Why capitalism can never work - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

pai mei · 02-15-2009, 12:27 AM

The value of the wages in an enterprise is always just a fraction of the cost of the finished product. That is for all factories and hotels and whatever across the planet. What does that mean ? It means people will never be able to buy all that is produced. All the money go to the business owner. But how many finished products do they buy ?

Solution : credit. But now they turned off the money fountain (intentionaly - people did not lose their jobs, then stopped buying ,it was the other way around). So people buy only what they realy need, or not even that. And the system collapses. Very simple. There is not a shortage of products.

Capitalism, and the "economic need" are pyramid schemes. To satisfy the real needs it is enough for 10 % of the workforce to work. We could invent a system with no money, where people work let's say 8 years in agriculture, healthcare, schools and some light industry producing some stuff like clothing. Then they are changed by others. The rest of the time they do nothing and are provided with all these things for free. That does not mean they are forced to live only with those things.
Want more ? Gather people who want the same and do it. Improve your life beyond what you are provided, anyway you like.

Money or credit will be BANNED, and that means we will never end up where we are now - working not because we need what we produce , but because we need money, and we have to have something "TO DO" to get them otherwise it does not fits into the crazy philosophy of "life is hard work".
People will do things only if they want to have them as an extra beyond the basics. When they stop wanting them they stop working. Simple. Not like the death trap of the current system : "look nobody buys what I produce, what will I do ?". Nothing. As I said to cover real needs there is no need for 100% of the workforce to work.

Also see this :
The Gospel of Consumption | Orion Magazine

Quote:

In a 1927 interview with the magazine Nation’s Business, Secretary of Labor James J. Davis provided some numbers to illustrate a problem that the New York Times called “need saturation.” Davis noted that “the textile mills of this country can produce all the cloth needed in six months’ operation each year” and that 14 percent of the American shoe factories could produce a year’s supply of footwear.

And these : The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard

Money As Debt

ASU2003 · 02-15-2009, 08:42 AM

Capitalism has worked pretty well for quite a few years. It's just that certain behaviors and actions need to be regulated or prevented.

Maybe if the population was 1/100th what it is today, and there was fusion energy (free), plus AI automation for 90% of the jobs, then you could get rid of capitalism and implement a new system. But, now there are limited resources, prime real estate locations, better products, and a culture of monogamy, And I'm not sure things would work out too well without capitalism or socialism (government picking good companies instead of the cheapest, or bad companies).

guyy · 02-15-2009, 09:44 AM

Why is capitalism necessary? I don't get it. Only the last few hundred years of human existence have been dominated by capitalism. It too will pass.

Dragonlich · 02-15-2009, 10:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pai mei

The value of the wages in an enterprise is always just a fraction of the cost of the finished product. That is for all factories and hotels and whatever across the planet. What does that mean ? It means people will never be able to buy all that is produced. All the money go to the business owner. But how many finished products do they buy ? ....

This statement in itself just isn't true. There have been and still are products where the wages make up a very large part of the total cost. And even for products where your statement is true, all the excess money does not go to the business owner. To create products, you also need machines, other products, power, etc. Those things are created by other companies, which also have employees and machines and other costs. If a company decides to produce X products, it expects these products to be sold, either in their own country or worldwide. Companies do not (or should not) produce more than they can sell.

Your idea that we only need X percent of the workforce to produce everything we need ignores the fact that there's a lot people working in the "services" business. Goods need to be created, but they also have to be transported from the factory to shops so people can buy them. Then there's all the people involved in the logistics of getting the goods delivered at the right place, at the right time. And the people supporting those people...
We may only 10% of the workforce to actually build stuff, but we need the other 90% to support them.

Consider this: if what you say is true, a truly capitalist society would have fired 90% of the workforce. Even if your theory was true, your alternative wouldn't work: if 90% of the population can sit on their arse all day, why would the remaining 10% choose not to?

roachboy · 02-15-2009, 11:44 AM

capitalism hasn't been a dominant mode of production for very long at all. if you think about it, it's only been over the past 50 years or so that agricultural production has been assimilated into that form.

elements that were built upon by capitalism have been around for much longer, but that doesn't make them capitalist.

the unification of capitalism as a mode of production in marx is linked as much to the political project as to a descriptive analysis.

and i don't see the op as making the argument that it sets out to make.
and i think i've seen all this before...

ASU2003 · 02-15-2009, 11:58 AM

The quality of life, and the development of new products has benefited from capitalism. Also, the ability to not have to do everything for yourself is a perk for the capitalistic system.

Quote:

Consider this: if what you say is true, a truly capitalist society would have fired 90% of the workforce. Even if your theory was true, your alternative wouldn't work: if 90% of the population can sit on their arse all day, why would the remaining 10% choose not to?

That is going to b e a problem when AI & robotics gets good enough to replace a large majority of workers. The 90% will have to figure out what to do with their lives if you are retired at 21. The 10% may become the upper class (with access to the best houses, best food, and other things). There will be more jobs in the robotics area, but my job now is to build machines that replace humans from doing repetitive jobs. And once I am done, I need to find another thing to work on if I do my job right.

pai mei · 02-15-2009, 12:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dragonlich

This statement in itself just isn't true. There have been and still are products where the wages make up a very large part of the total cost. And even for products where your statement is true, all the excess money does not go to the business owner. To create products, you also need machines, other products, power, etc. Those things are created by other companies, which also have employees and machines and other costs. If a company decides to produce X products, it expects these products to be sold, either in their own country or worldwide. Companies do not (or should not) produce more than they can sell.

Your idea that we only need X percent of the workforce to produce everything we need ignores the fact that there's a lot people working in the "services" business. Goods need to be created, but they also have to be transported from the factory to shops so people can buy them. Then there's all the people involved in the logistics of getting the goods delivered at the right place, at the right time. And the people supporting those people...
We may only 10% of the workforce to actually build stuff, but we need the other 90% to support them.

Consider this: if what you say is true, a truly capitalist society would have fired 90% of the workforce. Even if your theory was true, your alternative wouldn't work: if 90% of the population can sit on their arse all day, why would the remaining 10% choose not to?

Ok so some produce machines, components and so on. It does not matter. They get paid only when someone buys the finished product. Nobody buys it, the factory will not buy new machines or raw materials.

Why would the remaining 10% do something ? Because they know they will get free housing healthcare and food for the rest of their lives. That is the system I talk about. I am sure it would be enough for each of us to work 8 years of our life, and the rest do what we want. That dose not mean : sleep and eat your free food waiting to die. I have stuff I want to do, don't know about others, I don't need someone to force me to "work". Which is in fact today's slavery.

http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/chapter5-5.php

Quote:

"To most of the roles society offers, I say, "You are made for more than that." We inhabit, in the words of Ivan Illich, "a world into which nobody fits who has not been crushed and molded by sixteen years of formal education." The very idea of having to be at a job "on time" was appalling to early industrial laborers, who also refused the numbing repetitiveness of industrial work until the specter of starvation compelled them. What truly self-respecting person would spend a life marketing soda pop or chewing gum unless they were somehow broken by repeated threats to survival?

This system will provide only basic things. Look at the quote above. I don't want to be "comfortable" knowing there is an army of slaves somewhere doing stuff they hate, just to survive, but it ensures my comfort.

inBOIL · 02-15-2009, 01:50 PM

If someone in your system refuses to do that work, do they still recieve the necessities for free? If so, why would anyone work to produce them? If not, how is it any less 'slavery' than capitalism?

Suppose I want to buy a video game, or a painting, or some other item that I lack the skills to produce (or produce well). How would I acquire it without money or credit? I may be good at producing widgets, but if the game programmer or artist doesn't need widgets, I'll have to go through a convoluted barter transaction. How is this better than money?

telekinetic · 02-15-2009, 06:27 PM

Didn't you start this thread once already with a different name?

Edit: yup, http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/general...ot-needed.html

"90% don't need to work, 10% will voluntarily support society" is still a flawed idea for the same reasons.

pai mei · 02-15-2009, 11:38 PM

It's less slavery because you do it for others not for some rich man to get rich. All the others, no more poor or homeless. And you know you will get the benefits too.
If you don't want to you don;t do it, you get nothing. That does not mean you cannot grow food yourself and be a member of your community. There will be communities , people will have to know their neighbors and work with them to improve their surroundings. It's a different kind of life, when you know your entire street and everybody knows you. For who did not experience this is hard to understand.

Don't want that ? Go and find a slave master, that is a slave himself to some money creator, and work for him. Alone and fighting all the others for survival or for a bigger TV, while others don't have enough to eat - and nobody needs them or their "work". You can have your capitalist territory and look with envy at the crazy people next door that do nothing all day, just work in their garden for pleasure or travel or sit with their friends or whatever. And have no money and need no money.

