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On January 16 2020 22:09 Uldridge wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2020 21:14 Acrofales wrote:
I don't think this is fair at all. Most technology isn't invented to make us consume. Most technology is invented to do something new that people want to do, or to make "labour intensive" tasks less labour intensive (automation). Whether that is watch streaming videos over the internet while on the train, cure an ailment that has so far been uncurable (or at least, improve our treatments), or automate an entire supply chain with computation and robotics.
It's not the technology that turns us into good little consumers, it's US. It's people who look at glossy magazines/websites/"influencers" and conclude they need the newest jeans/telephone/game/washing machine RIGHT NOW. Sure, we can blame the existence of these marketing channels on capitalism, but it wouldn't be fair: wanting what your neighbour has is as old as humanity (and probably as old as life itself). We've just gotten better at looking further (we have more neighbours) and highlighting why some new gadget is "absolutely essential". But it's not capitalism that did that. People in communist East Germany were looking longingly at all the shiny things they had in West Germany. That innate desire to have "stuff" doesn't go away just because the system doesn't allow you to have it, and people find other means of procuring it (aka black market). Sure, wanting stuff is a thing, but people realizing they want stuff because of commercials because they didn't know that kind of thing or brand existsted also is a thing. You can't deny the absolute lengths the marketing industry will go to just to abuse people's mental state so they will want it even more. It's beyond despicable to prey on these people that don't necessarly need things, but are subtly convinced they do definitely absolutely do need it because it's the best thing ever. This happens mostly when certain brands get big enough that they can constantly bombard tv/radio/.. with their ads.
Sure, that isn't what I'm arguing against. Moreover, I don't think there is any way around some type of marketing. It'd exist (essentially in its current form) even under Nebuchad's proposal of removing ownership of companies as a concept, and have all companies be coops. I don't really see why these coops wouldn't compete amongst each other, and want to outsell their competitors, thus a coop would hire a marketing specialist (or outsource it to a marketing coop) which would convince more people they need that coop's products. The moment you have a market, you have an incentive to increase your market share. And the only alternative we've thought of to a market economy is a planned economy... which even GH seems to dislike.
So that leaves regulation, and we've seen that government regulation can effectively curb excesses of marketing. E.g. you're not allowed to market cigarettes to children (and in Europe, there are considerably stricter regulations about what you can market to kids than in the US). We could think of other ways of regulating this aspect of the market. But I digress. I was arguing against a blanket statement that technology only serves to make us consume more, which is obviously not true.
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On January 16 2020 14:19 Belisarius wrote:That is less than 10% of people who say they are willing to pay anything like the amount it might actually cost, and this is in a response-biased group that already skews educated and left. I can’t find the original article but here is a fancy interactographic thing they did afterwards. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-17/what-youd-spend-to-halt-climate-change-and-what-you-could-get/11784704 Everyone agrees climate change is a problem. Nobody will ever agree to do anything meaningful about it unless they are forced to. This problem is not solved by socialism because it is not due to power structures, it is due to people - and not just rich people - being ignorant and selfish and short-sighted.
It's kind of a stupid survey, not gonna lie. I might have answered zilch on that myself. We don't know how much money the people have, we don't know how much giving away 200$ or 2000$ affects them. Ask how many are willing to drive less or to go vegan if you want a clearer picture of the percentage that's willing to change its lifestyle. You'll hit about 25% I'd assume?
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On January 16 2020 09:48 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2020 08:47 Gorsameth wrote:On January 16 2020 08:17 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2020 08:03 Gorsameth wrote:On January 16 2020 07:43 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2020 07:41 Gorsameth wrote:On January 16 2020 07:33 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2020 07:28 Gorsameth wrote:On January 16 2020 07:21 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2020 07:15 Gorsameth wrote:
[quote]You didn't address his point tho.[quote]
If you change up who owns the industry then they become the class of people who fight against climate change regulations because they now control the industry. By changing ownership from a couple of rich people to a lot of 'poor' people your just increasing the number of people you are fighting and not reducing their power at all, they still control the industry.
