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True...I had the good fortune to spend some time travelling and working in Scandinavia back in the early 70s and they seemed streets ahead back then....
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
It sounds great, in a world full of people pursuing their passions who is going to fill the potholes, enforce the laws, balance the books, etc. though? People have always had to work doing things they maybe don't want to do to get by, I don't see why that is being thought of as unfair or some sort of imposition. Maybe once robots take over all the jobs that might be possible, but before then I think people need to contribute economically.
People like that are great and what I would consider to be ethically mature. I doubt there are enough of them to run the economy of an entire country.
There are plenty of people willing to do things that need to be done, whether they're paid for it or not.
Are there? Are there enough to make it work? Has it been demonstrated on a wide scale where self selection for altruistic people has been removed from the system?
You think so, but you don't know so. It is only theoretical.
It could be, and I believe I did say something to that effect. In general greater freedom requires greater responsibility to take actions that lead to good outcomes. In my area of self employed people I see many who once on their own with no one to check their work or make sure they show up on time and pay their taxes simply aren't able to self motivate and provide quality work. It takes discipline and conscientiousness to be independent. I do tend to think that the people being raised since about our time have been more coddled to their detriment
I think more accurately what I meant was ethically mature. In a capitalist system people benefit the whole by pursuing their own self interest. If they want to provide for themselves and their families they need to offer something that other people want, which in the aggregate makes everyone better off. If the system requires people to put forth effort not primarily for themselves but for the good of all then people need to have an altruistic motivation or they won't be as motivated.
Maybe capitalism not only harnesses that selfish motive but also reinforces it and maybe an explicitly cooperative system would encourage altruism, but it would also work against a deep human trait of self interest and IMO would lead to corruption and stagnation if people aren't ethically mature enough to look beyond their own interests.
The premise of this seems to be that, in general, people are too lazy and dumb to have more of a say in how things are organized and run
I guess I really do believe that they are at least in significant enough numbers to create a drag on an economy.
and that they have to be selfish in order to do things to benefit society.
They don't have to be, but if they are their economic activity will still benefit society. Benefiting society doesn't have to depend on altruism.
I think that's a rather cynical POV, and I disagree that if people were given more time, more responsibility, and a more community-oriented economic system, nothing would get done and/or they'd just be corrupt.
Maybe I am too cynical, but maybe you're too rosey.
That's a hyperbolic interpretation of what I mean. Not nothing, but less. And not just corrupt but more corruption.
I think they might surprise you. Also, being self-interested and being community-interested aren't mutually exclusive; and having a system that has a better mix of both just might be superior to one that relies more on self-interest.
That would be nice and a better system could contribute to that. This is more or less why I believe that the root of the solution is promotion of virtue and ethics in society so we can have a highly ethical populace who would be capable of a cooperative economy.
I think that if we reduced hours, spreading jobs that aren't automated to more people working less hours, giving them more time, and focused on providing universal healthcare and education, then we'd have a population that would not only be happier and more engaged, but productive as well.
Would there be enough or would many plug into drugs and VR to fill the void rather than community?
I do think there is some possibility in big data and social technology to increase a greater sharing economy. And once robots can push the cart I'll probably sign up for the revolution.
Think what you wish. I'll just add that places like Finland or Kenya have experimented with UBIs with positive results. And many of the places with universal education and healthcare and less working hours are doing quite well, with politically engaged, happy, and healthy populations. I don't see why people are afraid to try that here, or willing to go further.
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
edited March 2018
Because Jason, due to the culture, environment and influences they've been subjected to, they've grown up in an environment where "me first", "What's in it for me?" and "I'm alright Jack" is the order of the day. Even if it's demonstrated to be wildly wrong. For example:
What the USA (and other countries) could learn from the Netherlands:
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
@federica said:
Because Jason, due to the culture, environment and influences they've been subjected to, they've grown up in an environment where "me first", "What's in it for me?" and "I'm alright Jack" is the order of the day. Even if it's demonstrated to be wildly wrong. For example:
What the USA (and other countries) could learn from the Netherlands:
I definitely have blue collar middle America values, I don't agree with your characterization of course. And from what I know about you I would think we are in agreement on the idea that we shouldn't feel ashamed to share or express our values.
@Jason said:
Think what you wish. I'll just add that places like Finland or Kenya have experimented with UBIs with positive results. And many of the places with universal education and healthcare and less working hours are doing quite well, with politically engaged, happy, and healthy populations. I don't see why people are afraid to try that here, or willing to go further.
Let me just take a moment to express my gratitude for the exchange. While these are often stressful and aggravating the benefit towards refining my thoughts and views are so valuable to me.
Having said that let me just express some insights I had while my mind was lost in meditation this morning. I think earning what you have in life promotes dignity and self respect, but it also leads to the erroneous view that one is autonomous and independent of others. I think having your needs provided for you can lead to gratitude and an unlocking of ones passions, but it can also lead to a sense of entitlement and indolence.
Any system that fails to address these dichotomies is flawed, be it capitalism or socialism.
Where I come from and what I value is work over passion, empowerment over care, agency over systems or maybe both to some degree? Above all though, I think I value complexity over ideology and, I think we're in agreement here, empathy and respect over belligerence and self-righteousness.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
edited March 2018
@Jason said:
Think what you wish. I'll just add that places like Finland or Kenya have experimented with UBIs with positive results. And many of the places with universal education and healthcare and less working hours are doing quite well, with politically engaged, happy, and healthy populations. I don't see why people are afraid to try that here, or willing to go further.
To address this more specifically. I do believe in mixed economies and progressive taxation. I think there is a baby/bathwater issue here. I think there is an important quality to capitalism that I don't want to throw out. So when I hear talk about getting rid of it altogether I want to defend that baby and since we focus on the point of disagreement it comes across as being all I care about. So let me say it again, I'm not in favor of lassiez faire capitalism and I do favor some level of redistribution greater than currently in the US though directed more at removing obstacles to opportunity (healthcare, infrastructure) and empowering individuals (education, healthcare) than providing care and security.
I think we would have more of those types of people if we were more free ourselves though. Complete self love and freedom opens the world to us in a way we cannot comprehend otherwise and cooperation becomes second nature, and even joyful. When I have done mundane tasks in cooperation with others in order to build something or sustain something is has a much different feel about it than simply mundaneness. Mundanaeity heh.
I think assuming that too many people are not capable holds us back and everyone else back. When we put forth that we do not believe in someone, that is what they tend to live up to. Sometimes it takes a leap of faith in a way to trust someone to be able to manage and step up to the task. But when we assume they cannot and hold control ourselves as a result, then no one grows. No one matures. We all stagnate.
It is a common part, i think, of blue collar values because survival is never far from your mind. But it can also result in a level of reliance on self and community that other places do not know, because you understand that sometimes it is all you CAN rely on. Me First is a result of survival frame of mind, it seems, and I can see both parts of it really, having lived in both mindsets and both very rural and very urban settings.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
I don’t think it’s possible to run the world anymore without some form of capitalism @person, there is little danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It’s not 1917 anymore and I’m very far from certain that another Communist Revolution could succeed.
But the model of the scandinavian countries, which are quite a lot more socialist than most western democracies, does look very good. There are definitely things we can learn from Sweden, etc.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
@Kerome said:
I don’t think it’s possible to run the world anymore without some form of capitalism @person, there is little danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It’s not 1917 anymore and I’m very far from certain that another Communist Revolution could succeed.
But the model of the scandinavian countries, which are quite a lot more socialist than most western democracies, does look very good. There are definitely things we can learn from Sweden, etc.
The problem is it is very hard to move to another system, with industries and cooperation being so dependent on it. It's very hard to change things to that extent even with all the ecological problems and social. In addition, what kind of system can work on such a large scale, I can only think dictatorship because it is very hard to have so many people in a system, the more people the more authoritarian and suppressed a system gets as more control is required. Unless perhaps there is a technological solution to that.
Also the scandinavian countries are much smaller, it's harder for this sort of system to work well in bigger countries unless they reduce in size and it relies on capitalism still to power it's welfare state. Plus you need a culture of cooperation for this model to really work well.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
I came across a short piece that does a pretty good job of expressing my hopes regarding capitalism.
personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
edited March 2018
Maybe I should just let this thread go but Kurzgesagt just posted a really good video on what I want to preserve, that of making more pie as being more important than how it is distributed. I suppose the video doesn't explicitly state Capitalism's contribution but it does talk about supply and demand, the self serving motive, liberty to make ones own choices and the importance of innovation (which the profit motive incentivizes). The video doesn't address the negative consequences created either, but my opinion is that the overall impact is the greater good. I'm open to suggestions that it's not the greater good but I think it's important to acknowledge and keep in mind the benefits. Baby/bathwater.
I'll also add this one comment that I liked.
He suggested nothing about "distributing" other people's stuff. That was how nations operated prior to the spread of liberty at the beginning of the industrial age. Liberty allowed people to largely act in their own rational self interest, free of coercion, force or interference, with their only obligation to others being to respect their identical rights. People became free to make things that would benefit themselves by benefiting others. They were relatively freely traded, and that's Capitalism, and it created an economic and prosperity explosion many times greater than economies based on centralized control, as if anyone other that a God could direct how resources should be "distributed" everywhere and at every moment it time in a dynamic system.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
While it is true that the efficient distribution of resources in a planned economy is beyond the reach of a human planner, it would not be beyond the reach of an AI. Something to ponder...
Being a slave to any object of desire is a cause of suffering. We are all slaves to selfish desires born of ignorance.
That said, we live in a capitalist society, so, if we can detach from it and make money then distribute it to the needy, then even capitalism can become Dharma practice.
