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On January 19 2020 00:01 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2020 15:47 Sermokala wrote:
a "well regulated" Militia is meaningless in a nation without organized or regulated militia or even the very basis for what regulations a militia should undertake. having your argument based on that doesn't have a leg to stand on. while the argument that the text means that the militia, being the mechanism for what state used to ensure the security of the people, couldn't be used to deprive the people of their ability to keep and bear arms has at least historical precedent and logical progression. Id say you certainly have a well regulated militia in todays term, the national guard. They train, are ready to defend your nation if need be. Edit: In good news former congressman Collins was convicted for insider trading. The punishment seems light but better than nothing! https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/newspolitics/former-rep-chris-collins-sentenced-to-2-years-in-prison-for-insider-trading/ar-BBZ4W6V?li=AAggFp5
The national guard forms more of a reserve army/garrison role. the last Militia act specifically reformed these units to a dual federal/state commanded force. They also in that same act specified an "unorganized militia" to be everything else.
I'm personally for a governor of some state to announce that they are calling up a militia and drafting every able-bodied male and female in the state, then ordering said militia to bring their guns to a state holding facility for readiness, maintenance, and organizational reasons. They then have effectively removed all guns in the state from circulation or made anyone with a gun punishable by a military tribunal, something wildly more efficient then the regular judicial system. Let the supreme court deal with that shit.
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On January 19 2020 10:41 Aquanim wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2020 10:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On January 19 2020 09:19 Gorgonoth wrote:@Drone Thank you for your thought-provoking post. I had a couple of thoughts and questions regarding what you wrote about the role of greed in capitalistic societies. You said that you don't believe that greed is inherent in human nature and that it arises in human capitalistic societies. This seems to me to be a tenuous assertion. Isn't greed simply the motivating forces of self-preservation, and generally self or perhaps community-centered focus, which we can see working mightily in the earliest of human settlements and early tribes long before a formal capitalistic system? Perhaps I am being too simplistic, but doesn't this seem to be the question that we should be honing in on, because does the global economic system really matter that much if the individual's which we are basing the system on inherently flawed in a way which will lend towards destruction? Of course, we can judge and distinguish between better and worse. Capitalism has undeniably led, as you opened with, to an impressive surge in human quality of life. And I am inclined to believe, that socialistic systems where market control is centralized have tended toward authoritarian regimes that benefit few and are inferior towards allowing greater economic freedom and having free markets. Generally at least. But I don't want to make this seem like I am trying to reopen a discussion on capitalism or socialism. I have great faith others will do that for me. I'm curious what you think about the most basic element of a society, the individual. In short, I think it is not only tenuous, but dangerous to say that greed is not inherent, but external; because this implies if we only stumble upon the right formula, the right societal situations, we can produce people who are good. If you believe this it inevitably leads and has led to the conclusion that we must experiment, and make certain sacrifices to attain this, you have to break a couple eggs (Or millions of people like Stalin did) to achieve this perfect societal utopian omelet. + Show Spoiler +Weaver alludes to this of course. To him, rejection of the transcendent truth of "original sin"; shaped the 20th century's genocides. Maybe talk of an Adamic nature or original sin is too religious to be approachable. Religion, I guess which we should input with "Christianity" from now on since that is the only one which I can converse on its theology, is fascinating to me because it can be percieved wildly differently depending on the particular niche you grew up in, and a lot of very smart people spend their entire lives in a ultra-narrow field of study that seems so insignificant to the untrained. Anyway, I will say what I was taught was Relational Christianity. Absolutely everything is viewed through the lenses of a view transcendent truths which are accepted, not always for the verifiability of the truths, but for the results of which their acceptance brings, or the way they offer a systematic approach to the world. I'll try to hone in on one. The trial, crucifixion, death, and resurrection is a revelation of God's character but also of his design for what human relationships ought to be like. Jesus was crucified because it was a reflection of the character of God, not a payment or forensic transaction. Crucifixion represented utter humiliation, powerlessness, and was the most extreme end of human suffering which was endured to remind us that humans have their priorities wrong. The goal of life is not to move towards power, to gather popularity or riches; but to live relationally committed lives. We realize true love for God only to the extent that we love and live for each other.
One key part of this is that humans in their natural state, are fallen. We do not possess within ourselves the power to be good except in the context of our relationships with others where we begin to work towards this. It's not as pessimistic as a Calvinistic theology for instance, but it's incompatible with the idea that humans are good and then corrupted by society because the core of what humans inherently value is wrong. E.g. We think that the goal of life is to protect and seek to save ourselves, not lose it for others. The main point I'd like to submit is that human greed is inherent in human nature and we have ingrained self-destructive tendencies. The corollary of this is that no matter what economic system you implement, you cannot get around the greed and pervasive self-seeking nature of man. Attempts like you say to move to a socialistic global system will run into this same insufferable problem. People will just exploit that system in new ways to benefit themselves, probably resulting in a global elite that prospers while the rest of the world gets hit by a massive recession and the nastiest depths of human depravity is exposed. Maybe I'm way off here, but it seems like a fast track to a dystopian Mcormac-esque future. The idea that people are inherently selfish is a philosophical/practical one, not scientific. Since they've been investigating the claim scientifically, the research shows the opposite. Also that extrinsic rewards result in worse behavior rather than reinforcing good behavior. Such traits emerge so early in our lives that they appear to be innate. In other words, it seems that we have evolved to be this way. By the age of 14 months, children begin to help each other, for example by handing over objects another child can’t reach. By the time they are two, they start sharing things they value. By the age of three, they start to protest against other people’s violation of moral norms.
