I know, but it is just not how its worked historically even in the absence of states. Nothing in markets inherantly prevents centralization or market degradation. Taks Foutopolous took a long look at the history of markets. He concluded with many examples that they simply do not self sustain. Maybe with more enlighted players and search etc., but how do you stop Rockafellar type strategies. A market even in the absense of a state will tend toward oligopoly and monopoly and sprout a state if need be as a barrier to entry strategy. The consolidation of firms is not something that states for instance encourage, rather they cave to this loss of diversity and market function.
On the positive side maybe markets can be looked at as code ala SAFE?
Yes. Appropos, Google is now thinking it can inject ads into texts. To me its a candidate for worst idea ever. But note their twisted logic: this is where people spend their time., And then they feel entitled by way of cash-in metality to just go ahead and inflict this. Its would be more money for the wrong people and wrong reasons and it may presume selling your texts.
What I think would help tremendously would be a 75% rule. Forget minimum wage. Forget the average wage. Forget even the competitive wage (the wage calculated to produce a competitor to the employer.) The floor for any kind of work in terms of wage should be 75% of of the value that the work produces. If it canât get done with that floor than it shouldnât be done, thatâs what the dole is for. The US has got it in its mind that 34% and decreasing is acceptable. But its not, that will just lead to the destruction of the society and eventual loss of life and limb for the rich. Thatâs where it goes. Put this rule in place and weâll never have to worry about the crime of so called tax breaks (theft) for the rich. But hold it for every kind of working relationship. Really, as the business scales I think the amount should be even higher, but it never ever should have been below 51%. And people will whine about starting businesses on this basis but that is what banks are for, let them earn their money.
You stop these types of strategies by not losing sight of what is most important. The way that governments and corporations abuse its people is shocking. Thatâs why projects like Demonsaw make it so that we move away from oligopolies. Privacy is not just a matter of national security, but inherent within us to remind ourselves that in a momentâs notice it can all be taken away.
You did it, so youâve only yourself to blame. What? Marx.
see personally I think that we are headed towards marxism no matter what-- but thereâs a good marxism (the one that Marx wrote about and argued for) and a bad marxism ( the one where the state controls the lives of the people directly. ANyway, I just wanted to say âlay off marx, man.â I think marx was among the original cohort of people who understood just how dramatic the changes in society would be.
I donât see my left-anarchist views as in any way incompatible with Marxism. Also, Iâd never call myself a marxist: We havenât had an actual one yet, and itâs likely we never will. None of this is to say that Marx was perfect-- he spouted off a lot of silliness. At the same time, show me another philosopher who predicted in during Marxâs prime-- the knowledge economy-- almost to a T. Or, another who described the Internet. Also, I want to chime in on how Iâd describe Marxism: People living, ungoverned by third parties. Sound surprising?
Well, give uncle Marx a thorough read. I think youâll be surprised and delighted with what you find.
I see us possibly moving toward marxism too, though this time I do believe the software engineers are in a really strong position to dictate where we end up. We let the internet become a major part of our lives, and as such, the decentralization of the internet will be a big part in the catalyst process. Right now it is still hard to say. I personally know of initiatives that are moving us in a direction of socialist democracy.
Another argument for the post capitalist world might be as follows.
We know IQ is BS and social black magic. We know its not stable despite all the BS about it being stable or valid etc for a given person- it isnât its garbage- people who donât have a clue about what consciousness is simply arenât qualified to think they can measure or define it. But note this proclaimed change- which I heard from a Yale trained MD-Phd not long ago in a presentation.
Although I would personally say our relatives of 100 years ago were possibly not only wiser and more literate but also more ethical (maybe) and not recently damaged by lead in the gas (US)- according to the Dr., there is a 30 point gap on reasoning in the IQ tests in our favor vs our fore bearers of 100 years prior. The math may not scale perfectly both ways but the norm for an IQ test is 100 and the tests are scaled so that the average person is supposed to score 100. Theyâve had to re-norm or change the tests over the years because of the drift. Now I may not be representing the spread in a way that is quite properly scaled but the first point (which if memory serves the presenter made directly) is that todayâs average person in the US would score 130 on the normative test given our fore-bearers. I would extrapolate that this means they would score 70 on our test- again this may be pushing it. For context, that means the average person from their time would be labeled MR on our test and our average person would be 6 point above what the average professor of today scores on our test and 10 point shy of what such tests foolishly label as genius.