It's somewhat easy for a few rich people to insulate themselves from the consequences of climate change. It's a lot harder for the entirety of the workers of a company to do so. So no, I don't think that a democratic worker force would make the same decisions than a single CEO would, in fact I think that's pretty ludicrous to believe. It's not just that, it would also be harder for them to promote actively lying to the people for personal benefit, as the whole enterprise would have to agree to do that. So we wouldn't see as much propaganda and in consequence, not as much climate change or overall science denial. You are underestimating the dynamic of an elite vs a people. Replacing the elites with the people doesn't just make the people the elite. They're still the people. They don't have to insulate themselves from the consequences. They just don't have to give a shit, or less shit then they give about losing 20% of their pay (random ass number) for the company to become green. People are really good at ignoring negative consequences that are not directly apparent, and by the time we see direct consequences of climate change, beyond "oh this year is a little hotter then the previous one" it will be way way to late. Which do you think is more likely, that 50% of the workers of a company that are not insulated collectively decide not to give a shit, or that a board of CEOs that are insulated decide not to give a shit? Sounds fairly clear cut to me, do you disagree? I'd love to see why. I will confidently say neither of them will give enough of a shit. Which again goes back to what Belisarius said. And there is zero evidence that once they do the people make decisions collectively that are better for the environment and not to make their own lifestyles more comfortable So far your answer still is 'magic'. Walk up to 100 average Joes and ask them how much salary and living comfort they will give up to save the environment. The answer will be "not enough". Well then we're going to die, which I also believe is the most likely outcome. Is that an issue for you? On January 16 2020 05:14 Nebuchad wrote:
Well yeah, it's likely that humanity is screwed. We realize that. Doesn't mean we just stop fighting in my book. Not particularly, I resigned myself to the fact that humanity as a whole isn't going to do enough a while ago. And yes I am aware that is a rather pessimistic outlook. Nor do I think you shouldn't stop fighting. But you should realise that people aren't just going to jump aboard of whatever idea you come up with. I should have mentioned that I don't want you to jump aboard my ideas, I want us to come together and figure out better ideas together once we have acknowledged that the ideas we have currently aren't working. It's a pretty massive failure of me to never have mentioned that before on the forum, I realize that if I had people would stop saying this to me. My belief is that humanity is the fundamental issue with the problems facing humanity. Hopefully we survive long enough to develop advanced enough AI to take over the task of making important decisions for us. You can imagine a situation wherein AI distribution of certain goods and services is better than the market. Basically sidestepping Hayek's main criticisms of socialism.
Your faith in AI is noted. As a developer of AI, I don't think this is true at all. (Most) AIs are just really complex optimization functions... and that happens to be what the market is as well. The advantage of an AI is that it can optimize over other things than monetary value... but then we get into the question of how we measure the goodness of a distribution. Clearly monetary value has problems (for instance, it leads to people producing strawberries in the middle of winter), but what is a better alternative? AIs won't help you answer that, as it's a problem of what we value as society, not of optimization.
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Northern Ireland24513 Posts
On January 16 2020 22:09 Uldridge wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2020 21:14 Acrofales wrote:
I don't think this is fair at all. Most technology isn't invented to make us consume. Most technology is invented to do something new that people want to do, or to make "labour intensive" tasks less labour intensive (automation). Whether that is watch streaming videos over the internet while on the train, cure an ailment that has so far been uncurable (or at least, improve our treatments), or automate an entire supply chain with computation and robotics.
It's not the technology that turns us into good little consumers, it's US. It's people who look at glossy magazines/websites/"influencers" and conclude they need the newest jeans/telephone/game/washing machine RIGHT NOW. Sure, we can blame the existence of these marketing channels on capitalism, but it wouldn't be fair: wanting what your neighbour has is as old as humanity (and probably as old as life itself). We've just gotten better at looking further (we have more neighbours) and highlighting why some new gadget is "absolutely essential". But it's not capitalism that did that. People in communist East Germany were looking longingly at all the shiny things they had in West Germany. That innate desire to have "stuff" doesn't go away just because the system doesn't allow you to have it, and people find other means of procuring it (aka black market). Sure, wanting stuff is a thing, but people realizing they want stuff because of commercials because they didn't know that kind of thing or brand existsted also is a thing. You can't deny the absolute lengths the marketing industry will go to just to abuse people's mental state so they will want it even more. It's beyond despicable to prey on these people that don't necessarly need things, but are subtly convinced they do definitely absolutely do need it because it's the best thing ever. This happens mostly when certain brands get big enough that they can constantly bombard tv/radio/.. with their ads.