A fascinating paper in the journal Infancy reveals that reward has nothing to do with it. Three- to five-year-olds are less likely to help someone a second time if they have been rewarded for doing it the first time. In other words, extrinsic rewards appear to undermine the intrinsic desire to help.
The study also discovered that children of this age are more inclined to help people if they perceive them to be suffering, and that they want to see someone helped whether or not they do it themselves. This suggests that they are motivated by a genuine concern for other people’s welfare, rather than by a desire to look good. www.theguardian.com I think you (and the Guardian article) are substantially over-selling the quoted research. For starters, "Inherently selfish" doesn't necessarily mean only motivated by selfishness or only performing selfish acts.
I don't think either are making that claim.
The term "inherently selfish" as I understand it refers to the "Homo Economicus" of philosophical history. Not that humans innately (to the degree they possess things like psychopathy, sociopathy, etc...) posses the capacity for greed.
While there is a strain of utopic socialism with varying degrees of popularity at any moment that many (non-socialists) imagine, I'll just mention that my understanding of socialism doesn't presume people will never do greedy things or that a socialist economic system will eliminate the human capacity for greed.
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On January 19 2020 09:19 Gorgonoth wrote:@Drone Thank you for your thought-provoking post. I had a couple of thoughts and questions regarding what you wrote about the role of greed in capitalistic societies. You said that you don't believe that greed is inherent in human nature and that it arises in human capitalistic societies. This seems to me to be a tenuous assertion. Isn't greed simply the motivating forces of self-preservation, and generally self or perhaps community-centered focus, which we can see working mightily in the earliest of human settlements and early tribes long before a formal capitalistic system? Perhaps I am being too simplistic, but doesn't this seem to be the question that we should be honing in on, because does the global economic system really matter that much if the individual's which we are basing the system on inherently flawed in a way which will lend towards destruction? Of course, we can judge and distinguish between better and worse. Capitalism has undeniably led, as you opened with, to an impressive surge in human quality of life. And I am inclined to believe, that socialistic systems where market control is centralized have tended toward authoritarian regimes that benefit few and are inferior towards allowing greater economic freedom and having free markets. Generally at least. But I don't want to make this seem like I am trying to reopen a discussion on capitalism or socialism. I have great faith others will do that for me. I'm curious what you think about the most basic element of a society, the individual. In short, I think it is not only tenuous, but dangerous to say that greed is not inherent, but external; because this implies if we only stumble upon the right formula, the right societal situations, we can produce people who are good. If you believe this it inevitably leads and has led to the conclusion that we must experiment, and make certain sacrifices to attain this, you have to break a couple eggs (Or millions of people like Stalin did) to achieve this perfect societal utopian omelet. + Show Spoiler +Weaver alludes to this of course. To him, rejection of the transcendent truth of "original sin"; shaped the 20th century's genocides. Maybe talk of an Adamic nature or original sin is too religious to be approachable. Religion, I guess which we should input with "Christianity" from now on since that is the only one which I can converse on its theology, is fascinating to me because it can be percieved wildly differently depending on the particular niche you grew up in, and a lot of very smart people spend their entire lives in a ultra-narrow field of study that seems so insignificant to the untrained. Anyway, I will say what I was taught was Relational Christianity. Absolutely everything is viewed through the lenses of a view transcendent truths which are accepted, not always for the verifiability of the truths, but for the results of which their acceptance brings, or the way they offer a systematic approach to the world. I'll try to hone in on one. The trial, crucifixion, death, and resurrection is a revelation of God's character but also of his design for what human relationships ought to be like. Jesus was crucified because it was a reflection of the character of God, not a payment or forensic transaction. Crucifixion represented utter humiliation, powerlessness, and was the most extreme end of human suffering which was endured to remind us that humans have their priorities wrong. The goal of life is not to move towards power, to gather popularity or riches; but to live relationally committed lives. We realize true love for God only to the extent that we love and live for each other.
One key part of this is that humans in their natural state, are fallen. We do not possess within ourselves the power to be good except in the context of our relationships with others where we begin to work towards this. It's not as pessimistic as a Calvinistic theology for instance, but it's incompatible with the idea that humans are good and then corrupted by society because the core of what humans inherently value is wrong. E.g. We think that the goal of life is to protect and seek to save ourselves, not lose it for others. The main point I'd like to submit is that human greed is inherent in human nature and we have ingrained self-destructive tendencies. The corollary of this is that no matter what economic system you implement, you cannot get around the greed and pervasive self-seeking nature of man. Attempts like you say to move to a socialistic global system will run into this same insufferable problem. People will just exploit that system in new ways to benefit themselves, probably resulting in a global elite that prospers while the rest of the world gets hit by a massive recession and the nastiest depths of human depravity is exposed. Maybe I'm way off here, but it seems like a fast track to a dystopian Mcormac-esque future.
who is "Weaver"? you can't just one-name somebody that nobody else has ever heard of.
