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[de5me7]

are we talking communisim of marxisim. Most communist countries today run their economies in a capitalstic fashion; chinas the most obvious example of this. North Korea may still be true communisim.

I agree with the initial parts of Marx theory - that captilasim leads to an increasing wealth gap/ exploitation, that intern sparks revolution.

Im not sure his solution was particually workable. I havnt read anything written by Lenin, maybe i should.

[andy1005]

Each country should become a Monarchy lead by a robot king.

Each country's robot king should receive orders from a central command centre that is comprised of the leaders of all civilized countries that are around today.

There will be no deviation, no dictatorship, no democracy... No rebellion, no poverty, deserts would become forests and the world would be reborn under central leadership.

We can all dream right?

(PS. Communism is flawed just like democracy, robot monarchies are the only way forward!)

[Leafsnail]

Where would the robot's successor come from?

[andy1005]

Where would the robot's successor come from?

You are implying that robots age!

[Leafsnail]

Well, they do eventually break down.

[andy1005]

Well, they do eventually break down.

Bender the 1st
Bender the 2nd
Bender the 3rd
Bender the 4th
Bender the 5th

They are the monarchy, they are entitled to being made again! It will be the royal attendant's job!

[Leafsnail]

Ask yourself again: Is it such a great idea to put governance of the country in the hands of an alcoholic kleptomaniac robot?

[PTTG??]

Here's how my system works:

People can't think of more than 200 people as "people". They may know that they exist, but the 201st person is only a stereotype; a doctor or a street sweeper, some minority or a economic class.

It is actually a physical handicap; human brains are limited by some structural mechanism. Primates with specific kinds of social brain regions live in specific kinds of groups; and it just so happens that humans have 200-person sized brains.

Of course, this can be improved with training, and there's nothing wrong with living in a world with more than 200 people in your "clan"- it's just uncomfortable, and can lead to inhuman behavior, because people literally see the victims as non-human "others".

And it seems that humans "in the wild" naturally form clans of 200 or so. Aboriginal groups around the world live in such groups, naturally splitting when the band grows much larger than 200 people. Even Amish communities split at such sizes.

Consider at what point a company switches from being a "new, agile startup" or a "lively, family business" to being a "corperate monolith" or a "faceless firm".

I suggest that this limit be embraced, and that our culture be built with this in mind; by breaking down administrative divisions until they include, on average, one hundred people.

I must note here two things: One, that does not mean that cities can't exist- just that they have neighborhood organizations that are part of the larger and legal structure of the whole city. Life would not mean that you are a part of the clan's will, just that your whole participation in the government can be, if you choose, just talking to and voting for an activist neighbor for neighborhood manager; or, if you want, working your way up the ladder to whatever position you are suited for.
The other important note is that these communities only function when it is possible to change where you live; in these band-and-village communities, ones where they are forced to be sedentary lead to social strife, while allowing mobility from one clan to another leads to people finding the kind of community they like and staying there.

So, assuming we have 8 billion people on earth and we want them all to be in one government, how many levels of such a government would you need, if each one consisted of, on average, 200 people elected from the next level down?
since 200^5 is 320,000,000,000, which is somewhat more than 8 billion, five levels should be plenty. The fact that one is only five elections away from being leader of the entire world, and that no matter how distant someone is, you are only seven steps removed from them, is a powerful tool for peace.

As for capitalist/communist- this superseeds that. It's democratic, in a sense, since everyone votes at least for the local election. But as for economic decisions, the way it works is that each level may pass laws that effect all those below it; a city may pass a law that all neighborhoods must maintain one park within them, or such.
One would never be under tyranny, however, because one could always be allowed to go to some other group.
As an interesting side-effect of this, since this only describes legislative entities, the bureaucracy might end up being entirely separate of the state; most likely, it would be the duty of the legislator to ensure that his paperwork is done, and he would most likely contract this out to outside firms.

The ideal is that all of the government services would emergently appear in such a way, and only in those regions that it's needed or wanted.

[The Architect]

Where would the robot's successor come from?

You are implying that robots age!

