what are market based views on maximizing social utility?

[la guerita]

[Red Harvest]

Adam Smith's concept of the Invisible Hand of Capitalism is what you are looking for.

This is the notion that once a government repeals restrictions on the markets and allows commerce to freely act, then it will provide jobs for people and wealth will trickle down from the rich to the poor.

Social utility, so welfare and the institution which provide this, will then, such is the claim, not be needed to be provided by a government and will be delivered by the market. The argument for this is that the government, and its administration is ideologically driven, as opposed to the market which is the 'pooling' of self interests of lots and lots of people.

It is the idea that government regulation of markets is unwarranted because the markets can regulate themselves, and that government interference only serves to stifle innovation and expansion of the markets, making people poorer due to their being fewer and fewer jobs available. Also, taxation should be very low, in order to allow individuals to invest in stock and possibly start their own companies.

The arguments against market based values on maximizing social utility are that it can lead to exploitation thanks to monopolies which can feasibly exist (and do) in a free market economy, and that companies only operate on their self interest, and their exercising this within the confines of the law. Unlike a government, they have no responsibility to provide to the unfortunate, the disabled and the ill, those who cannot work.

[drypress]

I think existing systems are often not object-based to a satisfactory degree.

When we think of "genius solutions" we really want clear ideas of what can be improved or demonstrated.

Looking at technology for instance (which is a dominant metaphor at least, in addition to being so industrial) ideas can be proposed which change or adapt existing methods, but this creates a new context of "operable blindness" e.g. a kind of contingency

Most solutions you may find will begin with some concept of category, and extract this into a scenario of operable blindness. That it doesn't say so much as this about what it does may be a sign of actual incompetence (or usary)

As technological examples, I proposed at http://www.project-syndicate.org (a great site about ideas) the following technological innovations:

---Digital Marketing Devices for selling digital products by LAN or wireless
---Application Interfacer for saving meta-tags for use in public spaces, e.g. interactive visuals, music, etc.
---InterPhase display screen for application interfacer type interfacing, programs for filtering dynamic content

Maybe you are looking for these kinds of ideas, or maybe you are looking for something closer to social science literature, e.g. broad solutions or broad strokes.

One view of markets is they are always looking for an object, which results in these operable blindness scenarios, that are in turn best solved by objects like technology.

Another view that I have been fond of is that abstract ideas can be compared to social categories, creating ideas such as:

---The Modular Citizen
---Information Architecture
---Viable Travel
---Permanent Object-value

which are then combinable, creating Travel-as-information, Information-as-money, Citizen-as-digital-device, and Travel-by-instant-value-access

These may seem like commercial projects, but when taken as metaphysical they have value that is corroborable with consumer information and corporate motives.

It is broad categories like these that I find most functional in the context of social science literature, which is the prevailing norm for finding something profound about information of this type.

Use of such general categories may trace itself back to the time of Confucius, who used categories for social management. See <<The Analects of Confucius>>