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On January 19 2020 10:52 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2020 09:19 Gorgonoth wrote:@Drone Thank you for your thought-provoking post. I had a couple of thoughts and questions regarding what you wrote about the role of greed in capitalistic societies. You said that you don't believe that greed is inherent in human nature and that it arises in human capitalistic societies. This seems to me to be a tenuous assertion. Isn't greed simply the motivating forces of self-preservation, and generally self or perhaps community-centered focus, which we can see working mightily in the earliest of human settlements and early tribes long before a formal capitalistic system? Perhaps I am being too simplistic, but doesn't this seem to be the question that we should be honing in on, because does the global economic system really matter that much if the individual's which we are basing the system on inherently flawed in a way which will lend towards destruction? Of course, we can judge and distinguish between better and worse. Capitalism has undeniably led, as you opened with, to an impressive surge in human quality of life. And I am inclined to believe, that socialistic systems where market control is centralized have tended toward authoritarian regimes that benefit few and are inferior towards allowing greater economic freedom and having free markets. Generally at least. But I don't want to make this seem like I am trying to reopen a discussion on capitalism or socialism. I have great faith others will do that for me. I'm curious what you think about the most basic element of a society, the individual. In short, I think it is not only tenuous, but dangerous to say that greed is not inherent, but external; because this implies if we only stumble upon the right formula, the right societal situations, we can produce people who are good. If you believe this it inevitably leads and has led to the conclusion that we must experiment, and make certain sacrifices to attain this, you have to break a couple eggs (Or millions of people like Stalin did) to achieve this perfect societal utopian omelet. + Show Spoiler +Richard Weaver alludes to this of course. To him, rejection of the transcendent truth of "original sin"; shaped the 20th century's genocides. Maybe talk of an Adamic nature or original sin is too religious to be approachable. Religion, I guess which we should input with "Christianity" from now on since that is the only one which I can converse on its theology, is fascinating to me because it can be percieved wildly differently depending on the particular niche you grew up in, and a lot of very smart people spend their entire lives in a ultra-narrow field of study that seems so insignificant to the untrained. Anyway, I will say what I was taught was Relational Christianity. Absolutely everything is viewed through the lenses of a view transcendent truths which are accepted, not always for the verifiability of the truths, but for the results of which their acceptance brings, or the way they offer a systematic approach to the world. I'll try to hone in on one. The trial, crucifixion, death, and resurrection is a revelation of God's character but also of his design for what human relationships ought to be like. Jesus was crucified because it was a reflection of the character of God, not a payment or forensic transaction. Crucifixion represented utter humiliation, powerlessness, and was the most extreme end of human suffering which was endured to remind us that humans have their priorities wrong. The goal of life is not to move towards power, to gather popularity or riches; but to live relationally committed lives. We realize true love for God only to the extent that we love and live for each other.
One key part of this is that humans in their natural state, are fallen. We do not possess within ourselves the power to be good except in the context of our relationships with others where we begin to work towards this. It's not as pessimistic as a Calvinistic theology for instance, but it's incompatible with the idea that humans are good and then corrupted by society because the core of what humans inherently value is wrong. E.g. We think that the goal of life is to protect and seek to save ourselves, not lose it for others. The main point I'd like to submit is that human greed is inherent in human nature and we have ingrained self-destructive tendencies. The corollary of this is that no matter what economic system you implement, you cannot get around the greed and pervasive self-seeking nature of man. Attempts like you say to move to a socialistic global system will run into this same insufferable problem. People will just exploit that system in new ways to benefit themselves, probably resulting in a global elite that prospers while the rest of the world gets hit by a massive recession and the nastiest depths of human depravity is exposed. Maybe I'm way off here, but it seems like a fast track to a dystopian Mcormac-esque future. who is "Weaver"? you can't just one-name somebody that nobody else has ever heard of.
Richard Weaver. My apologies.
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There's a huge difference between "humans can be innately motivated by altruism", and "humans are not innately motivated by greed."
That study demonstrates that children can be empathetic. That is cool, but it says nothing about whether they can also be selfish, nor about whether that is innate, nor about which of greed and altruism wins when the two come into conflict. Those are the things that you would need to address to get around this:
On January 19 2020 09:19 Gorgonoth wrote:
The main point I'd like to submit is that human greed is inherent in human nature and we have ingrained self-destructive tendencies. The corollary of this is that no matter what economic system you implement, you cannot get around the greed and pervasive self-seeking nature of man.
Personally, I think innate selfishness is pretty hard to argue against. I don't know how many people here have had children, but I think everyone would be aware that if you watched those kids for another half hour, one would begin to throw a tantrum because another started playing with something they also wanted to play with. They do both, just as adults do both.
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My argument on this would be quite different from Drone's. I certainly do believe that greed is a component of human nature. I just don't really know why people think that's an argument for capitalism or an argument against socialism. If you're entering the realm of questions of greed and altruism you're going into morality, and I can't tell what the correct morals are. Is it moral to have politics that are good for society, or is it moral to have politics that are good for you personally? I don't know. Neither do you.
I'm inclined to want to sidestep these types of debates because I don't think there's a way to get a definitive answer. I can just tell you that the mechanics of a society that rewards greed in individuals, but also requires a majority of individuals to be in a lower class while a minority benefits, will always have tensions around inequality. You should strive to be a winner, but the reality is that most people will lose. Those tensions will be solved either by a move to the left, which would be my preference, or using divide and conquer methods of diversion: have the people who are losing the most be from another country or another culture, that way the others won't feel like they're losing as hard, and won't feel as connected to the least fortunate in the society as they would otherwise. Also, isn't it those people's fault if you're not making a ton of money? They're driving down your wages by being willing to work for less! And don't let me start about welfare, you know that's the poor and the weak in society holding you back...