@Jason said:
Think what you wish. I'll just add that places like Finland or Kenya have experimented with UBIs with positive results. And many of the places with universal education and healthcare and less working hours are doing quite well, with politically engaged, happy, and healthy populations. I don't see why people are afraid to try that here, or willing to go further.
To address this more specifically. I do believe in mixed economies and progressive taxation. I think there is a baby/bathwater issue here. I think there is an important quality to capitalism that I don't want to throw out. So when I hear talk about getting rid of it altogether I want to defend that baby and since we focus on the point of disagreement it comes across as being all I care about. So let me say it again, I'm not in favor of lassiez faire capitalism and I do favor some level of redistribution greater than currently in the US though directed more at removing obstacles to opportunity (healthcare, infrastructure) and empowering individuals (education, healthcare) than providing care and security.
I agree with much of that. What I disagree with, however, is: 1) having a system where the world's wealth is concentrated into so few hands, where just 2,000 out of 7,000,000,000 people own enough wealth to eliminate extreme global poverty seven times over; 2) the notion that the contradictions inherent to capitalism (e.g., cyclical crises, structural unemployment, the tendency of capital to accumulate rather than become more socialized, unequal social relation between capital and labour, etc.) can simply be willed away rather than materially changed; 3) that the profit motive is the best motivational force for society moving forward in a time characterized by consumerism, materialism, growing inequality, the profitability of harmful industries (e.g., war economies, the fossil fuel industry, etc.), environmental degradation, and the restriction of necessities and opportunities to those who can afford them, etc. I'm also critical of how the market decides what's of value on a scale that supersedes many of the needs and desires of individual communities, and how money influences political decisions more than the will of the people. So in the end, I think that trying to consciously move towards a more socialized, democratic, and green-oriented socio-economic system is in our best interest, in terms of survival as well as increasing human happiness. In essence, we can, and should, make more pie and distribute it more equitably with a mind towards sustainablity and need rather than profit.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
@Jason said:
Think what you wish. I'll just add that places like Finland or Kenya have experimented with UBIs with positive results. And many of the places with universal education and healthcare and less working hours are doing quite well, with politically engaged, happy, and healthy populations. I don't see why people are afraid to try that here, or willing to go further.
To address this more specifically. I do believe in mixed economies and progressive taxation. I think there is a baby/bathwater issue here. I think there is an important quality to capitalism that I don't want to throw out. So when I hear talk about getting rid of it altogether I want to defend that baby and since we focus on the point of disagreement it comes across as being all I care about. So let me say it again, I'm not in favor of lassiez faire capitalism and I do favor some level of redistribution greater than currently in the US though directed more at removing obstacles to opportunity (healthcare, infrastructure) and empowering individuals (education, healthcare) than providing care and security.
I agree with much of that. What I disagree with, however, is: 1) having a system where the world's wealth is concentrated into so few hands, where just 2,000 out of 7,000,000,000 people own enough wealth to eliminate extreme global poverty seven times over; 2) the notion that the contradictions inherent to capitalism (e.g., cyclical crises, structural unemployment, the tendency of capital to accumulate rather than become more socialized, unequal social relation between capital and labour, etc.) can simply be willed away rather than materially changed; 3) that the profit motive is the best motivational force for society moving forward in a time characterized by consumerism, materialism, growing inequality, the profitability of harmful industries (e.g., war economies, the fossil fuel industry, etc.), environmental degradation, and the restriction of necessities and opportunities to those who can afford them, etc. I'm also critical of how the market decides what's of value on a scale that supersedes many of the needs and desires of individual communities, and how money influences political decisions more than the will of the people. So in the end, I think that trying to consciously move towards a more socialized, democratic, and green-oriented socio-economic system is in our best interest, in terms of survival as well as increasing human happiness. In essence, we can, and should, make more pie and distribute it more equitably with a mind towards sustainablity and need rather than profit.
I'm happy leaving it there. I think the growing pie thing was what I had the most attachment to and conviction about. I do have other points of disagreement but not as much conviction or certainty.
If you want more I think there is more to unpack, if not I can let it go.
@person said:
I'm happy leaving it there. I think the growing pie thing was what I had the most attachment to and conviction about. I do have other points of disagreement but not as much conviction or certainty.
Having a bigger and bigger pie is good. But capitalism is about baking a bigger and bigger pie for capitalists at the expense of working-class people. Last year, capitalism created 10 pieces of pie, and a small handful of capitalists took 8 pieces, leaving the entire world to split 2. It also historically arose in conjunction with patriarchy, so more men own and control land and shares of capital, fueling gender inequality as well as economic inequality (and while they don't have statistics for it, I'd argue the same for things racial inequality, too). And since those people also have the social power (i.e., money) to steer policy, government actions have been geared towards lowering taxes and further eroding the political power of labour, solidifying the political mechanisms supporting these forms of inequality. This is how capitalism functions and has always functioned, because its internal logic is characterized by contradictions that sow the seeds for things like inequality, unequal social relations between capital and labour, capital accumulation and accumulation for accumulations sake. As a critic of this system, I seek to make others aware of this logic and the injustices created by it in the hopes of planting seeds of awareness that'll eventually sprout into a motivation to help push things in a more socialized, democratic, equitable, and green-oriented direction.
And this question of distribution is extremely important, I think, and can't be stressed enough. As Stephen Hawking noted in his last AMA on a question about automation and unemployment, "Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
edited March 2018
@Jason said:
And this question of distribution is extremely important, I think, and can't be stressed enough. As Stephen Hawking noted in his last AMA on a question about automation and unemployment, "Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."
In the future when production doesn't come from people then I worry about that possibility and would favor UBI, Fully Automated Luxury Communism or some other equitable system. Until then I worry too much about liberty, efficiency and growth.
@person said:
I'm happy leaving it there. I think the growing pie thing was what I had the most attachment to and conviction about. I do have other points of disagreement but not as much conviction or certainty.
Having a bigger and bigger pie is good. But capitalism is about baking a bigger and bigger pie for capitalists at the expense of working-class people. Last year, capitalism created 10 pieces of pie, and a small handful of capitalists took 8 pieces, leaving the entire world to split 2.
I don't disagree but overall wealth has increased dramatically over the past 200 years
And I would rather have %10 of 1 trillion dollars than %90 of 1 billion dollars.
And while the majority of wealth does go to the top those at the bottom are still better off.
I really don't disagree with many of the problems you have, but my inclination is to fix the system rather than over turn it because I see problems with a true socialist system.
For example I, and Warren Buffett, think trickle down economics is a sham. We need both supply AND demand, if the average person has more money in their hands they contribute more of their wealth to the economy than the average investor. Those with money don't invest it simply because they have it they invest because there are opportunities to make more money. During the recession companies had excess cash but they weren't using it because people weren't buying products. The drug trade isn't what it is because the producers are making so much but because people demand the product.
I think there needs to be an ethic of basic human dignity. If we just say growing the pie is the greatest good for the most number of people including all the future generations. It could be argued that enslaving most of humanity for many generations will create a much wealthier future for those future generations. So we need some basic standard.
Let me make a basic argument in favor of wealth disparity. Say you have a village of 100 people. Everyday it is the job of 10 people to break all the big rocks into small rocks. Now say one of the villagers creates a tool so only 1 person needs to now do that job. The other 9 people aren't out of work, they are now able to contribute their efforts to other aspects of village life. Now say the village decides to build several of the tools so they have many more small rocks than they need and they trade the excess to a neighboring village for more logs and horseshoes. This one person has contributed more wealth to the village than just what he produces from his labor. If he equally shares the wealth he created with the village everyone will be better off. If he keeps a large share of the added value no one is actually poorer than they were before and slightly more wealthy as they get some of the added value. Relatively speaking he now is more wealthy than the others, but others will look at his relative advantage and be incentivized to come up with their own value creating innovations.
Then, I've tried making this point at other times through some questions. Most businesses don't start out as large ones but as small start ups. I have some real uncertainty how "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" can work in this situation. Take myself for example, I'm single and self employed with no employees, but how would it work if I wanted to increase business and take someone on as help. Over 20+ years I've developed a good reputation and a solid network, the new partner would equally benefit from those in terms of pay and opportunity but might not have as much concern with maintaining them since if things go south they could leave and join another company. They would be effectively taking the value of those intangibles from me since we share equally in the financial rewards of our labor rather than if I pay them less than I would charge a customer and keep the profits for myself. There is more that is valuable in economics than labor. Now suppose they have a family to support, so in this scenario being more experienced I am more productive and have better quality so I am contributing more but since they have a family their needs are greater so they would receive more of the fruits. Why would I stay motivated to produce in this scenario except because I am a very altruistic person? Or would entrepreneurship not be a thing and the only option would be to join a construction co-op? If so, where does innovation and change come from? Unions seem to focus on stability and security.
It also historically arose in conjunction with patriarchy, so more men own and control land and shares of capital, fueling gender inequality as well as economic inequality (and while they don't have statistics for it, I'd argue the same for things racial inequality, too).
We can and have changed that in other ways. There is greater gender and racial equity now than in the past, can't that progress continue?
And since those people also have the social power (i.e., money) to steer policy, government actions have been geared towards lowering taxes and further eroding the political power of labour, solidifying the political mechanisms supporting these forms of inequality.
Money out of politics, no argument here. Would worker co-ops not also lobby for their interests?
This is how capitalism functions and has always functioned, because its internal logic is characterized by contradictions that sow the seeds for things like inequality, unequal social relations between capital and labour, capital accumulation and accumulation for accumulations sake.
These were problems before capitalism, even apes have unequal social relations, and will be the case in other systems (Some animals are more equal than others) until you remove greed, anger and delusion from the minds of the people in it.
As a critic of this system, I seek to make others aware of this logic and the injustices created by it in the hopes of planting seeds of awareness that'll eventually sprout into a motivation to help push things in a more socialized, democratic, equitable, and green-oriented direction.
