If we turn back to the old school communism now, I will get laid. Because I am beautiful and intelligent, but poor. In my childhood, when my country was communist, nerds were pop-stars. In capitalism I will die alone.
Communism 2.0
9 hours ago, Nypyren said:"Even if you do absolutely nothing your whole life and live on the lowest tier, you still get to eat, survive, have healthcare, etc."
Let's say everyone does this. Where would the food and healthcare come from? Or, let's say everyone wants to be an artist. But you can't eat (most) paintings. Paintings don't provide you healthcare.
It seems like you would need to motivate people to provide a variety of useful goods and services by dynamically changing the amount of points you get based on supply and demand. But that's pretty much how capitalism works.
The point system and things you're entitled to get from points sounds a lot like currency!
Spot on. The proposed system just replaced 'money' with 'points'. Call it what you want, it's the same thing.
The whole universal income thing is problematic because most people are inherently lazy. Give people a choice between lazing around 24/7 and working hard and having a little more money, most people will choose the lazing. And then have 10 kids, because, you know, entitlement.
Then those 10 kids will go on to have 10 kids, and pretty soon you start running out of resources. Don't care what it is, money, food, housing, land, something will become the bottleneck if your glorious society essentially pays people to reproduce. Then you get the inevitable wars, crime etc etc.
This whole scenario is playing out currently in a number of countries. There is actual selection pressure from socialist governments for the least productive members of society to reproduce the most (benefits increasing with more children).
It is pretty basic biology / ecology, all species follow the same rules, there is a certain carrying capacity from the environment.
I don't agree with much Thatcher said, but this one is very on point:
QuoteThe problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money
Replace money with resources etc.
It's kind of like the confusion some people have between individual based selection and group selection in biology.
(Just to clarify, I'm not a pure capitalist myself, I think there's an argument that certain things can be better state run, like transport etc.)
29 minutes ago, NikiTo said:If we turn back to the old school communism now, I will get laid. Because I am beautiful and intelligent, but poor. In my childhood, when my country was communist, nerds were pop-stars. In capitalism I will die alone.
Oh quit complaining. Capitalism at least gave you Tinder. If you are actually attractive, just sign up there and you can get laid as much as you want 
Just now, mikeman said:Oh quit complaining. Capitalism at least gave you Tinder. If you are actually attractive, just sign up there and you can get laid as much as you want
Nope. Not working
13 minutes ago, NikiTo said:Nope. Not working
Then you're not attractive, or you're extra creepy IRL. Nothing to do with money. Nobody cares how much you make on Tinder. It's a hook-up app.
Lol I like the turn this thread took. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Back to the topic : People that are saying "this point system looks like currency" miss at least 2 differences.
1) Points don't circulate.
2) You can't buy the means of production(capital goods) with those points, only consumer(final) goods.
As for incentives, I think most people *would* actually go to work if it meant a larger apartment, nicer furnitures, more luxuries, etc. At least enough people that, combined with automation, there wouldn't really be a problem of not enough people working.
I'm super mega hot. But I take pictures of myself in parks, on the beach etc. On social media, people are not looking so much at the person in the picture. They scan the corners of the photos like: "see, he is inside a car with leather seats" "the car looks new" "is that house in the background his house? It is at least 223 square meters" "he is on a vacation, this means he has money to spend" "he has a big dog, this means he can feed me. I eat less than a big dog"........
People look at a picture and look for the status of a person not for the person. Status is everything.
Ok, @NikiTo's love life problems aside...
There's a lot here about how people wouldn't work if they had a baseline standard of living. That's not necessarily the case. The major difference between the incentive system for Capitalism and for this Communist system is that in capitalism, you have to do some sort of job to sustain yourself, i.e., to survive. In this Communist system, you'll have a bare minimum baseline. By no means will this be luxury, but it'll be 'enough', so that you don't 'die'. It'll be a decent enough living. For most people, the promise of more stuff will be enough to want to do more. Want that Lamborghini? Well, work for it and maybe you can have it. Moreover, there's also the motivation of fame and recognition. You can still be the really well known designer of that killer smartphone. That and, well, doing nothing is frankly boring. An entire existence where you sit around and do nothing? Can you imagine it?
The other thing that we have to remember is that automation and AI can easily replace a lot of basic jobs. Manufacturing, driving, mining, farming, etc. can all be very easily automated. So a lot of jobs that would be available would be things like science, engineering, arts, etc. With all this automation, the people who normally would do those jobs won't do those. Not everyone can be an engineer, scientist etc., so we need a basic safety net.
Will people try to break the system? Absolutely. Will they succeed? Probably. People are already doing it with capitalism. This isn't to say capitalism is bad or worse, it's just that systems have flaws and those flaws will be exploited. It doesn't mean the system is bad. The flaws will be different and we will need to learn how to deal with them.
