country which does not adopt such a policy, and it may lead to an increase in unemployment in some sectors of the economy as a consequence.

So while I agree that its a nice ideal, and something worth aiming for in the long term, certain forces prevent me from supporting it merely on princple. This is similar to your ideal of everyone working from home. Productivity (at least in certain industries) could decline. Prices may increase, which means an impact on the affordability of goods and services.

Also zero unemployment is not possible in the market, due to the creative destruction and frictional unemployment that results as a natural consequence. Frictional unemployment can be workers changing jobs due to redundency, which can be caused by consumers no longer purchasing the companies products (there may be a better goods available), or workers even wishing to aquire better experience by changing jobs on their own accord. I mean in your favour it would certainly be nice if robots performed a lot of the hard labour for us and we all had more leasure time available as a consequence but I could alos see this generating a lot of conflict between advanced and developing nations.

would your optimum society also involve world-wide disarmament, universal disbandment of armies, vacation of all military posts, removal of 'war' as an available form of conflict resolution between states, and complete rejection of the notion of military? :>

The aim of reaching an optimum state of human existence is better suited or certainly more attainable under a single world government. Where workers rights and policy can be implemented and enforced universally across all nation states together...

I haven't got that far.

It's a case of identifying the net benefits and costs.

Remember right now I'm identifying measurables. In this case you'd come into conflict with:
- maximising human life
- maximising research speed

You may have to take a higher rate of deaths from warfare to enhance scientific research (at least with major wars, African bush wars probably don't help)

I don't understand the link between death rate from warfare and enhancing scientific research



Ok, what about something simpler.... removing borders? :>

For the second, it depends whether you're maximising benefit for humanity or subgroups in humanity... also there might be a view that competition between subgroups within humanity is actually beneficial for human advancement (a sort of macro-market model). Whereas One World Govt is a command economy type of thing.

As for war and science - honey - just about every major scientific advance has either come from war or sport (motor/air racing).

Plz list scientific advancements that have so far resulted from the war in Former Yugoslavia, the war in Rwanda, and the war in Sudan.

None that I *know* of.

However, jet aircraft, superchargers, margarine, canning procedures (for a few basic examples) came from military technology.

The Internet came from the Arpanet, hell ENIAC was an artillery plotting device.

I'm not aware of any scientific advancement either from those wars, just millions who are dead, injured and displaced, and generations which have either been wiped out or will suffer the consequences of these conflicts for years to come.

The bottom line is you can still have advancement without the military context, its clearly not dependent upon it.

Is war efficient? Doesn't look like it to me, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.