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[Frumple]

Spoiler: Off-topic? @Hiiri (click to show/hide)

Sure, and I can say the same thing about long-term unemployed people. Many of whom have become drunkards, mentally ill, completely fallen off the grid and physically devastated. I think they'd be better off had they had an excuse to get up in the morning. You can even see this same effect in some retirees once they leave the workforce.

Yeah... excuse to get up'd be part of the cultural shift folks have been talking about. Volunteer work, personal pursuits, etc., so forth, so on. Unemployed folks get wrecked generally because, y'know, they've lost the ability to care for themselves in a manner congruent with their society and that kinda' messes with most people, even if they manage to stay fed and sheltered. Retired folks going the same way, from what I've seen, tends to be because they've spent the last few decades doing more or less the exact same thing, centered basically their entire life around it, and then it's suddenly gone, and they just haven't had the sort of experiences (or training) that prepares them to do something else. Not to mention, again, they're probably either old or getting there at that point.

It takes all my life to try and stay somewhat physically fit. It's not really a wasted time, is it?

Different sort of thing. If it took you all your life to learn how to stay somewhat physically fit, I'd personally be worried. The mechanics of basic maintenance exercise shouldn't take 20-30 years to learn, just as the mechanics of basic social interaction and self-discipline shouldn't take 20-30 years to learn. Something set up to specifically train them would be incredibly more efficient, and likely without quite so many associated downsides. Sure, maybe a refresher of some sort every few years, but eight hours a day, five to six (or more) days a week is... kinda' ridiculous. Same thing if that's how much time you had to invest to stay somewhat physically fit.

I'm all ears for suggestions. I can only think of hobbies as a viable alternative, but if a person hasn't developed self-discipline, they're not much of an option. 'Coz I dun wanna'

Again, cultural shift. What counts as volunteer work of all sorts and stripes, hopefully expanded in breadth and depth by the whole no longer having to exhaust yourself daily in order to maintain food and shelter thing.

And L.Bucket, your statements are starting to get more and more absurd. People want to go to restaurants and fast food because people can cook better food for them, faster.
Less Time.
Less Effort.
More Quality.

Apropos to nothing, really, but it's been years and incredibly basic culinary skills since those three were accurate, for me. Cooking at home takes less time (no travel), less effort (no travel), and tends to be higher quality unless it's ridiculously expensive, and even then doesn't take too terribly much to match or near match, usually. Restaurants tend to be alright for something a bit more exotic than normal, I guess, but from what I've seen they're more for the social aspect ("getting out of the house") than the actual food.

@majikero... what's LB apologizing for, again? Also... what about all the people that work hard and fail anyway? Dunno about elsewhere, but in the states the failure rate for small business is something like 70-80% in the first 2-5 years, iirc. S'over 50%, anyway. Gets better after that initial hump, but yeah.

[majikero]

I grew up in a 3rd world country and when you step out to the street, small businesses are literally everywhere as in you have 2-3 of the same service being sold next to each other. I find what he says incredibly insulting by saying all those business are redundant and pointless.

[Frumple]

Will let LB clarify (or not, as he pleases) his own position, but... are they? Almost certainly they're going to be inefficient -- how much gets thrown out on a daily basis, how much goes to waste, that could be avoided if it were a single operation (or they collaborated, which may have actually been happening)? How much less would the startup and maintenance costs have been if there was only one shop instead of several? And absolutely they're redundant, since you've got several providers of the same service in the same area... that's pretty close to the definition of redundancy.

Whether they're pointless or not... insofar as that goes, for what it's worth, I'm fairly sure LB was referring to the sort of thing that goes on more in the states, than the situation you're more familiar with. Work situation in a small mom and pops or whathaveyou can be considerably different than in a chain store or somethin' (though I don't believe that's the point LB was making, re: pointlessness). But... as a mental exercise, try to justify their existence. What's the point of the businesses being there, and how is (is?) that point intrinsic to the business itself? Is it an insult to question that?

In any case, there's just... not really insult in calling something redundant and pointless if it largely is, y'know? And I personally wouldn't hold it against people if that's what they end up having to do to get by. More criticism for the systems that forces people in that situation than the people forced into them. Don't conflate the businesses with the people runnin' 'em, yeah?