I read an interesting paper where researchers were able to algorithmically predict when someone with Bipolar was entering a hypomanic/manic state solely based off their social media activity.
A state where your impulse control totally goes out the window. There’s was more cautionary research, basically saying that a predictive model that identifies individuals in this state could then open the floodgates to targeted advertisements.
There are definitely people out there who think that’s actually a good idea and not something with serious ethical problems, and its such folks who are in industry rather than in academia.
Marketing isn’t particularly effective in making me buy things, just in making me temporarily miserable for various reasons so I do try to avoid it as much as I can.
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On January 16 2020 22:26 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2020 21:14 Acrofales wrote:On January 16 2020 08:50 Wombat_NI wrote:On January 16 2020 08:47 Gorsameth wrote:On January 16 2020 08:17 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2020 08:03 Gorsameth wrote:On January 16 2020 07:43 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2020 07:41 Gorsameth wrote:On January 16 2020 07:33 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2020 07:28 Gorsameth wrote:
[quote]They don't have to insulate themselves from the consequences. They just don't have to give a shit, or less shit then they give about losing 20% of their pay (random ass number) for the company to become green.
People are really good at ignoring negative consequences that are not directly apparent, and by the time we see direct consequences of climate change, beyond "oh this year is a little hotter then the previous one" it will be way way to late. Which do you think is more likely, that 50% of the workers of a company that are not insulated collectively decide not to give a shit, or that a board of CEOs that are insulated decide not to give a shit? Sounds fairly clear cut to me, do you disagree? I'd love to see why. I will confidently say neither of them will give enough of a shit. Which again goes back to what Belisarius said. And there is zero evidence that once they do the people make decisions collectively that are better for the environment and not to make their own lifestyles more comfortable So far your answer still is 'magic'. Walk up to 100 average Joes and ask them how much salary and living comfort they will give up to save the environment. The answer will be "not enough". Well then we're going to die, which I also believe is the most likely outcome. Is that an issue for you? On January 16 2020 05:14 Nebuchad wrote:
Well yeah, it's likely that humanity is screwed. We realize that. Doesn't mean we just stop fighting in my book. Not particularly, I resigned myself to the fact that humanity as a whole isn't going to do enough a while ago. And yes I am aware that is a rather pessimistic outlook. Nor do I think you shouldn't stop fighting. But you should realise that people aren't just going to jump aboard of whatever idea you come up with. I should have mentioned that I don't want you to jump aboard my ideas, I want us to come together and figure out better ideas together once we have acknowledged that the ideas we have currently aren't working. It's a pretty massive failure of me to never have mentioned that before on the forum, I realize that if I had people would stop saying this to me. My belief is that humanity is the fundamental issue with the problems facing humanity. Hopefully we survive long enough to develop advanced enough AI to take over the task of making important decisions for us. Why would that help? Within the current framework all such technology is being utilised into more efficiently converting people into being good little consumers. I don't think this is fair at all. Most technology isn't invented to make us consume. Most technology is invented to do something new that people want to do, or to make "labour intensive" tasks less labour intensive (automation). Whether that is watch streaming videos over the internet while on the train, cure an ailment that has so far been uncurable (or at least, improve our treatments), or automate an entire supply chain with computation and robotics. It's not the technology that turns us into good little consumers, it's US. It's people who look at glossy magazines/websites/"influencers" and conclude they need the newest jeans/telephone/game/washing machine RIGHT NOW. Sure, we can blame the existence of these marketing channels on capitalism, but it wouldn't be fair: wanting what your neighbour has is as old as humanity (and probably as old as life itself). We've just gotten better at looking further (we have more neighbours) and highlighting why some new gadget is "absolutely essential". But it's not capitalism that did that. People in communist East Germany were looking longingly at all the shiny things they had in West Germany. That innate desire to have "stuff" doesn't go away just because the system doesn't allow you to have it, and people find other means of procuring it (aka black market). Well all that is mostly true yeah, but that’s what I meant by ‘within the current framework’. I’m simultaneously optimistic on AI and automation and extremely pessimistic on it at the same time. There’s a lot of potential there, equally look what kind of companies are pumping money into it. Marketing of some kind has existed since forever, it’s just simultaneously matured and become more pervasive in the current era. Personally I would really like to opt out of some but alas. Anyway yeah, people do want things and stuff, to some degree anyway. Plus new experiences as you said, as well as the social component.