So lets apply this to capitalism. In my mind capitalism while it has a kind of consistency which got us through an industrial system is also a system that itself is pretty dumb and relies on the concept of dumb or zombie people. The form of capitalism prior to the new deal (which we have to stop from re-emerging) requires an incredibly stupid economics dogma, its essentially a bad religion maybe an evil one, with no more merit than eugenics or slavery or monarchy.
In the US we said the 3 point drop from lead was incredibly catastrophic despite the counterveiling positive drift and weâve strongly correlated the lead uptake with massive increases in our rates of violence in the US for the subjected cohorts. Of course lead may do other types of damage leading to the violence. Still. imagine in 100 years time, if the rate is constant that the average person in the US will have a reasoning ability as measured by the test in the range of the average professor today. Assuming we survive, given the tech and the possibility of accelerating our evolution this may be a gros underestimate and that type of shift may come much sooner. So are professor types going to be expected to clean toilets and take care of depreciation issues? No, long before we get there it will be AI and robots. There are a dozen ways in which capitalismâs days are numbered and ticking down fast.
We canât take rule by a bunch of Paris Hilton(s) seriously anymore.
Alternatively, take the 1700 billionaires in the world today and place them on IQ planet or this planet at some point in the future where the average IQ is 220 or greater. Are those billionaires the McDonaldâs workers of that time? Are they going to happy with phony jobs filled with a bunch of unnecessary obsolete paperwork as is the case with so much of the current economy in the information age? No, its not going to happen. Or place them in a planet full of their clones (7 billion of them.) Are any of them going to be content to be strapped into the idiocy of labor. Is it even workable? Who would be the labor in that environment? Or regress them as a group to age 6 and then have them compete as a group with an un-regressed copy of their group- they still wouldnât make good labor. Capitalism just doesnât make sense anymore. It worked when some people could get away with treating other people like monkeys or livestock or chattel. That is all it is, the stupidity of animal husbandry applied to other human beings. But relative to 100 years ago when capitalism made more sense weâre a planet of savants, even with all our problems. On the other hand, at least in print the olden days produce some towering savants by todayâs standards but they they were the ones that made it into print which was rarefied even against the backdrop of a much smaller population.
Technologies eroding what was once the exclusive preserve of governments
Expansion of educational opportunity (also fueled by tech
Proliferation of open technology, which raises all ships, eemingly without harming any of them.
Growth of technologies that will make it possible to produce clear surpluses
My ideal future script isnât one without money, though i do hope that we make money largely unnecessary. Instead, itâs a future of limitless abundance, created by empowered individuals who have access to systems that provide them their needs. An example of this would be the recently explored concept of productive housing-- that is, that the home itself should provide the resources needed (electricity, for one example) for living in it. This can likely be expanded over time to include food, too. I donât trust government enough to actually rely on UBI-- I kind of fear UBI (though I am overall a proponent0 because it could create a large, permanent underclass. I realize that if done right, UBI has the potential to solve countless human problems.
I donât think the end game of capitalism has to be full employment, with non-jobs being filled to keep people busy. Capitalism - saving, investing, trading - will still be happening no matter what the employment levels are.
Ofc, if we wanted full employment, a country could just ban farm machines and food imports - magically, everyone will be busy trying to live a subsistence lifestyle.
Capitalism isnât the problem here; rent seeking is. People only need to do non-jobs if they are coerced into it by someone who is demanding payment from them simply to trade or even exist. Remove the rent seeking and the cost of living will fall to the point that occasionally working would suffice.
Who wants full employment? Who supports rent seekers? How can it be changed? These are the real questions that need to be answered.