As someone who understands the abuses and excess of the system, I seek to enact policies to counter and remedy them. Understanding that humans are driven by greed, hatred and delusion I seek to build love and wisdom in people's hearts so they no longer seek self advantage at the expense of others, but understand that helping others IS helping oneself.
Don't forget that people are also motivated by non-greed, non-hatred, and non-delusion; and fostering a system that relies on/encouages that rather than the motivation of greed will not only help serve to make things more equitable, but also help people to be better/more ethical people. It seems your arguments mainly revolve around keeping things, including inequality, as they are while hoping that more equality just somehow happens. The majority of the equality we currently have isn't due to the kindness of capital, but to the hard won victories of abolitionists, labour movements, suffrage movements, feminist movements, civil rights movements, etc., many coming from a radical POV that challenges the socioeconomic status quo. The move towards greater equality and democracy is happening despite capitalism, not because of it.
As for the rest, I'll answer more specifically when I have the time (my new job is really draining and time consuming). I'll just note now that: 1. I'm enjoying this exchange. 2. Early hunter-gatherer societies appear to have been more or less egalitarian, so the seeds for that have been with us for a long time. 3. Mechanisms of more radical and equal wealth distribution can mitigate some of the problems you bring up, but the contradictions inherent to capitalism make it difficult (maybe impossible) to sustain them because they're in conflict (here I'd recommend David Harvey's Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism for a detailed look at this subject). 4. If we simply wait to change things until after these jobs are lost and people are suffering and without power, the future will more likely look like a sci-fi dystopia than fully automated, luxury capitalism, as Hawking and others like me fear. Capitalism isn't just about economics, but the political power structures built onto of it as well.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
edited March 2018
@Jason said:
It seems your arguments mainly revolve around keeping things, including inequality, as they are while hoping that more equality just somehow happens.
Not really, I'm saying that inequality doesn't really matter that much because even though some have a lot more, everyone has some more. Comparing the equality of wealth at this current moment in time, there is massive inequality. Comparing the equality of wealth between the average person 200 years ago and today, we are much better off. Most people in the developed world live better today than the kings of old. And it could be better still, the developing world has much to catch up, we have diseases to cure, space to colonize, better kinds of Jello, etc. If we can not kill ourselves in the process that is.
And you are probably right, we do need to start acting rather than waiting. Efforts to make capitalism what it is today started many decades ago in think tanks and with other idea makers. Adam Smith also had a book on ethics that was important to his thinking in The Wealth of Nations that people have just sort of forgotten. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/smith-moral-political/
In all this I came across the idea of social capitalism, which sounds intriguing to me
Early hunter-gatherer societies appear to have been more or less egalitarian, so the seeds for that have been with us for a long time.
Maybe in the end it all comes down to this, what is the basic human nature?
Edited to add: It seems I'm on the side arguing that people are inherently selfish and I'm not sure how I got here, since I have long thought and often made posts saying that most of human behavior is cooperative.
@person said:
Not really, I'm saying that inequality doesn't really matter that much because even though some have a lot more, everyone has some more. Comparing the equality of wealth at this current moment in time, there is massive inequality. Comparing the equality of wealth between the average person 200 years ago and today, we are much better off. Most people in the developed world live better today than the kings of old. And it could be better still, the developing world has much to catch up, we have diseases to cure, space to colonize, better kinds of Jello, etc. If we can not kill ourselves in the process that is.
I think is matters to a lot of people, both materially and emotionally/spiritually (esp. those suffering from extreme poverty, exploitation, industrial pollution and other negative externalities, and other forms of privation). It's not simply that some people have more; it's that some people have more and then use that wealth in ways that harm working people and sows the seeds for the perpetuation of further inequality.
Edited to add: It seems I'm on the side arguing that people are inherently selfish and I'm not sure how I got here, since I have long thought and often made posts saying that most of human behavior is cooperative.
It's understandable. I certainly think we are both at heart, but it can be easy to focus on only one side of that divide when making a case from one POV, unintentionally neglecting the other. I just think that our material circumstances help serve to influence which we are the most; and the logic of capitalism seems to me to promote our more selfish side, which in turn colours our ethics and priorities rather than the other way around.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
@person said:
Not really, I'm saying that inequality doesn't really matter that much because even though some have a lot more, everyone has some more. Comparing the equality of wealth at this current moment in time, there is massive inequality. Comparing the equality of wealth between the average person 200 years ago and today, we are much better off. Most people in the developed world live better today than the kings of old. And it could be better still, the developing world has much to catch up, we have diseases to cure, space to colonize, better kinds of Jello, etc. If we can not kill ourselves in the process that is.
I think is matters to a lot of people, both materially and emotionally/spiritually (esp. those suffering from extreme poverty, exploitation, industrial pollution and other negative externalities, and other forms of privation). It's not simply that some people have more; it's that some people have more and then use that wealth in ways that harm working people and sows the seeds for the perpetuation of further inequality.
>
That makes a lot of sense. I just don't know how to get away from those two graphs I posted earlier today. The growth in wealth over the past 200 years has possibly been the greatest improvement in the quality of human life ever. If you can present me with something that solves the worlds problems without losing that benefit I'm with you.
Edited to add: It seems I'm on the side arguing that people are inherently selfish and I'm not sure how I got here, since I have long thought and often made posts saying that most of human behavior is cooperative.
It's understandable. I certainly think we are both at heart, but it can be easy to focus on only one side of that divide when making a case from one POV, unintentionally neglecting the other. I just think that our material circumstances help serve to influence which we are the most; and the logic of capitalism seems to me to promote our more selfish side, which in turn colours our ethics and priorities rather than the other way around.
It's true that even if capitalism reflects our selfish nature it also reinforces it. But imposing a system of altruism on people if their hearts aren't in it I don't think will work, people will seek to circumvent and gain relative advantage anyway. At least capitalism harnesses that selfish behavior in a positive direction as in the video I posted. And if cooperation is coerced (the system forces it) rather than voluntarily given is it really generosity?
@person said:
Not really, I'm saying that inequality doesn't really matter that much because even though some have a lot more, everyone has some more. Comparing the equality of wealth at this current moment in time, there is massive inequality. Comparing the equality of wealth between the average person 200 years ago and today, we are much better off. Most people in the developed world live better today than the kings of old. And it could be better still, the developing world has much to catch up, we have diseases to cure, space to colonize, better kinds of Jello, etc. If we can not kill ourselves in the process that is.
I think is matters to a lot of people, both materially and emotionally/spiritually (esp. those suffering from extreme poverty, exploitation, industrial pollution and other negative externalities, and other forms of privation). It's not simply that some people have more; it's that some people have more and then use that wealth in ways that harm working people and sows the seeds for the perpetuation of further inequality.
>
That makes a lot of sense. I just don't know how to get away from those two graphs I posted earlier today. The growth in wealth over the past 200 years has possibly been the greatest improvement in the quality of human life ever. If you can present me with something that solves the worlds problems without losing that benefit I'm with you.
Edited to add: It seems I'm on the side arguing that people are inherently selfish and I'm not sure how I got here, since I have long thought and often made posts saying that most of human behavior is cooperative.
It's understandable. I certainly think we are both at heart, but it can be easy to focus on only one side of that divide when making a case from one POV, unintentionally neglecting the other. I just think that our material circumstances help serve to influence which we are the most; and the logic of capitalism seems to me to promote our more selfish side, which in turn colours our ethics and priorities rather than the other way around.
It's true that even if capitalism reflects our selfish nature it also reinforces it. But imposing a system of altruism on people if their hearts aren't in it I don't think will work, people will seek to circumvent and gain relative advantage anyway. At least capitalism harnesses that selfish behavior in a positive direction as in the video I posted. And if cooperation is coerced (the system forces it) rather than voluntarily given is it really generosity?
Well, one could turn that around and argue that capitalism is forced upon us, and every nation that attempts something different is prevented from succeeding in large part to interventions by the US and other capitalist nations. When Iran tried to nationalize its oil fields, the US and UK helped support a coup to overthrow their democratically-elected prime minister and install the Shah. When Chile elected a socialist president, the CIA helped Pinochet assassinate him and replace him with a right-wing government. When MLK Jr. started getting too radical, the FBI tried to blackmail him and get him to commit suicide. When Castro overthrew the dictator Batista and instituted a communist government, we tried numerous times to assassinate him, start a failed coup, and then imposed a brutal, 50+ year embargo that economically choked the country. We did similar things to the fledgling Soviet Union and numerous other nations attempting, through various means, to create an alternative to capitalism as we know it. That's one of the main purposes of imperialism after all, besides regional and market hegemony, of course. Just saying.
If technology keeps developing at this pace, would it be possible for capitalism to disappear of its own accord?
With technology, supply exceeds demand. So at least when it comes to bare essentials it is possible that everybody can get what they want without working.
Wouldn't this therefore make the profit-making system itself redundant?
If so, wouldn't it lead to some kind of post-capitalist world (like the one depicted in star trek)?
If technology keeps developing at this pace, would it be possible for capitalism to disappear of its own accord?
With technology, supply exceeds demand. So at least when it comes to bare essentials it is possible that everybody can get what they want without working.
Wouldn't this therefore make the profit-making system itself redundant?
If so, wouldn't it lead to some kind of post-capitalist world (like the one depicted in star trek)?
Not necessarily. It's possible it'll happen organically and mostly on its own; but if those who own and control the commodities, the tech that produces them, and the market wish to continue to profit from them, it's unlikely it'll unfold in that way and we could very well end up destroying our planet in the process if we don't do something to change our trajectory.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
Capitalism has done some good for people’s personal wealth over the last few hundred years, but there are questions about how far wealth affects people’s happiness. The question of whether people are actually ‘better off’ now than before depends very much on what standard you use to measure things by.
