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Your Dunkle Sans posted:On that note, early tribal societies prior to the invention of agriculture and stored grain were quite adept at equitable distribution of resources. Some people have called this primitive communism, and whether or not the term is accurate it still shows that human society is capable of distributing resources efficiently and minimizing the power of hierarchy even in those groups with a chief figurehead. The problem now is how to reconcile that with the ideology, culture, and economics of capitalism or to overcome capitalism and progress to a more humane form of distribution of resources. Kill drat near loving everyone, reduce abstract social unit to a size where participants know almost all members. It's not complicated. You know what is? Logistics. Things get exponentially more difficult the more people and the more land area you have to a manage.
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Mar 5, 2016 08:16
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Your Dunkle Sans posted:On that note, early tribal societies prior to the invention of agriculture and stored grain were quite adept at equitable distribution of resources. Some people have called this primitive communism, and whether or not the term is accurate it still shows that human society is capable of distributing resources efficiently and minimizing the power of hierarchy even in those groups with a chief figurehead. The problem now is how to reconcile that with the ideology, culture, and economics of capitalism or to overcome capitalism and progress to a more humane form of distribution of resources.
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Mar 5, 2016 13:37
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Cicero posted:And yet, every time someone tries to reverse this, it seems to go rather horribly wrong. Venezuela has been steadily becoming more socialist ever since Chavez took power, and initially there were some good gains for the poor, but now at this point it's an unmitigated disaster. That's because socialism is still run by humans, and it's still corruptible by humans; even if the high-level objective is good, the individual actors are still more than capable of doing selfish or dumb things that break the system for everyone. That's a stupid example because Venezuela has a market economy full of private capitalists, which is completely different to a socialist-cybernetic planned economy. Real planned economies have existed and worked well until they reached a tipping point: Their capability to track, transmit, compile and then process planning data eventually became insufficient to keep up with the constantly increasing volume, breadth and speed of commodity production and consumption. Which is why I brought up the fact that that problem is now solved due to technology that's been around and commonplace for decades, technology every modern capitalist enterprise would be crippled without. HorseLord fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Mar 5, 2016 |
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Mar 5, 2016 16:24
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Human beings can quite easily recognise what actions will bring them happiness and then consistently fail to act on that knowledge. Why would we listen to some omnipotent machine if we can't even listen to ourselves?
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Mar 5, 2016 16:36
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Kilroy posted:It shows that human tribes are capable of it, not human societies.  Are you trying to imply tribal groups are somehow not societies? They are not civilizations in the way that humans that planted roots with agriculture and expanded in population were, I'll give you that; but I'm genuinely curious as to what you think human society is defined as.
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Mar 5, 2016 16:54
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No you see when you have more than 30 people in a neighbourhood original sin kicks in and nobody can colaberate on anything anymore. it's science
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Mar 5, 2016 17:11
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Arguing that an industrial economy that requires inputs from across the globe to function can be organized in a certain manner because small tribal groups relying on hyper-local economies powered by human muscle did it in the distant past is indeed a dubious foundation for a legal system or philosophy. That there is significant room for improvement in society is hardly debatable but suggesting that "primitive communism" tells us anything particularly meaningful about how to organize a 21st century economy is pretty dubious and I don't blame people for being sceptical. I think there are far better foundations for launching a critique of contemporary capitalism.
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Mar 5, 2016 19:49
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Helsing posted:That there is significant room for improvement in society is hardly debatable but suggesting that "primitive communism" tells us anything particularly meaningful about how to organize a 21st century economy is pretty dubious That's okay because nobody is doing that. The world is full of banal people who think they're saying something deep and profound when they poo poo out "it only works on paper, but not in real life because human nature/original sin/scientology-alien-ghosts make us evil." The point of bringing up primitive communism is to disprove that, because that's a whole mandatory era of the development of the human species which could not have happened if it was true. Literally you couldn't have even a feudal society without first passing through primitive communism, because you have to form some sort of society before you can invent such a thing as money. Or, you know, language. The dawn of human civilisation was in the cooperation of people who hadn't figured out a way of coercing each other yet. HorseLord fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Mar 5, 2016 |
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Mar 5, 2016 20:11
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Well, Lenin used to say that Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the country. I'm guessing that we could revise this to say that Socialism is free-market capitalism plus an AI?
