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wateroverfire posted:Sure. We just...don't really have anything better, at this point. Things that are less lovely in some ways and (potentially a lot) more lovely in other ways, but not better. Yes definitely it is impossible to say whether the US healthcare system or the UK one is better.
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May 29, 2019 20:35
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OwlFancier posted:Yes definitely it is impossible to say whether the US healthcare system or the UK one is better. Yeah, I thought about it and edited that in.
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May 29, 2019 20:36
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Nevvy Z posted:Lol at enjoyment of life being a "pointless thing" If you think enjoyment of life is something you should marketize and thus deprive some people of then you're a piece of poo poo hth.
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May 29, 2019 20:38
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KingNastidon posted:Very simple task for you today, Yeowch. Go to a few pharmaceutical or biotech website's careers section. See if they have any jobs under the "sales" or "marketing and market research" or "finance" or "analytics" or "market access" definitions that exist outside the US. Or if there are US-based roles that have "Global" responsibilities other than simply "US." take a quick look at how similar they are to your own, and be grimly surprised. for some reason, other countries do not consider your job title to mean Opiod Epidemic Manufacturer. but under your current employer, there are... oh, what is that wonderful euphemism... "differing market realities." there is a potential world where you do not need to exacerbate the suffering of the weak in order to eat, KN. why do you recoil from it in horror.
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May 29, 2019 20:40
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:take a quick look at how similar they are to your own, and be grimly surprised. Dude was your family killed by a pharma rep or something? That is a lot of hate.
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May 29, 2019 20:44
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Moridin920 posted:It's about people being free to pursue their own interests/hobbies/skills without worrying about becoming homeless. Again, Moridin, you cannot resist falling back on this argument. It's possible to address the homeless/starvation problem while also asking able-bodied people to contribute X hours a week in productive ways maintain/advance society. Moridin920 posted:If you had no worries about basic needs like food/medicine/clothing/housing would you choose to spend most of your waking life advertising pharmaceuticals? If yes then great and if no then you'd be free to go do whatever else you want to do. I would choose to do whatever maximizes my happiness. If there was some incentive to putting some portion of my waking life towards things that I wouldn't otherwise want to do - say, spending 20 hours a week hauling garbage to the dump - such that I am able to afford a nicer apartment or blueberry flavoring for my sustenance paste then I might be more inclined to do it. wateroverfire posted:Dude was your family killed by a pharma rep or something? That is a lot of hate. One of the many deranged people here that aren't interested in furthering the discussion or thinking about how to counter opinions they vehemently disagree with, but rather spend their time insulting people to try to run them off and create a place where everyone agrees with each other. And the mods do little to address it because they are generally ideologically aligned with these people and desire the same end. KingNastidon fucked around with this message at 20:56 on May 29, 2019 |
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May 29, 2019 20:52
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OwlFancier posted:If you think enjoyment of life is something you should marketize and thus deprive some people of then you're a piece of poo poo hth. "Everyone can't have all of everything is exactly the same as deprivation!" Ok guy
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May 29, 2019 21:00
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Nevvy Z posted:"Everyone can't have all of everything is exactly the same as deprivation!" Either you're suggesting markets for things that are literally pointless, as in people do not need them to be happy, or you are suggesting markets for things that people do need to be happy in which case see my prior point. Pick one and stick with it. I don't care which you pick but decide.
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May 29, 2019 21:15
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wateroverfire posted:Dude was your family killed by a pharma rep or something? That is a lot of hate. you are still the wateroverfire who was a huge Pinochet fan, yes do you recall being confused about why the Generalissimo's strategy of publicly murdering undesirables to maintain his power was unpopular, even among people whose family members he had not killed. it is possible for someone to consider the willful infliction of suffering on the weak, for no cause beyond one's personal enrichment, to be a bad thing. and it is possible to have a goal for society above and beyond making the helicopter Pinochet's chucking gay people out of slightly more fuel efficient, no matter how upset that makes the helicopter mechanic.
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May 29, 2019 21:43
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:you are still the wateroverfire who was a huge Pinochet fan, yes Dude that's both hosed up to say and not anything accurate about me. What the gently caress is wrong with you?