@Traktion I think youâve close to nailed it. Youâre making exactly the case that Marx made. But note this very crucial piece about terminology. Capitalism in its essence in its very definition is trickle down, it is about the rent seeker. Its the stupid incredible foolish religious belief that it is the rent seeker, the plantation owner the, the chop shop Mit Romney that makes the crucial indispensable contribution, this nonsense this idiotic charge is the only way you can keep people like Paris Hilton in charge by hereditary money based rule over everyone else. You also need to make a bunch of eugenic (genes donât change, brains are hard wired inferior etc) and racist claims and talk about death taxes and get into hero glorification and constant revisionist history. Some have said that non inclusive democracy is rule by the stupid or encumbering the strong with the weak, but its the absolute truth about capitalism. It explains the rise of business idiots and the veneration and protection of psychopathic traits.
You have a sit-on-its-ass class proclaiming its borne superiority and right to rule that complains about everyone else not working hard enough to support their conspicuous leisure, to reinforce the reality of their permanent victory. You get a puppet media that makes it possible for them to claim that wages need to be lowered, and profits need to be increased (when theyâve never been higher in the life time of anyone living) and taxes need to be lowered. Capitalism is always trying to take you back to the plantation. You can reform it temporarily but its basic assumptions and contradictions mean its going to destroy itself. Its even more tenuous than non inclusive democracy. Therefore we need a new term. I forgot, in trying to associate itself with success it will always use loss leaders and try to say its success was because of innovation or some phony contribution (it needs poster children like Bill Gates,) it will even try to justify luck with lotteries and gladiators.
Capitalism is basically Monarchy trying to associate itself with commerce or merchants. Its the merchant class meets the mafia class. Its organized business crime, a group of people who think the law is for other people. That thinks gold gives birth to gold and not copper and that diamonds give birth to diamonds and not carbon- but how can children raised by oppressor parents mature except by rebellion? And let us not forget that its tried and true path back to Monarchy will be to use banking (economic war on the populations which converts democratic or people power into rule by money) to lower wages and increase debt and bills to get people under control with more hours and more crime and incrimination.
I want to just throw this article, which many of you may have already read, into the fray, because I think that it warrants some serious consideration. It certainly got my attention, and stopped me from speaking about inequality when the real issue is poverty.
@Warren youâre undoubtedly right that todayâs capitalism is as you describe but do note in the essay I linked to-- the author is VERY clear that heâs no issue with concepts like taxing the wealthy-- even heavily if necessary and is in strong support of the total destruction of those whom @Traktion speaks of as ârent seekersâ and you describe as the âsit on your ass class.â Iâm pretty in step with the thinking in that essay: Weâre not equal and any attempt to equalize wealth, in my mind would be REALLY bad for society overall, so the best-case scenario is instead to commit ourselves to doing something that is achievable, and in all likelihood, favorable to the elimination or even the reduction of inequality-- the complete eradication of poverty, globally.
I donât like a lot of the hard-line, uncompromising thought that comes from people who call themselves capitalists, but this particular piece-- Iâve got to say that it had substantial influence on my thinking because it is directed at a solution that seems highly achievable while it also guides the reader away from a logical fallacy promoted by many in the media-drone-o-sphere. This piece, it seems well-considered and hits at problems with-- gasp-- how dare they-- achievable solutions.
Oh-- and one more thing-- the article that started this thread, and the newspaper that published it, frequently frame non-genuine âinnovationsâ as revolutionary, and cast attention away from those things that could bring substantial change. The guardian shills hard-core for the UKâs centrist and ineffective status quo in the American context⊠it is kind of like oh, I donât know the best comparison Iâm coming up with is the Buffalo News-- I say this because one thing a small-city newspaper in the US will NEVER do-- is print real news-- that could upset its actual customers, the nasty linkup between government and the shittiest type of businesspeople that would be exposed if genuine journalism ever took up its proper role in society. The guardian is best used after a proper defecation, and flushed away.
Looking forward to reading the article. And I do agree the issue is the lack of a more than adequate universal base of support and the need to avoid destabilizing levels of inequitable apportionment on a finite planet. But without splitting hairs let me suggest both a relative equality as in a comparatively small difference between savant and MR relative to a chimp, and also an intrinsic equality in being in the more absolute sense. One is not less because of limits on experience or expression or facility. To denie this is to go down the Nazi eugenic road of âthe life not worth livingâ etc.