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Mar 5, 2016 20:18
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HorseLord posted:That's okay because nobody is doing that. I agree. There's a pretty interesting book I was reading last year before work and life commitments distracted me called "The Creation of Inequality" in which a couple anthropologists actually worked through the details of how hunter / gatherer or early agricultural societies started to develop fixed social hierarchies and how stuff like the distribution of food or land were handled in early human civilization. It's very interesting stuff and I think there are probably some broad lessons to be learned about human conduct in general. But, to reiterate, I don't think the existence of primitive communism is a particularly convincing argument for the feasibility of a socialized industrial economy. It's not clear that the loyalty or comradery of a small group of 30-100 people can be scaled up to the regional, national or global level. I think if anything it's more feasible to point to examples of, say, the World War II era economy, the internal decision making of large corporations, the record of actual socialist societies, etc. as giving us clues about how you could base an advanced economy on something other than price signals and contracts.
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Mar 5, 2016 20:18
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Flowers For Algeria posted:Well, Lenin used to say that Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the country. "All power to the circuits"
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Mar 5, 2016 20:18
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HorseLord posted:That's a stupid example because Venezuela has a market economy full of private capitalists, which is completely different to a socialist-cybernetic planned economy.
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Mar 5, 2016 20:35
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Cicero posted:The point is that even with modern technology available, socialists can still find plenty of ways to screw up central planning, so no, it's not a simple matter of "socialists screwed it up before because they didn't have modern tech, if we did it now obviously things would work!" And we're not talking your run-of-the-mill recession where you lose some jobs and things are tight for a while, we're talking about it becoming difficult to find basic food staples and medicine across the country. You can read the Venezuela thread if you don't believe me. OTOH socialists have never benefitted from the help of a full AI
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Mar 5, 2016 20:40
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The problem is that socialism constrained to a nation-state is prone to failure. The economic global cybernet exists, but let's be honest - its a mess.
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Mar 5, 2016 20:51
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Cicero posted:The point is that even with modern technology available, socialists can still find plenty of ways to screw up central planning, so no, it's not a simple matter of "socialists screwed it up before because they didn't have modern tech, if we did it now obviously things would work!" And we're not talking your run-of-the-mill recession where you lose some jobs and things are tight for a while, we're talking about it becoming difficult to find basic food staples and medicine across the country. You can read the Venezuela thread if you don't believe me. What part of "Venezuela is not a command economy" do you not understand
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Mar 5, 2016 20:52
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Cicero posted:The point is that even with modern technology available, socialists can still find plenty of ways to screw up central planning, so no, it's not a simple matter of "socialists screwed it up before because they didn't have modern tech, if we did it now obviously things would work!" And we're not talking your run-of-the-mill recession where you lose some jobs and things are tight for a while, we're talking about it becoming difficult to find basic food staples and medicine across the country. You can read the Venezuela thread if you don't believe me. Venezuela didn't attempt to create a centrallly planned socialist economy using high technologic gear. It just turned full on populist, the state ordered lootings on its own properties to save popular face and tried to pretend there were no economic problems outside of foreign intervention and conspiracy (real and imagined, a lot of the latter). I mean, it's kinda dumb to look at Maduro's time in power and the first argument isn't "having a populist madman who has no idea what he is doing in power without an organized working class to stop him is a bad idea" but instead "see, Venezuela is a prime example of the results of what a highly technological country with a centrally planned economy is!".
