Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Dwarf]

Am I a stalinist? No. Neither can the situation go on like this, or we will end up in a government with corporate puppets. The complete lack of punishment for the people who caused the current recession show that people with money can do whatever the hell they like.
(Lend 500'000$ from a bank and lose it, you go to jail. Lose 10'000'000$ because you screwed up big time in the pseudo-real estate market, you get support from the government, and get another few millon bucks if you quit your corporation)

Quite recently, the 1:12 initiative has been launched in our country, which means the the hightest paid boss can only receive up to 12 times as much as the lowest paid janitor. You know what the manager of Nestlé said? "I will leave this country if the Swiss people have the insolence of limiting my salary"

So, communism, does it work? Rather not. But what I think MUST be enforced is, at least, socialism. A government which limits the power of money, which focus not on what people can afford, but what they require. Free hospitals instead of the really crapped up American health care. Free universities, so that even the poorest of the poor can actually make himself if he's got the brains.
I heard Denmark is pretty advanced in these aspects. The USA, however, is a conservative capitalistic hellhole, fearing of everything which has even a shade of red.

[Armok]

You're geting me wrong. I am a strong beliver in AI, the singularity, and transhumanism like that in general. But specualting abaut anything post singularity is 100% pointless and will with almost 100% probability have nothing wath so ever to do with what actualy happens, and what actualy hapens will be so far beyond human capability to understand that even if it could be predicted such ppredictions would still be meaningless to a human.
Hence, my brain skips over those possibilities in this kind of discussions, focusing attention on things that can actually be understood and affected. The AI and the singularity either happens, or they don't, the only thing that could posibly be dicused in a non technical way is the exact probability.

[Virex]

Toady should make humanity open-source! That way more people can look into the code for bugs.

See for yourself:

http://hapmap.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/thehapmap.html.en

I bet you can find similar data on the Human Genome Project, but the HapMap's more relevant nowadays.

[Lord Dakoth]

Stay alert! Trust no one! Keep your laser handy!

I also think that Communism is still alive. France has a Communist party.
Okay, bad example.
However, isn't Socialism essentially "baby Communism?" Pretty much all of Europe is socialist, and the U.S. is starting to lean that way too.

You know what always bugs me, people who make out that communism is an inherently flawed ideal. Maybe full on communism might be but then again a completely capitalised system is worse. At least the communistic one would be trying to work well and for the good of people as a whole.

The real problem is with human nature. Humans are naturally self-serving, even at the expense of others; this of course directly conflicts with the core of Communism (from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.) As a result, some corrupt individual or individuals (like Joseph Stalin) always seems to worm their way to the head of the Party (as with most things political.)

As for Communism not being inherently flawed, I respectfully disagree. In order for it to work, whoever's in charge of allocating goods must place everyone's needs before his/her own, and must also know exactly what everyone needs, and what everyone is capable of. The system would work if we had some perfectly benevolent, all-knowing leader, but seeing as no human meets this criteria, I'm not going to be holding my breath.

Capitalism is based upon the idea that people know what they need and are generally capable of taking care of themselves. Although I am not for a Social Darwinism system, I believe that Capitalism is the model that works best with the nature of humans. After all, Capitalism is focused on the individual's needs, and the "common good" is really just the summation of all the individuals' needs.

Also, good intention does not solve the problem. If I need an organ transplant, I would rather be operated on by a qualified physician who doesn't really care for me as a person than by my best friend who knows nothing whatsoever about medicine.

[Armok]

See for yourself:

http://hapmap.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/thehapmap.html.en

I bet you can find similar data on the Human Genome Project, but the HapMap's more relevant nowadays.

The problem is getting your changes into the release candidate.

...The system would work if we had some perfectly benevolent, all-knowing leader, but seeing as no human[/i][/i] meets this criteria, I'm not going to be holding my breath.

Keyword highlighted. You don't even need an actual AI, even a "dumb" automated system would do better than humans do, and things that require more intelligence could be done by direct democracy. Yes, you get a govenment with the intelegence of a nematode with alzeimers, but it's not like we dont have that alredy, and this worm would be uncorruptable.

[kuro_suna]

Stay alert! Trust no one! Keep your laser handy!

I also think that Communism is still alive. France has a Communist party.
Okay, bad example.
However, isn't Socialism essentially "baby Communism?" Pretty much all of Europe is socialist, and the U.S. is starting to lean that way too.