The other major difference is that you won't own the 'means of production', i.e., the factories, etc. They are owned by society, or state owned. So there is a limit as to how much one can achieve. The biggest issue with this system mainly is who decides resource allocation. In a previous thread I made, I thought that automation and AI could do much of this legwork actually in a way that takes into account supply-demand economics.
15 hours ago, slayemin said:I would tentatively say "politicians" get to make those decisions. But then, the follow up question becomes, "Okay, who gets to be a politician?". I think the current political systems in democratic systems are deeply flawed and tend to devolve into oligarchies and attracts people who are interested in power, rather than attractive benevolent policy makers suited for the task. I am a bit biased here, but I think the people who would be most qualified to be politicians would be disinterested philosophers. Political appointment would be based on a randomized selection from a wide pool of philosopher candidates, and would be limited to terms of about 4 years? And serving a term would probably need to lower their statistical chances of being randomly selected for a sequential term. The worrisome part about a system like this would be that philosophers would be disinclined to become philosophers if it meant that they had a chance of being politicians. But hey, some of the best politicians in history have also been great philosophers, so maybe this is the right general direction to go.
It's an interesting idea, but it's very very risky. The variance of outcomes is simply too high for this to be a stable system. Imagine we randomly select a nutcase philosopher?
That and there's all sorts of issues with vested interests, etc. There needs to be a system of government designed explicitly to take into account the notion that manufacturing, etc is no longer owned by private entities but controlled by the state. One method is AIs. Other methods would be a multi branch government similar to many modern governments, but specifically built to tackle the issues that come with a Communist based economy.
I can't see this working however, without tons of usage of automation and smart AI. But that's my opinion.
@deltaKshatriya I have no problems. Society is rotten.
Democracy is a lie. During elections people are being promised air. Then they exercise their democratic right for one single day, the day of election. After that, they are slaves for the next 4 years. Democracy choices in one day the totalitarian leader for the next 4 years.
Often in democracy it happens that the 51% rules over the 49%. This creates separatism, not a solution.
Democracy is the alias of anarchy. People tent to vote for legalizing things rather than ban things. At the end of the equation, maybe not now, not next year, but soon, at the end, there will be one single law: "there are no laws", "there is only one rule: there are no rules".
My initial comment was making reference to the values of communism - science, intelligence and progress, compared to the values of capitalism - money.
You have to admit it, in one way or another, only money matter in capitalism. Look at stock markets. Buying a thing is raising its value..... chaos! Actually they use chaos theory in markets. Me as a programmer would not expect to run few RNGs in a program(or infinite RNGs) and expect something good to come out of this. I would attempt to create rules since the very beginning of the creation of a program.
Any human being deserve the right to live the entirety of its whole life. It is not humane for somebody to not be able to access medical care because of poverty. Everybody deserves a roof and a meal, without of course, stopping to promote "people who move" over "people who sleep". Extreme equality is a cancer too. I was penalized for overdoing a task in university once. Teacher told me: "in our country competence is banned. Never again try to show how much you know. Now I will let you pass, but if you do it again, I will kick you out". This was my first shocking encounter with the study system of the most developed country in the world. I went there with things like Google and Facebook in mind but found out the shocking truth. You can not fail if you slack it. Study or not, you have the F++ and the diploma guaranteed, but if you try to be clever, you can be kicked out. Sense of modern society? I wrote to a person of the university that I have an idea but I need somebody who is good in electronic hardware to make it reality. That responsible told me: "I contacted the teacher, but he first need to be paid to listen to your idea. We will wait for the university to pay him in order for him to hear your idea out" I don't know about you, but I would hear out a student just for the curiosity. Real life is not like in movies.
In communism they see you have talent and they give you the meanings to keep improving. They hunted for talented people. Now practically everything is show business. Where Simon Cowell tells to three teen girls "you are too pure for this. If you want to succeed you have to become bi*ches".......
A solution is to create an AI that will become a leader. AI that will be above humans. Calculative and cold. Unbiased. Optimized in all decisions. Impossible to bribe. Made out of pure logic. This AI has to be created the same way a red button is created. Without humanity in mind. No programmer or funder expecting to use that AI to become the owner of the whole world. Nobody expecting to use this AI as a personal weapon or tool. An AI coded to be free on its own. And then like taking the red pill, like hitting the red button, just do it! Just start the AI. That AI will cure the cancer, or destroy the Earth. One of two. (where to find unbiased programmers? even I that am a very good hearted person, would program an AI with a harem in mind)
Of course AI is impossible using our silicon based computing. Until we discover a way to obtain nearly infinite computing power, AI will not become reality.