For example in 2005 uk pounds, it was found that once family income surpassed 45,000 per year there was not any benefit to happiness levels from additional income. All the things that made a genuine difference could be had for that level of money. Now I’m not sure what it would be in say 1900 dollars but I’m willing to bet it would be less, since there were fewer goods available.
And some essential things are very much more expensive now than they ever were, for example a home is now a lot dearer than even in the 1960’s. It all goes to show that money isn’t everything, and that the trade-off of time vs money that comes with capitalism for ordinary working people is not necessarily in their benefit.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
@person said:
Not really, I'm saying that inequality doesn't really matter that much because even though some have a lot more, everyone has some more. Comparing the equality of wealth at this current moment in time, there is massive inequality. Comparing the equality of wealth between the average person 200 years ago and today, we are much better off. Most people in the developed world live better today than the kings of old. And it could be better still, the developing world has much to catch up, we have diseases to cure, space to colonize, better kinds of Jello, etc. If we can not kill ourselves in the process that is.
I think is matters to a lot of people, both materially and emotionally/spiritually (esp. those suffering from extreme poverty, exploitation, industrial pollution and other negative externalities, and other forms of privation). It's not simply that some people have more; it's that some people have more and then use that wealth in ways that harm working people and sows the seeds for the perpetuation of further inequality.
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That makes a lot of sense. I just don't know how to get away from those two graphs I posted earlier today. The growth in wealth over the past 200 years has possibly been the greatest improvement in the quality of human life ever. If you can present me with something that solves the worlds problems without losing that benefit I'm with you.
Edited to add: It seems I'm on the side arguing that people are inherently selfish and I'm not sure how I got here, since I have long thought and often made posts saying that most of human behavior is cooperative.
It's understandable. I certainly think we are both at heart, but it can be easy to focus on only one side of that divide when making a case from one POV, unintentionally neglecting the other. I just think that our material circumstances help serve to influence which we are the most; and the logic of capitalism seems to me to promote our more selfish side, which in turn colours our ethics and priorities rather than the other way around.
It's true that even if capitalism reflects our selfish nature it also reinforces it. But imposing a system of altruism on people if their hearts aren't in it I don't think will work, people will seek to circumvent and gain relative advantage anyway. At least capitalism harnesses that selfish behavior in a positive direction as in the video I posted. And if cooperation is coerced (the system forces it) rather than voluntarily given is it really generosity?
Well, one could turn that around and argue that capitalism is forced upon us
Liberty is an important aspect of capitalism, people are still free to form co-ops or work directly for the betterment of others.
Edited to add: Would individual enterprise still be an option in your version of socialism? Or maybe it would take the form of some kind of collective enterprise? If so I'm really unsure of how that could practically work and have tried asking about it at times.
and every nation that attempts something different is prevented from succeeding in large part to interventions by the US and other capitalist nations. When Iran tried to nationalize its oil fields, the US and UK helped support a coup to overthrow their democratically-elected prime minister and install the Shah. When Chile elected a socialist president, the CIA helped Pinochet assassinate him and replace him with a right-wing government. When MLK Jr. started getting too radical, the FBI tried to blackmail him and get him to commit suicide. When Castro overthrew the dictator Batista and instituted a communist government, we tried numerous times to assassinate him, start a failed coup, and then imposed a brutal, 50+ year embargo that economically choked the country. We did similar things to the fledgling Soviet Union and numerous other nations attempting, through various means, to create an alternative to capitalism as we know it. That's one of the main purposes of imperialism after all, besides regional and market hegemony, of course. Just saying.
Except for Iran, which probably was about imperialism and oil, and MLK, which was probably about race, I'd say those were due to the cold war policy of containment rather than imperialism.
If technology keeps developing at this pace, would it be possible for capitalism to disappear of its own accord?
With technology, supply exceeds demand. So at least when it comes to bare essentials it is possible that everybody can get what they want without working.
Wouldn't this therefore make the profit-making system itself redundant?
If so, wouldn't it lead to some kind of post-capitalist world (like the one depicted in star trek)?
There is something called post scarcity which is essentially what you are asking.
@person said:
Liberty is an important aspect of capitalism, people are still free to form co-ops or work directly for the betterment of others.
Not really. Liberty within capitalism is limited, mainly to those who own capital. The liberty of the market is mostly an illusion, since working people are not only forced into wage labour for their survival — from being physically forced off of common/farm land by enclosure laws in places like England to fill the growing factories and the slave labour used to help growing economies in Europe and the US to the general need to make a living by working for a wage today — but the conditions of that exchange are unequal, as well.
It's often argued that capitalism values choice and equality, and that demand yields value, not labour. But that may not be the whole story, and things may not be as equitable as they appear. According to the labour theory of value, for example, value in the context of capitalism is primarily determined by the socially necessary labour time required for a commodity's production, which is then sold by the average or market value. So a commodity's value, which is qualitatively expressed by its use-value, is quantitatively expressed via its exchange-value, its price being a measure of its value against a particular money-form. Demand for a commodity, its degree of usefulness in fulfilling a want or need, is only one aspect of its value.
From this perspective, what a person receives in payment isn't the full value of their labour power due to an inherent inequality in capitalist social relations between capital and labour. This seed of inequality, however, is easily obscured, as are capitalist social relations and the origin of profit, which from the Marxist perspective arises out of the division of the workday into necessary labour and surplus labour. But since all labour appears as paid labour, it's easy to argue that capital's role in the production process and demand's role in the process of exchange is the source of value (essentially separating capital as an independent and autonomous factor of production) despite the actual complexity of capitalist production and distribution, completely obscuring labour's contribution in the creation and realization of profit. But as David Harvey illustrates in Limits to Capital, part of Marx's critique in Capital details precisely with how the contradictions inherent within the capitalist mode of production produces a fundamental contradiction between the equality presupposed by exchange and the inequality via the exploitation of labour required to gain profit. So from the very onset, the kernel of inequality is already present within our political-economic system. And that inequality is the basis for much of the struggle between capital and labour and how surplus value is distributed.
On the one hand, workers are, in principle, "free to sell their labour under whatever conditions of contract (for whatever length of working day) they please" (30), which highlights the equality, freedom, and individuality characterizing exchange relations, recalling both Aristotle's argument that "exchange cannot take place without equality" and Marx's argument that "the circulation of commodities requires the exchange of equivalents" (19).
However, workers must also compete against one another in the labour market, where capitalists who are forced to internalize the profit-seeking motive due to the coercive laws of competition purchase workers' labour time with the sole purpose being the accumulation of profit (accumulation for accumulation's sake), and who more often than not dictate the duration and conditions of labour workers must accept or else risk privation while seeking something better, putting workers at a disadvantage on an individual level. (28-30) (One of the main reasons I favour some kind of universal basic income is that it has the potential to empower workers, decommodify labour-power by helping free workers from absolute dependence on wage labour for subsistence, and enlarge the nonmarket social economy.)
The expansion of value in this process occurs via the production of surplus value by capitalists who employ wage labour, a social relation in which the worker — who gives up their rights to control over the production process, the product of their labour, and the added value incorporated in production — receives the value of their labour power and nothing else (42-3). And this is important because this is the point where the surplus value created in the labour process is appropriated by capitalists who are forced, due to the coercive laws of competition, to internalize the profit-seeking motive to purchase workers' labour time with the sole purpose being the accumulation of profit (accumulation for accumulation's sake), i.e., how they transform money (M) into commodities (C) and then back into money plus a surplus (M + ∆M), the added value being the result of the additional amount of labour time capitalists can extract/contract out of the worker in excess of what it takes for them to produce the value of the wages they receive, which is why they fight against things like reducing hours of labour and higher wages.
More broadly speaking, however, workers generally seek (and one could rightly even say are compelled) to purchase commodities with the money they earn through their role in the production of commodities (C-M-C); and through the maintenance and reproduction of the working class (primarily through their role as consumers of commodities), the reproduction of capital is created. Surplus value, then, is produced via the production process and realized via market exchange, where workers as producers and consumers give of themselves twice to capital—first as what's conventionally viewed as unpaid labour and second as wages for commodities (as well as things like rent, etc.) (56). And most people don't even question that we have to work certain jobs for money to survive, but others go completely unpaid. Women, for example, have historically been unpaid in their labour of birthing and raising the next generation of workers.
One of the practical as well as philosophical issues I have with the capitalist mode of production, then, is the potential exploitation inherent within the system itself, which in its most extreme (and therefore most visible) forms can be found in things like prison labour and sweatshops (which are utilized by most large retailers, from Nike and Apple to Walmart), but according to the LTV is a characteristic of all forms of wage labour under capitalism. And under political systems dominated by capitalism, capital has a decisive advantage due to its privileged positions and control of wealth, making the voting liberty of working-class people less than that of capital. For instance, about 75% of Americans favour higher taxes on the rich, with over half "strongly agreeing" and another 23% "somewhat agreeing," yet what did they do? They passed a giant tax cut, mainly favouring the wealthy, and adding money to the already bloated deficit. Where's the liberty in that? Definitely not with the 75% of Americans who would rather there be some sort of higher tax rate on the rich.
And none of that touches on the liberty the US takes in restricting the liberty of other nations, especially those who flirt with alternative economic models. If anything, I'd say that coercion is an important aspect of capitalism, and that the history of capitalism is that of the restriction of liberty of the working-class, which we're continually fighting to undo through various mass movements.
Except for Iran, which probably was about imperialism and oil, and MLK, which was probably about race, I'd say those were due to the cold war policy of containment rather than imperialism.