I don't think anyone doubts that people want things, experiences and stuff.
But marketing makes you want stuff and things which you wouldn't want otherwise, that is the whole point of it. It is basically a form of mind control trying to shift your wants from what you would inherently want towards what the marketer wants to sell to you.
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On January 16 2020 22:29 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2020 14:19 Belisarius wrote:That is less than 10% of people who say they are willing to pay anything like the amount it might actually cost, and this is in a response-biased group that already skews educated and left. I can’t find the original article but here is a fancy interactographic thing they did afterwards. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-17/what-youd-spend-to-halt-climate-change-and-what-you-could-get/11784704 Everyone agrees climate change is a problem. Nobody will ever agree to do anything meaningful about it unless they are forced to. This problem is not solved by socialism because it is not due to power structures, it is due to people - and not just rich people - being ignorant and selfish and short-sighted. It's kind of a stupid survey, not gonna lie. I might have answered zilch on that myself. We don't know how much money the people have, we don't know how much giving away 200$ or 2000$ affects them. Ask how many are willing to drive less or to go vegan if you want a clearer picture of the percentage that's willing to change its lifestyle. You'll hit about 25% I'd assume? But when your asking industries to go green your asking them to make less money (because its generally more expensive to operate environmentally neutral). And for a worker owned industry your asking them to give up money they would have otherwise earned.
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On January 16 2020 22:54 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2020 22:29 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2020 14:19 Belisarius wrote:That is less than 10% of people who say they are willing to pay anything like the amount it might actually cost, and this is in a response-biased group that already skews educated and left. I can’t find the original article but here is a fancy interactographic thing they did afterwards. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-17/what-youd-spend-to-halt-climate-change-and-what-you-could-get/11784704 Everyone agrees climate change is a problem. Nobody will ever agree to do anything meaningful about it unless they are forced to. This problem is not solved by socialism because it is not due to power structures, it is due to people - and not just rich people - being ignorant and selfish and short-sighted. It's kind of a stupid survey, not gonna lie. I might have answered zilch on that myself. We don't know how much money the people have, we don't know how much giving away 200$ or 2000$ affects them. Ask how many are willing to drive less or to go vegan if you want a clearer picture of the percentage that's willing to change its lifestyle. You'll hit about 25% I'd assume? But when your asking industries to go green your asking them to make less money (because its generally more expensive to operate environmentally neutral). And for a worker owned industry your asking them to give up money they would have otherwise earned.
That is only true in a system where external costs are paid for by society.
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Northern Ireland24513 Posts
On January 16 2020 22:29 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2020 14:19 Belisarius wrote:That is less than 10% of people who say they are willing to pay anything like the amount it might actually cost, and this is in a response-biased group that already skews educated and left. I can’t find the original article but here is a fancy interactographic thing they did afterwards. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-17/what-youd-spend-to-halt-climate-change-and-what-you-could-get/11784704 Everyone agrees climate change is a problem. Nobody will ever agree to do anything meaningful about it unless they are forced to. This problem is not solved by socialism because it is not due to power structures, it is due to people - and not just rich people - being ignorant and selfish and short-sighted. It's kind of a stupid survey, not gonna lie. I might have answered zilch on that myself. We don't know how much money the people have, we don't know how much giving away 200$ or 2000$ affects them. Ask how many are willing to drive less or to go vegan if you want a clearer picture of the percentage that's willing to change its lifestyle. You'll hit about 25% I'd assume?
How do you even answer such a question? What would this hypothetical money be used for for example?
I know down in ye olde Irish Republic people are extremely pissy about Green tax proposals. But they’re not against such taxes per se at all, for the most part. It’s the lack of pushing carbon taxes onto industry and instead onto the populace.
My sense is said individuals would be (generally) fine with it if they were both taxed.
Lifestyle changes are important too as you say. Good luck getting people to give up the car without improving public transport, at least over here. Someone would maybe be sacrificing their ability to get to work without a horrendous commute for example.
In somewhere with better public transport that’s a much easier sell.