Similar methods were used to maintain slavery back in the day. You stopped having irish slaves because it was hard to maintain power over both the Irish and the Black people at the same time, so if the Irish could be something in between white people and black people instead of being just slaves like the rest of them, the system was easier to maintain.
Of course it's not exactly the same thing, I'm not trying to say nothing has changed. But the logic is similar. People who are given the capacity to systemically exploit others will, on average, exploit them as much as they are allowed to, or as much as they feel they can get away with; and they will work to maintain that capacity and increase it.
In a sense we're still going back to morals, because if you're on the side of greed, you could argue that society should be a place where "I" get to strive, not where "individuals" get to strive, and I don't think I can argue against that without using a moral axiom, except to say that in that case you probably should be arguing for absolutely monarchy where you are the monarch rather than for capitalism. But regardless, it's either a little bit more complicated, or a little simpler, depending on how you look at it, than "is greed a human characteristic".
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On January 19 2020 09:14 Nouar wrote:
The only thing Trump is reliably for, is exposure, TV. That's the only thing on his mind, what will make people talk and excite them. True, false, left, right, doesn't matter. Just, not black, especially not Obama.
He went on the right to get elected, saw what worked with these people, and is looking the part. I have to admit he is a genius at that. But it's only ever for his own short-lived benefit. Couldn't care less about the country, and it's sad that his voters don't care either about the long-term rift this is furthering.
This "vigilance against tyranny" is bullshit. It's not the 1700' anymore. The federal govt is not going to be a tyran, there's a democracy. If they lose votes (at the state level), tough luck, that means more people in their state are against that kind of shit and they are the minority. So it's not a tyranny. Rather, they are the ones being it.
The government of Virginia can do things, and you've got a congress to pass it or cross it, and then courts to appeal to it. A few things are necessarily going to stick, nothing strange here.
Again, it's Trump's behaviour the issue for me.
Not a governor, after busting would-be terrorists, trying to ensure a protest can happen in peace (unlike another one that happened 2 years ago). Not the guys protesting themselves. It's absolutely allowed and encouraged. Just, try to understand what happened, beyond your fucking guns ?
Generally speaking, Trump capitalized, and still does capitalize, on the divisive behavior primarily carried out by the left.
As for your belief that vigilance against tyranny is bullshit - youre free to hold whatever opinion you have. People who err towards Constitutionalist side of the spectrum disagree with you.
Democratic process or not, elected officials do not have the right to abuse their powers.
Trump's behavior is actually fine in this situation imo. All he's saying is to vote Republcian. I don't see how he's inciting violence or anything
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On January 19 2020 12:55 Nebuchad wrote:
My argument on this would be quite different from Drone's. I certainly do believe that greed is a component of human nature. I just don't really know why people think that's an argument for capitalism or an argument against socialism. If you're entering the realm of questions of greed and altruism you're going into morality, and I can't tell what the correct morals are. Is it moral to have politics that are good for society, or is it moral to have politics that are good for you personally? I don't know. Neither do you.
I'm inclined to want to sidestep these types of debates because I don't think there's a way to get a definitive answer. I can just tell you that the mechanics of a society that rewards greed in individuals, but also requires a majority of individuals to be in a lower class while a minority benefits, will always have tensions around inequality. You should strive to be a winner, but the reality is that most people will lose. Those tensions will be solved either by a move to the left, which would be my preference, or using divide and conquer methods of diversion: have the people who are losing the most be from another country or another culture, that way the others won't feel like they're losing as hard, and won't feel as connected to the least fortunate in the society as they would otherwise. Also, isn't it those people's fault if you're not making a ton of money? They're driving down your wages by being willing to work for less! And don't let me start about welfare, you know that's the poor and the weak in society holding you back...
Similar methods were used to maintain slavery back in the day. You stopped having irish slaves because it was hard to maintain power over both the Irish and the Black people at the same time, so if the Irish could be something in between white people and black people instead of being just slaves like the rest of them, the system was easier to maintain.
Of course it's not exactly the same thing, I'm not trying to say nothing has changed. But the logic is similar. People who are given the capacity to systemically exploit others will, on average, exploit them as much as they are allowed to, or as much as they feel they can get away with; and they will work to maintain that capacity and increase it.
In a sense we're still going back to morals, because if you're on the side of greed, you could argue that society should be a place where "I" get to strive, not where "individuals" get to strive, and I don't think I can argue against that without using a moral axiom, except to say that in that case you probably should be arguing for absolutely monarchy where you are the monarch rather than for capitalism. But regardless, it's either a little bit more complicated, or a little simpler, depending on how you look at it, than "is greed a human characteristic".
The basis for using greed/human nature as an argument doesnt really concern itself with morality. It concerns itself with economics. Simply put, if people are not allowed to profit from their productive endeavors, and instead have to yield to the priority of equalizing outcomes, they would lack motivation to work. The argument is that socialism, as an economic system, is basically incompatible with human nature. Even guys like Marx acknowledged this when he said his final-state Communist utopia would require the people ascending to a superior Communist individual.
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dudes are missing some context here.
ex: greed looked at as being a psychological disorder and/or a genetic predisposition(based on the length of AVPR1A gene / arginine vasopressin receptor 1A).
evolutionary wise, groups of people evolved to have it or not to have it; to have it longer or shorter. there is no universal human nature here.
