Making Money Real

In here I will examine topics that don’t appear in the book, per the questions asked about how a given market system can work using Mahinist principles. These examples USE Mahinism, so everyone has a UBI, nobody HAS to do any specific job, and the society is paying for the work. Ownership alone does not make money. The laws of thermodynamics are followed.

How does the market for Truck Drivers work? (Freight Transport)

Not TOO differently from the way it happens now. Some entrepreneur perceives that there is a market opportunity in hauling widgets from here to there and whatnot from there to here.

The market for truck drivers still exists and probably will for another couple of years. Self-drivers and electrified rail freight will cut into the long-haul business over the next decade (if nothing else changes).

Starting a business

The entrepreneur works out that they can make a bit of extra income servicing that need, based on the work needed to do the maintenance on a truck, fuel costs, the cost of a truck, the work of someone to drive the truck, and the work of managing the whole business (Yes, management DOES count as work, but it is not paid a lot better than driving is).

The entrepreneur convinces a banker that this can be done and the loan can be repaid. The loan has no interest, so if the truck is well maintained, the payback period can be much shorter than the truck’s lifetime. The banker funds the entrepreneur with the startup cost, and the entrepreneur then finds a driver and lists the service (There is a long discussion about advertising and the lack of much need for it in the book, but not repeated here.).

The “Yellow Pages” application tells people that there is a freight service. The freight is hauled. The cost of the service (Driver’s work, Loan payment, Truck maintenance, Management work, and Fuel-cost) is also the price of the service. The driver is paid for the work of driving the truck according to their skill level.

Who gets paid, and for what

The Maintainer is paid for keeping the truck on the road. The loan is paid back to the bank. The banker is paid for evaluating the loan applications. The Entrepreneur is paid a small amount for managing the business (unless the Entrepreneur hires a manager) and a different small amount for creating the business. That last amount is for the work of invention.

The work of inventing a new business, a new method, writing a new book, or creating a work of art is paid somewhat differently than before. We do not “own” ideas, but the work of publishing an idea in a useful form is paid to the extent that the idea is used. The more people use it, the more useful that work is to society. The inventor (or entrepreneur) continues to be paid for that work when the society uses it for as long as they live and the business runs.

The user of the freight system, the one with the widgets to go from here to there, pays the COST of the freight run.

Who pays?

Who pays for the work? The book goes into this in detail, but the “Indirect Societal Reward” discussion can be summed up as “society pays.” Mahinism relies on a government that is not captured by the owning class because a foundation principle of Mahinism is that there can be no owning class.

Spotify – Can’t an Artist make a Living?

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Spotify is a service – an aggregator that brings artists and their audience together. Providing the service is work that gets paid for, and the artist gets paid when someone listens. The difficulty comes with the ownership rights arrangements limiting the ability of others to provide a similar service. I will have to return to this. People should remind me because I have to prioritize the audiobook now.

Who gets money from just owning something? You have to do something with the things you own to make money. Neil Young found that out when he pulled his songs from Spotify.