So we were drunk a few months ago...

[ZenGum]

Innnnteresting....

I agree about both the attraction and fundamental flaw of socialism. Pity we're such selfish lazy buggers isn't it?

Regarding specialization, I recall reading some futurist predictions made (I think by Arthur C Clark) back in the 1950s, in a similar vein. He argued that as technology takes over more and more of what needs doing, people we have less and less to do. We will eventually need to "uninvent" work.

In some respects we are getting there already: a large number of people are doing things that don't need to be done, certainly not for simple survival. Sit-com continuity checkers, for an extreme example. But consider Maslow's hierarchy of needs; our needs do not stop with food and blankets.

So when you claim that robots will deliver all of our needs, you'll have to include things like counselors, teachers, doctors, and so on. We're talking about some amazing robots, with skills in understanding humans, empathizing, decision making, taking responsibility... I think that is possible, but only by very advanced, complicated robots. And by the time robots have got that advanced, we're going to have to start treating them as, if not full persons, as creatures with interests and needs to be addressed. Robot liberation will become as morally pressing as slave emancipation.

So, this path might deliver something approaching socialism, but only socialism for the privileged few, the humans. Beneath that stratum, the robots will be toiling away ...
Maybe you will say, but they will either not notice anything is odd (like dumb machines nowadays) or will be programmed to like serving. But I don't believe that we can get the level of autonomous decision making necessary for a robo-doctor or robo-teacher, without giving them a very human-like psychology. And there, I think, lies the flaw in this possible future. The robots will become selfish.
You've seen Terminator. Maybe you've read H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. I greatly doubt the viability of any utopian future based on exploiting a naturally subservient class.

wow, six cents worth. I always wanted a sixth sense.

[Mockingbird]

I'm going to offer a brief counter point to all this and at the same time try not to look like an ass. This is going to be a trick.

First of all, if it were possible to reach a 'workless' society, it isn't one that I would want to live in. Without any sort of struggle, without someone getting the short end of the stick, there isn't any reason left to innovate. But, for the sake of argument, let's say that the innovators felt inclined (even though there's no real benefit to them personally in a socialist society) to keep improving things for everyone else even though pretty much everyone was getting fed by food bots or smoking weed all day or something. That wouldn't last long -- look at Atlas Shrugged. You can only fuck with the people with brains in your society for so long before they get really pissed off and demand that they get more than their 'fair' share, because they're doing a hell of a lot more work on improving society than John Q Layabout. If what you were saying was feasible, you would have a capitalist society still, but one that would lean towards a technocratic bent. One in which it's believed that technology solves anything so the people that can create and maintain the technology are the ones who end up rich.

Another problem with this is resources, for which I'll cite Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Say you have two rats in a box and you feed them 500 kilos of food a day. A hell of a lot for two rats. At the end of everyday, you take out what the rats haven't eaten and replace it with a new 500 k block every morning. Now, your rats are going to multiply like fucking crazy because they've got the food to do it, but eventually you're going to have a set number of rats, say about 1000 or something. You'll notice that the older rats die off to make way for new young and your population will stay at about 1000 rats.

Now, double the amount of food you give them each morning. What do you think will happen? The rats will double. Now, imagine letting the rats somehow control their food amount. Do you think they would choose to limit it? Unlikely, they'll just keep spreading until you have nothing but rats everywhere and eventually, not enough food.

Okay. The rats are people. As it is now, we control our own food source through agriculture to a certain point. Yes, we still have starving people, but our population simply doubles and doubles and doubles. And think, even those starving people eat food, though it may be scattered and hard to acquire because otherwise they wouldn't be starving -- they would be dead. So, if you created a 'foodbot' that just synthesized food out of something, (because of the way physics work, you'd have to use something, I doubt we'll ever have the ability to spontaneously create matter out of a void) people are going to eat and fuck until whatever it is that we're using to make food, no matter how common and available it is, will run out.

Of course, it would never reach that point. As soon as things were starting to run a little low and food was becoming a problem, the scientists and people who were making society function would either force the gluttonous society off its ass and get it put to work solving the problem, or annihilate them altogether.

Even introducing some sort of nano-fail proof birth control, you'll still have lazy folks just sucking up welfare or what have you and popping out kids left and right, doing nothing at all to make the world better. Any reasonable working person is going to see that what they're working for is bullshit and stop.

What I'm trying to get at here is that for decades socialism has seemed like some sort of noble ideal that human nature isn't quite ready for. I would like to see that come to an end. Socialism is stagnation, plain and simple. Stagnation of creativity, stagnation of innovation, stagnation of soul. Free market capitalism works -- people who work hard get paid well for it. Why should it be otherwise?

So rather than the crew of Star Trek being budding socialists I think it would have been far more likely that they had the resources and just weren't dicks. Share, if you have it. I have no problem with that. But, if I'm working harder than anyone else, recognize me for it.