My cousin over in London was telling me of some car renting app she uses on the infrequent times her journey is awkward on the public transport system. Sounds a pretty neat way to fill in the gaps. I can’t recall the name but basically you register, locate a free car on your phone, do your drive and then leave it for the next person.
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Northern Ireland24513 Posts
On January 16 2020 22:45 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2020 22:26 Wombat_NI wrote:On January 16 2020 21:14 Acrofales wrote:On January 16 2020 08:50 Wombat_NI wrote:On January 16 2020 08:47 Gorsameth wrote:On January 16 2020 08:17 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2020 08:03 Gorsameth wrote:On January 16 2020 07:43 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2020 07:41 Gorsameth wrote:On January 16 2020 07:33 Nebuchad wrote:
[quote]
Which do you think is more likely, that 50% of the workers of a company that are not insulated collectively decide not to give a shit, or that a board of CEOs that are insulated decide not to give a shit? Sounds fairly clear cut to me, do you disagree? I'd love to see why. I will confidently say neither of them will give enough of a shit. Which again goes back to what Belisarius said. And there is zero evidence that once they do the people make decisions collectively that are better for the environment and not to make their own lifestyles more comfortable So far your answer still is 'magic'. Walk up to 100 average Joes and ask them how much salary and living comfort they will give up to save the environment. The answer will be "not enough". Well then we're going to die, which I also believe is the most likely outcome. Is that an issue for you? On January 16 2020 05:14 Nebuchad wrote:
Well yeah, it's likely that humanity is screwed. We realize that. Doesn't mean we just stop fighting in my book. Not particularly, I resigned myself to the fact that humanity as a whole isn't going to do enough a while ago. And yes I am aware that is a rather pessimistic outlook. Nor do I think you shouldn't stop fighting. But you should realise that people aren't just going to jump aboard of whatever idea you come up with. I should have mentioned that I don't want you to jump aboard my ideas, I want us to come together and figure out better ideas together once we have acknowledged that the ideas we have currently aren't working. It's a pretty massive failure of me to never have mentioned that before on the forum, I realize that if I had people would stop saying this to me. My belief is that humanity is the fundamental issue with the problems facing humanity. Hopefully we survive long enough to develop advanced enough AI to take over the task of making important decisions for us. Why would that help? Within the current framework all such technology is being utilised into more efficiently converting people into being good little consumers. I don't think this is fair at all. Most technology isn't invented to make us consume. Most technology is invented to do something new that people want to do, or to make "labour intensive" tasks less labour intensive (automation). Whether that is watch streaming videos over the internet while on the train, cure an ailment that has so far been uncurable (or at least, improve our treatments), or automate an entire supply chain with computation and robotics. It's not the technology that turns us into good little consumers, it's US. It's people who look at glossy magazines/websites/"influencers" and conclude they need the newest jeans/telephone/game/washing machine RIGHT NOW. Sure, we can blame the existence of these marketing channels on capitalism, but it wouldn't be fair: wanting what your neighbour has is as old as humanity (and probably as old as life itself). We've just gotten better at looking further (we have more neighbours) and highlighting why some new gadget is "absolutely essential". But it's not capitalism that did that. People in communist East Germany were looking longingly at all the shiny things they had in West Germany. That innate desire to have "stuff" doesn't go away just because the system doesn't allow you to have it, and people find other means of procuring it (aka black market). Well all that is mostly true yeah, but that’s what I meant by ‘within the current framework’. I’m simultaneously optimistic on AI and automation and extremely pessimistic on it at the same time. There’s a lot of potential there, equally look what kind of companies are pumping money into it. Marketing of some kind has existed since forever, it’s just simultaneously matured and become more pervasive in the current era. Personally I would really like to opt out of some but alas. Anyway yeah, people do want things and stuff, to some degree anyway. Plus new experiences as you said, as well as the social component. I don't think anyone doubts that people want things, experiences and stuff. But marketing makes you want stuff and things which you wouldn't want otherwise, that is the whole point of it. It is basically a form of mind control trying to shift your wants from what you would inherently want towards what the marketer wants to sell to you.
I agree (see above), I was merely agreeing that people do want things, as in I’m not some utopian socialist.
It’s a tossup between invasive marketing and terrible landlords as to which particular facet of capitalism I like the least.