Edit: some quotes and stuff https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02021/full Greed is one of the most common features of human nature, and it has recently attracted increasing research interest. The aims of this paper are to provide one of the first empirical investigations of the effects of greed on job performance and to explore the mediating role of the need for social status and perceived distributive justice. Using a working sample (N = 315) from China, the current study found that greed promoted both task and contextual performance through the intermediary effect of the need for social status. At the same time, greed inhibited both types of performance through perceived distributive justice. These results confirmed our hypothesis that greed is a double-edged sword with opposite effects on one’s performance.
...
The relationship between greed and performance is far from self-evident. In organizational settings, where individuals work together with others and social status is valued even more highly than money (Ezard, 2000). Thus, employees with higher level of greed are more likely to have a higher level of the need for social status, which makes them work harder to gain the status they long for. Meanwhile, greed may distort people’s perception of distributive justice, which may in turn hold them back from devoting themselves to their work. In sum, it seems two different paths may exist through which greed could affect performance. In the current study, we tested the facilitating effect of greed on performance through the need for social status and the inhibiting effect of greed on performance through perceived distributive justice.
https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2008.738 Researchers should nevertheless be careful about using the relatively blunt tool of the Dictator Game to draw conclusions about human generosity, says Nicholas Bardsley at the University of Southampton, UK, who studies such games.
His research suggests that players who routinely give money away as Dictators are also perfectly happy to steal money off other players in games that involve taking rather than giving. This suggests that the apparently more altruistic players in Ebstein's game may in fact be motivated by a desire simply to engage fully with the game, perhaps just because they feel that that is what's expected of them.
If that is true, then apparently ruthless dictators may be motivated not by out-and-out greed but by a simple lack of social skills, which leaves them unable to sense what's expected of them. that is where things are at at the moment.
in psychology, narcissism and greed are lumped together and narcissism(as pervasive grandiosity) is listed as a mental disorder.
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On January 19 2020 14:10 BerserkSword wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2020 12:55 Nebuchad wrote:
My argument on this would be quite different from Drone's. I certainly do believe that greed is a component of human nature. I just don't really know why people think that's an argument for capitalism or an argument against socialism. If you're entering the realm of questions of greed and altruism you're going into morality, and I can't tell what the correct morals are. Is it moral to have politics that are good for society, or is it moral to have politics that are good for you personally? I don't know. Neither do you.
I'm inclined to want to sidestep these types of debates because I don't think there's a way to get a definitive answer. I can just tell you that the mechanics of a society that rewards greed in individuals, but also requires a majority of individuals to be in a lower class while a minority benefits, will always have tensions around inequality. You should strive to be a winner, but the reality is that most people will lose. Those tensions will be solved either by a move to the left, which would be my preference, or using divide and conquer methods of diversion: have the people who are losing the most be from another country or another culture, that way the others won't feel like they're losing as hard, and won't feel as connected to the least fortunate in the society as they would otherwise. Also, isn't it those people's fault if you're not making a ton of money? They're driving down your wages by being willing to work for less! And don't let me start about welfare, you know that's the poor and the weak in society holding you back...
Similar methods were used to maintain slavery back in the day. You stopped having irish slaves because it was hard to maintain power over both the Irish and the Black people at the same time, so if the Irish could be something in between white people and black people instead of being just slaves like the rest of them, the system was easier to maintain.
Of course it's not exactly the same thing, I'm not trying to say nothing has changed. But the logic is similar. People who are given the capacity to systemically exploit others will, on average, exploit them as much as they are allowed to, or as much as they feel they can get away with; and they will work to maintain that capacity and increase it.
In a sense we're still going back to morals, because if you're on the side of greed, you could argue that society should be a place where "I" get to strive, not where "individuals" get to strive, and I don't think I can argue against that without using a moral axiom, except to say that in that case you probably should be arguing for absolutely monarchy where you are the monarch rather than for capitalism. But regardless, it's either a little bit more complicated, or a little simpler, depending on how you look at it, than "is greed a human characteristic". The basis for using greed/human nature as an argument doesnt really concern itself with morality. It concerns itself with economics. Simply put, if people are not allowed to profit from their productive endeavors, and instead have to yield to the priority of equalizing outcomes, they would lack motivation to work. The argument is that socialism, as an economic system, is basically incompatible with human nature. Even guys like Marx acknowledged this when he said his final-state Communist utopia would require the people ascending to a superior Communist individual.
Yeah but this is backwards though. It is in capitalism that you don't fully benefit from your productive endeavor, as the profits go to a member of the capitalist class (your boss) and you get a wage that isn't representative of your productive endeavor but of the contract that you have negotiated with your boss beforehand.
It is true that a system where the state just replaces the boss and acts like him for all workers, which is what you're refering to here, would go against human nature if we accept that greed is part of it, and wouldn't improve the situation that I find fault with. But that's not what I or democratic socialists in general are advocating for. We want the company to be owned by its workers, so that they are the ones getting the benefit of their labor rather than their bosses. Arguably what you described is not even what marxist-leninists (with the exception of tankies) are advocating for, but I'm not sure this is worth getting into at this stage.
It seems a system like the one I aspire to would be not only acceptable for, but also superior for the vision of human nature that you describe here.
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On January 19 2020 14:58 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2020 14:10 BerserkSword wrote:On January 19 2020 12:55 Nebuchad wrote:
My argument on this would be quite different from Drone's. I certainly do believe that greed is a component of human nature. I just don't really know why people think that's an argument for capitalism or an argument against socialism. If you're entering the realm of questions of greed and altruism you're going into morality, and I can't tell what the correct morals are. Is it moral to have politics that are good for society, or is it moral to have politics that are good for you personally? I don't know. Neither do you.
