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[Vester]

Alright, well, we're cancelling all debts.  We can do that, we're the UN.

No, you won't get your money back.  That credit you've been moving around as a form of currency is gone. 

What's that?  Economic crisis?  Mass-poverty?  We don't deal with crises and poverty, we're the UN.  You're on your own.

That part is accurate, although they at least try.

[Armok]

Well, presumably they'd have to replace it with something, pherhaps giving evryone an amount of curency aproxematly equal to the logarithm of their total assets before the resets, and with a minimum of 1? (thats just pulling a number out of my ass. Acording to that somone that had 10 000 000 000 dollars before the reset would have  as much money as 5 peaple who had 10...) I kno0w nothing abaut economy but atleast Im probably giving economists a good laugh.

[Cthulhu]

There are over 6 billion people in the world.  If you want to figure out how much money each person gets, go for it.

[Armok]

Well, lets decide from the begining that the median person will get exactly one unit, and go from there?

[Vester]

You're implying that A) people aren't selfish and b) resources can be equally distributed, to hell with geography.

...

I just... dunno.

[Cthulhu]

If this stuff were possible in any sane way, it would have been done already.

You're just saying "Worldwide Communism, logistics be damned" and that's it.  It won't work, it can't work.


Plus, how do you value how much each person gets?  What is the "median person"?

[Vester]

Can I be the median person?

[Cthulhu]

No, I'm the median person.

[Armok]

Well, I always assumed communism didn't work due to lack of motive, this would be a one-of thing, not a permanent system.
Also, the logarithm and median thing is basically this: For each person in  the world, calculate their total assets of all kinds (this is the hard part), then set any value less than 0 to 0, then replace each value with it's own logarithm, then sort the list according to size, then multiply all of them with the inverse of the quantity in the exact middle of the list, add 1 to all the items, then set everyone bank accounts so that their total assets equal the quantity that resulted from this algorithm (everything value is of coarse renormalized for this calculation).

This is completely irrelevant, I know this is a stupid and ridiculous and imposible thing to do, it was just an example.

[Cthulhu]

Well, I always assumed communism didn't work due to lack of motive, this would be a one-of thing, not a permanent system.
Also, the logarithm and median impossible[/b] part), then set any value less than 0 to 0, then replace each value with it's own logarithm, then sort the list according to size, then multiply all of them with the inverse of the quantity in the exact middle of the list, add 1 to all the items, then set everyone bank accounts so that their total assets equal the quantity that resulted from this algorithm (everything value is of coarse renormalized for this calculation).

This is completely irrelevant, I know this is a stupid and ridiculous and imposible thing to do, it was just an example.

If you're going to give an example, give a real one.

[Armok]

I don't know enoguht economics to do that.

[Blacken]

It wouldn't work, and not because of "selfishness."

It wouldn't work because you'd see the same problems in no time. People without the marketable skills to get more money will end up in the same hole--and there are more of them now than ever before, people who are too uneducated or too narrowly focused (two sides of the same coin, really) to effectively operate in a global economy. Also factor in that it seems that a global economy requires the existence of fractional-reserve banking (you do know that your bank makes money, as in poof, out of thin air, right?) and it's wholly infeasible.

Lordy. Thanks for the in-depth response, Blacken.

No problem. It's what I do. I'm a software developer who's probably going back for a master's in economics in a few years, so I've spent some time on the topic.

[Armok]

Yes I know abaut the banks creating money.

And economic inaquality is from skill inequality? I thought it was from historical reasons and inheritance, and that it would take a century or two to resurface, and by that time some technology that makes everything obsolete will have been invented.

[Blacken]

Obviously historical situation is a large factor. But, generally speaking, people with highly marketable skills do commensurately better regardless of society. Countries have marketable qualities, too--in such a situation you'd immediately see China attain a position of strength (because they have a staggering array of manufacturing systems), and the United States would scramble to reactivate our significant manufacturing industry (which we still have, contrary to popular belief--it just doesn't get used because it's not economically feasible).

You cannot bank on "some technology" appearing that "solves your problems." There's no guarantee, or even a really good chance, of that happening.

[Neruz]

China would also gain a marked amount of strength due to the fact that they have 1/3 of the worlds population.