After reading @girlziplocked (twitter handle) tear Paul Graham to shreds in her recent blog (below) Iâm not inclined to read what he has to say. Sheâs responding to the very article you linked, so I suggest you read her perspective too. She made some very powerful points as to why we might want to ignore him! Itâs well worth a read:
Please do not confuse a gift economy with socialism or communism. In a gift economy one is honored for what one gives, but one still owns whatever is exchanged. If one shares ownership, say for example how one could consider public land or water all shared by the entire nation. Then one simply doesnât own it. Itâs part of the earth. Everyone makes use of it. Why is ownership required? Why do we WANT to own things in the first place? So we can make use of them. But if things are available to the entire community, the entire network, and available for use then why is ownership an issue? If someone designs an app and everyone can use it who cares who owns it? Ownership only becomes an issue in the case of app development support which is covered by the network. And that can be chalked up to an exchange of resources to the network: You contribute code and you get safecoin.
We have long since had public libraries where we take out books. Do the patrons of libraries own the books? No they just borrow and use them. We have public transportation. Do the patrons of buses and trains own the buses and trains? No they just use them for a fee. In Japan they even have public baths. Now a lot of people own stuff in order to rent it out to others. Again thatâs a form of use. You are using it as an asset to earn profit. But what if one simply shared that asset with others or gave it away? One isnât losing access to the asset one is simply sharing access. But why share resources with others? Because then others are motivated to share resources with you. Same reason you get a roommate. If you split the rent and living expenses then the over all individual expenses are lessened. If there are 10 people and each of them is only going to use a ladder once a year do they each really need to own their own ladder? Couldnât they just share a single ladder between them and save costs? If more resources are required then more can be aquired.
Communism is ideally based on having a classless society but in reality has never worked out like that and ends up with having a two tiered authoritarian driven society with a master over the populous. But this is by no means what is being suggested. A gift economy doesnât require abdication of ownership to any authority figure. Nor does a sharing or resource based economy. Nor is there any stipulation saying one must give or share with everyone, or perpetually.
Tanstafl nothing is free ever. Doesnât matter if youâre talking digital or physical. Everything gets paid for somehow. You canât get the state or the network to enforce free goods. You can program a network to automate a payment system but canât make things appear out of thin air.
âAs with the end of feudalism 500 years ago, capitalismâs replacement by
postcapitalism will be accelerated by external shocks and shaped by the
emergence of a new kind of human being. And it has started.â
This just made me laugh. The end of feudalism? Seriously? Have you looked at our legal texts recently? Or at how politics and corporations are structured? Or the fact the states have been using the conquest war model to gain revenue for the last 200 years. I mean for Goddess sake wake up and smell the blood soaked sheets and burning civilizations. We havenât really advanced all that much since the Roman Empire, and I really donât think that was much of an advancement but the fact is a good part of our civilization has their heads stuck there.
"Third, weâre seeing the spontaneous rise of collaborative production:
goods, services and organisations are appearing that no longer respond
to the dictates of the market and the managerial hierarchy. " Oh for booting up code⊠there are more resources than just money. Just because youâre paying someone in Purpose or a sense of community or otherwise honoring them doesnât mean that the dictates of the market have failed. If you have a surplus in time and skill and a deficit in being honored and appreciated, perhaps a financial lacking as well, then it follows that giving freely of oneâs time and skills would be a good exchange. Money isnât everything.
Thanks for the nudge. I read about a third. It seems heâs arguing towards a preconceived conclusion - justifying his kind of inequality generation by pointing out worse ones.
The picture is even more complicated than he portrays. For example, in some areas heâs correct, there is not a fixed amount of pie to share out, while in effect there is in others - wherever resources become scarce, being rich enables you to price others out, inadvertently deny them resources, decreasing what they can afford, which means creating poverty. So in some ways, just being rich can create poverty, even without the need to take that wealth from the poor. Iâm not sure anyone really says that anyway, itâs too simplistic a position to even start from.
I donât say this is the issue, Iâm just suggesting his thinking is simplistic, and self justifying (Iâm with Holly Wood on that). His thinking is reductionist, and easy to pick apart with counter (but equally reductionist) arguments, along the lines I just used.