I'm inclined to want to sidestep these types of debates because I don't think there's a way to get a definitive answer. I can just tell you that the mechanics of a society that rewards greed in individuals, but also requires a majority of individuals to be in a lower class while a minority benefits, will always have tensions around inequality. You should strive to be a winner, but the reality is that most people will lose. Those tensions will be solved either by a move to the left, which would be my preference, or using divide and conquer methods of diversion: have the people who are losing the most be from another country or another culture, that way the others won't feel like they're losing as hard, and won't feel as connected to the least fortunate in the society as they would otherwise. Also, isn't it those people's fault if you're not making a ton of money? They're driving down your wages by being willing to work for less! And don't let me start about welfare, you know that's the poor and the weak in society holding you back...
Similar methods were used to maintain slavery back in the day. You stopped having irish slaves because it was hard to maintain power over both the Irish and the Black people at the same time, so if the Irish could be something in between white people and black people instead of being just slaves like the rest of them, the system was easier to maintain.
Of course it's not exactly the same thing, I'm not trying to say nothing has changed. But the logic is similar. People who are given the capacity to systemically exploit others will, on average, exploit them as much as they are allowed to, or as much as they feel they can get away with; and they will work to maintain that capacity and increase it.
In a sense we're still going back to morals, because if you're on the side of greed, you could argue that society should be a place where "I" get to strive, not where "individuals" get to strive, and I don't think I can argue against that without using a moral axiom, except to say that in that case you probably should be arguing for absolutely monarchy where you are the monarch rather than for capitalism. But regardless, it's either a little bit more complicated, or a little simpler, depending on how you look at it, than "is greed a human characteristic". The basis for using greed/human nature as an argument doesnt really concern itself with morality. It concerns itself with economics. Simply put, if people are not allowed to profit from their productive endeavors, and instead have to yield to the priority of equalizing outcomes, they would lack motivation to work. The argument is that socialism, as an economic system, is basically incompatible with human nature. Even guys like Marx acknowledged this when he said his final-state Communist utopia would require the people ascending to a superior Communist individual. Yeah but this is backwards though. It is in capitalism that you don't fully benefit from your productive endeavor, as the profits go to a member of the capitalist class (your boss) and you get a wage that isn't representative of your productive endeavor but of the contract that you have negotiated with your boss beforehand. It is true that a system where the state just replaces the boss and acts like him for all workers, which is what you're refering to here, would go against human nature if we accept that greed is part of it, and wouldn't improve the situation that I find fault with. But that's not what I or democratic socialists in general are advocating for. We want the company to be owned by its workers, so that they are the ones getting the benefit of their labor rather than their bosses. Arguably what you described is not even what marxist-leninists (with the exception of tankies) are advocating for, but I'm not sure this is worth getting into at this stage. It seems a system like the one I aspire to would be not only acceptable for, but also superior for the vision of human nature that you describe here.
Absolutely.
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On January 19 2020 14:58 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2020 14:10 BerserkSword wrote:On January 19 2020 12:55 Nebuchad wrote:
My argument on this would be quite different from Drone's. I certainly do believe that greed is a component of human nature. I just don't really know why people think that's an argument for capitalism or an argument against socialism. If you're entering the realm of questions of greed and altruism you're going into morality, and I can't tell what the correct morals are. Is it moral to have politics that are good for society, or is it moral to have politics that are good for you personally? I don't know. Neither do you.
I'm inclined to want to sidestep these types of debates because I don't think there's a way to get a definitive answer. I can just tell you that the mechanics of a society that rewards greed in individuals, but also requires a majority of individuals to be in a lower class while a minority benefits, will always have tensions around inequality. You should strive to be a winner, but the reality is that most people will lose. Those tensions will be solved either by a move to the left, which would be my preference, or using divide and conquer methods of diversion: have the people who are losing the most be from another country or another culture, that way the others won't feel like they're losing as hard, and won't feel as connected to the least fortunate in the society as they would otherwise. Also, isn't it those people's fault if you're not making a ton of money? They're driving down your wages by being willing to work for less! And don't let me start about welfare, you know that's the poor and the weak in society holding you back...
Similar methods were used to maintain slavery back in the day. You stopped having irish slaves because it was hard to maintain power over both the Irish and the Black people at the same time, so if the Irish could be something in between white people and black people instead of being just slaves like the rest of them, the system was easier to maintain.
Of course it's not exactly the same thing, I'm not trying to say nothing has changed. But the logic is similar. People who are given the capacity to systemically exploit others will, on average, exploit them as much as they are allowed to, or as much as they feel they can get away with; and they will work to maintain that capacity and increase it.