The main thing they were containing were anti-capitalist alternatives, which, if they could be united, would challenge the dominancy of the US and its capitalist economy. Like, literally, the whole point of "containment" was to contain the Soviet model of communism and punish/overthrow those who tried. That was its main point. When the US backed pro-monarchist force in Russia after the 1917 revolutions (pre-cold war), it was to get them back into WWI as well as to stop a new economic vision. When it tried to get MLK Jr. to kill himself, it was because of his growing radical message against US materialism and militarism and poverty and the need for working people to change that (which wasn't even connected to the Soviet Union). In Chile, the threat was the election of Allende and his policies of economic socialization. The list goes on and on. In addition, by arguing in favour of the US's policy of cold war containment, you're inadvertently arguing in favour of the Soviet bloc, too, since they were simply doing the same thing and trying to stave off the US and its allies, who were trying to undermine their progress and international relations.
@person said:
Edited to add: Would individual enterprise still be an option in your version of socialism? Or maybe it would take the form of some kind of collective enterprise? If so I'm really unsure of how that could practically work and have tried asking about it at times.
Sure, but in a post-wage labour society, it might not look like same thing. I know it's difficult, but just try to think about what alternatives could look like. Read some sci-fi novels or economic theorists or something. Use your imagination.
The FBI did worse to other groups like the Black Panthers with their COINTELPRO program. Seriously henious things.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
edited March 2018
@Jason I read and more or less comprehended what you said. Disagreements and points of argument come to mind, mostly that I come at the problem from a different moral frame and I see your points not as wrong but incomplete.
At any rate I think I am full and need to digest this stuff for a while. If I have been moved some I think it's that I had maybe become too complacent with the suffering in the world.
I'll leave this with a few minutes of some very pertinent words of wisdom from our mutual friend Stephen West. The whole series on the Frankfurt school was pretty good as well.
Also, I highly recommend The Radical King, edited by Cornel West. King's views on materialism mirror those of the Dalai Lama.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
The Four-hour Workweek by Tim Ferris becomes really interesting if you consider what may happen with human-equivalent AI agents a few years down the line. At the moment that system works because you can delegate a lot of work to human consultants in various forms who you source off internet platforms, and he shows you how to do this. But with advanced AI agents it will become possible to reduce the labour costs to the cost of electricity needed to run an instance of an agent, and a lot of work will become obsolete.
At that point we will need a new way of doing things, and it is possible that capitalism will become a much smaller part of society.
We can already reduce human labour, but that labour is profitable to capital, so we still have it. I suggest we need a new way of doing things now, not only to give people more of their time back, but because if we don't start consciously doing it now, capital will do it for us. Like Hawking said, "Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."
And just for the record, I'm not onboard with Ferris, but the critique of him in the article.
Good thread everyone! Polite, balanced, with meaningful info and knowledge.... I'm still working through all the links...
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
edited April 2018
@Vastmind said: Good thread everyone! Polite, balanced, with meaningful info and knowledge.... I'm still working through all the links...
I'll second that - isn't it wonderful when members can enjoy a lively debate, discuss various points and hold different opinions, but respect those differences fully, without resorting to arguing, belittling, insults, sarcasm, irritation, bitching, snapping, baiting or back-and-forth spats? Particularly AFTER a Moderator - any Moderator - has already intervened, made a point and drawn a line under the issue?
Thought this was a good listen. It touches on everything from global poverty to colonialism and the way the narratives we're told about poverty and the blessings of capitalism is obscuring the economic reality of global capital exploitation.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
edited April 2018
@Jason said:
Thought this was a good listen. It touches on everything from global poverty to colonialism and the way the narratives we're told about poverty and the blessings of capitalism is obscuring the economic reality of global capital exploitation.
I'll put it in my podcast feed. I feel though like even if I conceded every point about capitalism being the worst, I still wouldn't find true socialism a viable alternative. Since our debate I've found a few groups that are trying to put humanity back into capitalism. Their basic idea seems to be to add a human metric to the normal financial and efficiency metrics of economics. https://www.ineteconomics.org/ http://evonomics.com/ https://www.consciouscapitalism.org/
I don't listen to the Russell Brand podcast, but I listen to Sam Harris and I heard their mutual podcast. I know you've agreed with aspects of Sam's thinking in the past so out of curiosity, what did you make of their meeting?
It was ok. I side more with Brand these days. In general, I like Harris' interest in contemplativism and he's a good debater, but I find his views on torture troubling, his views on Islam verging on Islamophobic, his views on Western culture paternalistic (e.g., he basically argues that western imperialism was good for the world because it spread western culture), and his exchanges more often than not rather arrogant and dismissive.
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
It wouldn't be so bad if Brand wasn't such a hypocrite...
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
edited April 2018
@Jason You might like Sam Harris' most recent podcast with Vox editor Ezra Klein. While they often seemed to be talking past each other, I thought Ezra really was every bit Sam's equal and was able to point out some of Sam's faults.
More to the thread specifically. I resonate a lot with Stephen Pinker's new book Enlightenment Now, where he maps the amount of progress that actually has been made in the world if we take a step back from the negativity bias of news or, I should add, our more immediate evolutionary programming towards fairness and justice and look at the data to see what is actually occurring over time.
His presentation is 26 minutes the rest is Q&A if you don't want to spend an hour
Re: Sam Harris, I've read some of the transcript of their exchange via Klein's article about it, and I definitely think Harris is starting to slide into dangerous intellectual territory. Much of what he's trying to defend re: Murray and the Bell Curve has been heavily criticised by others, and some I thought thoroughly debunked years ago. He's sounding more and more like the social Darwinists of the 19th century.
Re: progress, very few people would argue that progress hasn't been made. What people like me criticize, however, is how that progress has been historically engineered in such a way as to really benefit a small minority of the population while often times being used to supress the progress of others, from colonial conquest and physical suppression to intellectual supression via various forms of discrimination and restrictions placed upon distribution of new technologies and medicines via property rights. I'm actually amazed at the level of progress we've made despite all that, and can see how much further along we'd be with a more equitable world.
Also, for what it's worth, Pinker glosses over a lot of the negatives and out right harm that's been done to paint such a rosey picture of progress, e.g., his treatment of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
@Jason said:
Thought this was a good listen. It touches on everything from global poverty to colonialism and the way the narratives we're told about poverty and the blessings of capitalism is obscuring the economic reality of global capital exploitation.
I listened to it today. He (Hickel) was good, it's hard for me to know how well what he says captures the full picture. In general most of the info we get is sort like a lawyer's view of the world, it starts from a moral frame of how the world works or what's important and then finds the facts that confirms that view and ignores or minimizes ones that contradict it. Even if the facts are true there are often multiple ways of interpreting what they mean.
So, I'll keep it in mind and probably see if I can find views and arguments that contradict or agree with him to see how much I should take on board myself.
I also listened to Russel's conversation with Jordan Peterson. I'm not a devotee of his, but he's interesting to me since no one else seems to be saying what he is saying. I found agreement with his point that inequality is a much deeper and longer lasting problem than capitalism and his view that personal, psychological solutions to problems might be the better way to address some of these social issues.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
I’m largely unfamiliar with the original works of Karl Marx, but I saw this article about the communist manifesto and thought it unusually insightful. It’s quite surprising how thinking from 150 years ago is still resonating today...
@Kerome said:
I’m largely unfamiliar with the original works of Karl Marx, but I saw this article about the communist manifesto and thought it unusually insightful. It’s quite surprising how thinking from 150 years ago is still resonating today...
Yeah, I'm a fan of Yanis Varoufakis, and I agree with much that he has to say. I also think Marx is worth reading. I used to be highly critical of Marx and his thought until I actually starting reading things like his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and Capital. Another really good article on Capital and its continued relevance is "150 years of Karl Marx’s Capital."
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
edited April 2018
I came across an article I liked that sort of sums up my philosophical rather than technical view of a balanced approach to economics. It's focus is on management but I think it can equally be applied to macroeconomics.
The struggle for the future of work is already underway, and instead of finding a way to minimize work and make wealth distribution more equitable, they're trying to give employers even more power to hire and fire and underpay: World Bank recommends fewer regulations protecting workers.
Comments
True...I had the good fortune to spend some time travelling and working in Scandinavia back in the early 70s and they seemed streets ahead back then....
People like that are great and what I would consider to be ethically mature. I doubt there are enough of them to run the economy of an entire country.
Are there? Are there enough to make it work? Has it been demonstrated on a wide scale where self selection for altruistic people has been removed from the system?
You think so, but you don't know so. It is only theoretical.
I guess I really do believe that they are at least in significant enough numbers to create a drag on an economy.
They don't have to be, but if they are their economic activity will still benefit society. Benefiting society doesn't have to depend on altruism.
Maybe I am too cynical, but maybe you're too rosey.
That's a hyperbolic interpretation of what I mean. Not nothing, but less. And not just corrupt but more corruption.
That would be nice and a better system could contribute to that. This is more or less why I believe that the root of the solution is promotion of virtue and ethics in society so we can have a highly ethical populace who would be capable of a cooperative economy.
Would there be enough or would many plug into drugs and VR to fill the void rather than community?
I do think there is some possibility in big data and social technology to increase a greater sharing economy. And once robots can push the cart I'll probably sign up for the revolution.
Think what you wish. I'll just add that places like Finland or Kenya have experimented with UBIs with positive results. And many of the places with universal education and healthcare and less working hours are doing quite well, with politically engaged, happy, and healthy populations. I don't see why people are afraid to try that here, or willing to go further.
Because Jason, due to the culture, environment and influences they've been subjected to, they've grown up in an environment where "me first", "What's in it for me?" and "I'm alright Jack" is the order of the day. Even if it's demonstrated to be wildly wrong. For example:
What the USA (and other countries) could learn from the Netherlands:
I definitely have blue collar middle America values, I don't agree with your characterization of course. And from what I know about you I would think we are in agreement on the idea that we shouldn't feel ashamed to share or express our values.
