Fully Automated Luxury Communism

[lomiller]

I have been in sales for a number of years, working for people of varying levels of integrity.
My job is to motivate people to pay more than they "should" for things. Of late I have questioned why being "stupid" is considered such a character flaw that our culture approves of the "smart" preying on them.
Is it illegal, or immoral, to be less smart than I am?
Why am I-and those that I work for- rewarded for being able to outsmart someone else in a particular transaction to their detriment? Is that truly "merit"?

It’s not. In free market economies the real goal should be economic efficiency. IOW creating the most value with the least effort/input. This frees up resources that can be redirected to more or better goods/services, and when there is more to go around everyone can benefit.

Contrary to the libertarian propaganda laissez faire free market do not accomplish this. This only happens when sellers compete on certain fronts, if there is insufficient regulation they can do an end run around these the opposite can happen.

To work properly markets must be both free and regulated. Similarly, for property rights to work they need to exist but have limitations. The right wing fallacy is that the middle ground doesn’t exist, so the limitations and regulations that are required for things like property rights or free markets to function as intended and deemed “socialist”.

 

[lomiller]

How do you figure?

Compared to modern social democracies the US is more economically stratified based on the economic status of the parent. This means that individual merit plays as smaller role in raising/lowering economic status than, which by definition makes it less of a meritocracy.

 

[lomiller]

My original statement was that gifting your descendants with your wealth has been an important value in most cultures throughout human history.

There have been many societies with such concept.

What’s most relevant, however, is comparing state level societies based on absolute inherited property, privilege and economic status vs state level societies that tried to do away with personal property altogether. Both approached have failed.

The most successful approaches have been someplace in between. The truly relevant question is which direction a society should move to become more successful.

This concept of the value of inheritance is not all about meritocracy.

It runs counter to meritocracy. You can't have both and the value of one must be weighed against the value of the other.

 

[theprestige]

In my ideal world, from each according to their ability, to each according to their need would be law.

In an ideal world, it wouldn't need to be law.

In the real world, it's actually been tried as a law, with disastrous and deadly results.

---

I'm curious, though. How do you envision enforcing such a law?

How would you go about determining my ability? Would you make me take an aptitude test, and then choose my career for me? Would you figure that I have the ability to work 50 hours a week, and hold me to that requirement?

What if I have the ability to be a really good artist? Would that count? How would you determine the amount of art per year I would be required to produce by law? If I decided to slack off, how would you even know?

What about my needs? Would the law determine how much cream I really need for my coffee? Would the law determine whether I need any coffee at all?

Would your law allow me to grow marijuana on my back porch, for recreational purposes? Trade it to my neighbors for goods and services without regard for need?

How many biographies per month do I really need to read? How many crime caper novels? How many movies do I really need to see in a year? How many hours of X-box are really necessary? Maybe I should be spending that time making more hammers or sickles or whatever. If I have the ability to lean, I have the ability to clean, as it were.

---

I think the whole point of "ability/need" is not to make it a law (which honestly I think is unworkable even in an ideal world), but that come the apotheosis, humans will just operate that way naturally and voluntarily, without the need for laws, or capital, or any of the guff we think is mandatory today in our imperfect state.

 

[Distracted1]

In an ideal world, it wouldn't need to be law.

In the real world, it's actually been tried as a law, with disastrous and deadly results.

---

I'm curious, though. How do you envision enforcing such a law?

How would you go about determining my ability? Would you make me take an aptitude test, and then choose my career for me? Would you figure that I have the ability to work 50 hours a week, and hold me to that requirement?

What if I have the ability to be a really good artist? Would that count? How would you determine the amount of art per year I would be required to produce by law? If I decided to slack off, how would you even know?

What about my needs? Would the law determine how much cream I really need for my coffee? Would the law determine whether I need any coffee at all?

Would your law allow me to grow marijuana on my back porch, for recreational purposes? Trade it to my neighbors for goods and services without regard for need?

How many biographies per month do I really need to read? How many crime caper novels? How many movies do I really need to see in a year? How many hours of X-box are really necessary? Maybe I should be spending that time making more hammers or sickles or whatever. If I have the ability to lean, I have the ability to clean, as it were.

---

I think the whole point of "ability/need" is not to make it a law (which honestly I think is unworkable even in an ideal world), but that come the apotheosis, humans will just operate that way naturally and voluntarily, without the need for laws, or capital, or any of the guff we think is mandatory today in our imperfect state.

I think previous iterations have defined "ability" basically as
"The ability to successfully pretend to be a machine", and "need" as (broadly) "That which is necessary to not experience premature death".