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On January 16 2020 22:54 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2020 22:29 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2020 14:19 Belisarius wrote:That is less than 10% of people who say they are willing to pay anything like the amount it might actually cost, and this is in a response-biased group that already skews educated and left. I can’t find the original article but here is a fancy interactographic thing they did afterwards. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-17/what-youd-spend-to-halt-climate-change-and-what-you-could-get/11784704 Everyone agrees climate change is a problem. Nobody will ever agree to do anything meaningful about it unless they are forced to. This problem is not solved by socialism because it is not due to power structures, it is due to people - and not just rich people - being ignorant and selfish and short-sighted. It's kind of a stupid survey, not gonna lie. I might have answered zilch on that myself. We don't know how much money the people have, we don't know how much giving away 200$ or 2000$ affects them. Ask how many are willing to drive less or to go vegan if you want a clearer picture of the percentage that's willing to change its lifestyle. You'll hit about 25% I'd assume? But when your asking industries to go green your asking them to make less money (because its generally more expensive to operate environmentally neutral). And for a worker owned industry your asking them to give up money they would have otherwise earned.
Yeah.
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On January 16 2020 22:39 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2020 09:48 IgnE wrote:On January 16 2020 08:47 Gorsameth wrote:On January 16 2020 08:17 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2020 08:03 Gorsameth wrote:On January 16 2020 07:43 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2020 07:41 Gorsameth wrote:On January 16 2020 07:33 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2020 07:28 Gorsameth wrote:On January 16 2020 07:21 Nebuchad wrote:
[quote]
It's somewhat easy for a few rich people to insulate themselves from the consequences of climate change. It's a lot harder for the entirety of the workers of a company to do so. So no, I don't think that a democratic worker force would make the same decisions than a single CEO would, in fact I think that's pretty ludicrous to believe.
It's not just that, it would also be harder for them to promote actively lying to the people for personal benefit, as the whole enterprise would have to agree to do that. So we wouldn't see as much propaganda and in consequence, not as much climate change or overall science denial.
You are underestimating the dynamic of an elite vs a people. Replacing the elites with the people doesn't just make the people the elite. They're still the people. They don't have to insulate themselves from the consequences. They just don't have to give a shit, or less shit then they give about losing 20% of their pay (random ass number) for the company to become green. People are really good at ignoring negative consequences that are not directly apparent, and by the time we see direct consequences of climate change, beyond "oh this year is a little hotter then the previous one" it will be way way to late. Which do you think is more likely, that 50% of the workers of a company that are not insulated collectively decide not to give a shit, or that a board of CEOs that are insulated decide not to give a shit? Sounds fairly clear cut to me, do you disagree? I'd love to see why. I will confidently say neither of them will give enough of a shit. Which again goes back to what Belisarius said. And there is zero evidence that once they do the people make decisions collectively that are better for the environment and not to make their own lifestyles more comfortable So far your answer still is 'magic'. Walk up to 100 average Joes and ask them how much salary and living comfort they will give up to save the environment. The answer will be "not enough". Well then we're going to die, which I also believe is the most likely outcome. Is that an issue for you? On January 16 2020 05:14 Nebuchad wrote:
Well yeah, it's likely that humanity is screwed. We realize that. Doesn't mean we just stop fighting in my book. Not particularly, I resigned myself to the fact that humanity as a whole isn't going to do enough a while ago. And yes I am aware that is a rather pessimistic outlook. Nor do I think you shouldn't stop fighting. But you should realise that people aren't just going to jump aboard of whatever idea you come up with. I should have mentioned that I don't want you to jump aboard my ideas, I want us to come together and figure out better ideas together once we have acknowledged that the ideas we have currently aren't working. It's a pretty massive failure of me to never have mentioned that before on the forum, I realize that if I had people would stop saying this to me. My belief is that humanity is the fundamental issue with the problems facing humanity. Hopefully we survive long enough to develop advanced enough AI to take over the task of making important decisions for us. You can imagine a situation wherein AI distribution of certain goods and services is better than the market. Basically sidestepping Hayek's main criticisms of socialism. Your faith in AI is noted. As a developer of AI, I don't think this is true at all. (Most) AIs are just really complex optimization functions... and that happens to be what the market is as well. The advantage of an AI is that it can optimize over other things than monetary value... but then we get into the question of how we measure the goodness of a distribution. Clearly monetary value has problems (for instance, it leads to people producing strawberries in the middle of winter), but what is a better alternative? AIs won't help you answer that, as it's a problem of what we value as society, not of optimization.