Let me just take a moment to express my gratitude for the exchange. While these are often stressful and aggravating the benefit towards refining my thoughts and views are so valuable to me.
Having said that let me just express some insights I had while my mind was lost in meditation this morning. I think earning what you have in life promotes dignity and self respect, but it also leads to the erroneous view that one is autonomous and independent of others. I think having your needs provided for you can lead to gratitude and an unlocking of ones passions, but it can also lead to a sense of entitlement and indolence.
Any system that fails to address these dichotomies is flawed, be it capitalism or socialism.
Where I come from and what I value is work over passion, empowerment over care, agency over systems or maybe both to some degree? Above all though, I think I value complexity over ideology and, I think we're in agreement here, empathy and respect over belligerence and self-righteousness.
To address this more specifically. I do believe in mixed economies and progressive taxation. I think there is a baby/bathwater issue here. I think there is an important quality to capitalism that I don't want to throw out. So when I hear talk about getting rid of it altogether I want to defend that baby and since we focus on the point of disagreement it comes across as being all I care about. So let me say it again, I'm not in favor of lassiez faire capitalism and I do favor some level of redistribution greater than currently in the US though directed more at removing obstacles to opportunity (healthcare, infrastructure) and empowering individuals (education, healthcare) than providing care and security.
I think we would have more of those types of people if we were more free ourselves though. Complete self love and freedom opens the world to us in a way we cannot comprehend otherwise and cooperation becomes second nature, and even joyful. When I have done mundane tasks in cooperation with others in order to build something or sustain something is has a much different feel about it than simply mundaneness. Mundanaeity heh.
I think assuming that too many people are not capable holds us back and everyone else back. When we put forth that we do not believe in someone, that is what they tend to live up to. Sometimes it takes a leap of faith in a way to trust someone to be able to manage and step up to the task. But when we assume they cannot and hold control ourselves as a result, then no one grows. No one matures. We all stagnate.
It is a common part, i think, of blue collar values because survival is never far from your mind. But it can also result in a level of reliance on self and community that other places do not know, because you understand that sometimes it is all you CAN rely on. Me First is a result of survival frame of mind, it seems, and I can see both parts of it really, having lived in both mindsets and both very rural and very urban settings.
I don’t think it’s possible to run the world anymore without some form of capitalism @person, there is little danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It’s not 1917 anymore and I’m very far from certain that another Communist Revolution could succeed.
But the model of the scandinavian countries, which are quite a lot more socialist than most western democracies, does look very good. There are definitely things we can learn from Sweden, etc.
Agreed, maybe you missed my last post.
The problem is it is very hard to move to another system, with industries and cooperation being so dependent on it. It's very hard to change things to that extent even with all the ecological problems and social. In addition, what kind of system can work on such a large scale, I can only think dictatorship because it is very hard to have so many people in a system, the more people the more authoritarian and suppressed a system gets as more control is required. Unless perhaps there is a technological solution to that.
Also the scandinavian countries are much smaller, it's harder for this sort of system to work well in bigger countries unless they reduce in size and it relies on capitalism still to power it's welfare state. Plus you need a culture of cooperation for this model to really work well.
I came across a short piece that does a pretty good job of expressing my hopes regarding capitalism.
https://m.signalvnoise.com/exiting-the-dark-ages-of-capitalism-480f0600f103
Maybe I should just let this thread go but Kurzgesagt just posted a really good video on what I want to preserve, that of making more pie as being more important than how it is distributed. I suppose the video doesn't explicitly state Capitalism's contribution but it does talk about supply and demand, the self serving motive, liberty to make ones own choices and the importance of innovation (which the profit motive incentivizes). The video doesn't address the negative consequences created either, but my opinion is that the overall impact is the greater good. I'm open to suggestions that it's not the greater good but I think it's important to acknowledge and keep in mind the benefits. Baby/bathwater.
I'll also add this one comment that I liked.
While it is true that the efficient distribution of resources in a planned economy is beyond the reach of a human planner, it would not be beyond the reach of an AI. Something to ponder...
Being a slave to any object of desire is a cause of suffering. We are all slaves to selfish desires born of ignorance.
That said, we live in a capitalist society, so, if we can detach from it and make money then distribute it to the needy, then even capitalism can become Dharma practice.
I agree > @person said:
I agree with much of that. What I disagree with, however, is: 1) having a system where the world's wealth is concentrated into so few hands, where just 2,000 out of 7,000,000,000 people own enough wealth to eliminate extreme global poverty seven times over; 2) the notion that the contradictions inherent to capitalism (e.g., cyclical crises, structural unemployment, the tendency of capital to accumulate rather than become more socialized, unequal social relation between capital and labour, etc.) can simply be willed away rather than materially changed; 3) that the profit motive is the best motivational force for society moving forward in a time characterized by consumerism, materialism, growing inequality, the profitability of harmful industries (e.g., war economies, the fossil fuel industry, etc.), environmental degradation, and the restriction of necessities and opportunities to those who can afford them, etc. I'm also critical of how the market decides what's of value on a scale that supersedes many of the needs and desires of individual communities, and how money influences political decisions more than the will of the people. So in the end, I think that trying to consciously move towards a more socialized, democratic, and green-oriented socio-economic system is in our best interest, in terms of survival as well as increasing human happiness. In essence, we can, and should, make more pie and distribute it more equitably with a mind towards sustainablity and need rather than profit.
I'm happy leaving it there. I think the growing pie thing was what I had the most attachment to and conviction about. I do have other points of disagreement but not as much conviction or certainty.
If you want more I think there is more to unpack, if not I can let it go.
Having a bigger and bigger pie is good. But capitalism is about baking a bigger and bigger pie for capitalists at the expense of working-class people. Last year, capitalism created 10 pieces of pie, and a small handful of capitalists took 8 pieces, leaving the entire world to split 2. It also historically arose in conjunction with patriarchy, so more men own and control land and shares of capital, fueling gender inequality as well as economic inequality (and while they don't have statistics for it, I'd argue the same for things racial inequality, too). And since those people also have the social power (i.e., money) to steer policy, government actions have been geared towards lowering taxes and further eroding the political power of labour, solidifying the political mechanisms supporting these forms of inequality. This is how capitalism functions and has always functioned, because its internal logic is characterized by contradictions that sow the seeds for things like inequality, unequal social relations between capital and labour, capital accumulation and accumulation for accumulations sake. As a critic of this system, I seek to make others aware of this logic and the injustices created by it in the hopes of planting seeds of awareness that'll eventually sprout into a motivation to help push things in a more socialized, democratic, equitable, and green-oriented direction.
And this question of distribution is extremely important, I think, and can't be stressed enough. As Stephen Hawking noted in his last AMA on a question about automation and unemployment, "Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."
In the future when production doesn't come from people then I worry about that possibility and would favor UBI, Fully Automated Luxury Communism or some other equitable system. Until then I worry too much about liberty, efficiency and growth.
I don't disagree but overall wealth has increased dramatically over the past 200 years
And I would rather have %10 of 1 trillion dollars than %90 of 1 billion dollars.
And while the majority of wealth does go to the top those at the bottom are still better off.
I really don't disagree with many of the problems you have, but my inclination is to fix the system rather than over turn it because I see problems with a true socialist system.
For example I, and Warren Buffett, think trickle down economics is a sham. We need both supply AND demand, if the average person has more money in their hands they contribute more of their wealth to the economy than the average investor. Those with money don't invest it simply because they have it they invest because there are opportunities to make more money. During the recession companies had excess cash but they weren't using it because people weren't buying products. The drug trade isn't what it is because the producers are making so much but because people demand the product.
I think there needs to be an ethic of basic human dignity. If we just say growing the pie is the greatest good for the most number of people including all the future generations. It could be argued that enslaving most of humanity for many generations will create a much wealthier future for those future generations. So we need some basic standard.
Let me make a basic argument in favor of wealth disparity. Say you have a village of 100 people. Everyday it is the job of 10 people to break all the big rocks into small rocks. Now say one of the villagers creates a tool so only 1 person needs to now do that job. The other 9 people aren't out of work, they are now able to contribute their efforts to other aspects of village life. Now say the village decides to build several of the tools so they have many more small rocks than they need and they trade the excess to a neighboring village for more logs and horseshoes. This one person has contributed more wealth to the village than just what he produces from his labor. If he equally shares the wealth he created with the village everyone will be better off. If he keeps a large share of the added value no one is actually poorer than they were before and slightly more wealthy as they get some of the added value. Relatively speaking he now is more wealthy than the others, but others will look at his relative advantage and be incentivized to come up with their own value creating innovations.
Then, I've tried making this point at other times through some questions. Most businesses don't start out as large ones but as small start ups. I have some real uncertainty how "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" can work in this situation. Take myself for example, I'm single and self employed with no employees, but how would it work if I wanted to increase business and take someone on as help. Over 20+ years I've developed a good reputation and a solid network, the new partner would equally benefit from those in terms of pay and opportunity but might not have as much concern with maintaining them since if things go south they could leave and join another company. They would be effectively taking the value of those intangibles from me since we share equally in the financial rewards of our labor rather than if I pay them less than I would charge a customer and keep the profits for myself. There is more that is valuable in economics than labor. Now suppose they have a family to support, so in this scenario being more experienced I am more productive and have better quality so I am contributing more but since they have a family their needs are greater so they would receive more of the fruits. Why would I stay motivated to produce in this scenario except because I am a very altruistic person? Or would entrepreneurship not be a thing and the only option would be to join a construction co-op? If so, where does innovation and change come from? Unions seem to focus on stability and security.
We can and have changed that in other ways. There is greater gender and racial equity now than in the past, can't that progress continue?
Money out of politics, no argument here. Would worker co-ops not also lobby for their interests?