They do age. The only differences are the way they age, and the fact that a robot's memory can be backed up and its parts replaced.

[Armok]

Here's how my system works:

This is actually similar to another such system I considered, you got a few things wrong thou:
1) it's 150, not 200
2) each manager shuld know all on their paralel group, all the people under them, and all the peaple one level above, meaning each group size would actually 50
3) ther shuld probably be some overlap as a double safe. 3 or 5 or 7 are probably good numebrs.

Assuming 5 for easy math: one in 1 is a part manager of 50, one in 100 is part manager of 50^2, one in 10^n is a part manager of 50^n...
How do I do 50-th logarithms?

[LegoLord]

The subject of GDP came up a while ago.  I'd just like to make note of something:

GDP does not take the population of a country into account.  If a country like China had a GDP equal to Australia, Australia would be considered richer due to the wealth being spread across a smaller population.  GDP per capita (GDP divided by population) is a much more effective display of a countries wealth.

Now granted, a lot of money could still be concentrated in the hands of a few rich people.   But that's not quite so common as it used to be.

[Jreengus]

As I understand it GDP is a bad measure anyway because something like a natural disaster will increase it due to all the insurance payouts.

[andy1005]

Ask yourself again: Is it such a great idea to put governance of the country in the hands of an alcoholic kleptomaniac robot?

maniac

I like you. Prepare for your curse of flesh to be cured and to become the first robot monarchist.

Also; what is GDP? Is it like GBP? Can I spend it?

[Judas Maccabeus]

A few notes:

- Marx was actually fairly anti-utopian, in that he felt that those people who were at the time retreating into small communes and not helping the rest of the working class; of course, this was mostly because Marx felt that peaceful solutions wouldn't work.  Which, in his time and place (where any liberalism and anti-aristocratic sentiment was quickly and bloodily crushed) was true.

- "Dictatorship of the proletariat", in Marx's vision, wasn't one person being a dictator, but the working class as a whole (the proletariat) gaining political, social, and economic power (dictatorship).  Theoretically, this isn't opposed to representative democracy.  In practice, businesses and the upper class tend to figure out how to game any representative system at all fairly quickly, but that's more due to the rest of society not being vigilant enough.  Especially when the upper class comes up with the idea that "you can become upper class too!", when in the vast majority of cases one can't since the system is set up against them.


In all actuality, the problems with Marx and the Communist Manifesto are:

1.  Assumption that revolution is necessary in all cases.  As I said, in his time and place (mid-19th century Prussia), to get a system fair to anyone but the aristocracy in place would have required revolution, but this isn't necessarily the case always and everywhere.

2.  Historical inevitability.  There's nothing that says that a clever and powerful ruling class can't keep the lower classes down indefinitely.  Orwell successfully demolished this argument wholesale in 1984 (note that Goldstein's Book is quite similar to the Manifesto thematically...)

3.  Belief that solidarity amongst the workers means that national distrust dissolves.  Very much not the case at all.

4.  There is a sense of revenge running throughout, with the idea of the working class becoming the ruling class, not getting rid of class differences entirely.


Marx had some good ideas, though:  workers having some measure of control over the means of production (that is, not being entirely subject to their managers and employers), smoothing over of national boundaries and opposition (even if it wasn't such an inevitable thing as he believed), and recognition of capitalist industrial culture as tending towards becoming mechanistic, both with the machines themselves and the people around them.


...Good heavens I sound like a steretypical young intellectual in this.  Where's my beret... 

[PTTG??]

Orwell's 1984 can't function indefinitely. After only a few decades at most, such a system would run out of resources; either they don't develop technology to use new resources (deeper oil wells and such) or else they do and use it all up even faster.
So, the good news is that the Automacracy (that is, a government that rules by rote, rather than a self-ruling Autocracy) is, assuming that it forms in the first place, not eternal, or even particularly long-lived.
And then there's Orwell's rather dismal outlook on humanity as a whole. Oddly, he seems to assume that while there are people who love "power, pure power", he also assumes that there wouldn't be petty and corrupt people in these organizations that would pretty quickly wear them down.