In developed countries 3% of the workforce work in agriculture and they have more than enough food. Add more for education and health and you get kind of 20% the max. 1/5 of the work time of let's say 40 years is 8 years. More than enough.

guyy · 02-16-2009, 06:20 AM

Pai Mei,

Take a look at volume II of Das Kapital.

aceventura3 · 02-16-2009, 08:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pai mei

The value of the wages in an enterprise is always just a fraction of the cost of the finished product. That is for all factories and hotels and whatever across the planet. What does that mean ? It means people will never be able to buy all that is produced. All the money go to the business owner. But how many finished products do they buy ?

Solution : credit.

I apologize in advance for not reading any further, but I could not get past the flaw in the "solution". Consumption can come from wages, but we also have profits, capital gains and on a global perspective - exports (the theory being - items produced efficiently in one area get exported to an area where that is not true, but that area has an efficiency advantage in a product they export).

{added} I just finished watching the video, I think they presented a one sided summation of money and debt in an economy. I think they failed to look at the fact that debt is most often used to acquire assets, and in some cases productive assets. For example if $100,000 loan is given to a farmer to purchase a tractor with a useful life of 20 years, or a depreciation rate of $5,000 per year, and let's say the debt service on the loan is $6,000 per year, then we have a total annual cost of the tractor of $11,000 excluding operating expenses. If that tractor enables the farmer to be more productive and is able to feed 100 more people at a rate of $50 per week and generates the farmer 10% of the gross that is ($50 x 52 week x 100 people x 10% to the farmer) $26,000. The farmer has a gross profit of $15,000 per year on the tractor or the debt not including operating costs. This is a net good for the farmer, net good for society (100 more people getting fed), net good for the bank, and a net good for the tractor maker. the system begins to fail if debt is used for non-productive purposes.

pai mei · 02-17-2009, 12:11 AM

Aceventura3 all looks good on paper. Look at third world countries were people eat dirt while capitalist corporations grow food. It does not matter it's their country, the food is not for them. Or look at Niger's delta.

guyy I don't have that book. Communism did not renounce money and that was it's biggest mistake.

The disappearance of money is very important for a real civilized society to form. There will be no more crime - nothing to steal. Steal what ? Food which is free for everybody ?
The only reason for organized crime will remain slavery. I am sure most rich people of today would hate my system. Not having anyone to do stuff for them, and having no means to lure people or to force people to work for them.

Today is very simple to have a slave cook your food, clean your house and so on if you have money. His survival depends on it.

"No" some say , he is free to go. Ya right, he is "free", you don't kill him if he tries to go away, like they used to kill slaves. Go where ?
Also slaves of the past got free food and home. Now slaves get only money, and indeed a better treatment. Obtained trough countless revolutions, not because of the good will of the slave masters.

"It's his fault, he should have gotten a better education, and then a better job" some say. Yes sure. Maybe he did not have the chance. And who will do all the dirty or repetitive and boring jobs if everybody will be a manager ? Capitalism and today;s society is based on slavery, without the threat to their survival there would be no people for those jobs.

"People got to work ! That is life !" No it's not. That is why we have invented machines, to work less. And see this :

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.p...s/article/2962

Quote:

Machines can save labor, but only if they go idle when we possess enough of what they can produce. In other words, the machinery offers us an opportunity to work less, an opportunity that as a society we have chosen not to take. Instead, we have allowed the owners of those machines to define their purpose: not reduction of labor, but “higher productivity”—and with it the imperative to consume virtually everything that the machinery can possibly produce

And this :
http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/chapter1-5.php

Quote:

An oft-cited example is the !Kung of the Kalihari Desert in southern Africa, who were studied by the anthropologist Richard Lee.ii He followed them around for four weeks, kept a log of all their activities, and calculated an average workweek of approximately twenty hours spent in subsistence activities. This figure was confirmed by subsequent studies by Lee and other researchers in the same region. In one of the harshest climates in the world, the !Kung enjoyed a leisurely life with high nutritional intake. This compares to the modern standard of forty hours of work per week. If we add in commuting time, shopping, housework, cooking and so forth, the typical American spends about eighty hours per week aside from leisure time, eating, and sleep. The comparable figure for the !Kung is forty hours including such necessary activities as making tools and clothes.

Other studies worldwide, as well as common sense, suggest that the !Kung were not exceptional. In more lush areas life was probably even easier. Moreover, much of the "work" spent on these twenty hours of subsistence activities was by no means strenuous or burdensome. Most of the men's subsistence hours were spent hunting, something we do for recreation today, while gathering work was occasion for banter and frequent breaks.
Primitive small-scale agriculturalists enjoyed a similar unhurried pace of life. Consider Helena Norberg-Hodge's description of pre-modern Ladakh, a region in the Indian portion of the Tibetan Plateau.iii Despite a growing season only four months long, Ladakh enjoyed regular food surpluses, long and frequent festivals and celebrations, and ample leisure time (especially in winter when there was little field work to do). This, despite the harsh climate and the (proportionately) enormous population of non-working Buddhist monks in that country's numerous monasteries! More powerfully than any statistic, Norberg-Hodge's video documentary Ancient Futures conveys a sense of the leisurely pace of life there: villagers chat or sing as they work, taking plenty of long breaks even at the busiest time of the year. As the narrator says, "work and leisure are one."

I do not write here because of the economic crisis. Even without it there is something very wrong with our society. People forced to get money to survive, and they get money by building stuff that must be bought, then thrown away fast then bought again, else they lose their jobs. This life is more than survival, ownership and control. And people are not inherently evil, those who say : "this is the only way to live" are very wrong.
People want to be part of something , and seek a group to belong to. They would work for that group for "free" if allowed to. That is how tribal societies worked, each helped the group knowing he will be helped too.
Today's society denies that, it's each for himself, the only thing left for them is to get rich and "escape" and be "successful".

Look here a society where only to tell another what do do would have been very rude :
Native Americans - Sioux

Quote:

Crazy Horse, Tashunkewitko of the western Sioux, was born about 1845. Killed at Fort Robinson, Nebraska in 1877, he lived barely 33 years.

As a boy, Crazy Horse seldom saw white men. Sioux parents took pride in teaching their sons and daughters according to tribal customs. Often giving food to the needy, they exemplified self-denial for the general good. They believed in generosity, courage, and self-denial, not a life based upon commerce and gain.

One winter when Crazy Horse was only five, the tribe was short of food. His father, a tireless hunter, finally brought in two antelope. The little boy rode his pony through the camp, telling the old folks to come for meat, without first asking his parents. Later when Crazy Horse asked for food, his mother said, "You must be brave and live up to your generous reputation."

It was customary for young men to spend much time in prayer and solitude, fasting in the wilderness --typical of Sioux spiritual life which has since been lost in the contact with a material civilization.

The Realm of Me and Mine

Quote:

Not only does our acquisitiveness arise out of separation, it reinforces it as well. The notion that a forest, a gene, an idea, an image, a song is a separate thing that admits ownership is quite new. Who are we to own a piece of the world, to separate out a part of the sacred universe and make it mine? Such hubris, once unknown in the world, has had the unfortunate effect of separating out ourselves as well from the matrix of reality, cutting us off (in experience if not in fact) from each other, from nature, and from spirit. By objectifying the world and everything in it, by making an other of the world, we necessarily objectify ourselves as well in relation to that other. The self becomes a lonely and isolated ego, connected to the world pragmatically but not in essence, afraid of death and thus closed to life. Such a self, cut off from its true nature and separated from the factitious environment created by its own self-definition, will always be insecure and will always try to exert more and more control over this environment

guyy · 02-17-2009, 04:46 AM

It's probably available at a public library, and it's also on line. Here are your links:

Original

English version

aceventura3 · 02-17-2009, 07:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pai mei

Aceventura3 all looks good on paper. Look at third world countries were people eat dirt while capitalist corporations grow food. It does not matter it's their country, the food is not for them. Or look at Niger's delta.

At the root, is one basic question that needs to be answered regarding the choice between true capitalism and other options: Should a small group of centralized bureaucrats decide how resources are allocated or should the larger group of market participants decide? Why you would trust a small group of bureaucrats to do what is best for everyone makes no sense to me.

The problems in places like Nigeria or Zimbabwe (printing 100 trillion dollar notes, worth about $300 US dollars) is with government decision makers making poor decision or a history of other governments exploiting the resources of other nations through the use of force. A corporation has never used an army to grow market share.

guyy · 02-17-2009, 08:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

A corporation has never used an army to grow market share.

= "Imperialism never happened."