And to caveat things, I'm not saying that what you were familiar with was pointless. I don't know the situation enough to say either way, really. S'just... maybe you might be overreacting a titch, M? Reading more into what LB's saying than he was saying.

[10ebbor10]

Smaller shop's are generally less capable of sustaining losses than larger shops. Besides, as they're more local than large supermarket chains, they loose less due to transportation, packaging and quality control*.
Most of the times, especially for roadside stores, they're more lenient with sell bye dates as well, meaning less food gets wasted that way. Besides, supermarkets always waste a ton of food and goods, as they are always filled to the brim, whether there's high demand or not.

*Really, lot's of food is lost this way.

[Tack]

Also if robotics gets to the point where it's as cheap as an iPod, why wouldn't a small business have automated service? Which would pretty much change stores from something you pour your heart into - into pretty much a capital investment.

[majikero]

Sorry for taking it personally. I'm just incredibly cranky and homesick.

Anyways, in the spirit of capitalism, having 2-3 of the same service in the same area forces each to improve. I find those roadside stores and street foods are better in overall quality than what I find here in the States.

For example, the pie bakery my grandmother runs had a competing pie bakery right next to it. The pie stuffing is exactly the same since there's only so much you can change on it. The main difference is in the crust. She spent a whole lot of time experimenting with the crust recipe before she started the business.

That small difference made it a specialty pie, completely different from the competitor.

I guess I do find that lack of soul unappealing.

[Thecard]

Sorry for taking it personally. I'm just incredibly cranky and homesick.

Anyways, in the spirit of capitalism, having 2-3 of the same service in the same area forces each to improve. I find those roadside stores and street foods are better in overall quality than what I find here in the States.

For example, the pie bakery my grandmother runs had a competing pie bakery right next to it. The pie stuffing is exactly the same since there's only so much you can change on it. The main difference is in the crust. She spent a whole lot of time experimenting with the crust recipe before she started the business.

That small difference made it a specialty pie, completely different from the competitor.

I guess I do find that lack of soul unappealing.

The thing is, having "redundant" businesses is good, and in fact important. That competition is how we get different choices and better qualities at lower prices. The business has to please the consumer. Big stores don't have to worry as much. And really, two mom and pop stores next to each other is similar to, say, Walmart and Kroger being next to each other. They're both large chains, and they both sell similar products. It'd be much better for them to work together --but it would also be much easier for them to screw over the consumers.

[Helgoland]

Just read pages 4 through 11. TL;DR : Automating everything and achieving utopia will be possible sometime in the future and that's why capitalism is bad right now, OR capitalism work and there's nothing to improve.

Seriously, people? Would've expected a bit more from Bay12 Remember, folks: Economics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources. Discussing capitalism means discussing economics, and just going SCARCITY SHALL BE OVERCOME is no substitute for, you know, actual workable* ideas.
Not that artificial scarcity is not something to think about, but I guess it's overblown. Just look at the Free Energy crowd and the likes. Air isn't scarce, but still free, right?




*In a reasonable timeframe.

[Angle]

I offered to post my ideas again, but noone cared so I didn't.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Honestly, that is a misrepresentation of the conversation in this thread. It concerned the merits of a capitalist society vs. a... Communist, i think, one.

[Angle]

Wel, no, I'd say Helgoland is spot on. That is more or less how the conversation has been going. It's not quite that simple, but that can sum it up pretty well.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

hm, well after rereading some of those pages and his statement I fear you may be right.

[LordBucket]

And as for working, I'd prefer not to force anyone to do so if they don't want to.

Agreed.

...so spending roughly a third of your waking hours for the majority of your lifetime working to survive sounds reasonable to you?

I think there are benefits in having jobs and duties, yes. Forced social encounters and self-discipline come to mind. Think of discipline with kids, they don't like it, but it's for their own good in the long run.

I'm no fan of capitalism, but technology reliant society + people with too much time in their hands sounds like a recipe for disaster.

You really believe that life is better in a system where most people are compelled by circumstance to give up a third of their waking life doing things they probably don't like in order to survive? That it would a disaster if technology made life easier such that people had more time and power to do the things they really want to do? You think that would be bad?