These were problems before capitalism, even apes have unequal social relations, and will be the case in other systems (Some animals are more equal than others) until you remove greed, anger and delusion from the minds of the people in it.
As someone who understands the abuses and excess of the system, I seek to enact policies to counter and remedy them. Understanding that humans are driven by greed, hatred and delusion I seek to build love and wisdom in people's hearts so they no longer seek self advantage at the expense of others, but understand that helping others IS helping oneself.
Don't forget that people are also motivated by non-greed, non-hatred, and non-delusion; and fostering a system that relies on/encouages that rather than the motivation of greed will not only help serve to make things more equitable, but also help people to be better/more ethical people. It seems your arguments mainly revolve around keeping things, including inequality, as they are while hoping that more equality just somehow happens. The majority of the equality we currently have isn't due to the kindness of capital, but to the hard won victories of abolitionists, labour movements, suffrage movements, feminist movements, civil rights movements, etc., many coming from a radical POV that challenges the socioeconomic status quo. The move towards greater equality and democracy is happening despite capitalism, not because of it.
As for the rest, I'll answer more specifically when I have the time (my new job is really draining and time consuming). I'll just note now that: 1. I'm enjoying this exchange. 2. Early hunter-gatherer societies appear to have been more or less egalitarian, so the seeds for that have been with us for a long time. 3. Mechanisms of more radical and equal wealth distribution can mitigate some of the problems you bring up, but the contradictions inherent to capitalism make it difficult (maybe impossible) to sustain them because they're in conflict (here I'd recommend David Harvey's Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism for a detailed look at this subject). 4. If we simply wait to change things until after these jobs are lost and people are suffering and without power, the future will more likely look like a sci-fi dystopia than fully automated, luxury capitalism, as Hawking and others like me fear. Capitalism isn't just about economics, but the political power structures built onto of it as well.
Not really, I'm saying that inequality doesn't really matter that much because even though some have a lot more, everyone has some more. Comparing the equality of wealth at this current moment in time, there is massive inequality. Comparing the equality of wealth between the average person 200 years ago and today, we are much better off. Most people in the developed world live better today than the kings of old. And it could be better still, the developing world has much to catch up, we have diseases to cure, space to colonize, better kinds of Jello, etc. If we can not kill ourselves in the process that is.
And you are probably right, we do need to start acting rather than waiting. Efforts to make capitalism what it is today started many decades ago in think tanks and with other idea makers. Adam Smith also had a book on ethics that was important to his thinking in The Wealth of Nations that people have just sort of forgotten.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/smith-moral-political/
In all this I came across the idea of social capitalism, which sounds intriguing to me
Maybe in the end it all comes down to this, what is the basic human nature?
Edited to add: It seems I'm on the side arguing that people are inherently selfish and I'm not sure how I got here, since I have long thought and often made posts saying that most of human behavior is cooperative.
I think is matters to a lot of people, both materially and emotionally/spiritually (esp. those suffering from extreme poverty, exploitation, industrial pollution and other negative externalities, and other forms of privation). It's not simply that some people have more; it's that some people have more and then use that wealth in ways that harm working people and sows the seeds for the perpetuation of further inequality.
It's understandable. I certainly think we are both at heart, but it can be easy to focus on only one side of that divide when making a case from one POV, unintentionally neglecting the other. I just think that our material circumstances help serve to influence which we are the most; and the logic of capitalism seems to me to promote our more selfish side, which in turn colours our ethics and priorities rather than the other way around.
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That makes a lot of sense. I just don't know how to get away from those two graphs I posted earlier today. The growth in wealth over the past 200 years has possibly been the greatest improvement in the quality of human life ever. If you can present me with something that solves the worlds problems without losing that benefit I'm with you.
It's true that even if capitalism reflects our selfish nature it also reinforces it. But imposing a system of altruism on people if their hearts aren't in it I don't think will work, people will seek to circumvent and gain relative advantage anyway. At least capitalism harnesses that selfish behavior in a positive direction as in the video I posted. And if cooperation is coerced (the system forces it) rather than voluntarily given is it really generosity?
Well, one could turn that around and argue that capitalism is forced upon us, and every nation that attempts something different is prevented from succeeding in large part to interventions by the US and other capitalist nations. When Iran tried to nationalize its oil fields, the US and UK helped support a coup to overthrow their democratically-elected prime minister and install the Shah. When Chile elected a socialist president, the CIA helped Pinochet assassinate him and replace him with a right-wing government. When MLK Jr. started getting too radical, the FBI tried to blackmail him and get him to commit suicide. When Castro overthrew the dictator Batista and instituted a communist government, we tried numerous times to assassinate him, start a failed coup, and then imposed a brutal, 50+ year embargo that economically choked the country. We did similar things to the fledgling Soviet Union and numerous other nations attempting, through various means, to create an alternative to capitalism as we know it. That's one of the main purposes of imperialism after all, besides regional and market hegemony, of course. Just saying.
Just a thought.
If technology keeps developing at this pace, would it be possible for capitalism to disappear of its own accord?
With technology, supply exceeds demand. So at least when it comes to bare essentials it is possible that everybody can get what they want without working.
Wouldn't this therefore make the profit-making system itself redundant?
If so, wouldn't it lead to some kind of post-capitalist world (like the one depicted in star trek)?
Not necessarily. It's possible it'll happen organically and mostly on its own; but if those who own and control the commodities, the tech that produces them, and the market wish to continue to profit from them, it's unlikely it'll unfold in that way and we could very well end up destroying our planet in the process if we don't do something to change our trajectory.
Capitalism has done some good for people’s personal wealth over the last few hundred years, but there are questions about how far wealth affects people’s happiness. The question of whether people are actually ‘better off’ now than before depends very much on what standard you use to measure things by.
For example in 2005 uk pounds, it was found that once family income surpassed 45,000 per year there was not any benefit to happiness levels from additional income. All the things that made a genuine difference could be had for that level of money. Now I’m not sure what it would be in say 1900 dollars but I’m willing to bet it would be less, since there were fewer goods available.
And some essential things are very much more expensive now than they ever were, for example a home is now a lot dearer than even in the 1960’s. It all goes to show that money isn’t everything, and that the trade-off of time vs money that comes with capitalism for ordinary working people is not necessarily in their benefit.
Liberty is an important aspect of capitalism, people are still free to form co-ops or work directly for the betterment of others.
Edited to add: Would individual enterprise still be an option in your version of socialism? Or maybe it would take the form of some kind of collective enterprise? If so I'm really unsure of how that could practically work and have tried asking about it at times.
Except for Iran, which probably was about imperialism and oil, and MLK, which was probably about race, I'd say those were due to the cold war policy of containment rather than imperialism.
There is something called post scarcity which is essentially what you are asking.
Not really. Liberty within capitalism is limited, mainly to those who own capital. The liberty of the market is mostly an illusion, since working people are not only forced into wage labour for their survival — from being physically forced off of common/farm land by enclosure laws in places like England to fill the growing factories and the slave labour used to help growing economies in Europe and the US to the general need to make a living by working for a wage today — but the conditions of that exchange are unequal, as well.
It's often argued that capitalism values choice and equality, and that demand yields value, not labour. But that may not be the whole story, and things may not be as equitable as they appear. According to the labour theory of value, for example, value in the context of capitalism is primarily determined by the socially necessary labour time required for a commodity's production, which is then sold by the average or market value. So a commodity's value, which is qualitatively expressed by its use-value, is quantitatively expressed via its exchange-value, its price being a measure of its value against a particular money-form. Demand for a commodity, its degree of usefulness in fulfilling a want or need, is only one aspect of its value.
From this perspective, what a person receives in payment isn't the full value of their labour power due to an inherent inequality in capitalist social relations between capital and labour. This seed of inequality, however, is easily obscured, as are capitalist social relations and the origin of profit, which from the Marxist perspective arises out of the division of the workday into necessary labour and surplus labour. But since all labour appears as paid labour, it's easy to argue that capital's role in the production process and demand's role in the process of exchange is the source of value (essentially separating capital as an independent and autonomous factor of production) despite the actual complexity of capitalist production and distribution, completely obscuring labour's contribution in the creation and realization of profit. But as David Harvey illustrates in Limits to Capital, part of Marx's critique in Capital details precisely with how the contradictions inherent within the capitalist mode of production produces a fundamental contradiction between the equality presupposed by exchange and the inequality via the exploitation of labour required to gain profit. So from the very onset, the kernel of inequality is already present within our political-economic system. And that inequality is the basis for much of the struggle between capital and labour and how surplus value is distributed.
On the one hand, workers are, in principle, "free to sell their labour under whatever conditions of contract (for whatever length of working day) they please" (30), which highlights the equality, freedom, and individuality characterizing exchange relations, recalling both Aristotle's argument that "exchange cannot take place without equality" and Marx's argument that "the circulation of commodities requires the exchange of equivalents" (19).
However, workers must also compete against one another in the labour market, where capitalists who are forced to internalize the profit-seeking motive due to the coercive laws of competition purchase workers' labour time with the sole purpose being the accumulation of profit (accumulation for accumulation's sake), and who more often than not dictate the duration and conditions of labour workers must accept or else risk privation while seeking something better, putting workers at a disadvantage on an individual level. (28-30) (One of the main reasons I favour some kind of universal basic income is that it has the potential to empower workers, decommodify labour-power by helping free workers from absolute dependence on wage labour for subsistence, and enlarge the nonmarket social economy.)
The expansion of value in this process occurs via the production of surplus value by capitalists who employ wage labour, a social relation in which the worker — who gives up their rights to control over the production process, the product of their labour, and the added value incorporated in production — receives the value of their labour power and nothing else (42-3). And this is important because this is the point where the surplus value created in the labour process is appropriated by capitalists who are forced, due to the coercive laws of competition, to internalize the profit-seeking motive to purchase workers' labour time with the sole purpose being the accumulation of profit (accumulation for accumulation's sake), i.e., how they transform money (M) into commodities (C) and then back into money plus a surplus (M + ∆M), the added value being the result of the additional amount of labour time capitalists can extract/contract out of the worker in excess of what it takes for them to produce the value of the wages they receive, which is why they fight against things like reducing hours of labour and higher wages.