You're always good for laffs, Ace.

Here, read up one of its shinier moments:

Also, if you can only imagine the alternative to capitalism to be a group of bureaucrats deciding matters, you really haven't thought of an alternative to capitalism. Try again.

aceventura3 · 02-17-2009, 08:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by guyy

= "Imperialism never happened."

You're always good for laffs, Ace.

Here, read up one of its shinier moments:

Also, if you can only imagine the alternative to capitalism to be a group of bureaucrats deciding matters, you really haven't thought of an alternative to capitalism. Try again.

Please assume I am an idiot. I won't be offended. Please help me see the light.

What do you mean by imperialism as it relates to my comment?

What does opium have to do with lawful corporate activity?

What are the alternatives to capitalism that don't involve a relatively small group of bureaucrats?

Dragonlich · 02-17-2009, 11:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pai mei

Aceventura3 all looks good on paper. Look at third world countries were people eat dirt while capitalist corporations grow food. It does not matter it's their country, the food is not for them. Or look at Niger's delta.

Please provide an example of a third world country where this happens. In third world countries, people generally eat "dirt" because the land cannot support the current population. This can be caused by bad soil, or by things like wars.
I haven't seen a country where "capitalist corporations" force the population to starve. I have in fact seen a country where getting rid of those bad capitalists has led to starvation (Zimbabwe)

Quote:

guyy I don't have that book. Communism did not renounce money and that was it's biggest mistake.

The disappearance of money is very important for a real civilized society to form. There will be no more crime - nothing to steal. Steal what ? Food which is free for everybody ?

I guess there was no crime back in ye olde pre-money days then. No murders, no rapes, no coveting of the neighbors wife/ox? Even if we limit crime to stealing, even without money and with free food, there'll be plenty of other things to steal.

Quote:

The only reason for organized crime will remain slavery. I am sure most rich people of
today would hate my system. Not having anyone to do stuff for them, and having no means to lure people or to force people to work for them.

I myself don't feel "forced" to work at all. I actually quite enjoy myself at work. There's nobody forcing me to do anything. And even though I'm not particularly rich, I would also hate your system. I can't imagine being happy in a society where 90% of the population is too damn lazy to improve their own lives, and where such improvements are even frowned upon.

Quote:

Today is very simple to have a slave cook your food, clean your house and so on if you have money. His survival depends on it.

"No" some say , he is free to go. Ya right, he is "free", you don't kill him if he tries to go away, like they used to kill slaves. Go where ?
Also slaves of the past got free food and home. Now slaves get only money, and indeed a better treatment. Obtained trough countless revolutions, not because of the good will of the slave masters.

"It's his fault, he should have gotten a better education, and then a better job" some say. Yes sure. Maybe he did not have the chance. And who will do all the dirty or repetitive and boring jobs if everybody will be a manager ? Capitalism and today;s society is based on slavery, without the threat to their survival there would be no people for those jobs.

Capitalism has NOTHING to do with slavery. Generally, capitalist countries tend to be democratic, free countries. If you want to look for slaves, you have to look at dictatorships and former communist countries.

Quote:

"People got to work ! That is life !" No it's not. That is why we have invented machines, to work less. And see this :

I do not write here because of the economic crisis. Even without it there is something very wrong with our society. People forced to get money to survive, and they get money by building stuff that must be bought, then thrown away fast then bought again, else they lose their jobs. This life is more than survival, ownership and control. And people are not inherently evil, those who say : "this is the only way to live" are very wrong.
People want to be part of something , and seek a group to belong to. They would work for that group for "free" if allowed to. That is how tribal societies worked, each helped the group knowing he will be helped too.
Today's society denies that, it's each for himself, the only thing left for them is to get rich and "escape" and be "successful".

Perhaps you should look beyond your own (parody of your) country. There's plenty of people being part of groups, and doing work for free. Not everything is as black and white as you claim it to be.

pai mei · 02-17-2009, 01:06 PM

Quote:

I can't imagine being happy in a society where 90% of the population is too damn lazy to improve their own lives, and where such improvements are even frowned upon

Wait, so you believe in "Arbeit macht frei" ? You think people need to be put to work ?

The oil we eat: Following the food chain back to Iraq?By Richard Manning (Harper's Magazine)

Quote:

Why humans might have traded this approach for the complexities of agriculture is an interesting and long-debated question, especially because the skeletal evidence clearly indicates that early farmers were more poorly nourished, more disease-ridden and deformed, than their hunter-gatherer contemporaries. Farming did not improve most lives. The evidence that best points to the answer, I think, lies in the difference between early agricultural villages and their pre-agricultural counterparts—the presence not just of grain but of granaries and, more tellingly, of just a few houses significantly larger and more ornate than all the others attached to those granaries. Agriculture was not so much about food as it was about the accumulation of wealth. It benefited some humans, and those people have been in charge ever since.

This is what capitalism brings to the world - slavery,Columbus asked for gold, look what happened when they did not bring him gold :

Quote:

As Columbus wrote of the Arawak (before murdering and enslaving them),
"They are so ingenuous and free with all they have, that no one would believe it who has not seen it... Of anything they possess, if it be asked of them, they never say no; on the contrary, they invite you to share it and show as much love as if their hearts went with it..."

Was an intense acculturation process applied to Arawak children in order to override their inherently greedy, selfish natures and impose the desire to share?

http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/text.php

Look at Haiti, people eat dirt there. And I don't even want to talk about "Democratic" and "Free". You have no idea what freedom is. And consider yourself lucky if you like your job, for 80% others is just a matter of survival.

MSD · 02-17-2009, 01:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pai mei

The disappearance of money is very important for a real civilized society to form. There will be no more crime - nothing to steal. Steal what ? Food which is free for everybody ?
The only reason for organized crime will remain slavery. I am sure most rich people of today would hate my system. Not having anyone to do stuff for them, and having no means to lure people or to force people to work for them.

And there will be no incentive to development because people are not inherently good and the vast majority will not work hard out of concern for the goodwill of others.

How will the product of talented individuals be rewarded and how should it be?

roachboy · 02-17-2009, 01:28 PM

what makes you think the work of talented individuals is rewarded under the present regime?

Xerxys · 02-17-2009, 03:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MSD

And there will be no incentive to development because people are not inherently good and the vast majority will not work hard out of concern for the goodwill of others.

How will the product of talented individuals be rewarded and how should it be?

Nailed it!! pai mei, people are bastards. I mean, sure, The person is smart and kind, yes. But if you were to put the collective peoples' heads together, there would essentially be more space than grey matter.

Ever since the beginning of time, people have developed and thrived through exchange. The barter trade was introduced, then gold and now money. Developmet has been fueled, essentially, through incentives and reward. Without this, we would have no desire to move forward. Period. Money can never be abolished.

roachboy · 02-17-2009, 03:30 PM

nonsense. there are problems with the op argument in my opinion, but that's not one of them. there have been a host of social mechanisms for determining things like status that have not involved capitalist-style money=the medium through which all social relations are expressed. think about aristocratic societies for example. they're not so distant from the present--status was a matter of bloodline, which in turn opened onto sets of material possibilities that were not at all oriented around a bourgeois relation to money. quite the contrary in many cases. so for example in pre-revolutionary france, status was a matter of birth, land=holding the primary mechanism for wealth generation and the rationality concerning money was predicated on it being something to be spent, optimally in ways that reflected back onto one's social position. this was directly contrary to bourgeois modes of establishing social position and particularly to bourgeois relations to money.
you can read myriad books on this.

that money was present does not mean that the relations to and around money were anything like those which are dominant under contemporary capitalism.

capitalist rationality is relatively new and it is deeply problematic. it can and should be relativized, and looking into even quite recent history will do that.

.

Xerxys · 02-17-2009, 06:30 PM

Gosh dang' roachboy, how can one with crude gestures argue with one so well spoken, I'll try though.

I disagree, for some reason exchange is important to us. The reason the aristocratic system is not very prevalent nowadays is because no matter what I did I could never be the same as you, simply because you existed, made you better than me. All you had to do was be BORN!! That may be irrelevant but in some unclear way it makes sense to me to have money around.

Land, on the other hand is scarce. Sure, we have plenty of it in the sahara but..... To me, money is an equalizer .... scratch that ... a scale. I can be better than you as long as I have it. Or I can use it to buy my equality to you. Money is a universal enabler. We need the value instilled in it in order to develop.

MSD · 02-17-2009, 06:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

what makes you think the work of talented individuals is rewarded under the present regime?