Just hope for the lesser bad, and keep watching "our beds burning"! (Midnight Oil)
(there are some proposals of systems that eliminate excessive richness. Such proposals penalize money staying in banks doing nothing. Rich people are forced to reinvest or they lose their money.)
About that resource thing - I believe resources are not the problem. If there were not corruption, we already would have colonized Mars by now. Space is nearly infinite. So resources is a way to not look at corruption. Now 1% of people control the 99% of resources. When you distribute that percentage evenly between people, ONLY then you can talk about "not enough resources for people". At this point, people are not lacking resources, people are STOLEN resources. Even the last Avengers movie is mentioning the "reduction of population" perverse idea. Population is not the problem, Thanos is not the solution.
(there are some proposals of systems that eliminate excessive richness. Such proposals penalize money staying in banks doing nothing. Rich people are forced to reinvest or they lose their money.)
About that resource thing - I believe resources are not the problem. If there were not corruption, we already would have colonized Mars by now. Space is nearly infinite. So resources is a way to not look at corruption. Now 1% of people control the 99% of resources. When you distribute that percentage evenly between people, ONLY then you can talk about "not enough resources for people". At this point, people are not lacking resources, people are STOLEN resources. Even the last Avengers movie is mentioning the "reduction of population" perverse idea. Population is not the problem, Thanos is not the solution.
59 minutes ago, NikiTo said:Democracy choices in one day the totalitarian leader for the next 4 years.
Which country are we talking about? That's not even the case in the US, never mind the parliamentary systems like Canada and the UK.
59 minutes ago, NikiTo said:People tent to vote for legalizing things rather than ban things.
That... doesn't seem to match up with my view of history. Even recent history - there were plenty of people who voted against legalizing gay marriage in various Western countries, for instance. Care to support your statement with data?
59 minutes ago, NikiTo said:Extreme equality is a cancer too. I was penalized for overdoing a task in university once. Teacher told me: "in our country competence is banned. Never again try to show how much you know. Now I will let you pass, but if you do it again, I will kick you out".
What country do you live in and which university did you go to? I studied in Canada and this experience is completely foreign to me. My teachers rewarded me for going above and beyond, both in high school and university. If anything, they were grateful to have a student who actually paid attention in lectures and tutorials and could "talk shop" a little about their field! In major universities a great many students do nothing in lectures other than play with their phones or watch movies.
59 minutes ago, NikiTo said:I don't know about you, but I would hear out a student just for the curiosity.
I suggest that this is mostly because intellectual property law is a minefield, as your university instructors should have taught you.
I gave up on studying.
In another university in another country. I was doing well with the different teams. But with the 3rd team I had the misfortune to have lazy people for teammates. At the first meeting I offered, our team to make something cool for a full A++, but they told me that a D or E is enough. And I said ok then, but, the damage was already done. They started to not call me to their meetings, and they was in constant conflict with me, about things like comments in the code for example.... There was a teacher for whom it was very important to be the alpha geek. He was talking on a lecture about new technologies in JS, and my previous teammates asked him if he can WebGL, he said no and they said, niki can.... Hearing that I reacted like: "What do you do!!!! He now will hate me!!!!" And for the 3rd team project, my teammates told the teacher that I did not contributed enough and the teacher was that same teacher and I got kicked out.
I am not bitter. I am an Asperger. Anyplace I go, people end up hating me. I always show excellent results on exams, but always teachers kick me out. Any university and organization has a way, a path created to can kick somebody out. Trying to access an university, I showed the highest of all the candidates and maximal result in the IQ test. I had an excellent in the other test too. But they put me an F-- in the exam of arts. Of course.... art is relative, any art could be an A++ or F--. Even with that F--, the average of my exams was giving the access, BUT the rules of the university says that an F means immediate NO. See? Those are paths to get rid of some person who is not pleasant. In that "diploma guaranteed" university, they had not a legal reason to kick me out, but they had meeting between the teachers and they voted to kick me out........Anyway I don't regret having failed to make a future in that weird country. Everybody was so prejudiced there. I was feeling like inside a big sect. If you have a shoelace untied people are starting to look at you in a weird way. It felt like when the children of Village of the Damned 1995 are pointing at you.
In Spain, the leaders promised to cut nothing.....weeks after they got elected they started to cut and cut and cut.... People were protesting all the time on the streets, nothing changed at all. 4 years of dictatorship.
You say I am bitter... well maybe. I am sorry for it. Not everyone has the same experience in life. I try to not be bitter, but sometimes it comes out.
Democracy means to jump from the 5th stair right into the face of a person....
This topic is closed to new replies.
Advertisement
Popular Topics
Advertisement