In a sense we're still going back to morals, because if you're on the side of greed, you could argue that society should be a place where "I" get to strive, not where "individuals" get to strive, and I don't think I can argue against that without using a moral axiom, except to say that in that case you probably should be arguing for absolutely monarchy where you are the monarch rather than for capitalism. But regardless, it's either a little bit more complicated, or a little simpler, depending on how you look at it, than "is greed a human characteristic". The basis for using greed/human nature as an argument doesnt really concern itself with morality. It concerns itself with economics. Simply put, if people are not allowed to profit from their productive endeavors, and instead have to yield to the priority of equalizing outcomes, they would lack motivation to work. The argument is that socialism, as an economic system, is basically incompatible with human nature. Even guys like Marx acknowledged this when he said his final-state Communist utopia would require the people ascending to a superior Communist individual. Yeah but this is backwards though. It is in capitalism that you don't fully benefit from your productive endeavor, as the profits go to a member of the capitalist class (your boss) and you get a wage that isn't representative of your productive endeavor but of the contract that you have negotiated with your boss beforehand. It is true that a system where the state just replaces the boss and acts like him for all workers, which is what you're refering to here, would go against human nature if we accept that greed is part of it, and wouldn't improve the situation that I find fault with. But that's not what I or democratic socialists in general are advocating for. We want the company to be owned by its workers, so that they are the ones getting the benefit of their labor rather than their bosses. Arguably what you described is not even what marxist-leninists (with the exception of tankies) are advocating for, but I'm not sure this is worth getting into at this stage. It seems a system like the one I aspire to would be not only acceptable for, but also superior for the vision of human nature that you describe here.
It's not backwards at all. The market determines whether the wage is representative of your productive endeavor.
Companies don't just grow out of thin air, and don't run themselves. Companies require vision, business acumen, capital, and risk.
Your system falls prey to the same concept - there is no incentive to do much. Why take risks and enter the liquidity pool of a market when you can just let someone else do it and get ownership of someone else's endeavor by merely providing low skill work or something? Are you really suggesting that Amazon should be owned by all its employees, for example?
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On January 19 2020 18:35 BerserkSword wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2020 14:58 Nebuchad wrote:On January 19 2020 14:10 BerserkSword wrote:On January 19 2020 12:55 Nebuchad wrote:
My argument on this would be quite different from Drone's. I certainly do believe that greed is a component of human nature. I just don't really know why people think that's an argument for capitalism or an argument against socialism. If you're entering the realm of questions of greed and altruism you're going into morality, and I can't tell what the correct morals are. Is it moral to have politics that are good for society, or is it moral to have politics that are good for you personally? I don't know. Neither do you.
I'm inclined to want to sidestep these types of debates because I don't think there's a way to get a definitive answer. I can just tell you that the mechanics of a society that rewards greed in individuals, but also requires a majority of individuals to be in a lower class while a minority benefits, will always have tensions around inequality. You should strive to be a winner, but the reality is that most people will lose. Those tensions will be solved either by a move to the left, which would be my preference, or using divide and conquer methods of diversion: have the people who are losing the most be from another country or another culture, that way the others won't feel like they're losing as hard, and won't feel as connected to the least fortunate in the society as they would otherwise. Also, isn't it those people's fault if you're not making a ton of money? They're driving down your wages by being willing to work for less! And don't let me start about welfare, you know that's the poor and the weak in society holding you back...
Similar methods were used to maintain slavery back in the day. You stopped having irish slaves because it was hard to maintain power over both the Irish and the Black people at the same time, so if the Irish could be something in between white people and black people instead of being just slaves like the rest of them, the system was easier to maintain.
Of course it's not exactly the same thing, I'm not trying to say nothing has changed. But the logic is similar. People who are given the capacity to systemically exploit others will, on average, exploit them as much as they are allowed to, or as much as they feel they can get away with; and they will work to maintain that capacity and increase it.
In a sense we're still going back to morals, because if you're on the side of greed, you could argue that society should be a place where "I" get to strive, not where "individuals" get to strive, and I don't think I can argue against that without using a moral axiom, except to say that in that case you probably should be arguing for absolutely monarchy where you are the monarch rather than for capitalism. But regardless, it's either a little bit more complicated, or a little simpler, depending on how you look at it, than "is greed a human characteristic". The basis for using greed/human nature as an argument doesnt really concern itself with morality. It concerns itself with economics. Simply put, if people are not allowed to profit from their productive endeavors, and instead have to yield to the priority of equalizing outcomes, they would lack motivation to work. The argument is that socialism, as an economic system, is basically incompatible with human nature. Even guys like Marx acknowledged this when he said his final-state Communist utopia would require the people ascending to a superior Communist individual. Yeah but this is backwards though. It is in capitalism that you don't fully benefit from your productive endeavor, as the profits go to a member of the capitalist class (your boss) and you get a wage that isn't representative of your productive endeavor but of the contract that you have negotiated with your boss beforehand. It is true that a system where the state just replaces the boss and acts like him for all workers, which is what you're refering to here, would go against human nature if we accept that greed is part of it, and wouldn't improve the situation that I find fault with. But that's not what I or democratic socialists in general are advocating for. We want the company to be owned by its workers, so that they are the ones getting the benefit of their labor rather than their bosses. Arguably what you described is not even what marxist-leninists (with the exception of tankies) are advocating for, but I'm not sure this is worth getting into at this stage. It seems a system like the one I aspire to would be not only acceptable for, but also superior for the vision of human nature that you describe here. It's not backwards at all. The market determines whether the wage is representative of your productive endeavor. Companies don't just grow out of thin air, and don't run themselves. Companies require vision, business acumen, capital, and risk. Your system falls prey to the same concept - there is no incentive to do much. Why take risks and enter the liquidity pool of a market when you can just let someone else do it and get ownership of someone else's endeavor by merely providing low skill work or something? Are you really suggesting that Amazon should be owned by all its employees, for example?