Looking back, I should have said "talented and motivated.". I don't think that either is adequately rewarded under the current system, but I also think that eliminating all traces of a free market including money is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I assure you that I am as disgusted by the lassiez-faire condonement of robber barons, exploitation, and bootstraps as those arguing for the end of capitalism, but I find the solution in a balance. There should be a minimum standard below which we do not let our fellow men fall, but it need not be paired with restrictions beyond those necessary to prevent abuse.

Xerxys · 02-17-2009, 07:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MSD

....eliminating all traces of a free market including money is throwing the baby out with the bathwater..... arguing for the end of capitalism, but I find the solution in a balance. There should be a minimum standard below which we do not let our fellow men fall, but it need not be paired with restrictions beyond those necessary to prevent abuse.

Capitalism, works for what we have now. If some sort of venus project were possible, we'd have one now. The modern man, (I consider us modern, not civilized) is adaptable to change and growth. For the balance to exist, we need to be governed, to be governed without the incentive of reward would break more than make. Also, when it comes to government, it's hard not to select slime of the earth.

pai mei · 02-17-2009, 11:35 PM

I feel like I'm talking to some wall here. Please all read some books by Daniel Quinn. There was a world before agriculture and before money. Look at the Arawak indians. Look at the North American indians. Of course there is nothing to see, we killed them all they were savages, not like us...

You say that if people are not rewarded there will be no progress ? People who work for progress like Einstein for example need no reward. Their work is their reward and I am sure they don't even see it as work, when you do what you like it' not work.

What you mean is "if people are not forced to fit and maintain this system there will be no progress". That is not progress for me. There's all this talk, all this philosophy about not caring about material things, but you think people need "rewards like money and status" to progress ? People who need those things are weak people and there is no progress in following them. Look at all the geniuses and whatever - did they require money and "status" ? They were far beyond those, even if other gave those things to them I am sure that was not the motivation.

In my system people would be really free. Imagine you wake up and know you have nothing to do and will never have. You improve your home, improve your street, then you gather with others and say "let's do this", and start building a monument to last for many centuries, not because you are forced or rewarded, just because you have nothing to do, and you like it. Your result is your reward. Like children do when they play, of course adults say "a just children, they do nothing", and in fact they are real creators.
Anybody does what he likes. You are interested in science, gather together with others and do research. You do it because you like it and want to make life for everybody better. Look at the art work of the American Indians. I am sure nobody forced or paid them for it. They did it, they had more "free time" then we the "Advanced" have today. All their time was "free" and they did not "work" or "not work" they just lived.

The lack of money and the free food and housing means - no crazy glory seeking madman will ever rise. He will have no means to lure or to threaten others to work for his plan. If some people gather and do a thing they will do it out of their own will, quitting anytime they want, and never able to impose their will on others.

Alone in a Crowd

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We don't really need each other. Contemporary parties, for example, are almost always based on consumption—of food, drink, drugs, sports, or other forms of entertainment. We recognize them as frivolous. This sort of fun really doesn't matter, and neither do the friendships based on fun. Does anybody ever become close by partying together?

Actually, I don't think that joint consumption is even fun. It only passes the time painlessly by covering up a lack, and leaves us feeling all the more empty. The significance of the superficiality of our social leisure becomes apparent when we contrast that sort of "fun" with a very different activity, play. Unlike joint consumption, play is by nature creative. Joint creativity fosters relationships that are anything but superficial. But when our fun, our entertainment, is itself the object of purchase, and is created by distant and anonymous specialists for our consumption (movies, sports contests, music), then we become consumers and not producers of fun. We are no longer play-ers.

Play is the production of fun; entertainment is the consumption of fun. When the neighbors watch the Superbowl together they are consumers; when they organize a game of touch football (alas, the parks are empty these days) they are producers. When they watch music videos together they consume; when they play in a band they produce. Only through the latter activity is there the possibility of getting to know each other's strengths and limitations, character and inner resources. In contrast, the typical cocktail party, dinner party, or Superbowl party affords little opportunity to share much of oneself, because there is nothing to do. (And have you noticed how any attempt to share oneself in such settings seems contrived, uncomfortable, awkward, inappropriate, or embarrassing?) Besides, real intimacy comes not from telling about yourself—your childhood, your relationships, your health problems, etc.—but from joint creativity, which brings out your true qualities, invites you to show that aspect of yourself needed for the task at hand. Later, when intimacy has developed, telling about oneself may come naturally—or it may not even be necessary.

Have you ever wondered why your childhood friendships were closer, more intimate, more bonded than those of adulthood? At least that's how I remember mine. It wasn't because we had heart-to-heart conversations about our feelings. With our childhood friends we felt a closeness that probably wasn't communicated in words. We did things together and created things together. From an adult's perspective our creativity was nothing but games: our play forts and cardboard box houses and pretend tea parties and imaginary sports teams and teddy bear families were not real. As children, though, these activities were very real to us indeed; we were absolutely in earnest and invested no less a degree of emotion in our make-believe than adults do in theirs.

Yes, the adult world is make-believe too. Roles and costumes, games and pretenses contribute to a vast story. When we become aware of it, we sense the artificiality of it all and feel, perhaps, like a child playing grown-up. The entire edifice of culture and technology is built on stories, composed of symbols, about how the world is. Usually we don't notice; we think it is all "for real". Our stories are mostly unconscious. But the new edifice that will rise from the ruins of the old will be built on very different stories of self and world, and these stories will be consciously told. We will go back to play.

As children the things we did together mattered to us. To us they were real; we cared about them intensely and they evoked our full being. In contrast, most of the things we do together as adults for the sake of fun and friendship do not matter. We recognize them as frivolous, unnecessary, and relegate them to our "spare time". A child does not relegate play to spare time, unless forced to.

I remember the long afternoons of childhood when my friends and I would get totally involved in some project or other, which became for that time the most important thing in the universe. We were completely immersed, in our project and in our group. Our union was greater than our mere sum as individuals; the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. The friendships that satisfy our need for connection are those that make each person more than themselves. That extra dimension belongs to both partners and to neither, akin to the "fifth voice" that emerges in a barbershop quartet out of the harmonics of the four. In many of my adult relationships I feel diminished, not enlarged. I don't feel like I've let go of boundaries to become part of something greater than my self; instead I find myself tightly guarding my boundaries and doling out only that little bit of myself that is safe or likeable or proper. Others do the same. We are reserved. We are restrained.

Our reservedness should not be too surprising, because there is little in our adult friendships that compels us to be together. We can get together and talk, we can get together and eat and talk, we can get together and drink and talk. We can watch a movie or a concert together and be entertained. There are many opportunities for joint consumption but few for joint creativity, or for doing things together about which we care intensely. At most we might go sailing or play sports with friends, and at least we are working together toward a common purpose, but even so we recognize it as a game, a pastime. The reason adult friendships seem so superficial is that they are superficial. The reason we can find little to do besides getting together and talking, or getting together to be entertained, is that our society's specialization has left us with little else to do. Thus the teenager's constant refrain: "There's nothing to do." He is right. As we move into adulthood, in place of play we are offered consumption, in place of joint creativity, competition, and in place of playmates, the professional colleague.

Dragonlich · 02-18-2009, 12:21 PM

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Originally Posted by pai mei

Wait, so you believe in "Arbeit macht frei" ? You think people need to be put to work ?

Very bad analogy. Half my family was murdered by the people that made up that line... So no, I don't believe in a nazi mantra.

That said: No, I don't think that people need to be put to work. I think people need to work period. There has never been a society where ordinary people could just sit back and do nothing all day. There's a reason for that, and it's not money. It's called nature.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pai mei

I feel like I'm talking to some wall here. Please all read some books by Daniel Quinn. There was a world before agriculture and before money. Look at the Arawak indians. Look at the North American indians. Of course there is nothing to see, we killed them all they were savages, not like us...

I didn't kill anyone. Besides, the murder of Arawak indians has nothing to do with this subject at all.

Before agriculture and money, humans were hunter-gatherers. They had to work bloody hard to survive at all. They didn't have time to sit around doing nothing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pai mei

You say that if people are not rewarded there will be no progress ? People who work for progress like Einstein for example need no reward. Their work is their reward and I am sure they don't even see it as work, when you do what you like it' not work.

I enjoy my work, but I expect to be paid to do it. Not because I'm a slave, not because I'm greedy, but because I work to live. I like some extra money to buy extra luxury. Something I wouldn't be able to do in your "perfect" system. In your system, I'd probably do the same nice work, but would live in a shithole without anything to do in my ample free time. Gee, doesn't that sound nice.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pai mei

What you mean is "if people are not forced to fit and maintain this system there will be no progress". That is not progress for me. There's all this talk, all this philosophy about not caring about material things, but you think people need "rewards like money and status" to progress ? People who need those things are weak people and there is no progress in following them. Look at all the geniuses and whatever - did they require money and "status" ? They were far beyond those, even if other gave those things to them I am sure that was not the motivation.

