I hope you realize that the talk about how automation will free the masses from the shackles has been going on for a while, yet we are depending on slave labor for our cheap gadgets that we claim will free us more… Lovely idea, no question, I just can’t see it happening in my lifetime (or ever, for the matter; greed will keep ruling, sorry for my lack of idealism on that field.) Did you know that it’s expected that the majority of the world’s population is going to live in slums within a few decades? That’s how well it’s going.
I am aware of that. The time to make the switch was when economists were telling us to do it around 1970. Back then with capital realized with the help of the economists that labor was obsolete it also realized that it (capital) was obsolete and has been trying to take us back to the plantation with a behind the scenes policy war ever since- the phoney economy is part if it. But the intelligence and wisdom is at the base of the pyramid of 8 billion people. No way a bunch of Paris Hiltons hiding out in gated communities can prevail against the extreme outliers the numbers say must be there.
It sounds like a big conspiracy. I don’t believe we need to assume such a thing. It’s enough to have people who like power have power trying to keep that power. Because, having the power, keeping it they can.
Let’s say you magically change society into another order; let’s call it Warrenism. You do it out of a selfless desire to make people’s life better; after all, you’re one of the true idealists who actually do what they preach.
Your buddy won’t be like that; he will be average: he’ll like the idea that people do what he says, he’ll be attracted to power. He (or another) will be smart enough to figure out how to distort the high ideals of Warrenism into a filthy counterfeit that is no more than a way to acquire money and power. If you’re really unlucky, he will also defame you and get you jailed, exiled, executed. Surprise? Nah; it’s just history being a meanie, stuck on repeat because nobody gave her cat videos 
EDIT: What I mean by the above is that, no matter what the order of a society is, those who are attracted to power will find a way to take it. You’ll recognize the proper sociopaths among them by the fact that they will also have found a way to make people thank them for it and pity them for the sacrifices they had to endure to get into their regrettable position of wealth and power.
Seems to work for the mafia and as the HBC put it “Don’t shoot your customers.” It’s not good business not to take the public interest into account, you lose “customers” that way.
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Not a conspiracy. Documented in Rifken’s book The End of Work.
I think people are evolving. There is some evidence that people are evolving at least on reasoning tests. Also prior to 10000 years ago the instance of slavery is thought to have been less than 15% and it was mainly flat extended families with very little war and no up down hierarchy. So forward and way back it was a bit better. Lead and weed.
Conspiracy (i.e. a group of powerful power hungry jerks come together and decide to not stop being greedy) or not (i.e. a bunch of powerful power hungry jerks just follow their instinctive greed on their own), the result is the same: the ones with enough power to keep it do what they have to do to keep it. And it’s a universal thing.
Show me a society with a significant population (let’s say more than several tens of people) in human history where, for at least a few decades, nobody decided to grab the power and rule over the others in some way. I can’t prove there wasn’t such a dream society, but I bet my best cat video on it that you won’t find any. I’ll take that as empirical evidence that it’s because it’s simply not possible: humans screw up; we are reliable, that way.
If you do, we can start a meaningful talk about how to replicate what they did. Until then, however, I can’t take seriously any attempts towards a utopian society just because we have better gadgets.
I’m not sure how to respond to the idea about humans’ evolving.
I don’t think it does that. It’s what statists say to justify the involvement in redistribution of wealth and power.
People are equal in their rights, not in their abilities. I have the right to be a porn star, but I may not be well equipped (pun intended) to do that.
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Yeah there’s all this talk about making sure everyone is equal but the fact is everyone isn’t equal. We aren’t all the same. We are each unique. And there are a set number of resources on the planet. So while everyone might have the same rights and have the same value as human beings they aren’t the same when it comes to power or the same kind of power.
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Established:
- Socialism and capitalism are outdated
- Government is in cahoots with the richest among us
- Government only functions for those it is in cahoots with
- Bickering on these small points is irrelevant. Wanna know something? Personally, I think that “Marxism” should/could look a hell of a lot like uncorrupted capitalism-- imagine capitalism, but without cronyism.