More broadly speaking, however, workers generally seek (and one could rightly even say are compelled) to purchase commodities with the money they earn through their role in the production of commodities (C-M-C); and through the maintenance and reproduction of the working class (primarily through their role as consumers of commodities), the reproduction of capital is created. Surplus value, then, is produced via the production process and realized via market exchange, where workers as producers and consumers give of themselves twice to capital—first as what's conventionally viewed as unpaid labour and second as wages for commodities (as well as things like rent, etc.) (56). And most people don't even question that we have to work certain jobs for money to survive, but others go completely unpaid. Women, for example, have historically been unpaid in their labour of birthing and raising the next generation of workers.
One of the practical as well as philosophical issues I have with the capitalist mode of production, then, is the potential exploitation inherent within the system itself, which in its most extreme (and therefore most visible) forms can be found in things like prison labour and sweatshops (which are utilized by most large retailers, from Nike and Apple to Walmart), but according to the LTV is a characteristic of all forms of wage labour under capitalism. And under political systems dominated by capitalism, capital has a decisive advantage due to its privileged positions and control of wealth, making the voting liberty of working-class people less than that of capital. For instance, about 75% of Americans favour higher taxes on the rich, with over half "strongly agreeing" and another 23% "somewhat agreeing," yet what did they do? They passed a giant tax cut, mainly favouring the wealthy, and adding money to the already bloated deficit. Where's the liberty in that? Definitely not with the 75% of Americans who would rather there be some sort of higher tax rate on the rich.
And none of that touches on the liberty the US takes in restricting the liberty of other nations, especially those who flirt with alternative economic models. If anything, I'd say that coercion is an important aspect of capitalism, and that the history of capitalism is that of the restriction of liberty of the working-class, which we're continually fighting to undo through various mass movements.
The main thing they were containing were anti-capitalist alternatives, which, if they could be united, would challenge the dominancy of the US and its capitalist economy. Like, literally, the whole point of "containment" was to contain the Soviet model of communism and punish/overthrow those who tried. That was its main point. When the US backed pro-monarchist force in Russia after the 1917 revolutions (pre-cold war), it was to get them back into WWI as well as to stop a new economic vision. When it tried to get MLK Jr. to kill himself, it was because of his growing radical message against US materialism and militarism and poverty and the need for working people to change that (which wasn't even connected to the Soviet Union). In Chile, the threat was the election of Allende and his policies of economic socialization. The list goes on and on. In addition, by arguing in favour of the US's policy of cold war containment, you're inadvertently arguing in favour of the Soviet bloc, too, since they were simply doing the same thing and trying to stave off the US and its allies, who were trying to undermine their progress and international relations.
Sure, but in a post-wage labour society, it might not look like same thing. I know it's difficult, but just try to think about what alternatives could look like. Read some sci-fi novels or economic theorists or something. Use your imagination.
Can you say more on this? This is new to me.
I'm sure if you google mlk, fbi, and suicide letter you'll get some info on it.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensored-letter-to-mlk-reveals.html
The FBI did worse to other groups like the Black Panthers with their COINTELPRO program. Seriously henious things.
@Jason I read and more or less comprehended what you said. Disagreements and points of argument come to mind, mostly that I come at the problem from a different moral frame and I see your points not as wrong but incomplete.
At any rate I think I am full and need to digest this stuff for a while. If I have been moved some I think it's that I had maybe become too complacent with the suffering in the world.
I'll leave this with a few minutes of some very pertinent words of wisdom from our mutual friend Stephen West. The whole series on the Frankfurt school was pretty good as well.
Haven't gotten that far yet. Still finishing Kant series.
Saw this and thought it was relevant (and something I support 100%): https://jacobinmag.com/2018/03/four-hour-workweek-tim-ferriss-work
Also, I highly recommend The Radical King, edited by Cornel West. King's views on materialism mirror those of the Dalai Lama.
The Four-hour Workweek by Tim Ferris becomes really interesting if you consider what may happen with human-equivalent AI agents a few years down the line. At the moment that system works because you can delegate a lot of work to human consultants in various forms who you source off internet platforms, and he shows you how to do this. But with advanced AI agents it will become possible to reduce the labour costs to the cost of electricity needed to run an instance of an agent, and a lot of work will become obsolete.
At that point we will need a new way of doing things, and it is possible that capitalism will become a much smaller part of society.
We can already reduce human labour, but that labour is profitable to capital, so we still have it. I suggest we need a new way of doing things now, not only to give people more of their time back, but because if we don't start consciously doing it now, capital will do it for us. Like Hawking said, "Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."
And just for the record, I'm not onboard with Ferris, but the critique of him in the article.
Good thread everyone! Polite, balanced, with meaningful info and knowledge.... I'm still working through all the links...
I'll second that - isn't it wonderful when members can enjoy a lively debate, discuss various points and hold different opinions, but respect those differences fully, without resorting to arguing, belittling, insults, sarcasm, irritation, bitching, snapping, baiting or back-and-forth spats? Particularly AFTER a Moderator - any Moderator - has already intervened, made a point and drawn a line under the issue?
(I hate it when that happens!)
All members, please take note!
Thought this was a good listen. It touches on everything from global poverty to colonialism and the way the narratives we're told about poverty and the blessings of capitalism is obscuring the economic reality of global capital exploitation.
I'll put it in my podcast feed. I feel though like even if I conceded every point about capitalism being the worst, I still wouldn't find true socialism a viable alternative. Since our debate I've found a few groups that are trying to put humanity back into capitalism. Their basic idea seems to be to add a human metric to the normal financial and efficiency metrics of economics.
https://www.ineteconomics.org/
http://evonomics.com/
https://www.consciouscapitalism.org/
I don't listen to the Russell Brand podcast, but I listen to Sam Harris and I heard their mutual podcast. I know you've agreed with aspects of Sam's thinking in the past so out of curiosity, what did you make of their meeting?
It was ok. I side more with Brand these days. In general, I like Harris' interest in contemplativism and he's a good debater, but I find his views on torture troubling, his views on Islam verging on Islamophobic, his views on Western culture paternalistic (e.g., he basically argues that western imperialism was good for the world because it spread western culture), and his exchanges more often than not rather arrogant and dismissive.
It wouldn't be so bad if Brand wasn't such a hypocrite...
@Jason You might like Sam Harris' most recent podcast with Vox editor Ezra Klein. While they often seemed to be talking past each other, I thought Ezra really was every bit Sam's equal and was able to point out some of Sam's faults.
More to the thread specifically. I resonate a lot with Stephen Pinker's new book Enlightenment Now, where he maps the amount of progress that actually has been made in the world if we take a step back from the negativity bias of news or, I should add, our more immediate evolutionary programming towards fairness and justice and look at the data to see what is actually occurring over time.
His presentation is 26 minutes the rest is Q&A if you don't want to spend an hour
Re: Sam Harris, I've read some of the transcript of their exchange via Klein's article about it, and I definitely think Harris is starting to slide into dangerous intellectual territory. Much of what he's trying to defend re: Murray and the Bell Curve has been heavily criticised by others, and some I thought thoroughly debunked years ago. He's sounding more and more like the social Darwinists of the 19th century.
Re: progress, very few people would argue that progress hasn't been made. What people like me criticize, however, is how that progress has been historically engineered in such a way as to really benefit a small minority of the population while often times being used to supress the progress of others, from colonial conquest and physical suppression to intellectual supression via various forms of discrimination and restrictions placed upon distribution of new technologies and medicines via property rights. I'm actually amazed at the level of progress we've made despite all that, and can see how much further along we'd be with a more equitable world.
Also, for what it's worth, Pinker glosses over a lot of the negatives and out right harm that's been done to paint such a rosey picture of progress, e.g., his treatment of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.
I listened to it today. He (Hickel) was good, it's hard for me to know how well what he says captures the full picture. In general most of the info we get is sort like a lawyer's view of the world, it starts from a moral frame of how the world works or what's important and then finds the facts that confirms that view and ignores or minimizes ones that contradict it. Even if the facts are true there are often multiple ways of interpreting what they mean.
So, I'll keep it in mind and probably see if I can find views and arguments that contradict or agree with him to see how much I should take on board myself.
I also listened to Russel's conversation with Jordan Peterson. I'm not a devotee of his, but he's interesting to me since no one else seems to be saying what he is saying. I found agreement with his point that inequality is a much deeper and longer lasting problem than capitalism and his view that personal, psychological solutions to problems might be the better way to address some of these social issues.
I’m largely unfamiliar with the original works of Karl Marx, but I saw this article about the communist manifesto and thought it unusually insightful. It’s quite surprising how thinking from 150 years ago is still resonating today...
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/20/yanis-varoufakis-marx-crisis-communist-manifesto
Yeah, I'm a fan of Yanis Varoufakis, and I agree with much that he has to say. I also think Marx is worth reading. I used to be highly critical of Marx and his thought until I actually starting reading things like his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and Capital. Another really good article on Capital and its continued relevance is "150 years of Karl Marx’s Capital."
I came across an article I liked that sort of sums up my philosophical rather than technical view of a balanced approach to economics. It's focus is on management but I think it can equally be applied to macroeconomics.
http://evonomics.com/organizational-management-ecological-hwang/
The struggle for the future of work is already underway, and instead of finding a way to minimize work and make wealth distribution more equitable, they're trying to give employers even more power to hire and fire and underpay: World Bank recommends fewer regulations protecting workers.