No, what I mean is that there will be less (!) progress in your system, because people won't have any incentive to improve their lives. There aren't many people that would work for free; the few that would won't be able to do enough to make a difference.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pai mei

In my system people would be really free. Imagine you wake up and know you have nothing to do and will never have. You improve your home, improve your street, then you gather with others and say "let's do this", and start building a monument to last for many centuries, not because you are forced or rewarded, just because you have nothing to do, and you like it. Your result is your reward. Like children do when they play, of course adults say "a just children, they do nothing", and in fact they are real creators.

Anybody does what he likes. You are interested in science, gather together with others and do research. You do it because you like it and want to make life for everybody better. Look at the art work of the American Indians. I am sure nobody forced or paid them for it. They did it, they had more "free time" then we the "Advanced" have today. All their time was "free" and they did not "work" or "not work" they just lived.

If I woke up knowing I have nothing to do for the rest of my life, I wouldn't do jack shit. I know from personal experience (unemployement) that I need a goal to keep me going.
With nothing to do and no hope of ever getting a better life, I certainly wouldn't improve my home or my street or do anything else. Why bother? Why would I improve the lives of the people around me, if they can't be bother to do it themselves?
Perhaps that makes me "weak" in your eyes, but I'm not that different from the rest of the human race. I certainly don't think I'm weak, and you probably wouldn't think that either if you knew me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pai mei

The lack of money and the free food and housing means - no crazy glory seeking madman will ever rise. He will have no means to lure or to threaten others to work for his plan. If some people gather and do a thing they will do it out of their own will, quitting anytime they want, and never able to impose their will on others.

There were many glory seeking "madmen" around before money was ever an issue. A madman can gather friends who want glory just like him. Money isn't the only thing that people want; one could easily imagine the madmen promising his followers all the women (=sex) they want. Back in the olde (pre-money) days, this worked wonders. Hell, some people would help him just because that would allow them to use force to control other people. That's not unlikely, given our human nature. Or they want to steal the luxury stuff their (not-so-lazy) neighbor made.

With some friends, the madman could start to enforce his will on the rest of the lazy bastards out there. He could then take control of the food supply, and force the rest of the people to do his bidding. How would you prevent such a scenario? Do you really expect all the people to be nice all the time?

guyy · 02-18-2009, 12:24 PM

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Originally Posted by aceventura3

What does opium have to do with lawful corporate activity?

It was a lawful corporate activity undertaken by the East India Co.

pai mei · 02-18-2009, 12:42 PM

Dragonlich you say people need to work ? Of course they need to work to survive. If by technology we escape that work isn't that a good thing ? Then do whatever you want, party all day.

I can't understant what luxury you would want that you could not get with your free time. You underestimate yourself. If you gather more people that want the same thing you can have anything, even a space ship built. The impact on the environment of people getting what they want in this way will be far less than what we see today where we must destroy the earth, to have stuff to sell, to throw it in the garbage, then buy it again, else we have no job and so on.

If you seek servants - impersonal servants working for you to survive, you won't find any in my system. Nobody says you can't have your friends cook for you , but nothing like a servant which has too cook or does not get money/food.
Look at the american indians. To tell another one what to do was very rude for them. Strange concept.

Maybe you think you are entitled to servants and luxury because of your knowledge or because you work more. No you are not. As long as there are people that can't find a job, and people that can't get your education you can't say "they are lazy, they don't deserve what I get". If everybody would have a job then yes you can be "entitled".

In my system everybody could get all the luxury he wants, or live in the woods if he is "lazy"

ASU2003 · 02-18-2009, 03:54 PM

Star Trek is the future example of democratic communism that would be one possibility. Anarchism (anarcho-communism) would be more like the native tribes in America, New Zealand(pacific islands) and Australia. Small groups that work together, but wouldn't need to worry too much about the things that they used too with modern construction techniques, food production, and machinary.

The problem is that the population increased to 6.6 billion people. On a planet this size, the population density of Alaska (outside of the 'big' city) or northern Canada would provide each person with whatever they want. If someone is living on the lake by the mountain, there is another lake and another mountain just a few miles away that is probably just as good.

People would have to be 100% self sufficient. They can be helped by machines and other people occasionally,

And life would be different, but it doesn't mean that it is bad.

Te movie 'Into The Wild' looked into this, I would reccommend you watch it.

roachboy · 02-18-2009, 04:32 PM

it's interesting that folk seem to have such trouble not thinking that capitalism is somehow inevitable and that it represents a culmination of human history for reasons that go beyond the fact that any present anywhere seems a culmination of something because you make that present for yourself...you make and configure the present as you move through the world---but anyway, a direct-democratic revolution coming from what was the left once upon a time would not at all have lead to some flight from capitalism because capitalism is what would have shaped it--revolutionary movements in the marxist tradition were understood as taking shape on the most advanced edge of capitalist development, to mobilize social classes that were products of capitalism etc. for marx the working class was a revolutionary class because of it's double consciousness--it operated within capitalist ideology, but also had a direct experience of the realities concealed by that ideology in the course of working every day, at what they used to call "the point of production." the revolutionary movement was basically in a similar position, but it had a theory of history that it could use to piece together an image of the present, isolate the myriad problems of oppression and routinized violence that are fundamental to what capitalism is and does every day, and outline possibilities for an alternate order that was organized in such a ways as to eliminate those problems to the greatest possible extent. so it had nothing to do with running away into the woods, dispensing with technologies or anything like that.

it is amazing to me the extent to which folk, particularly in the states, have been convinced that the horseshit all around you is necessary and inevitable because it exists--the squashing of imagination that's implicit in that is a sad sad thing---maybe of a piece with the lack of imagination you see at almost every level of society right now----faced with a crisis, folk seem to having a difficult time getting their heads around the fact that it's even real, maybe because you can't see crisis on television.

i don't buy much of anything pai mei is arguing personally--i work from an entirely different political position, an entirely different perspective---but i find the threads interesting because each time they demonstrate the collapse of imagination or a sense of alternate possibilities for the present--for ourselves--that the soft authoritarian system in the united states has created. it doesn't matter that folk can wander around congratulating themselves on how free they are as they do as they're told and want what they're told they want in the ways they're told they want them. the tragedy--and i think that's the word--is that folk imagine this is all there is, all that's possible.

and if you think that way, then this is all there is and this is all that's possible.
i don't know why anyone would accept that.

catback · 02-18-2009, 06:17 PM

Maybe it's just me but I don't see the problem with capitalism or money, nor do I see how your 10% work force plan makes things any better. The whole idea that people will work solely for the good of others and not capitalize on their talent/skill/ability is not realistic in today's time. Really how many people today offer to pump the gas for a senior citizen without them having to reach out for help. It's not the system that is flawed it's the "it's all about me" society, from the big CEO's down to the little guy. Each of them trying to assign as much value to their talent/skill/product/ability as possible. If you take away money and big corporations, basically pushing us back into the olden days, your still going to have people wanting a car for a bushel of banana's. That's the cost and best part of free market, you can ask for whatever you like in return for your goods/services. In fair turn, the customer can accept the terms or decline and seek another supplier.

Free doesn't work, nothing in life is "free"

ASU2003 · 02-18-2009, 07:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by catback

Maybe it's just me but I don't see the problem with capitalism or money, nor do I see how your 10% work force plan makes things any better. The whole idea that people will work solely for the good of others and not capitalize on their talent/skill/ability is not realistic in today's time. Really how many people today offer to pump the gas for a senior citizen without them having to reach out for help. It's not the system that is flawed it's the "it's all about me" society, from the big CEO's down to the little guy. Each of them trying to assign as much value to their talent/skill/product/ability as possible. If you take away money and big corporations, basically pushing us back into the olden days, your still going to have people wanting a car for a bushel of banana's. That's the cost and best part of free market, you can ask for whatever you like in return for your goods/services. In fair turn, the customer can accept the terms or decline and seek another supplier.

Free doesn't work, nothing in life is "free"

Ubuntu Home Page | Ubuntu

You might want to check out open source software for example. A large group of people program this for fun or for praise from other nerds.

I am using a version of Linux right now to post this. Free works better than the OS I paid for and don't use anymore.