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May 29, 2019 22:28
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KingNastidon posted:Again, Moridin, you cannot resist falling back on this argument. It's possible to address the homeless/starvation problem while also asking able-bodied people to contribute X hours a week in productive ways maintain/advance society. I fall back to the argument because in practice this is what we actually do. I also don't see any way around the fact that however you jigger your markets they are fundamentally about motivating people via depriving them of something they need, whether or not the supply exists to sufficiently meet everyone's needs. Like in your hypothetical future everyone is just a lazy selfish rear end and no one will haul any trash if they aren't incentivized by gaining access to luxuries that other people are deprived of? What a sad outlook on humans. KingNastidon posted:I would choose to do whatever maximizes my happiness. If there was some incentive to putting some portion of my waking life towards things that I wouldn't otherwise want to do - say, spending 20 hours a week hauling garbage to the dump - such that I am able to afford a nicer apartment or blueberry flavoring for my sustenance paste then I might be more inclined to do it. Why should someone who is unable to spend 20 hours a week hauling trash, whether because they are just physically incapable or because there isn't enough trash to be hauled, not be able to get blueberry flavoring? Why should *afford* come into it even? If demand for blueberry flavors rise then you allocate away from other food/flavor production and into blueberries or whatever. It's not 1830 we don't need markets to regulate that for us anymore (they're kind of poo poo at it anyway). Like why should we deprive people of that just to coerce them to do things? Because otherwise society falls apart and no one contributes poo poo? Because there isn't enough blueberry flavoring to go around otherwise? I don't think so. Moridin920 fucked around with this message at 22:57 on May 29, 2019 |
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May 29, 2019 22:49
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wateroverfire posted:Dude that's both hosed up to say and not anything accurate about me. What the gently caress is wrong with you? someone, can't remember who posted:the Pinochet regime committed crimes that can be explained by circumstances (ongoing political violence by the left) my apologies for misrepresenting your position: you merely believe the left -made- his holiness the General chuck people out of helicopters. and that it was necessary, to save the Economy, for the 1% of the country whose wealth his tenure did not utterly destroy. unless your position has evolved since then. that would be nice to hear. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 29, 2019 22:50
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whoa actual pinochet apologia that's fresh
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May 29, 2019 22:53
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:my apologies for misrepresenting your position: you merely believe the left -made- his holiness the General chuck people out of helicopters. and that it was necessary, to save the Economy, for the 1% of the country whose wealth his tenure did not utterly destroy. In the context of arguing against american leftists who think that everything was sweetness and light and headed toward glorious communism until America and that nothing at all was wrong and there was no insurgent violence whatsoever nosir, not "oh yeah what the regime did was ok".
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May 29, 2019 22:57
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V. Illych L. posted:whoa actual pinochet apologia that's fresh in fairness, the OP is a chilean complaining about what could possibly make one of the servant classes think they could waste his time just because he was planning on wasting theirs with substandard pay. this was not exactly a shot in the dark
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May 29, 2019 22:57
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Pull up, imo
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May 29, 2019 23:00
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wateroverfire posted:In the context of arguing against american leftists who think that everything was sweetness and light and headed toward glorious communism until America and that nothing at all was wrong and there was no insurgent violence whatsoever nosir, not "oh yeah what the regime did was ok". it is important that we consider the full context, of throwing people out of helicopters, for being suspected left-wingers. say, do you think that fucker who you started this thread to complain about might have been a lefty? if only the General was still around. you could have asked him to teach the uppity little poo poo a lesson, about the cost of wasting your oh-so-precious time.
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May 29, 2019 23:00
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:my apologies for misrepresenting your position: you merely believe the left -made- his holiness the General chuck people out of helicopters. and that it was necessary, to save the Economy, for the 1% of the country whose wealth his tenure did not utterly destroy. Also what the gently caress, that's not an accurate paraphrase of the quoted post, even.
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May 29, 2019 23:01
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Moridin920 posted:Why should someone who is unable to spend 20 hours a week hauling trash, whether because they are just physically incapable or because there isn't enough trash to be hauled, not be able to get blueberry flavoring? I'm not talking about people that are unable to haul trash because they are incapable. I'm referring to those that are capable but would otherwise have no incentive to do so because those twenty hours could be spent doing literally anything else besides hauling trash. Because even in a hypothetical utopia there will still be constraints. Maybe blueberry flavoring won't be one of them. But I could imagine not everyone will get the beachfront 284th floor penthouse apartment with westward facing views of the pacific ocean. Meaningful contributions to society via labor selection and expenditures could help determine priority and access while also ensuring everyone else is not homeless and starving. What is an alternative?