I accept that it is quite possible that "we" have passed a threshold wherein it may be possible that no one need pretend to be a machine any longer in order to ensure that everyone's needs can be met (using the aforementioned definition of "need")

Since a great deal of human suffering can be attributed both to making people pretend to be machines, and to allowing a situation to persist wherein many people cannot get their needs met. I think a re-alignment of how "we" operate societally should definitely be considered.

 

[theprestige]

I think it's the other way around. We make machines that pretend to be human, for some specific task. Up until very recently, at least, the human worker came first, and the machine came later.

For example: Computers. In 1945, a computer was a human who performed computational tasks. Then a series of machines were developed to emulate humans at this task, and the term gradually shifted to refer to these machines. And it's a similar evolution in every field of human endeavor. Farm machinery replaces human effort. Automated systems replace the flight engineer on jet airliners, and the RIO on fighter/attack aircraft.

It's never been about humans pretending to be machines. It's been about humans building a better tomorrow through sheer human effort, and then investing the profits in machines that can perform the same tasks more efficiently and with less overall human effort.

That Amazon warehouse picker isn't a human pretending to be a machine. It's a human putting in human effort the way humans have always done, because there isn't yet a machine that can convincingly pretend to be a human for that task.

 

[BobTheCoward]

If 10 of us work at the need factory, and the vacation factory sends over two vouchers for vacation to the beach, and two to the mountains, how do we distribute them?

 

[kellyb]

If 10 of us work at the need factory, and the vacation factory sends over two vouchers for vacation to the beach, and two to the mountains, how do we distribute them?

How many days are the vacations for, and how often are they distributed?

 

[TragicMonkey]

How many days are the vacations for, and how often are they distributed?

And which of the workers want a vacation now versus later, or hate the beach, or would rather see Granny at Xmas? Individuals are more complex than the division of the sum of their collective.

 

[Brainster]

In my ideal world, from each according to their ability, to each according to their need would be law.

I'll say this for the old-style communists: At least they recognized that there was an awful lot of work to be done. The new, improved commies seem to think that robots will do all the work and they will be free to do whatever they please. I can understand the appeal, but find myself chuckling at the naivete.

 

[Joe Random]

If 10 of us work at the need factory, and the vacation factory sends over two vouchers for vacation to the beach, and two to the mountains, how do we distribute them?

 

[Distracted1]

I think it's the other way around. We make machines that pretend to be human, for some specific task. Up until very recently, at least, the human worker came first, and the machine came later.

For example: Computers. In 1945, a computer was a human who performed computational tasks. Then a series of machines were developed to emulate humans at this task, and the term gradually shifted to refer to these machines. And it's a similar evolution in every field of human endeavor. Farm machinery replaces human effort. Automated systems replace the flight engineer on jet airliners, and the RIO on fighter/attack aircraft.

It's never been about humans pretending to be machines. It's been about humans building a better tomorrow through sheer human effort, and then investing the profits in machines that can perform the same tasks more efficiently and with less overall human effort.

That Amazon warehouse picker isn't a human pretending to be a machine. It's a human putting in human effort the way humans have always done, because there isn't yet a machine that can convincingly pretend to be a human for that task.

Conceded that humans pre-date machines. Conceded, also, that "humans pretending to be machines" contains some hyperbole.

Not conceded that a picker for Amazon is putting in effort "the way humans have always done". As conceded above, humanity predates the reliance on machine culture by a large span of time. Throughout most of that time (and even now) the behavior of a picker at an Amazon warehouse would have been viewed as decidedly unnatural (except, of course, in the broadest sense of exerting effort towards a reward- a quality shared by most animals)

While "building a better tomorrow" certainly would have included having all aforementioned "needs" met in the minds of the early machine builders and planners, a life of toil in service to the necessities of "machine culture" almost certainly was not part of the dream as more than a necessary evil.

As stated earlier, I think it is worthwhile to explore wether or not we have crossed the threshold wherein the efforts of the early machine builders have reached fruition, inasmuch as humans can behave more in accordance with their nature while still having their needs met, and not needing to fill in the gaps of meeting those with unnatural behavior (by pretending to be machines)

I am open to the possibility that we have reached that point. If we have, it leads to the question of how the "machine culture" humans have created needs to be adjusted so that it functions as envisioned.

Conceded in advance that there are obviously considerations of what "natural" human behavior and its drawbacks are. Left out discussion of such as it seems to run too far afield of topic.

 

[theprestige]

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_45075d012eddc1e01.jpg[/qimg]

Nah. Thunderdome was more trial by combat and bread and circuses.