The issue is, should we be increasing productivity or increasing effciency? With the capitalist system, increasing a person's productivity makes more profits and that is what most companies try to do. In my life, I try to increase effciency. My linux DVR (hardware cost money, but just a one time fee) now watches TV for me, so I can do other things instead of worring about when a TV show is going to be on. I use machines to get the job done quicker so I have more time to do other things. At work, I have to work 8 hours and I could probably get the same amount of stuff done in 6 hours, but I'm not allowed to leave early if I get done early. If I can program a robot or machine to do my job for me, then I lose my income, yet provided the company with a way to save lots of money, but make even more at the same time. If the system was setup to where there was a large reward for replacing humans with machines, yet still providing a high quality of life for the people who has been freed from their daily job, that would be the system I'm talking about.

I won't get into how you can get free heat from the Sun, cooling from running pipes deep into the ground, electricity from the wind, insulation from dirt, food from gardening, music over the radio, and HDTV over the air. You may need to buy some materials or equipment in order to get the free stuff, but once you have paid the upfront costs, you can live a good life with no reoccuring bills. The problem with this is that utility companies would be in trouble if hundreds of millions of people did this. All it would take is a little different home building practices.

ngdawg · 02-18-2009, 08:44 PM

Quote:

I won't get into how you can get free heat from the Sun, cooling from running pipes deep into the ground, electricity from the wind, insulation from dirt, food from gardening, music over the radio, and HDTV over the air. You may need to buy some materials or equipment in order to get the free stuff, but once you have paid the upfront costs, you can live a good life with no reoccuring bills. The problem with this is that utility companies would be in trouble if hundreds of millions of people did this. All it would take is a little different home building practices.

You should explain how those things are free because, quite frankly, they aren't.

You have to pay for solar panels, piping, the windmill, construction, seeds, electronics, etc., and what you call "upfront costs" are not upfront, but ongoing. One solar panel can run several hundred dollars before all the installing, piping, etc. and the reason they are not more popular than they are is that the return can take up to 20 years.
The utility companies actually will give grants and/or rebates for many energy saving installs and appliances because it costs them to shell out mor energy as well.
Even in places that utilize wind power, the utilities charge for it.

Nothing, NOTHING is free. Even if you were to build a wind combine from crap you took off the curb on garbage day, it's not totally free because it took time and effort to build.

pai mei · 02-18-2009, 11:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by catback

Maybe it's just me but I don't see the problem with capitalism or money, nor do I see how your 10% work force plan makes things any better. The whole idea that people will work solely for the good of others and not capitalize on their talent/skill/ability is not realistic in today's time. Really how many people today offer to pump the gas for a senior citizen without them having to reach out for help. It's not the system that is flawed it's the "it's all about me" society, from the big CEO's down to the little guy. Each of them trying to assign as much value to their talent/skill/product/ability as possible. If you take away money and big corporations, basically pushing us back into the olden days, your still going to have people wanting a car for a bushel of banana's. That's the cost and best part of free market, you can ask for whatever you like in return for your goods/services. In fair turn, the customer can accept the terms or decline and seek another supplier.

Free doesn't work, nothing in life is "free"

Everything in life is free. The things that matter are free. Want more, find people like you and get to work. Don't make me work for you, I don't want more "stuff", but today my survival depends on me working for people who want "stuff".
I am happy with food and shelter, in my system I would probably occupy my time with gardening and traveling around. Some house maintenance and that's it all I can think of now. Of course people like you see that as a waste of time, instead I could help them live a comfortable life.Are they skilled, and think they are smarter than others ? Good for them ! Why do you want me in the equation ? My system allows for me and billions of others to live how we want. A, you have not enough slaves to do your projects, sorry for that ! All the smart comfort seeking people don't want to get together and realize their dream ? Sorry for that too...

Thor Heyerdahl - Kon Tiki, and I agree with him :

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It did not matter anymore if we were in the year 1947 AD or BC. We were living an we were feeling it with intensity.We understood that the lives of humans were full even before the age of technology, without a doubt more full and rich in many ways than the life of the modern man.
Time and evolution somehow did not exist anymore: everything that was real and had meaning was today the same as yesterday, the same as tomorrow. We were engulfed by the absolute measure of history by the deep and continuous darkness under the myriads of stars.

Look at the internet. How much free stuff is out here, nobody pays people to put it here and nobody forces them. The same, free people would do the thing they like and give to others. Fame and status will still exist - for skilled people, or people who play games - sports. There are millions of young people who just finished education, are very smart in their domain and would like to help the world somehow, and do not condition this by how much money they get. They are free to do so. In today's world they are used to get money.

And people do not seek money and material comfort. That is a mistaken view. But that is the only thing left for them in today's society to seek, nothing else.
http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/chapter6-4.php

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Not only does school prepare us to submit to the trivialized, demeaning, dull, and unfulfilling jobs that dominate our economy to the present time, not only does it prepare us to be modern producers, it equally prepares us to be modern consumers. Consider Gatto's description:

Schools train individuals to respond as a mass. Boys and girls are drilled in being bored, frightened, envious, emotionally needy, generally incomplete. A successful mass production economy requires such a clientele. A small business, small farm economy like that of the Amish requires individual competence, thoughtfulness, compassion, and universal participation; our own requires a managed mass of leveled, spiritless, anxious, familyless, friendless, godless, and obedient people who believe the difference between "Cheers" and "Seinfeld" is worth arguing about.

They know that there is a way the world is supposed to be, and a magnificent role for themselves in that more beautiful world. Broken to the lesser lives we offer them, they react with hostility, rage, cynicism, depression, escapism, or self-destruction—all the defining qualities of modern adolescence. Then we blame them for not bringing these qualities under control, and when they finally have given up their idealism we call them mature. Having given up their idealism, they can get on with the business of survival: practicality and security, comfort and safety, which is what we are left with in the absence of purpose. So we suggest they major in something practical, stay out of trouble, don't take risks, build a résumé. We think we are practical and wise in the ways of the world. Really we are just broken and afraid. We are afraid on their behalf, and, less nobly, we are afraid of what their idealism shows us: the plunder and betrayal of our own youthful possibilities.

They are denied the "luxury" of being part of something. Being in a corporation is nothing like being in a community. In my system people will form communities , people want to be part of a group and would do whatever it is valued by that group. Today they seek big houses, lots of money and so on, that is viewed as "valuable". In a community they will happily help others and get together with others for the common good, that will make them appreciated, and that is what people really seek. Friends, appreciation, community.
Look : in a natural disaster of something, who cares about the destroyed stuff ? The first thing people care is their friends and family. Anything else is just to fill the void, created by today's alienating system.
http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/chapter4-1.php

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As that word mine indicates, ownership implies an attachment of things to self. The more we own, the more we are. The constellation of me and mine grows. But no matter how large the discrete and separate self grows, it is still far smaller than the self of the hunter-gatherer. The pre-separation mind is able to affirm, all at once and without contradiction, "I am this body," "I am this tribe," "I am the jungle," "I am the world." No matter how much of the jungle we control, we are smaller than the one who knows, "I am the jungle." No matter how dominant we are socially, we are far less than one who knows, "I am my tribe." And far less secure, too, because all of these appendages to our tiny separate selves may be easily sundered from us. We are therefore perpetually and irremediably insecure. We go to great lengths to protect all these accessories of identity, our possessions and money and reputations, and when our house is burglarized, our wallet stolen, or our reputation besmirched, we feel as if our very selves have been violated.

Not only does our acquisitiveness arise out of separation, it reinforces it as well. The notion that a forest, a gene, an idea, an image, a song is a separate thing that admits ownership is quite new. Who are we to own a piece of the world, to separate out a part of the sacred universe and make it mine? Such hubris, once unknown in the world, has had the unfortunate effect of separating out ourselves as well from the matrix of reality, cutting us off (in experience if not in fact) from each other, from nature, and from spirit. By objectifying the world and everything in it, by making an other of the world, we necessarily objectify ourselves as well in relation to that other. The self becomes a lonely and isolated ego, connected to the world pragmatically but not in essence, afraid of death and thus closed to life. Such a self, cut off from its true nature and separated from the factitious environment created by its own self-definition, will always be insecure and will always try to exert more and more control over this environment.

Edit : Now I realize that people in the modern society are used to the idea that from a certain age , everything they do comes not from them but from rules and "superiors". And they are not bothered by this. The mind molding about listening to your superiors and so on starts in school. And very few people really do what they want to do. Most of them alone and unable to fit in, sometimes they get "lucky" and we the others call them "geniuses". Very sad

Dragonlich · 02-19-2009, 12:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pai mei

Dragonlich you say people need to work ? Of course they need to work to survive. If by technology we escape that work isn't that a good thing ? Then do whatever you want, party all day.

I can't understant what luxury you would want that you could not get with your free time. You underestimate yourself. If you gather more people that want the same thing you can have anything, even a space ship built. The impact on the environment of people getting what they want in this way will be far less than what we see today where we must destroy the earth, to have stuff to sell, to throw it in the garbage, then buy it again, else we have no job and so on.