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Mar 5, 2016 21:04
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I don't think Cicero knows what a centrally planned economy even is. I mean, Venezuela's crisis is rooted in them funding a bunch of social democratic projects using oil money, which then dried out. That's a market economy problem. In a command economy you'd respond to running out of budget for things by going "So what? There's no private sector, we control all industry, all economic activity, all bank accounts, all prices, and all wages, and our foreign trade is done exclusively with barter and not currency. We'll just print some more money" and the problem would vanish. In a command economy it isn't an enterprise's bank balance that determines what it can do, it's the resources and targets that it's been assigned. That's why in countries like the USSR the law of value (and taxation) turned into a big joke. Not that budgeting should be handled like that, even in a command economy - there's no real reason to when your banking system is computerized all the way down to grandad buying a pack of worthers originals with his debit card. HorseLord fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Mar 5, 2016 |
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Mar 5, 2016 21:19
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it's the same logic that drives people to claim that Brazil is turning more and more socialist because ECONOMY BAD AND STATE EXISTS
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Mar 5, 2016 21:34
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Your Dunkle Sans posted:On that note, early tribal societies prior to the invention of agriculture and stored grain were quite adept at equitable distribution of resources. Some people have called this primitive communism, and whether or not the term is accurate it still shows that human society is capable of distributing resources efficiently and minimizing the power of hierarchy even in those groups with a chief figurehead. The problem now is how to reconcile that with the ideology, culture, and economics of capitalism or to overcome capitalism and progress to a more humane form of distribution of resources. Early tribal societies were groups of only 60 to 150 people where everyone knew everyone and there was no surplus. Inequality arose as soon as surpluses were available that could both grow a human population beyond natural limits and be horarded. It exists in every large society that has existed since the neolithic revolution, thousands of years before capitalism. Even John Zerzan could figure that out. There are few if any lessons socialists can learn from hunter-gatherers. Their ways of life do not scale. Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Mar 5, 2016 |
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Mar 5, 2016 22:37
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Woolie Wool posted:Early tribal societies were groups of only 60 to 150 people where everyone knew everyone and there was no surplus. Inequality arose as soon as surpluses were available that could both grow a human population beyond natural limits and be horarded. It exists in every large society that has existed since the neolithic revolution, thousands of years before capitalism. Did you read the thread? I don't think you read the thread.
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Mar 5, 2016 23:50
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I did, you were completely unable to explain how you could make perfect strangers in mass society behave like a tribe of 90 people who grew up together and are mostly related.
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Mar 5, 2016 23:58
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The USA needs to take the lead developing human resources laws and a new system of citizen profiles for education, employment, etc. The rest of the western hemisphere can use the same protocols so there is reasonable free travel and commerce.
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Mar 6, 2016 00:13
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How about a market economy with the means of production still being owned by the people? Like everyone gets an equal portion of the available production ressources and then decides what it is used for.
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Mar 6, 2016 10:21
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Lucy Heartfilia posted:How about a market economy with the means of production still being owned by the people? Like everyone gets an equal portion of the available production ressources and then decides what it is used for. Why? Why is this better than a centrally planned economy?
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Mar 6, 2016 13:59
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It's dangerous to attribute the historical failure of central planning solely to human error and limitation while ignoring the political motivations that shaped economic policy. Soviet planners didn't overproduce heavy industry because they were ignorant of what people really wanted, they did it because they were convinced it was what the country and the socialist project needed by providing work, cheap infrastructure, and materiel. Those kinds of structural choices would be the basic inputs in any kind of cybernetic or AI system. The only way around this is a fully participatory system, which would likely generate its own social tensions and inefficiencies.
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Mar 6, 2016 14:56
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fspades posted:Why? Why is this better than a centrally planned economy? Both situations are pipe dreams at the moment and as valid as the other. Would it be easier to develop a centrally planned highly technological state or a workers owned descentralized model where the central state is more of a regulator of the regional self-suficient structures than the planner itself? The only reasonable areas where you could attempt this would be in the U.S. (lmao) western Europe (where you'd be choked to death by the rest of the Eurozone) or in Eastern Europe (r.i.p.) so you might as well theorycraft about all possibilities because between the status quo and post-scarcity high technology socialism there will be a shitload of trouble and near impossibilities.