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May 29, 2019 23:02
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OwlFancier posted:Either you're suggesting markets for things that are literally pointless, as in people do not need them to be happy, or you are suggesting markets for things that people do need to be happy in which case see my prior point. This is a false binary. There are things that people want and are enjoyable but not strictly necessary for their happiness or human happiness generally. I'm suggesting that there is a line drawn and money can be an ok way to generally facilitate exchanges if we fix a lot of other poo poo. Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 23:07 on May 29, 2019 |
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May 29, 2019 23:04
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KingNastidon posted:I'm not talking about people that are unable to haul trash because they are incapable. I'm referring to those that are capable but would otherwise have no incentive to do so because those twenty hours could be spent doing literally anything else besides hauling trash. Do you think that there's no way to get otherwise healthy mentally stable people to contribute to their community's wellbeing besides by depriving them of something they want? 'Cuz that's kind of what flipped it for me a while ago when I asked "OK but say you need 20 people to run the fusion plant while everyone else fucks off and is idle how do you operate it" and the answer of "if your entire society is so selfish and self absorbed that you can't get anyone that is interested in its upkeep to that degree then how does it ever function in the first place" was pretty good imo. Like fuckit dude like I said earlier I'll gladly volunteer a month out of the year to hauling trash and we can just rotate it on shifts. That's gotta be better than spending most of my waking life figuratively spinning my wheels in some office making profits for some financial group. Some exercise, some contribution to my community, what's so bad about that? Hell draft everyone 18-21 to be the trash haulers or whatever. It's normal for countries to draft or coerce teens into the military to die in the Middle East but we can't do mandatory civil service jobs for 2-4 years post high school? There's all kinds of solutions once you move past the ideological fog of "the market is the best way to do everything." We're just not going to have that much manual labor to be done in the next 20-30 years either at the rate automation is going. Honestly we can already cut out so much random crap; so much is just bullshit make work. I spend 40 hours a week at an office and I "work" maybe a fourth of that time. But I gotta be here for 40 hours anyway to get wages to afford the things I want/need! Very efficient. KingNastidon posted:Because even in a hypothetical utopia there will still be constraints. Maybe blueberry flavoring won't be one of them. But I could imagine not everyone will get the 284th floor penthouse apartment with westward facing views of the pacific ocean that is on the beach. Meaningful contributions to society could help determine priority and access while also ensuring everyone else is not homeless and starving. What is an alternative? I think that there are means other than markets/currency that achieve this. A city council that is democratically voted on decides how to allocate the apartments with the best views based on social recognition, and if they are buddy buddy with their friends then they are voted out because obviously the apartments on the top floor with nicer views will be of a lesser number than all the other apartments. Selection by random lottery when a new building is completed. Make the top floor into a communal living area. There's all kinds of methods other than just "the richest get it." My point earlier with the Iroquois that got handwaved away was precisely that humans have already figured out numerous equitable ways to distribute goods/services without currency or markets. Perhaps those means are not sufficient for an industrial society's production allocation but I didn't really see good evidence for that other than just a declarative statement. Large multinationals can coordinate their inventories and supply chains just fine without needing some kind of internal free market mechanism. The only real issue is how to determine demand accurately so you make enough blueberry flavor vs strawberry flavor (or what have you) but... that's waaay easier in 2019 than it was in 1919. Like maybe if everyone just got the same income and could then choose which luxuries they wanted to buy at the opportunity cost of getting other stuff and everyone's basic needs were otherwise taken care of then fine but I really don't see the need for the extra step there and it also introduces the unnecessary risk of grifters accumulating wealth and using it to influence other people (which hey, that's one reason why capitalism is fundamentally unworkable - capital accumulates and undoes all your reforms). Moridin920 fucked around with this message at 23:24 on May 29, 2019 |
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May 29, 2019 23:08
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KingNastidon posted:No, they shouldn't die. They should be given food, shelter, and healthcare. Interesting. What will motivate them if they have all of these things?
