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[MetalSlimeHunt]

Once human civilization goes post-scarcity on us, people are going to look back and laugh at all of us for arguing over ecomomic systems. Or not, because laughter will also be post-scarce.

[inteuniso]

I say we establish a strict meritocracy. On the Moon.

[alway]

I say we establish a strict meritocracy. On the Moon.

I second this motion.

[Muz]

Go communist.

Pure communism.

I agree.

but pure communism doesn't promote progress. A pure communism would mean (correct me if I'm wrong) that everyone gives their resources to elected officials, who then disperse it back to everyone. This provides a few problems, mainly that it gives too much power to officials, and it gives little incentive to do the less glamorous and more difficult jobs. Who wants to work 10 super-productive hours a day to farm or cleanup sewage when you can spend the same time as a student studying art history? The former are required simply to have a decent standard of living, but the later is a LOT easier.

Lol, talk of communism will derail the thread. There's like 10 communism threads around here in the past 6 months, half of them locked.

[AntiAntiMatter]

I think that we should implement a socialist meritocracy run by computers. Seriously. Computers, because humans can't run governments worth a damn. Socialist, because private interests don't have your best interests in mind when they provide services. Meritocracy, because those who actually do something constructive should be rewarded, not those who don't.

[Realmfighter]

Because computers are at the point where they are not swayed by there programmers whims.

[AntiAntiMatter]

Because computers are at the point where they are not swayed by there programmers whims.

This is ideally. The meritocracy bit would ensure that we have decent leaders, though, until we have sufficiently advanced computers.

[Glowcat]

Go communist.

Pure communism.

No thanks. However, I suspect our world's societies will need to slowly ease into something similar. As the value of labor deteriorates due to technology, employment will shift towards education, art, and tasks which require higher-education. Given that the world population is only increasing and there are only so many of those jobs that can feasibly be in existence I think that the remnant of Capitalism will eventually collapse in on itself... if we don't destroy ourselves first.

The United States is unfortunately set in a path of self destruction by clinging onto ideals of Free Market Capitalism, ideals which always seem to manifest as Corporatism... A society's worth is found in what it provides to its citizens. If the only thing the USA has to brag about itself is how rich its elite are then it's not much better than a Medieval Aristocracy supported by the serfs who enforce its laws, protect its borders, and maintain the infrastructure which allows the elite to remain so.

In that sense I fall more into the Liberal-Democrat camp. However, I'm not interested in fiscal equality so much as a baseline of good living for citizens and creating a solid base from which humanity can continue to progress.

[malimbar04]

@ Grakelin
"If it was done efficiently" is one of the big problems. How could we possibly ensure efficiency? More importantly though, how could we ensure progress?

Progress comes with new ideas to make the limited labour and resources we have more efficient. Each of these often originate among other bad ideas. As an example, imagine the first creation of cheese. All cheese is, at it's heart, rotten milk. Someone had the idea of "hey, the milk has gone sour, lets eat it". Among the undoubtedly several failed and possibly deadly results, someone figured out a few strains of good cheese and found how to propagate the technology onward. Crazy leaps forward don't happen by decree.

Also, consider that to manage a complete society can't be done well by someone with higher intelligence. We are not managing relatively stupid dwarves. Dwarves managing themselves don't think  to make megastructures, self-powering water-pumps or compllicated obsidian mines. If we were to build a society that we hoped to survive, it would have to account for the crazy leaps that could happen in the future, and preferably encourage it.

Social pressures I would agree could help some progress, but it would be unreliable to rely entirely on culture. Culture is extremely slow moving, and is often cluttered with bad ideas that are even more hard to remove.

@Glowcat

Corporatism is an interesting addition to the conversation. Technically a free-market requires an absurdly large amount of companies. Also, the people who buy goods (almost everyone) would need good information on every one of these companies. This amount of information is far beyond what we are capable of thinking about. Thus it's easier to buy something off of a few venders than to analyze all every time we make a purchase.

@AntiAntiMatter

The biggest problem with a meritocracy that I see is that we don't know what "merits" to use. IQ means nothing. Test scores mean little. Intelligence is completely subjective, and education is only as useful as the contents of the curriculum. The way we measure education is also the equivalent of brainwashing. Those that do better on a standardized test may be more insightful or more knowledgable than their pears, but they may also have simply memorized a specific set of data. I'll use the example of one of my fathers coworkers at ford. She is (by his account) a very intelligent and highly educated employee, but when she started she didn't even know the difference between righty-tighty and lefty-loosy (how to turn a screw).

The only way we could fairly and accurately evaluate politicians to be fair in a meritocracy is to give the job and THEN evaluate them.

[nenjin]

I say we establish a strict meritocracy. On the Moon.

I second this motion.

I think your digital rulers would have something to say about this whole "meritocracy" thing.

[ECrownofFire]

I think a night watchman state would be awesome. Seriously, it would be like having Batman for a government

[Leafsnail]

Well, it would collapse as soon as anyone needed to use roads or basic infrastructure.  Apart from that... great!

[Nikov]

Pff, women and their need to vote. FINE Vector, just because, I'll grant you that I took women's suffrage for granted and didn't think to include it. Trust-busting I don't need, however. Too much power for national government.

Furthermore, if we could man aircraft carriers with militia, I'd be for that instead. But reasonably it isn't possible. Protecting the national interest was my catch-all for foreign policy and military action, by the way.

But yes, the 'night-watchman state' was pretty well the thought on the national level. State and local are different beasts; politics are more direct, so more power can be trusted to them.

[Twiggie]

night watchmen plus government funded education and healthcare.

that should ensure that all the classes have an equal chance at wealth - would be close to a meritocracy, but you'd still have rich stupid people who inherited it all. but nobody would talk to them.

[Nikov]

That would be fine for your town or state, sure.