Most people think this way, I do too, because it works when addressing localised issues - which is almost everything we do day to day.
But this kind of thinking is part of the problem when you are trying to improve the whole, when you care about the knock on effects of your âsolutionâ, outside the immediate context.
This is why weâre destroying ourselves, environmentally, economically, politically etc - you canât just fix one problem - itâs a system problem. Fix one part and⊠Oh, now hereâs another, we better fix that. Etc. Not seeing that each âfixâ created other problems because we didnât look at the system as a whole.
Paul Grahamâs thinking process suggests heâs not made the leap. He realises there are knock on effects within the economic structures, but heâs still not seeing this as a wider system problem IMO, not even in the economic system, let alone the whole.
Systems thinkers are rare. Iâm not one of them, but Iâve begun to recognise them and how they think. I think David is one, and I suspect that is something that attracted me to this project, though I didnât understand that at the time. The following article is what sparked that thought in me when I read it a couple of days ago:
ââŠcreating something more dynamic that exists, at first, almost unseen within the old system, but which will break through, reshaping the economy around new values and behaviours. I call this postcapitalismâ
Perhaps he simply means what he saysâŠ
Thatcher and Regan ushered in an age where âcapitalâ became worth more than labour. That is, the weight of value tilted further in favour of those with money (capital) and against those with those people with jobs (labour).
The post-80s era of 'capitalâism isnât fueled by anything tangible or real. My take on what the author means is that he perceives the dawn of a new era of labour becoming worth more than capital along with other dynamic changes from tech and social upheavel (post-financial collapse and shift in types of labour?) in a decentralised and less abusive system.
I think the one thing we can probably all agree on is that we hate governments and big centralised business and the vast majority of us would rather see the world become more decentralised and all forms of power become directly and democratically accountable.
I enjoyed the article and disagree with most of the criticisms leveled at it⊠although fp, feudalism never ended
It seems to me that both capital and labor are obsolete and a lot of economists said this 45 years ago and its becoming increasingly apparent only because its increasingly so, it was always so in important ways.
We absolutely have to break the habit and mentality of employment. Employment is a situation where people most of the time on most of the days of their life through the magic of denial shift into an involuntary automaton mode and do what some one with more money then them tells them to do (crucially because they have more money) on point of need and want dependencies. The only alternative offered is to become a party to this life killing sadism. Employment is fundamentally dehumanizing with cancer like cumulative effects. It inculcates learned helplessness and powerlessness. Its stupid animal husbandry type behaviorism applied to humanbeings, management criminals are people who farm human beings. In a slightly better functioning society most mananager behaviors would quickly get the managers killed. Management is protracted rape.
Can you imagine the managers being paid less than those they treat as tools? The whole thing is designed to convert and reinforce arbitrary economic power into political power and it naturallt kills powersharing or democracy which is aimed at preventing inbred economic domination
As humanity changes what it values are, One will change what is determined as wealth.
I think we already seeing people value life and happiness over a fictional money systems based fraud.
As for myself I prefer to be more self-efficient exchanging or sharing food in my local community so as my wealth increases so does the cost of my living goes down. Being able to reinvest into solar and food production to reduce the amount of effort I use is most important means more time with my family.
So I believe sharing will be apart of my future because the effort of labor is not worth of material sparkly processions.
Been saying this for years. Getting a job is not independence. Quite the opposite itâs dependence. Only self sufficiency and producing the goods one relies on to live is independence. Moreover you donât need to work in order to get things done. People do productive things all the time for the simple joy of it. We should focus on building a ludic society, on producing goods and services because people want to do it; because itâs what they enjoy doing. That doesnât mean they shouldnât be compensated for their labours, tanstafl, but that we should focus on passion and play rather than stress and work.
Look at everyone here in the maidsafe community. True perhaps the devs are getting paid but the majority of the community is not and yet everyone here is passionately dedicated to bringing about the network. We all commit time and resources whatever they might be to achieving that goal. Most open source projects operate just like this. Theyâre for the most part gift economies and are based on honoring what one gives and the purpose motive. And in so doing people achieve mastery, self expression, and autonomy. Which in turn is what drives them to continue contributing.