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May 29, 2019 23:30
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i think what nevvyz is imagining is a communism where we all have almost everything we want but we all issued like 100 bison dollars a year and you get to spend your bison dollars on super luxuries like a caribbean cruise or an avocado. sort of like an arcade tickets type thing
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May 29, 2019 23:34
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and i think that sounds like alot of fun personally
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May 29, 2019 23:34
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Calibanibal posted:i think what nevvyz is imagining is a communism where we all have almost everything we want but we all issued like 100 bison dollars a year and you get to spend your bison dollars on super luxuries like a caribbean cruise or an avocado. sort of like an arcade tickets type thing I think that's what people are getting at also but again I just don't then see the point of the extra step really. Aside from the extra complexity for no real benefit, you invite stuff like the possibility of people hoarding/scamming for those bison dollars until they get a bunch and now can influence others (such as purchase their votes for who gets the best apartment). So then you have to have like a 100% income tax on monies past a certain amount, auditors, etc., a big admin pain in the butt for no real reason other than to have carnie tickets in between people and the goods/services they want. If people want to go on cruises or order avocados such that it stretches the supply then there's just more production allocated towards cruises or avocados and taken away from whatever those people were doing/eating before cruises and avocados?
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May 29, 2019 23:45
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Since rationing was brought up and then mocked, a lot of the olds here in the UK outright insist that overall people ate better during rationing and a lot less poo poo got wasted. This stands up in the ever widening malnutrition gap since the free market got its hands back on the western diet and went sugar happy for 50 years. We grossly overproduce and waste food. The agricultural industrial complex could well stand to be reduced massively through sheer waste alone, not to mention the amount of poo poo we eat that just has no need to be even manufactured in the first place. It's just another consume market, we're WAY past scarcity even being a thing as far as food is concerned and it should no longer be a free market ran commodity. Fundamental needs should not be something to be traded, not so long as there's billionaires around. Shelter, food, warmth, health care etc should be available in sufficient quantity for all, to each according to need. People shouldn't be forced into pittance lovely work to avoid losing any of those things. NinpoEspiritoSanto fucked around with this message at 23:52 on May 29, 2019 |
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May 29, 2019 23:49
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Calibanibal posted:i think what nevvyz is imagining is a communism where we all have almost everything we want but we all issued like 100 bison dollars a year and you get to spend your bison dollars on super luxuries like a caribbean cruise or an avocado. sort of like an arcade tickets type thing Or like Star Trek where you can manufacture infinite pizza from atoms but there's only so many holodecks so you can't just play in one for 8 hours a day every day.
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May 29, 2019 23:52
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Nevvy Z posted:Or like Star Trek where you can manufacture infinite pizza from atoms but there's only so many holodecks so you can't just play in one for 8 hours a day every day. For the volunteers who went to Starfleet and are stationed on the naval ships, sure. Who's to say that every town on Earth didn't have a central holo-complex for people to just gently caress off in? And the Federation didn't have internal currency, heck they even make a point to say that they also think money implies poverty; except in other words. When Picard is asked why they have no money, he replies Picard posted:A lot has changed in three hundred years, people are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of 'things.' We have eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions. They'd probably think the question of "but who gets the top penthouse apartment?" a strange one. Moridin920 fucked around with this message at 00:02 on May 30, 2019 |
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May 29, 2019 23:58
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Moridin920 posted:For the volunteers who went to Starfleet and are stationed on the naval ships, sure. Who's to say that every town on Earth didn't have a central holo-complex for people to just gently caress off in? A reason DS9 is my favourite Trek, is that it was the first to really look at the Federation's flaws in a canon that up until then had always been presented as a socialist peace loving utopia. It stuck a spotlight on the things you may have to do to get to and hold onto such an ideal.
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May 30, 2019 00:08
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Moridin920 posted:They'd probably think the question of "but who gets the top penthouse apartment?" a strange one. if you can promise me communism will provide my own eco friendly uss enterprise then I won't fuss about my westward view
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May 30, 2019 00:09
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OwlFancier posted:If your best defence of markets is that they can only function for pointless things then why bother with them at all? I'll bite. I like Mountain Dew, but I would not by any stretch call it socially necessary. I don't think Mountain Dew could really exist in a society where production is controlled by the dictatorship of the proletariat. But I would be okay with subjecting myself to 15 minutes of socially unnecessary labor to buy a 12 pack of Dew. I also won't lose any sleep that there happens to be one guy with disproportionate control over the means of Dew production who is hoarding thousands of cans of Dew off the backs of his workers. Because it's very petty and dumb, let the dumb capitalists play stupid king of the hill, I'll play with them long enough to get my 12 pack then go.
