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Author Topic: Occupying Wallstreet  (Read 294314 times)

ChairmanPoo

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Re: Occupying Wallstreet
« Reply #2385 on: December 18, 2011, 04:52:15 am »

Quote
And planned approaches can work better than free market ones - but it is different than
"Soooo....
Down with Capitalism? Cause that's starting to look more and like the only answer."
without providing reasonable alternative.
We are of the same mind in this, and have in fact argued the same in the past, in some contexts.
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SalmonGod

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Re: Occupying Wallstreet
« Reply #2386 on: December 18, 2011, 06:34:53 am »

The majority of the world population would get a better quality of life out of returning to the stone age, compared to the way capitalism has been proven to operate over and over again.  Even if you believe the absolute worst about that way of life, it can't be worse than suffering the exploitations of modernity without enjoying any of its benefits, which is the reality for far too many people.

Personally, I think our economy and politics need to evolve into a memetic form.  I'm not talking about stupid jokes.  I'm talking about direct communication that spreads in a natural fashion and unites people into action that they have a direct interest and belief in.  I think that this is the natural way for civilization to progress at this stage of mass communication.  It's already happening in many ways.  The right tools have just not been made to facilitate it with the proper procedures and scale that we need.
Well, you described capitalism ("people into action that they have a direct interest and belief in").

1.  What I said implied far more than that.
2.  I think there's much more to the definition of capitalism than that.  Otherwise, a group of people deciding to create a communist government and acting on that belief and interest would be a capitalist course of action.

I see capitalism as an abstract, decentralized method of indirectly electing rulers, who then rule in a centralized fashion.  The invisible hand is a good concept.  People who have good ideas or skills are rewarded for them when people partake of the benefits they offer.  That reward is more resources to, theoretically, have greater ability to do more good things.  This is where it falls apart pretty damn quickly.  There is incentive to do beneficial things to get ahead.  Once ahead, there is no incentive to do anything good.  In fact, those who continue to act on that incentive lose out in competition.

Plus, people doing what they are directly interested or believe in has nothing to do with it most of the time.  The vast majority are forced into daily activity that works against their best interests; working for the wealthy to make them more wealthy.

What I was saying is that we don't need the abstraction anymore.  It was the best we could do before the era of mass communications, when there was no practical way for intelligent allocation of resources to occur without centralized leadership.  There were too many limitations in the ways information could flow.  A single person at the top of a hierarchy could mobilize large numbers of people into concerted effort much quicker than a community's ability to work out mutual agreements. 

This is no longer the case at all.  People are now more than capable of reacting in an egalitarian and organized fashion to information and ideas from around the world many times more quickly than an order can pass down through a chain of command.  There is no reason we should be organizing our lives around the commands of people who have no relation to us.  We should be communicating directly with one another on a scale relative to the issue in question and coming to mutual agreements through modern consensus decision making processes.  We should be acting because it is what we mutually agree to do, not because we have to pay the rent.

And I'm currently convinced that all the world is waiting for is the proper tools to be made to facilitate this.
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Kogut

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Re: Occupying Wallstreet
« Reply #2387 on: December 18, 2011, 06:57:20 am »

The majority of the world population would get a better quality of life out of returning to the stone age, compared to the way capitalism has been proven to operate over and over again.
Are you serious? I am not sure, maybe my sarcasmeter failed.
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SalmonGod

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Re: Occupying Wallstreet
« Reply #2388 on: December 18, 2011, 07:14:09 am »

The majority of the world population would get a better quality of life out of returning to the stone age, compared to the way capitalism has been proven to operate over and over again.
Are you serious? I am not sure, maybe my sarcasmeter failed.

Meh... I admit, "majority of the world population" was an overstatement.  I would still say an unjustifiably significant portion of the world population, plus more whose quality of life is incredibly questionable.
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ChairmanPoo

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Re: Occupying Wallstreet
« Reply #2389 on: December 18, 2011, 07:34:03 am »

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The majority of the world population would get a better quality of life out of returning to the stone age
Let's not get ourselves carried off. There are likely ways to do things in a better way, but I don't think luddism is one of them.
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scriver

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Re: Occupying Wallstreet
« Reply #2390 on: December 18, 2011, 08:09:54 am »

Salmon, if we somehow reverted back to the stone age - and I'm being fair here and assuming you mean farmer stone age - billions of people would die horrible deaths of starvation within the first year. That's an unjustifiable significant majority of the world population. And those who survived would face a world where you're an adult at 12 (if you're lucky enough to be the 1 of 10 to survive your childhood at all), have worked your body into tatters at 30 and then have fun watching yourself be a burden on your family for another 10-30 years. All during which you live constantly on the verge of starvation and watch your family die off from such horrible things as rat bites, ingrown toenails and any disease stronger than the common cold (most of which will be a consequence of the heavy toll even a cold will take on your immune system). You will have to kill your own children with disabilities as otherwise they will simply be a burden on your family. And let's not forget the constant warring with other tribes. No peace or safety for you ever again. Oh, and the warlord of the biggest tribe in the area just declared himself king. Have fun being his subject and keeping him fed while your children keep starving. And that thing called gender equality? Forget about it. Women may now be worshipped as magical baby-popping wonders, but their purpose now is making more children. They have to, the tribe got to live on. As for your sons, they'll enjoy the fine choice between following in your footsteps and working themselves to death on the fields and - no, wait, they don't have any choice either.