I'm thinking a limited number of vacation vouchers would be purchased with sexual favors.

---

"Tell you what: I'll take the vacation at the beach, and you can have a vacation in my pants on our lunch break."

"Deal!"

"Hey! All our needs are met! This kind of bartering for scarce goods is technically impossible and legally prohibited! I'm reporting you to The Machine!"

"THE MACHINE ALREADY KNOWS. GET IN LINE FOR REEDUCATION. PLEASE BE PATIENT. THE INDOCTRINATION BOOTHS ARE OVERBOOKED. WE BELIEVE SOME PEOPLE ARE USING THEM FOR SEX."

 

[ponderingturtle]

The ability to do what, though? Seems like the answer is that "meritocracy" allocates wealth and power to those with the ability to accrue wealth and power. A bit circular, no?

And of course making good decisions in who your parents are is the most important decision of all, as such it gets the highest rewards. Ability and crap like that are meaningless in comparison, as true merit is shown through blood.

 

[theprestige]

Conceded that humans pre-date machines. Conceded, also, that "humans pretending to be machines" contains some hyperbole.

Not conceded that a picker for Amazon is putting in effort "the way humans have always done". As conceded above, humanity predates the reliance on machine culture by a large span of time. Throughout most of that time (and even now) the behavior of a picker at an Amazon warehouse would have been viewed as decidedly unnatural (except, of course, in the broadest sense of exerting effort towards a reward- a quality shared by most animals)

While "building a better tomorrow" certainly would have included having all aforementioned "needs" met in the minds of the early machine builders and planners, a life of toil in service to the necessities of "machine culture" almost certainly was not part of the dream as more than a necessary evil.

As stated earlier, I think it is worthwhile to explore wether or not we have crossed the threshold wherein the efforts of the early machine builders have reached fruition, inasmuch as humans can behave more in accordance with their nature while still having their needs met, and not needing to fill in the gaps of meeting those with unnatural behavior (by pretending to be machines)

I am open to the possibility that we have reached that point. If we have, it leads to the question of how the "machine culture" humans have created needs to be adjusted so that it functions as envisioned.

Conceded in advance that there are obviously considerations of what "natural" human behavior and its drawbacks are. Left out discussion of such as it seems to run too far afield of topic.

Fair enough. You raise some interesting points that have given me food for thought.

 

[ponderingturtle]

This. The underlying problem here is that both communism and capitalism were developed in a world in which material wealth was fundamentally limited. When faced with the problem that we can't make everyone rich, what do you do?

In capitalism, you say, fine, let everyone compete, and some will be rich, some will be middle class, and some will be rat-ass poor. In communism, you say, fine, let's make everyone equally not-quite-rat-ass poor.

But in a post-scarcity economy, that problem simply doesn't exist. Given sufficient technology, we could make everyone "rich". That is, adequate housing, food, entertainment, fulfilling work/hobbies, and what not.

The problem is how to get from here to there.

Grinding poverty is a feature not a bug of the american way. You need to know that if you get sick, have an accident or anything you will lose anything and be left to starve because that is needed to motivate people to work harder for what the classes who matter have determined they deserve.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I doubt most people throughout history have had much of anything TO pass down to their kids, much less enough to qualify as "providing for their descendants after their death."

Your sentence might be accurate if it read "Most fantastically wealthy members of the hereditary aristocracies through most of history have considered providing for their descendants after their death to be one of the most meaningful dispositions of their private property", though.

Exactly the peasants don't count. Why when serfdom makes a comeback property owns you!

 

[Cabbage]

Perhaps there's a difference between Granny leaving you $2000 and her good china and Mrs Vanderbilt leaving you three mansions and $200,000,000? Unless it's very good china indeed.

I think it's worth pointing out that in our society there's also a hypocritical trend to bitch and whine about the lazy SOB living off of the government while at the same time kissing the ass of the lazy SOB living off of their inheritance.

 

[I Am The Scum]

Agreed. But I invtited you to make a case that "it's all about meritocracy." Why should I care that inheritance isn't based on merit, if "it" (whatever "it" is) isn't actually "all about" merit-based inheritance.

My original statement was that gifting your descendants with your wealth has been an important value in most cultures throughout human history. This concept of the value of inheritance is not all about meritocracy.

So maybe you should start making your case by explaining what "it" is, in your "it's all about".

Never said "all." Readjust and try again.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Grinding poverty is a feature not a bug of the american way. You need to know that if you get sick, have an accident or anything you will lose anything and be left to starve because that is needed to motivate people to work harder for what the classes who matter have determined they deserve.

Abject poverty is the natural state of man, not a product of the American way.