Remember, both policies seek efficency, just through very different means.
I think that Mr. Grahm was trying to do something really important:
He wanted to ensure that a harsh light was cast on poverty, and that inequality, inasmuch as it is the source of diversity, is even possibly welcome. He then goes on to describe how he’s happy to consider harming wealth in order to alleviate poverty, the source of so many of our species’ troubles. Maybe he sees a bigger state role in this than I do, however. I’m pretty sure that the way out of poverty is connectivity, opportunity, and a LACK of governance. China in 2012 fit this to a T.
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What if there was competition between said businesses and many were run as democratic cooperatives?
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@Traktion I like that idea and hope its the future.
@faddat I agree about that characterization of communism. But despite what the Austrian school types want to suppose and in line with the supposed nightmare case for Marxism, limits and even state limits on trade aren’t the worst. I think we’ve seen unrestricted trade in English Mercantilism and it was horrid- the worst. Capitalism was a money innovation, a catalyst. I think trade is overblown and a distraction from the issue, but agree working Marxist Communism would be close to Capitalism without the Capitalist class and the overhead of its money superstructure. But I think the essence of capitalism is that it is top down. It was still top down with 25% of the revenue going to the capitalist. It would still be top down with 1% going to the pin point top. We need another name. And you have to scrap the corporate structure it and sponsored puppet media as they are the extractive core of the problem. Its based on lies and inequity.
indeed! As for businesses being run as democratic cooperatives, I’ve gotta say I don’t like that concept or quite frankly-- the concept of democracy in general. Please do allow me to explain before flipping out:
As governance needs to be kept strictly limited, it’s quite reasonable to require a MUCH higher threhold of agreement amongst the governed before government is allowed to do ANYTHING. The fact that we’ve gone to war on 51/49’s shows a clear problem. Then you get into social issues like drug prohibition, overcriminalization, etc… and you find that indeed ,these are 51/49’s too-- generally because it is hell of a lot easier to argue to do ‘SOMETHING OH GOD WHY WONT ANYONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN! THEYRE GOING TO SMELL “INDIAN HEMP” FROM THAT “COFFEE SHOP” AND ONCE THEY CATCH A WHIFF THEY’LL LIVE ETERNITY AS SINNERS!’ Than to argue that government has no place regulating something like that because… blah blah blah-- it’s a much more complex argument that requires thought deeper than “moral panic, let’s roll.” So, a democracy requiring 80+% consensus (though I am actually more in favor of 95%+) – I am all for that, it’s a beautiful thing, and it should be done. What we have today though, especially as regards this “puppet media” when coupled with relatively loose governance systems that would allow for 49/51 cases is just an outright mess and everyone from the governors to the governed knows it.
I suggest you look far beyond marxism in your search for answers. Marx is undoubtedly one of the most important thinkers in politics, EVER, and his work-- and the work of his followers-- through to today’s Chinese Communist Party is absolutley worthy of study.
Two problems in every existing communist implementation that for me, fully impeach them:
- A belief in national-level mass-everything which denies the ability of local governments to specialize
- A notion of control
I stand in a weird place, politically speaking though: I’m the kind of left-anarchist who thinks that today’s venture capitalists are doing great work for the future because all the cash pumped into R&D will reduce the costs of future products and enhance the aggregate standard of living. I also think that anyone with an idle pool of cash resources (for example: apple) that isn’t using that to build a better tomorrow is a traitor to the species. I feel the same way about those who promote intellectual property rights, too.