Wow.

Well hey, if we somehow manage to transfer into a society where the menial work is done by robots and most humans are free to explore sciences, the arts, and all that stuff, I'll be a happy guy.
Hell, even engineering and stuff would be good since you'd need to mantain th robot workforce.

Agreed. People having more time to do the things they want to do sounds good to me. As for the people who would spend all their lives watching television without leaving the couch... *shrug* Personally I suspect that there would be far fewer of those than some people are suggesting. But even so, some number of people living their lives watching television by their own choice seems vastly preferable to me than compelling most everyone through circumstances to spend a third of their lives doing things they'd rather not be doing.

I'm not going to take any stance here on whether sloth is "bad." But I'm definitely going to take a stand that compulsory service via a system that requires it for survival is not something I would choose for others.

This view that it's "good" people to be compelled to work or die is...I guess I'll just say that it's not my worldview.

I really hope people realize that Utopia by it's nature is non-existent?
Literally the word Utopia wasn't originally greek. It was an amalgamation of two greek words meaning "Good place" And "Impossible place" respectively.

Why is this relevant?

We're talking about systems that might improve lives and socities. Arguing etmology is not productive here. I haven't seen anyone in this discussion claim that their view would engender an 'impossibly perfect' world.

Are you seriously suggesting that becauise 'impossible perfect' is not possible, that it's pointless to try to make thing better?

What are you even saying and what does it have to do with what the rest of us are discussing?

And L.Bucket, your statements are starting to get more and more absurd. People want to go to restaurants and fast food because people can cook better food for them, faster.
Less Time.
Less Effort.
More Quality.

I think you're not looking at the whole picture. For those of us making over 100k/yr, sure....it's more time efficient and less effort to simply eat out. But I think that's not representative of most people.

If you really believe that it takes less time and effort for the average person to work a job to pay for eating out, then go ahead and get a median $26,000/yr job, and eat out every meal to "save money."

Which is what is the original cause for capitalism in the first place. I can only assume that your 'ideal society' so far is one where everything is mass produced from factories and you have the option to go to the factories and take whatever goods you want?
Or is your ideal society one where people never leave their houses, have water taken out of the air outside and their sewage recycled. Their food is delivered and they cook it themselves and rely on computers for passing their endless days?

Are you even reading my posts before you respond to them? o.O

Because both of those are fundamentally flawed.

Well, fortunately neither of your examples are even remotely close to anything I've said, so those being flawed doesn't really affect me or my position at all.

The last few weeks i've spent working out here on the gas fields has majorly reenforced my view that the whole idea of "lets just automate all manual labor" to be terribly laughable, particularly the way its banded about as "well once we do that we can then go on and do x y z etc *cue wall of text and theory*"

Things that are impractical to automate, we don't automate. Saying that we can't automate everything is not a valid reason to not automate what we can. Also, the goal is not specifically automating everything, but rather, reducing work. Automation is just one means of accomplishing that. Not insisting on doing things the hard way is another means of accomplishing it.

Your decentralized water system has several key problems.
1) You're not eliminating the jobs, you're redistributing them. Instead of a few dedicated people working on something, you'll turn it into a task everyone has to spent some time upon. (Maintenance, checking filters,...). While this doesn't seem that bad, do note that the majority of human societal evolution has been made possible due to specialization of labour.
2) Water condensers will fail in cities and suburban areas. Not only will the water be slightly polluted due to the air pollution, there will also be distinct shortages. Your average American family uses 400 gallons (more than 1500 liter of water a day*). New York has population densities of 10 000 people/ km˛ (Meaning you're extracting 14.8 liter/ m˛. Which is a lot.). Belgium has a population density of 300 people/ km˛ and lower water usage, but it will still be problematic. And that's not counting industrial usage. It will have an enormous effect on weather patterns, agriculture and might make city centers unliveable.
3) You can't fill a tank forever. Once a septic tank is full, it needs to be emptied. (Doing this with trucks defeats the purpose) Alright, there are biological ways to filter water, but those don't work for chemically polluted water. (washing machine, dishwasher,...). And even then, these methods are fairly spacious, making suburbs and cities an impossibility, and further increasing land usage.