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May 30, 2019 00:29
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MixMastaTJ posted:I'll bite. I like Mountain Dew, but I would not by any stretch call it socially necessary. I don't think Mountain Dew could really exist in a society where production is controlled by the dictatorship of the proletariat. But I would be okay with subjecting myself to 15 minutes of socially unnecessary labor to buy a 12 pack of Dew. Dumb poo poo like Mountain Dew is going to have to go to save the planet my dude. Welcome to late stage consumer capitalism.
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May 30, 2019 00:32
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Bundy posted:Dumb poo poo like Mountain Dew is going to have to go to save the planet my dude. Welcome to late stage consumer capitalism. carbonated soft drinks are relatively cheap co2-wise i thought anyway it's dodging the issue, which is that some degree of consumer choice, be that mtn dew or novels or w/e must reasonably remain, and it makes no sense to allocate one middle-brow novel and four light novels to each individual and so some currency system will emerge whether official or unofficial
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May 30, 2019 00:50
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V. Illych L. posted:carbonated soft drinks are relatively cheap co2-wise i thought No, with novels you bring libraries back and stop hoarding paper on shelves. The state providing a nice place to be while you read from an e-reader or a real book sounds like an excellent quality of life boon and highly beneficial from an education perspective.
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May 30, 2019 00:53
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Bundy posted:No, with novels you bring libraries back and stop hoarding paper on shelves. The state providing a nice place to be while you read from an e-reader or a real book sounds like an excellent quality of life boon and highly beneficial from an education perspective. ok clothes then jesus christ man you get the point
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May 30, 2019 01:03
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V. Illych L. posted:ok clothes then jesus christ man you get the point Relax, I was more going on a tangent about books specifically since you mentioned them in your example. Wasn't meaning to say your entire premise was flawed, apologies if that wasn't clear. I miss a nice library.
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May 30, 2019 01:10
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V. Illych L. posted:ok clothes then jesus christ man you get the point I mean, ideally you'd end up with something like the Maker from Transmetropolitan, and double-ideally anyone could have as much of the "matter" stuff as they could reasonably suggest that they have use for. The idea of rationing out portions from a centralised or distributed manufacturing complex that produces finished goods is already starting to fracture with the incremental popularity of home 3D printing. How long will money last once utility fog is a thing?
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May 30, 2019 01:18
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libraries for clothes already exist, its called Goodwill
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May 30, 2019 01:19
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Bundy posted:Dumb poo poo like Mountain Dew is going to have to go to save the planet my dude. Welcome to late stage consumer capitalism. Why, though? Our production obviously needs to scale way the hell down and we need more responsible delivery methods but I don't see Mountain Dew as inherently contradictory to a sustainable socialist society.
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May 30, 2019 02:09
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I feel like a lot of the discussion in this thread is people talking past one another, because one side is arguing about the ethics of labor compensation while the other is arguing about what is practical. The former are, as best I can tell, arguing that we should always keep the fair and ethical outcome as a final goal, even if it might not be fully possible. The fact that some work might end up, even after centuries of improvements in technology/automation/etc, still existing and being unpleasant enough that people are unwilling to work it without additional compensation (in a world where all human needs, including leisure/recreation, are provided to everyone) doesn't change that it should still be the goal to reach a point where all labor is compensated equally. It's also probably worth mentioning that even if some labor needs to be compensated unequally, there's no reason for it to even remotely approach the gap between even middle and upper-middle class labor that exists in our own society. In any reasonable society, the difference in quality of life between a person making $40k and a person making $150k should never exist. So even if disparity in pay existed, there's no reason for it to ever exceed, say, a range where the most paid labor pays 2x what the least paid labor does. So there will never be a fair world where anyone will be in the sort of position the upper-middle class is relative to the median income in the US (which I feel the need to mention since a lot of the posts here give the distinct impression that people are trying to justify the existence of people like themselves in a fair society).
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May 30, 2019 04:10
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