Do you even understand what is needed to build *anything*, let alone a spaceship? Suppose I and a lot of friends want to build a spaceship. Where would I get the basic materials? The metal, the plastics, the fuel, the computers? Where would I get the chips to go into those computers? And the silicon to build those chips? And the machines to process that silicon into chips? And the machines to gather that silicon? And all the stuff to build *those* machines? etc. etc.

I think you're overestimating my popularity...

Quote:

Originally Posted by pai mei

If you seek servants - impersonal servants working for you to survive, you won't find any in my system. Nobody says you can't have your friends cook for you , but nothing like a servant which has too cook or does not get money/food.
Look at the american indians. To tell another one what to do was very rude for them. Strange concept.

Maybe you think you are entitled to servants and luxury because of your knowledge or because you work more. No you are not. As long as there are people that can't find a job, and people that can't get your education you can't say "they are lazy, they don't deserve what I get". If everybody would have a job then yes you can be "entitled".

In my system everybody could get all the luxury he wants, or live in the woods if he is "lazy"

I do not seek servants, nor do I feel entitled to get servants and luxury. I do however want more in life than just a house and food, free or not.

In your system nobody could get any luxury, because there'd be nobody to CREATE that luxury. And why would they? Everything they build is immediately stolen by those nasty madmen who you claim won't be there. Besides, people would be too busy trying to protect what little luxury they have from those crazy people in the woods. Not to mention protecting their wives and daughters from groups of bored youths.

Or perhaps you could finally explaining how all crime would suddenly disappear?
How would getting rid of money make people suddenly become totally moral, instead of staying the amoral ***holes they have allways been?
I feel like I'm talking to some wall here...

ASU2003 · 02-19-2009, 10:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ngdawg

You should explain how those things are free because, quite frankly, they aren't.

You have to pay for solar panels, piping, the windmill, construction, seeds, electronics, etc., and what you call "upfront costs" are not upfront, but ongoing. One solar panel can run several hundred dollars before all the installing, piping, etc. and the reason they are not more popular than they are is that the return can take up to 20 years.
The utility companies actually will give grants and/or rebates for many energy saving installs and appliances because it costs them to shell out mor energy as well.
Even in places that utilize wind power, the utilities charge for it.

Nothing, NOTHING is free. Even if you were to build a wind combine from crap you took off the curb on garbage day, it's not totally free because it took time and effort to build.

Solar Heater

This is the cheap and easy passive solar that I was talking about. Sorry about the confusion. You can build even cheaper ones than this, or more elaborate 'professional' looking attached green houses or sun porches.

People use solar water heaters to heat swimming pools and to get hot water too.

Welcome to The Sietch - Projects Build Your Own Solar Thermal Panel

I would expect more people to look into this form of heating in the south and southwest, and you don't need expensive solar panels (the equivalent active solar panel energy needed to run a furnace or hot water heater would be huge).
The concept is the same thing when you get in a car after it's been setting in the sun for a few hours, but this system is designed to maximize the amount of heat that is created. I haven't seen the type I am thinking of building on-line yet though.

Seeds can be found, or saved from being discarded.
GreenDealer Exotic Seeds, How to get free seeds

Dirt can be used to make rammed-earth or poured earth homes (dirt mixed with concrete).
How rammed earth construction is made - Background, History, Raw materials, Design, The manufacturing process, Byproducts/waste

Wind power can be harnessed for free once the initial windmill is made.
How I built an electricity producing wind turbine

Rainwater can be collected and used for some jobs. An electric pump for well water and geothermal cooling could be useful too.

But that is the thing, people might spend $500-$1000+ on regular utilities a year. If they spent some money on these types of systems that generate heat or energy at no cost, they could be saving a lot of money year after year, without impacting their lifestyle too much. If home designers actually built for maximum energy savings and production, people in a large part of this country could live without monthly utility bills probably.

And my time is free, I'm not one of those people that puts a value on every hour of their day, and if they aren't being productive they 'lose' money. If I am building something, I'm learning and I feel good when I complete a project.

Xerxys · 02-19-2009, 11:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by catback

Maybe it's just me but I don't see the problem with capitalism or money, nor do I see how your 10% work force plan makes things any better. The whole idea that people will work solely for the good of others and not capitalize on their talent/skill/ability is not realistic in today's time. Really how many people today offer to pump the gas for a senior citizen without them having to reach out for help. It's not the system that is flawed it's the "it's all about me" society, from the big CEO's down to the little guy. Each of them trying to assign as much value to their talent/skill/product/ability as possible. If you take away money and big corporations, basically pushing us back into the olden days, your still going to have people wanting a car for a bushel of banana's. That's the cost and best part of free market, you can ask for whatever you like in return for your goods/services. In fair turn, the customer can accept the terms or decline and seek another supplier.

Free doesn't work, nothing in life is "free"

I ... love ... you.

ASU2003 · 02-19-2009, 11:52 PM

Love should be free. But then again maybe that is my problem. No $50 meals, no $20 flowers, $500 vacations, rings, weddings, etc.

I think we are all coming from different places on the economic spectrum. Pai Mei is the anarchist/economic communist, I am the green individualist socialist/small government capitalist, and others think that nothing is wrong with current capitalism. I think our current go to school for 18 years, work for 40-50 years, hope your savings last until you die model is flawed. I think people would enjoy life more if they worked 5-10 years, but built or bought long lasting homes, cars, and renewable energy generation sources. Then once they owned enough to sustain their normal quality of life, they would be free to come up with new business ideas, travel, build friendships, be there for your family, or just hang out.

02-15-2009, 11:44 AM	#5 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	capitalism hasn't been a dominant mode of production for very long at all. if you think about it, it's only been over the past 50 years or so that agricultural production has been assimilated into that form. elements that were built upon by capitalism have been around for much longer, but that doesn't make them capitalist. the unification of capitalism as a mode of production in marx is linked as much to the political project as to a descriptive analysis. and i don't see the op as making the argument that it sets out to make. and i think i've seen all this before... __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

02-15-2009, 01:50 PM	#8 (permalink)
inBOIL I have eaten the slaw	If someone in your system refuses to do that work, do they still recieve the necessities for free? If so, why would anyone work to produce them? If not, how is it any less 'slavery' than capitalism? Suppose I want to buy a video game, or a painting, or some other item that I lack the skills to produce (or produce well). How would I acquire it without money or credit? I may be good at producing widgets, but if the game programmer or artist doesn't need widgets, I'll have to go through a convoluted barter transaction. How is this better than money? __________________ And you believe Bush and the liberals and divorced parents and gays and blacks and the Christian right and fossil fuels and Xbox are all to blame, meanwhile you yourselves create an ad where your kid hits you in the head with a baseball and you don't understand the message that the problem is you.

02-15-2009, 06:27 PM	#9 (permalink)
telekinetic zomgomgomgomgomgomg Location: Fauxenix, Azerona	Didn't you start this thread once already with a different name? Edit: yup, http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/general...ot-needed.html "90% don't need to work, 10% will voluntarily support society" is still a flawed idea for the same reasons. __________________ twisted no more Last edited by telekinetic; 02-15-2009 at 06:30 PM..

02-15-2009, 11:38 PM	#10 (permalink)
pai mei Insane	It's less slavery because you do it for others not for some rich man to get rich. All the others, no more poor or homeless. And you know you will get the benefits too. If you don't want to you don;t do it, you get nothing. That does not mean you cannot grow food yourself and be a member of your community. There will be communities , people will have to know their neighbors and work with them to improve their surroundings. It's a different kind of life, when you know your entire street and everybody knows you. For who did not experience this is hard to understand. Don't want that ? Go and find a slave master, that is a slave himself to some money creator, and work for him. Alone and fighting all the others for survival or for a bigger TV, while others don't have enough to eat - and nobody needs them or their "work". You can have your capitalist territory and look with envy at the crazy people next door that do nothing all day, just work in their garden for pleasure or travel or sit with their friends or whatever. And have no money and need no money. In developed countries 3% of the workforce work in agriculture and they have more than enough food. Add more for education and health and you get kind of 20% the max. 1/5 of the work time of let's say 40 years is 8 years. More than enough. __________________ Blog One day there will be so many houses, that people will be bored and will go live in tents. "Why are you living in tents ? Are there not enough houses ?" "Yes there are, but we play this Economy game" Last edited by pai mei; 02-15-2009 at 11:47 PM..

