A questioner asked: How supply and demand is tracked and dealt with in Copiosis? For example you say that food is free in Copiosis so how do we track the need to produce more of a food produce (or any free product for that matter) if we aren’t directly accounting for it by people spending reward on them? This won’t be so much a problem for things that aren’t free since the payer organization could track how many times people spend there reward on a product then that info could be sent back to the producer to let them know the demand of their product so they can then work together to decide if more of a product is needed to be made, but what about things that producers make that are free?
We humans are immersed in “economic theory” like fish are in water. So when I say “supply and demand is an economics concept, a concept that doesn’t exist in the natural world”, I’m likely to get strange looks. But that really is the case.
Copiosis is about reconnecting humanity back to nature without jettisoning technical advances which help make our species and our lifestyles awesome. Part of doing that is by removing concepts such as “supply and demand” so humanity can reconnect with natural process taking place in the natural world. One of these is the concept of abundance, which is so overwhelmingly obvious in the natural world, arguments to the contrary are easy to dispel.
But that’s another story.
I’ll answer the question[s] above in a moment. First let’s clarify for all readers another important Copiosis concept called “available to all at no cost.” It may have been the commenter’s shorthand, or it may have been a misunderstanding to equate “available to all at no cost” as the same as “free”. This is a common misconception.
But “available to all at no cost” is not the same as “free”. A person in Copiosis can’t walk into a store take items off the shelf and leave. That’s not how Copiosis works. All property is owned by someone. So to get ones necessities, one still has to go to a store and check them through some sort of system that records the property transfer from the current owner to the new owner (the consumer). This step is the point at which the above questions are answered.
Accounting for necessities is no different from luxury consumption accounting. In luxuries’ case, it’s not the transfer of NBR that creates a record. Why? Because there is no NBR transfer. The consumer’s NBR simply goes out of existence. It doesn’t go to anyone. But the property in question does go somewhere: from the producer to the new owner. That is the record that’s important. For both luxuries and necessities.
So when anything is transferred from one person to another a record is made. Today, when someone buys something, a record of the purchase is made, but also inventory software tracks the drop in inventory in the same way it records inventory increases when suppliers bring more inventory to the point of sale. When someone buys a head of lettuce, the software deducts one “item” of lettuce head from the grocer’s “inventory”. When enough lettuce heads are purchased, causing inventories to reach a certain level, the software can do a number of things: alert the purchasing department that lettuce head supplies are low, thus triggering a wholesale purchase of more lettuce; or, it can automatically contact the supplier, letting her know the grocer needs more lettuce inventory. This is typical for modern-day supply chain logistics systems operating today.
This example is why I say most technology needed to run Copiosis exists. This system is easily repurposed to monitor inventories throughout the system and alert producers about all kinds of things relative to inventory (supply):
- It can tell producers – at pretty much any given time period – how much of whatever consumers are consuming (instantaneous consumer demand). That includes luxuries, necessities, products and services.
- It can tell producers the inventory status of any good or service at any time, any place. So payers and producers (and consumers, if they’re interested) can know how much of whatever exists, where; how much is in production, where; and pretty much anything else.
- Based on historic consumption patterns, it can reasonably predict future demand for anything. If sophisticated enough, such systems can (and do) predict demand by correlating consumption data with weather patterns (coffee shops need more insulated to-go cups in winter than summer), recurring events (more sports team shirts are needed during their respective seasons), or even social events (more staff will be needed at a venue if a popular attraction is scheduled).
Today our system is pretty darn efficient at matching “supply” and “demand” up and down the supply chain. It allows for on-demand, or “just in time” delivery, again, up and down the supply chain. And it allows everyone involved to better understand how much of whatever they need to or would want to make. Where we currently suck is manufacturing efficiency: our technology is not yet as advanced as it can be, especially at the end of the product life cycle.
Of course, Copiosis would also include in the software an expectation or estimate of Net Benefit produced, thereby allowing producers to tell, in advance, how their rewards might be effected by a given consumer behavior or change in manufacturing practices. In other words, I could see specialty entities popping up offering computer modeling services for producers to study NBR impacts of certain hypothetical scenarios.
Combine this technology with advanced manufacturing processes that allow us to capture even more resource efficiency throughout the product life cycle and you end up with a society that is hyper-efficient in providing consumers with everything they need, while at the same time hyper-efficient at rebuilding and stewarding the environment. Oh, by the way, all these technologies are available to all at no cost. Those designing and installing them, as well as those using them as end users are all rewarded as a result. All this happens naturally, as people seek to maximize Net Benefit.
There’s really no need to fret about supply and demand in Copiosis. Natural abundance combined with Net Benefit Rewards efficiently allocates resources (including necessities) with none of the trouble we see today such as supply “surpluses” or “shortages”.
(other photo credits; John Foust, Jezael Melgoza, Clark Young on Unsplash)