…but… anarchist, so: While I might call them a traitor to the species, and indeed worse, I’d not advocate their being harmed in any way shape or form. Of course, without government’s iron grip on everything, they might have a much harder time pooling such a giant amount of wealth, but personally I think it’d still be possible to get very rich and benefit all of humanity, and in fact would be easier with either:
a) no governance
b) the kind of government 95% of people can agree upon, and no more
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Well I think it is the future. And I agree with what you have said above. To me the anarchist anti cooercion is the essence of cooperatives. In friendship and cooperation we don’t cooerce people we go for trust and trustless.
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High ideals never stopped those who didn’t care about them. They’ll go “how cute, we can use this!” and next thing you know your pretty little system is just a tool in the hands of another generation of thugs. Most people won’t even notice the difference, less care about it. Just like now.
It is better to keep trying to kick out the thugs, than just accept them and their regular bullying. It is easy to do nothing, but that doesn’t mean people shouldn’t try to do something hard, even if they may fail.
In many ways, trying something and failing is useful - it illustrates another way which doesn’t work.
Kicking somebody out sounds rather “coercive.” Which is parallel to the point I’m trying to make: the baddies aren’t going away, and a “soft” system can’t to deal with them.
Completely agreed on this one, but my take is “let’s make the most of this crap we have.” I’m not even cynical; I just don’t believe it’s worth wasting time on the next utopia when we could spend it on making real life better.
It’s foolish to build on obviously false assumptions. Think like a hacker. Look for the edge cases. “What will happen when a malicious agent…” and bang, most dreams are just vapor.
Most of the complexity in the SAFE network comes from the mechanisms that secure it from abuse. “Human protocols” (low level formal and informal agreements between people and groups) are a lot less open for redesign than software, and it’s much harder to enforce them. Especially if you want to enforce them without using force (can you see the problem with that?) If, however, you’re willing to use force, then that force will at some point get abused. Full circle once again.
So why focus fighting against the “system” when the real problem is not the system? The current “ism”, as would any other, is just being used by completely average people to satisfy their desires, even if it’s at the expense of that of others. It’s best when those “others” are far away (or can be de-humanized in other ways), because it lessens the blow of the dissonance between “I’m a good guy” and “I’m doing mean things to people.”
You can’t solve humanity. It’s worth so much more if you just pick a cause and make a few lives better. Feed and educate some kids for $1 a day through some foundation. If you don’t trust them, go visit them. Or start your own.
When you already did something, show others that they can help, too.
I met some guys at a makeshift refugee camp who collected thousands of dollars and a vanful of supplies from their community over just a few days; they just used the trust they already had, and they could do it with zero overhead. I saw their work helping many hundreds. Kids got shoes, people got coats. They drove and bought bottled water. They helped us carry blankets, we used their van to carry huge tents (from some NGOs that showed up once there was news value in the situation, but didn’t care enough to put the freaking things where they could be used.) They were flexible; they ended up helping the local police, something they didn’t plan on, because they spoke the language and understood the culture.
Doing something small is worth so much more than talking about something big. 
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No! SAFE is big worthwhile and capitalism is obsolete, never was good enough and is rapidly destabilizing. Flat cooperative models are not utopias.
Just thinking about CA and how its budgets were raped in the Enron fraud, Now investora in not good enough natural gas think solar customers must keep them afloat when people invested in solar specifically to kill the criminal Bush Cheny natural gas and oil racket that is driving us toward nuclear war. We are trying to terminate the wealth of these finacial bufoons not aid and abete the in bringing us to deaths door step.
You are aware coops are a form of capitalism right? Voluntarism has nothing against a coop or even setting up a commune for that matter. The only principle involved is doing force people to do stuff they don’t want. Simple voluntary interaction. Capitalism values the having of wealth and free exchange via quid pro quo. This is important to understand about capitalism because there is nothing to say that within a free society one could not have different groups of people interacting with different sets of VALUES. There’s nothing to say you can’t have a commune in one tent, a capitalist market in another tent, a cooperative in another tent and a gift economy over in another tent and they all exist peacefully in the same field by agreeing not to impose their values on one another. You could even have people traveling from tent to tent as their belief systems change and realign.