02-17-2009, 01:28 PM	#21 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	what makes you think the work of talented individuals is rewarded under the present regime? __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

02-15-2009, 08:42 AM	#2 (permalink)
ASU2003 immoral minority Location: Back in Ohio	Capitalism has worked pretty well for quite a few years. It's just that certain behaviors and actions need to be regulated or prevented. Maybe if the population was 1/100th what it is today, and there was fusion energy (free), plus AI automation for 90% of the jobs, then you could get rid of capitalism and implement a new system. But, now there are limited resources, prime real estate locations, better products, and a culture of monogamy, And I'm not sure things would work out too well without capitalism or socialism (government picking good companies instead of the cheapest, or bad companies).

02-15-2009, 09:44 AM	#3 (permalink)
guyy Addict Location: Cottage Grove, Wisconsin	Why is capitalism necessary? I don't get it. Only the last few hundred years of human existence have been dominated by capitalism. It too will pass.

02-16-2009, 06:20 AM	#11 (permalink)
guyy Addict Location: Cottage Grove, Wisconsin	Pai Mei, Take a look at volume II of Das Kapital.

02-17-2009, 04:46 AM	#14 (permalink)
guyy Addict Location: Cottage Grove, Wisconsin	It's probably available at a public library, and it's also on line. Here are your links: Original English version

02-17-2009, 03:30 PM	#23 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	nonsense. there are problems with the op argument in my opinion, but that's not one of them. there have been a host of social mechanisms for determining things like status that have not involved capitalist-style money=the medium through which all social relations are expressed. think about aristocratic societies for example. they're not so distant from the present--status was a matter of bloodline, which in turn opened onto sets of material possibilities that were not at all oriented around a bourgeois relation to money. quite the contrary in many cases. so for example in pre-revolutionary france, status was a matter of birth, land=holding the primary mechanism for wealth generation and the rationality concerning money was predicated on it being something to be spent, optimally in ways that reflected back onto one's social position. this was directly contrary to bourgeois modes of establishing social position and particularly to bourgeois relations to money. you can read myriad books on this. that money was present does not mean that the relations to and around money were anything like those which are dominant under contemporary capitalism. capitalist rationality is relatively new and it is deeply problematic. it can and should be relativized, and looking into even quite recent history will do that. . __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 02-17-2009 at 04:08 PM..

02-17-2009, 06:30 PM	#24 (permalink)
Xerxys Junkie Location: My head.	Gosh dang' roachboy, how can one with crude gestures argue with one so well spoken, I'll try though. I disagree, for some reason exchange is important to us. The reason the aristocratic system is not very prevalent nowadays is because no matter what I did I could never be the same as you, simply because you existed, made you better than me. All you had to do was be BORN!! That may be irrelevant but in some unclear way it makes sense to me to have money around. Land, on the other hand is scarce. Sure, we have plenty of it in the sahara but..... To me, money is an equalizer .... scratch that ... a scale. I can be better than you as long as I have it. Or I can use it to buy my equality to you. Money is a universal enabler. We need the value instilled in it in order to develop.

02-18-2009, 12:42 PM	#30 (permalink)
pai mei Insane	Dragonlich you say people need to work ? Of course they need to work to survive. If by technology we escape that work isn't that a good thing ? Then do whatever you want, party all day. I can't understant what luxury you would want that you could not get with your free time. You underestimate yourself. If you gather more people that want the same thing you can have anything, even a space ship built. The impact on the environment of people getting what they want in this way will be far less than what we see today where we must destroy the earth, to have stuff to sell, to throw it in the garbage, then buy it again, else we have no job and so on. If you seek servants - impersonal servants working for you to survive, you won't find any in my system. Nobody says you can't have your friends cook for you , but nothing like a servant which has too cook or does not get money/food. Look at the american indians. To tell another one what to do was very rude for them. Strange concept. Maybe you think you are entitled to servants and luxury because of your knowledge or because you work more. No you are not. As long as there are people that can't find a job, and people that can't get your education you can't say "they are lazy, they don't deserve what I get". If everybody would have a job then yes you can be "entitled". In my system everybody could get all the luxury he wants, or live in the woods if he is "lazy" __________________ Blog One day there will be so many houses, that people will be bored and will go live in tents. "Why are you living in tents ? Are there not enough houses ?" "Yes there are, but we play this Economy game" Last edited by pai mei; 02-18-2009 at 12:48 PM..

02-18-2009, 03:54 PM	#31 (permalink)
ASU2003 immoral minority Location: Back in Ohio	Star Trek is the future example of democratic communism that would be one possibility. Anarchism (anarcho-communism) would be more like the native tribes in America, New Zealand(pacific islands) and Australia. Small groups that work together, but wouldn't need to worry too much about the things that they used too with modern construction techniques, food production, and machinary. The problem is that the population increased to 6.6 billion people. On a planet this size, the population density of Alaska (outside of the 'big' city) or northern Canada would provide each person with whatever they want. If someone is living on the lake by the mountain, there is another lake and another mountain just a few miles away that is probably just as good. People would have to be 100% self sufficient. They can be helped by machines and other people occasionally, And life would be different, but it doesn't mean that it is bad. Te movie 'Into The Wild' looked into this, I would reccommend you watch it.

02-18-2009, 04:32 PM	#32 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	it's interesting that folk seem to have such trouble not thinking that capitalism is somehow inevitable and that it represents a culmination of human history for reasons that go beyond the fact that any present anywhere seems a culmination of something because you make that present for yourself...you make and configure the present as you move through the world---but anyway, a direct-democratic revolution coming from what was the left once upon a time would not at all have lead to some flight from capitalism because capitalism is what would have shaped it--revolutionary movements in the marxist tradition were understood as taking shape on the most advanced edge of capitalist development, to mobilize social classes that were products of capitalism etc. for marx the working class was a revolutionary class because of it's double consciousness--it operated within capitalist ideology, but also had a direct experience of the realities concealed by that ideology in the course of working every day, at what they used to call "the point of production." the revolutionary movement was basically in a similar position, but it had a theory of history that it could use to piece together an image of the present, isolate the myriad problems of oppression and routinized violence that are fundamental to what capitalism is and does every day, and outline possibilities for an alternate order that was organized in such a ways as to eliminate those problems to the greatest possible extent. so it had nothing to do with running away into the woods, dispensing with technologies or anything like that. it is amazing to me the extent to which folk, particularly in the states, have been convinced that the horseshit all around you is necessary and inevitable because it exists--the squashing of imagination that's implicit in that is a sad sad thing---maybe of a piece with the lack of imagination you see at almost every level of society right now----faced with a crisis, folk seem to having a difficult time getting their heads around the fact that it's even real, maybe because you can't see crisis on television. i don't buy much of anything pai mei is arguing personally--i work from an entirely different political position, an entirely different perspective---but i find the threads interesting because each time they demonstrate the collapse of imagination or a sense of alternate possibilities for the present--for ourselves--that the soft authoritarian system in the united states has created. it doesn't matter that folk can wander around congratulating themselves on how free they are as they do as they're told and want what they're told they want in the ways they're told they want them. the tragedy--and i think that's the word--is that folk imagine this is all there is, all that's possible. and if you think that way, then this is all there is and this is all that's possible. i don't know why anyone would accept that. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

02-18-2009, 06:17 PM	#33 (permalink)
catback Psycho Location: North America	Maybe it's just me but I don't see the problem with capitalism or money, nor do I see how your 10% work force plan makes things any better. The whole idea that people will work solely for the good of others and not capitalize on their talent/skill/ability is not realistic in today's time. Really how many people today offer to pump the gas for a senior citizen without them having to reach out for help. It's not the system that is flawed it's the "it's all about me" society, from the big CEO's down to the little guy. Each of them trying to assign as much value to their talent/skill/product/ability as possible. If you take away money and big corporations, basically pushing us back into the olden days, your still going to have people wanting a car for a bushel of banana's. That's the cost and best part of free market, you can ask for whatever you like in return for your goods/services. In fair turn, the customer can accept the terms or decline and seek another supplier. Free doesn't work, nothing in life is "free"

02-19-2009, 11:52 PM	#40 (permalink)
ASU2003 immoral minority Location: Back in Ohio	Love should be free. But then again maybe that is my problem. No $50 meals, no $20 flowers, $500 vacations, rings, weddings, etc. I think we are all coming from different places on the economic spectrum. Pai Mei is the anarchist/economic communist, I am the green individualist socialist/small government capitalist, and others think that nothing is wrong with current capitalism. I think our current go to school for 18 years, work for 40-50 years, hope your savings last until you die model is flawed. I think people would enjoy life more if they worked 5-10 years, but built or bought long lasting homes, cars, and renewable energy generation sources. Then once they owned enough to sustain their normal quality of life, they would be free to come up with new business ideas, travel, build friendships, be there for your family, or just hang out.