You know what always bugs me, people who make out that communism is an inherently flawed ideal. Maybe full on communism might be but then again a completely capitalised system is worse. At least the communistic one would be trying to work well and for the good of people as a whole.

The real problem is with human nature. Humans are naturally self-serving, even at the expense of others;

But that's also the problem with a pure capitalist system. We need some form of collective control to keep a handful of CEO's from declaring themselves kings and despite what the libertarians say history show that when you have a small ruling class they tend to be less concerned with the betterment of society and more with growing and maintaining their power by any means necessary.

[Virex]

The idea that capitalims fits best with human nature ignores the fact that humans are also social. Capitalism assumes that someone will always go for personal gain (or at least as far as I know) but therefor it fails to take into acount that humans also have a strong group-related feelings.
People are generaly unhappy if left to their own devices and actively seek company and what's more important, they'll help protect and further members of such company at their own cost. Good examples of this are people who work for organisations like the RSPCA or churches without getting payed. Thereīs no personal gain in it for them and itīll even cost them time and money, but thereīs communual gain.
In short, Capitalims ignores all ideals except for the Self. But people also have ideals. Therefor, pure capitalism, like pure communism, isnīt a good fit for human nature.

[Jreengus]

<snip>

But that's also the problem with a pure capitalist system. We need some form of collective control to keep a handful of CEO's from declaring themselves kings and despite what the libertarians say history show that when you have a small ruling class they tend to be less concerned with the betterment of society and more with growing and maintaining their power by any means necessary.

Gah, you stole what I was going to say as I typed it.

Anyhow a communistic system could work but when you have self serving bastards at the head of a so called "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" it falls down. Lenin was likely a fairly good man and what he did he did mainly because the country needed it. Russia was ultimately a third world country and Lenin carried it through a civil war and the first world war and put it on the track to recovery. Setting asde his evilness without Lenin Stalin couldn't have turned Russia into a super power, he needed the base Lenin provided. Problem with Lenin is that he set up Russia for all those evil bastards who came after hi and were often more interested in power than anything. Communism in a Republican society though wouldn't be as bad as that because the leaders would be awnserable to the people rather than the reverse.

[Leafsnail]

Well, communism doesn't work, but neither does "full" capitalism (without labour laws, taxes, federal control etc...).  The best setup is somewhere in between, although exactly where is anyone's guess.

[Servant Corps]

As for Communism not being inherently flawed, I respectfully disagree. In order for it to work, whoever's in charge of allocating goods must place everyone's needs before his/her own, and must also know exactly what everyone needs, and what everyone is capable of. The system would work if we had some perfectly benevolent, all-knowing leader, but seeing as no human meets this criteria, I'm not going to be holding my breath.

Isn't the endpoint of Communism the "withering away of the state", so that there would be no state whatsoever, just people being free to do as they please? You need a Dictatorship of the Politeralit in order to run society in the meantime, but it's supposed to be a transitional stage, it's not the be-all and end-all of Communism.

[Jreengus]

The whole dictatorship was thought up by a Lenin as a way of not having to hand over power, he had a vision for Russia and just assumed that after he had done so much for the people they would naturally elect him. They didn't so he decided to go with a dictatorship.

IIRC Karl Marx said something along the lines of: Communism needs democracy like a fish needs water.

[Servant Corps]

Well, Wikipedia states that it was Karl Marx that coined the term, but that Lenin adopted that term to justify the dictatorship. I believe Lenin himself planned on running a dictatorship, since he was running a Vanguard party of elites.

Lenin didn't really like the whole revisionism of the Social Democrats, thinking that they basically "sold out" to capitalism. So...meh.

[Jude]

Communism is a great thing for communities no bigger than a largish dwarf fort. Any bigger than that and it doesn't go right, and on the level of countries it can't be done without forcing it down people's throats.

Shame, too, given how nicely small communities can work.

[cowofdoom78963]

Humans are naturally self-serving, even at the expense of others;

Are you sure about that?


Becuase I beg to differ. Humans are NOT naturally self-serving; Even at the expense of themselves.

[Virex]

The whole set of self-serving and non-self-serving behaviour's such a tangeled mess that it's not realy possible to say that people are self-serving or not by nature. People chose to be self-serving or not dependant on personal preferences and the situation. People will generaly not give up everything for the group (though there are exceptions. Thinking about Iran's Martyr Brigades here) and they will generaly not forgo everything for personal gain (though there are exceptions again. Assasins would come to mind, but I bet there are better examples)