Practical socialism: a thought experiment

[Young Master Smeet]

Bringing this thread back seems to be a good way of looking at this site:http://www.spliddit.org/about

Quote:

When we say that we guarantee a fairness property, we are stating a mathematical fact. In other words, there are formal proofs showing that each of our algorithms provides rigorous fairness guarantees. The surprising possibility of formulating fairness in mathematical terms is the beauty of the scientific field of fair division, and the force behind Spliddit.

It seems to be an attempt to use various fairness algorithms for real world applications, although currently  some of them are about splitting taxi fairs and rent, there's an interesting toold for splitting up work (I think we may need to find an occasion for using it for party work).So, for splitting up chores:http://www.spliddit.org/apps/tasks/demoThe types of tasks and the number ofoccasions (or I suppose it could be hours) needed in a given time frame are listed.

Quote:

For each row, choose which task you'd prefer. Then, enter a multiplier to indicate how many times you'd be willing to complete your preferred task instead of completing the other task once. For example, if you believe that working the night shift is equal to working one and a half day shifts, select day shift and enter a multiplier of 1.5.

Each row is taking the most frequent/longest time task and comparing it once with all the other tasks.Now, this sounds complicated, but I suspect  in reality it would give a pretty good division of tasks (I suppose it presupposes everyone knows what the experience of each task is like).So, a whole community couldn't do it at the micro level like their example, but you could have broad professions, sectors, types of work?  And of course, many iterations across thousands of different groups would begin to give a genuine evaluation of how people feel about different types of work.  Unpopular work would be spared, and we could have a practical basis for a decentralised co-eprative economy.

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