1) Yes, I'm redistributing them. I've said that multiple times.

2) No, the work would be less in this case with a distributed system as I described.

To demonstrate that, let's look at a ridiculous example: you brush your own teeth, right? So do I. What if, instead of brushing our own teeth, we were to create a toothbrushing service? Establish centers in every city, hire and train people to brush teeth, and have them drive every day to every house, and brush everyone's teeth.

Would this be more efficient or most cost effective, than simply having people brush their own teeth? Of course not.

Septic vs sewer cost comparisons

" when it comes to cost comparison of city sewer vs. septic systems – septic always wins. As we have discussed many times in the past, maintenance for septic systems only requires septic tank pump outs every 3 to 5 years. The cost for pumpouts ranges from $250 to $500."

This should be obvious. A single on-location installation, once per house, and a cheap, easy pumpout every couple years....versus installed an underground pipe system across entire cities, along with sufficient accessways to maintain those systems, drivers and maintenance crews to maintain those systems year after year, dedicated water purification facilities along with crews to staff them...it should be obvious that the distributed water system I described would be less labor intensive than a centralized system.

LordBucket, I grew up next to a store that bakes and sells pies, literally. My grandmother started that business and it has provided jobs for people. I was friendly with people who own small stores who sells exactly what you can find in a large market, especially the one in front of my private highschool even if our school has a caterer to serve our lunch(meaning food isn't crap like in the US).

Apologize! Apologize to all the people who started those small business as a dream. Apologize to all the people who worked hard to realize that dream. Apologize to all of humanity!

Not really sure what you're asking me to apologize for. If people want to do something because it's what they want to do, I have no problem with that. I'm objecting to a society designed to encourage wage slavery. I'm not sure you and I are even talking about the same things.

I was going to make a post on the decentralised water system, but 10ebbor10 pretty much said everything I was going to and more. This may also be relevant.

And see my response to 10ebbor10. Again, it should be obvious that building and maintaining all that infrstructure over entire cities would be more labor intensive than a simple distributed system.

Here is a septic tank:



Now, do you believe it will be more cost and labor intensive to:

A) Install one of those on every house and clean it out or replace it every 2-5 years

or

B) Install an underground sewer system that connects every single house across countless square miles to centralized purification centers, build those facilities, maintain staff to operate and maintain those facilities, and build and maintain the pumping stations required to keep the water flowing through those pipes.

Just read pages 4 through 11. TL;DR : Automating everything and achieving utopia will be possible sometime
in the future and that's why capitalism is bad right now, OR capitalism work and there's nothing to improve.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy#Perfect_solution_fallacy

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Before we continue further about Capitalism and whatnot, let me just restate some things:

First of all, no 'Capitalist' society exists today, the majority of western states practice socialism, whether or not they admit to it.

Secondly, we're all working with perfect situations here, none of this is realistic.

Finally, keep this shit civil, it hasn't gotten out of hand yet, but the tension is still there. It's just words on a page fellas, try and enjoy it.

[misko27]

Well I framed both the robot and the actual economics discussions, it's not my fault robotics is a more fun topic

Limited resources: 2 options. All have the same amount, or not all have the same amount. First is hard to implement and exploitable. If the latter, there are a few options for how to mete it out, but most agree Meritocracy is best.

Capitalism is a imperfect Meritocracy. Privilege, the right of a human to aid others, pass down money, and the right to use his money to eliminate competition rather then improve himself, are all

Before we continue further about Capitalism and whatnot, let me just restate some things:

First of all, no 'Capitalist' society exists today, the majority of western states practice socialism, whether or not they admit to it.

Socialism: political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

Socialism is an economic system characterised by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy.

Capitalism is an economic system in which capital assets are privately owned and goods and services are produced for profit in a market economy

You're thinking of the oft confused term "Welfare State", which is related but certainly not the same.

A welfare state is a "concept of government in which the state plays a key role in the protection and promotion of the economic and social well-being of its citizens. It is based on the principles of equality of opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for those unable to avail themselves of the minimal provisions for a good life. The general term may cover a variety of forms of economic and social organization. The sociologist T.H. Marshall identified the welfare state as a distinctive combination of democracy, welfare, and capitalism."

Certainly not the same.