I am not saying that AIs will tell us what to value, but you said yourself that they are “complex optimization functions.” Given some human mandate it is entirely plausible that we will have AIs better at optimizing the distribution of certain goods than markets. That’s not a “faith” in AI, it’s simply an observation with caveats.
One of the main liberal criticisms of socialism is that the market is a better way of organizing productive capacity than any kind of centralized planning. I am saying maybe so with humans alone, but you can imagine networks organized by AI that might be even better, because AI capacity for optimization greatly enhances the focus and power of self-organizers who lack institutional support. Imagine AI helping organize a local homeowner power grid for solar, or even a lawn mowing service. Think distributed computing but put towards real-life goods and services that have high individual transaction costs but also higher returns the larger the network. Basically a more optimized socialism, that lends itself to syndicalist community organizing.
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Canada5565 Posts
On January 16 2020 21:02 Artisreal wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2020 15:49 GreenHorizons wrote:On January 16 2020 15:40 Sermokala wrote:On January 16 2020 15:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On January 16 2020 15:06 Sermokala wrote:
You don't think that they went through democracy and that it was a horrible disaster that cost them repeatedly until they returned to having kings? And that communist governments aren't defined by a strongman leader like Stalin Gorbachov mao Castro and Tito?
I don't think Andrew Jackson was a federalist as he was the creator of the democratic party and Jefferson was the creator of the federalist's party but again you don't provide any actual argument on that so ....
I don't want to have to be the one to break this to you but women have been historically oppressed and dismissed from leadership positions in history. Pretty sure they were digging on democracy (probably not so much the women and they needed to be incentivized) then there was a coup/lost battle/some other stuff, about a year under the "30 Tyrants" then struggled to rebuild their democracy (that excluded ~50% of the population based on gender). Then some notable figures came through and conquered the land/subjugated the people a couple times over the next 100 or so years (presuming the kings you're referring to are Philip and Alexander). The Wiki sums it up this way: The Thirty Tyrants' brief reign was marred by violence and corruption. In fact, historians have argued that the violence and brutality the Thirty carried out in Athens was necessary to transition Athens from a democracy to an oligarchy.[15] However, the violence produced an unanticipated paradox. The more violent the Thirty's regime became, the more opposition they faced en.wikipedia.orgI think we've reached the end of constructive dialogue between us on this though. We didn't have a dialogue. You said I was wrong, refused to elaborate on the why. then made arguments on my behalf why I was right. Then tried to have a "I'm taking my ball and going home" moment. This is not how normal people have discussions GH. I hope for your sake you realize that. Your argument presumed a bunch of unsourced facts that didn't match up with my interpretation/recollection supplemented with some sourcing. Your argument veered wildly away from my question for someone else and in hopes I may still get a response that pertains to those issues/questions I raised and seeing little-nothing further to be gained in our exchange I'm not going to argue things indefinitely. I'd agree that it's not a great way to interact, but dragging this out any further is assuredly less desirable for everyone. On January 16 2020 15:46 Artisreal wrote:On January 16 2020 15:34 GreenHorizons wrote:On January 16 2020 15:30 Artisreal wrote:On January 16 2020 14:23 GreenHorizons wrote:Everyone agrees climate change is a problem. Nobody will ever agree to do anything meaningful about it unless they are forced to. How do you suggest we force them? Laws and strict surveillance. Like China?  More like adequate staffing for the bureaucratic institutions whose duty it is to ensure that laws are adhered to. Like carrying out unannounced inspections, in depth analysis of documentation and resilience against loopholes that undermine the intent of the law. Sounds like we've slipped into the realm of fantasy where we aren't (after decades) still fighting just to get cops to stop turning off the few working cameras they have and prisons not to "misplace" critical evidence in even the most absurd circumstances (Epstein video outside his cell was "accidentally lost" despite multiple protocols and calls to preserve them) Well, let's not call it the one solution to end all problems - say it's a piece of the greater puzzle. Add a global and significant carbon tax and deploy the Brazilian military to combat the wideliy illegalized logging. The correct term we're looking for is a revolutionary overhaul of our environmental legislation and enforcement. Law and order. Should also appeal to Conservatives all over the globe. Though Germany definitely has a historic tendency to be blind on the right eye - which comes to light more and more these last years. And evidence disappearing, well it just so happened on the work phone of our new President of the European Commission in her former emplyoment as Minister of Defence. I think conservatives and liberals agree on a lot of things, and we often forget that. Conservatives are wary of any economic change because it could be communism, and liberals are wary of lowering immigration because it could be racism (that's my guess. I have no idea why they are for mass immigration). Another big one, in the U.S., is gun laws. But I think a better angle to reduce violence that both right and left agree on would be addressing the problem of solo parent households -- specifically boys growing up without a father. I think Obama said as much in Chicago, then was attacked for it and left it alone.