Seriously, Salmon. Saying things like that make you impossible to take seriously.
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ECrownofFire

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Re: Occupying Wallstreet
« Reply #2391 on: December 18, 2011, 08:09:54 am »

Simply replace democracy with capitalism in this sentence.

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Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
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ChairmanPoo

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Re: Occupying Wallstreet
« Reply #2392 on: December 18, 2011, 08:20:53 am »

Maybe you've heard this other one:
Quote from: Voltaire
"A witty saying proves nothing"

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Sheb

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Re: Occupying Wallstreet
« Reply #2393 on: December 18, 2011, 08:21:34 am »

Well, actually hunter-gatherer lived much better than prehistoric farmers. And I think he meant that a significant part of the world's population is worth off than were their stone-age ancestors, as they are starving with nothing but polluted water to drink and no access to health care anyway. Sure we're far too many to live as hunter-gatherer, but it still sad that for many people civilization as a whole didn't bring anything.
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ChairmanPoo

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Re: Occupying Wallstreet
« Reply #2394 on: December 18, 2011, 08:25:31 am »

I don't think a majority (or even a significant minority) of the world's population is worse off than their stone age ancestors, even accounting for the comparatively shitty quality of life in the poorer countries. The thing is, it's comparatively shitty, when compared to our own!

Now, I'm not saying it's right that those people have to live like that, but the statement itself doesn't make sense. You might as well say that we'd be better off returning to the Ancient Regimee.
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Willfor

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Re: Occupying Wallstreet
« Reply #2395 on: December 18, 2011, 08:32:44 am »

Even taking technology back 100 years world kill off a surprising amount of the human race, or at least put heavy restrictions on our ability to grow in the best case scenarios. Starving is the natural state of humanity, and technology is our evolutionary tool to overcome that.
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scriver

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Re: Occupying Wallstreet
« Reply #2396 on: December 18, 2011, 08:32:47 am »

Well, actually hunter-gatherer lived much better than prehistoric farmers. And I think he meant that a significant part of the world's population is worth off than were their stone-age ancestors, as they are starving with nothing but polluted water to drink and no access to health care anyway. Sure we're far too many to live as hunter-gatherer, but it still sad that for many people civilization as a whole didn't bring anything.

Well, the only difference between stone-age farmers and hunter-gatherers is that as hunter-gatherers, you'll get 10 more years on account of a living better suited to your body before your it is broken. If you manage to survive, as the mortality rate will increase from both starvation and illness, and warring.

There's a reason people went tending the land everywhere it was possible. It isn't that they they were worse off as farmers.

Also - it's still sad that civilization as a whole hasn't brought anything yet. Remember, it's only been just about a 100 years of it bringing anything to the majority of the people in "the West" as well.
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Kogut

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Re: Occupying Wallstreet
« Reply #2397 on: December 18, 2011, 10:04:30 am »

There's a reason people went tending the land everywhere it was possible. It isn't that they they were worse off as farmers.
Live of early farmers was worse than life of hunter-gatherers, but it is possible to feed more farmers than h-gs from the same area (info from The Third Chimpanzee).
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Sheb

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Re: Occupying Wallstreet
« Reply #2398 on: December 18, 2011, 10:08:34 am »

Kogut is right. The invention of agriculture saw a sharp increase in population but a drop in quality of life that was only overcome in the 18th-19th century for most Westerners. And I guess that's what SalmonGod was referring to when he said a significant portion of the world is still worse off than h-g (aka, a large part of the 925 million hundry people).
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ChairmanPoo

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Re: Occupying Wallstreet
« Reply #2399 on: December 18, 2011, 10:16:53 am »

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The invention of agriculture saw a sharp increase in population but a drop in quality of life that was only overcome in the 18th-19th century for most Westerners.
I'd like more info on this bit (mostly because I find it hard to believe, TBH. I can fathom that when it started, the living standard was worse, but once civilization kicked in? It beggars belief that the average Egyptian -for instance- lived worse than contemporary nomads. Also, having more food means that you can afford to do other things besides foraging.)
« Last Edit: December 18, 2011, 10:21:30 am by ChairmanPoo »
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