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Mar 6, 2016 15:26
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It can begin in the US. You need to update the social contract with modern telecommunications - everyone from the janitor to the CEO will be an 'independent contractor' with clear responsibilities and compensation. The 40 hour work week will be replaced with a more dynamic system of a primary profession and secondary 'public' jobs like driving and park maintenence. It's less about AI and more about IT - the administrators of such a new state would all be elected and the unelected middle managers of today would be replaced by direct communication and 'crowdsourcing'. Mc Do Well fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Mar 6, 2016 |
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Mar 6, 2016 15:32
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McDowell posted:It can begin in the US. You need to update the social contract with modern telecommunications - everyone from the janitor to the CEO will be an 'independent contractor' with clear responsibilities and compensation. The 40 hour work week will be replaced with a more dynamic system of a primary profession and secondary 'public' jobs like driving and park maintenence. Just post the name of your startup already.
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Mar 6, 2016 19:55
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Pope Guilty posted:Just post the name of your startup already. Nah I'm doing a biotech entrepreneur thing that I would later turn into a political platform if I make it. We're all social entrepreneurs.
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Mar 6, 2016 20:04
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Mans posted:Venezuela didn't attempt to create a centrallly planned socialist economy using high technologic gear. It just turned full on populist, the state ordered lootings on its own properties to save popular face and tried to pretend there were no economic problems outside of foreign intervention and conspiracy (real and imagined, a lot of the latter).
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Mar 6, 2016 20:47
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Pope Guilty posted:It's okay, OP, I want to live in the Culture, too. End thread.
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Mar 6, 2016 20:53
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gohmak posted:End thread. I love the book series but the main thing I've taken away from it is not the nature of governance but level of invasiveness government should have in individual lives, which is to say, as much as you want but within a certain minimum.
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Mar 6, 2016 21:26
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I think there's an ethical problem with creating minds intelligent enough to do all these things and treating them like slave labor. Maybe AI can be intelligent without being conscious, but that seems like a big philosophical unknown.
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Mar 6, 2016 22:29
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Woolie Wool posted:I did, you were completely unable to explain how you could make perfect strangers in mass society behave like a tribe of 90 people who grew up together and are mostly related. Me, in response to someone else who said what you said posted:That's okay because nobody is doing that. Turns out you didn't read the thread.
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Mar 6, 2016 22:45
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Vienna Circlejerk posted:I think there's an ethical problem with creating minds intelligent enough to do all these things and treating them like slave labor. Maybe AI can be intelligent without being conscious, but that seems like a big philosophical unknown.
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Mar 6, 2016 22:45
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Cicero posted:The thing is, even if an AI is theoretically capable of the administrative day to day tasks/logistics of managing an economy, it's still going to have high level directives from people, and if those people say things like, "yes, subsidize the gas price until it's cheaper than water, and don't let the currency float", it's probably not going to work so well. Except that that decision wouldn't be made because the system would a) never indicate that it would be a good idea, and b) straight up tell you what effect it would have, and C) you're describing a market economy problem again we've been over this.
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Mar 6, 2016 22:56
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Vienna Circlejerk posted:I think there's an ethical problem with creating minds intelligent enough to do all these things and treating them like slave labor. Maybe AI can be intelligent without being conscious, but that seems like a big philosophical unknown. Just program the AI to enjoy it.
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Mar 6, 2016 23:09
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HorseLord posted:I don't think Cicero knows what a centrally planned economy even is. What you just described is the economic equivalent of an aerospace engineer solving the challenges of designing an airplane by pretending gravity doesn't exist. The result of a command economy printing money is identical to a market economy printing money, it increases the rate of inflation. Maintaining a low and steady rate of inflation is the basis of sound monetary policy, and is like the first stated job function of every developed country's monetary authority.
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Mar 7, 2016 00:31
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Lucy Heartfilia posted:Just program the AI to enjoy it.
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Mar 7, 2016 00:40
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Except the laws of physics are immutable and the laws of economics are not, so that's a pretty fuckin stupid analogy
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Mar 7, 2016 00:44
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