I hope environmental funds and enforcement don't fall primarily on the common taxpayer. Would be a huge win for corporations -- like Chomsky says: the government loves to privatize the profits and socialize the costs. Regulations on corporations would show that the government is making it a serious issue. For example, low hanging fruit like creating way less packaging waste. Don't need three layers of plastic with bubble wrap in an oversized cardboard box. Less packaging at grocery stores, instead large dispensers and re-usable containers. Limit cruise ships somehow.
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i don’t think garbage is more expensive than recycling. many municipal recycling programs in the US have been abandoned because china stopped taking our recycling-laden ships and the costs shot up. so what exactly do you mean when you say that recycling is cheaper?
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On January 17 2020 00:51 IgnE wrote:
i don’t think garbage is more expensive than recycling. many municipal recycling programs in the US have been abandoned because china stopped taking our recycling-laden ships and the costs shot up. so what exactly do you mean when you say that recycling is cheaper?
One major reason they stopped taking it was because they were full of garbage that we lied and told them was recycling.
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On January 17 2020 01:17 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2020 00:51 IgnE wrote:
i don’t think garbage is more expensive than recycling. many municipal recycling programs in the US have been abandoned because china stopped taking our recycling-laden ships and the costs shot up. so what exactly do you mean when you say that recycling is cheaper? One major reason they stopped taking it was because they were full of garbage that we lied and told them was recycling.
do you mean some kind of blatant inclusion of pure garbage or do you mean it had to be sorted? many articles of trash are a mixture of materials, either unrecyclable or of different recyclability, which when combined with the not insignificant difficulty for the average consumer of deciding what is recyclable and how, makes recycling piles a total mess. my understanding was that we sent our trash to china because of cheap sorting labor for unmixing it all and because china has recycling facilities for all the various plastics, papers, metals, and glasses
edit: jimmic explained some of that, but my overall impression is that “recycling” is a huge clusterfuck and militant wishcyclers who admonish people for “not recycling” majorly annoy me
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On January 17 2020 01:41 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2020 01:17 GreenHorizons wrote:On January 17 2020 00:51 IgnE wrote:
i don’t think garbage is more expensive than recycling. many municipal recycling programs in the US have been abandoned because china stopped taking our recycling-laden ships and the costs shot up. so what exactly do you mean when you say that recycling is cheaper? One major reason they stopped taking it was because they were full of garbage that we lied and told them was recycling. do you mean some kind of blatant inclusion of pure garbage or do you mean it had to be sorted? many articles of trash are a mixture of materials, either unrecyclable or of different recyclability, which when combined with the not insignificant difficulty for the average consumer of deciding what is recyclable and how, makes recycling piles a total mess. my understanding was that we sent our trash to china because of cheap sorting labor for unmixing it all and because china has recycling facilities for all the various plastics, papers, metals, and glasses
All of it. From straight up garbage bins labeled as recycling to the more mundane lazily sorted/cleaned stuff that was recycled in good faith.
We (in cooperation with corporations/lowly smugglers in China) smuggled a lot in too.
China’s customs authority intercepted nearly 1 million tonnes of illegally imported trash in the first half of this year, it said on Wednesday, part of a crackdown on smuggled waste materials.
www.reuters.com
edit: “recycling” is a huge clusterfuck and militant wishcyclers who admonish people for “not recycling” majorly annoy me Yeah, composting is a reasonable expectation for people with yards but most recycling programs in the US have always been bullshit and everyone (except the avg Joes filling their bins) knew it.
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EPT