Fuuuuuuuuuuck. That was long, sorry folks. Communism/socialism/etc. is just sort of a hot button issue for me.

[ZenGum]

Originally Posted by Mockingbird

That was long, sorry folks. Communism/socialism/etc. is just sort of a hot button issue for me.

Long, maybe, but not repetitive, and completely devoid of name-calling, put downs, or personal attacks, so I was cool with it.


But I think you might want a now.

Have you considered the system used in China for a while under Mao? Everyone was paid the same hourly rate, but could work different hours. If you worked harder, you got more.
I know, it still seems unfair. Six hours shelving books in the library is NOT equal to six hours digging coal in an underground mine.
But the present western system doesn't seem fair either ... but QQG covers that well I thought.

[Mockingbird]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

Long, maybe, but not repetitive, and completely devoid of name-calling, put downs, or personal attacks, so I was cool with it.


But I think you might want a now.

Have you considered the system used in China for a while under Mao? Everyone was paid the same hourly rate, but could work different hours. If you worked harder, you got more.
I know, it still seems unfair. Six hours shelving books in the library is NOT equal to six hours digging coal in an underground mine.
But the present western system doesn't seem fair either ... but QQG covers that well I thought.

There will always be people fucked over, I'm not saying that any society will ever be rid of the cutthroats.

I don't know. I've gotten the short end of the stick most of my life, I grew up in a trailer park where my parents had nothing. They couldn't afford to put me through college, and we were barely fed. I got a scholarship, had it revoked on a technicality, then still went on. I wanted an education and a good life and no paths were open to me. I sold cocaine for a few years (I knew the risk and have had more than one gun in my face, but there weren't many other options), saved up the money for college and earned a job where I work only 20 hours a week, but work hard and get paid many times over what my father made when I was a boy, even adjusting for inflation.

I'm in college now and working, and I haven't had anything handed to me. My father was a hard worker, too, but he did a lot of manual labor. I think maybe that now it's more important to work smarter than harder, and there's a bonus if you don't mind struggling past other people or being a bit of a bastard now and then. I just know that I am where I am now because of what I did and I worked hard to get here.

Also, what would socialist capitalism even look like? If we had universal free health care, and better government institutions, wouldn't it be the same thing as capitalism, just with a better organized government?

[queequeger]

Originally Posted by Mockingbird

Also, what would socialist capitalism even look like? If we had universal free health care, and better government institutions, wouldn't it be the same thing as capitalism, just with a better organized government?

That's a pretty good summary right there. The idea is higher taxes (think 50% on average, maybe even higher... of course progressive in nature rather than flat) and much more comprehensive in nature. Meaning universal free education, as high as you can earn (though you do still have to earn the grades). Meaning free health care for everyone (although I think you should be able to opt to pay more for better than average service). Meaning if you're disabled or can't work for a short time, free food.

No one should have to worry about shelter, food, medicine, or education. Everyone who CAN work, should. With this system you still have the motivation to work harder and you are rewarded for it, but it leaves no one wanting. Wikipedia's entries are under 'social democracy' although that's a misnomer because socialism is supposed to be democratic, not despotic like the USSR. I guess someone high jacked the name Social capitalism with some theory that institutionalizes social strata.

but yeah, I wasn't meaning to imply the popular idea of communism (i.e. russia's twisted BS factory) I mean that through technology and idealogical advancements, we'll create a form of socialism without even trying to.

[Mockingbird]

Originally Posted by queequeger

That's a pretty good summary right there. The idea is higher taxes (think 50% on average, maybe even higher... of course progressive in nature rather than flat) and much more comprehensive in nature. Meaning universal free education, as high as you can earn (though you do still have to earn the grades). Meaning free health care for everyone (although I think you should be able to opt to pay more for better than average service). Meaning if you're disabled or can't work for a short time, free food.

No one should have to worry about shelter, food, medicine, or education. Everyone who CAN work, should. With this system you still have the motivation to work harder and you are rewarded for it, but it leaves no one wanting. Wikipedia's entries are under 'social democracy' although that's a misnomer because socialism is supposed to be democratic, not despotic like the USSR. I guess someone high jacked the name Social capitalism with some theory that institutionalizes social strata.

but yeah, I wasn't meaning to imply the popular idea of communism (i.e. russia's twisted BS factory) I mean that through technology and idealogical advancements, we'll create a form of socialism without even trying to.

I agree, I think that people have forgotten the use of many common words, even our forms of government. If you analyze the United States for example, you'll find that it's a lax republic rather than a true democracy. Which is actually better, depending on who you ask. Everyone is so used to calling it a democracy though, that you don't really think twice about it. In the case of 'socialism' we could substitute a new meaning in there to distill the bitter Russian taste. How about:

Socialism: A form of government operating on the philosophy of not being a dick to a stranger, ever.

See, that's much easier to understand.