This. The only way you can create a company owned by its workers is when you start really small. In this world, currently, it's nearly impossible. You can't scale something without a lot of money invested. Or it would take dozens of years to reach a large company.
You wouldn't have planes, heavy industry, carmaking companies, etc...
And even if you had, I don't believe the company would stay competitive in a world economy if it was run by employees, sadly. We had things like that here in France : the main press printing company where the union was the one in charge of deciding salaries and recruitment. It did NOT go well. At some point, the printing company was withholding the magazines' money because it was running low on cash as salaries were much too high, and work conditions "too good" to properly make it run, endangering the whole industry and causing several magazines to go under.
In the end, a compromise was found and it appropriated something like 2.25% of the magazines price for something like 10 years starting on 2012, and then withheld another 25% on certain months after another crisis in 2018 due to several critical strategic errors...
(I am trying to find the name again to provide a source).
edit : NMPP / Presstalis
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndicat_général_du_livre_et_de_la_communication_écrite_CGT
The union :
The union has a monopoly on recruitment in its field, source of its strength. The system resembles british "closed shops" and allows workers to reach a very high salary. According to a senatorial report, salary weight in daily press printing costs is 80% compared to 35% in the other printing services
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presstalis
It withheld 25% of payments to clients, and forbid them from leaving to go to another printer several times to cover for its deficit, due to its near monopoly. The whole article is also pretty impressive to read... (storing 5000weapons, covertly sending tons of paper to Cuba, diverting magazines to sell them under the counter etc)
Can't really find an english source and no time to translate everything now.
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On January 19 2020 18:35 BerserkSword wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2020 14:58 Nebuchad wrote:On January 19 2020 14:10 BerserkSword wrote:On January 19 2020 12:55 Nebuchad wrote:
My argument on this would be quite different from Drone's. I certainly do believe that greed is a component of human nature. I just don't really know why people think that's an argument for capitalism or an argument against socialism. If you're entering the realm of questions of greed and altruism you're going into morality, and I can't tell what the correct morals are. Is it moral to have politics that are good for society, or is it moral to have politics that are good for you personally? I don't know. Neither do you.
I'm inclined to want to sidestep these types of debates because I don't think there's a way to get a definitive answer. I can just tell you that the mechanics of a society that rewards greed in individuals, but also requires a majority of individuals to be in a lower class while a minority benefits, will always have tensions around inequality. You should strive to be a winner, but the reality is that most people will lose. Those tensions will be solved either by a move to the left, which would be my preference, or using divide and conquer methods of diversion: have the people who are losing the most be from another country or another culture, that way the others won't feel like they're losing as hard, and won't feel as connected to the least fortunate in the society as they would otherwise. Also, isn't it those people's fault if you're not making a ton of money? They're driving down your wages by being willing to work for less! And don't let me start about welfare, you know that's the poor and the weak in society holding you back...
Similar methods were used to maintain slavery back in the day. You stopped having irish slaves because it was hard to maintain power over both the Irish and the Black people at the same time, so if the Irish could be something in between white people and black people instead of being just slaves like the rest of them, the system was easier to maintain.
Of course it's not exactly the same thing, I'm not trying to say nothing has changed. But the logic is similar. People who are given the capacity to systemically exploit others will, on average, exploit them as much as they are allowed to, or as much as they feel they can get away with; and they will work to maintain that capacity and increase it.
In a sense we're still going back to morals, because if you're on the side of greed, you could argue that society should be a place where "I" get to strive, not where "individuals" get to strive, and I don't think I can argue against that without using a moral axiom, except to say that in that case you probably should be arguing for absolutely monarchy where you are the monarch rather than for capitalism. But regardless, it's either a little bit more complicated, or a little simpler, depending on how you look at it, than "is greed a human characteristic". The basis for using greed/human nature as an argument doesnt really concern itself with morality. It concerns itself with economics. Simply put, if people are not allowed to profit from their productive endeavors, and instead have to yield to the priority of equalizing outcomes, they would lack motivation to work. The argument is that socialism, as an economic system, is basically incompatible with human nature. Even guys like Marx acknowledged this when he said his final-state Communist utopia would require the people ascending to a superior Communist individual. Yeah but this is backwards though. It is in capitalism that you don't fully benefit from your productive endeavor, as the profits go to a member of the capitalist class (your boss) and you get a wage that isn't representative of your productive endeavor but of the contract that you have negotiated with your boss beforehand. It is true that a system where the state just replaces the boss and acts like him for all workers, which is what you're refering to here, would go against human nature if we accept that greed is part of it, and wouldn't improve the situation that I find fault with. But that's not what I or democratic socialists in general are advocating for. We want the company to be owned by its workers, so that they are the ones getting the benefit of their labor rather than their bosses. Arguably what you described is not even what marxist-leninists (with the exception of tankies) are advocating for, but I'm not sure this is worth getting into at this stage. It seems a system like the one I aspire to would be not only acceptable for, but also superior for the vision of human nature that you describe here. It's not backwards at all. The market determines whether the wage is representative of your productive endeavor.
Do you have any actual proof that the market truly determines a wage that is representative of one's productive endeavor? I know plenty of people who were offered considerably higher salaries by companies that tried to poach them to have them do exactly the same kind of work. What is more likely - that the valuation of one's productivity is objectively drastically different depending on the employer or that the first company undervalued that person's work? If it's the latter, is simply being offered a certain amount of money sufficient proof that it's a fair compensation for said work?
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Norway28558 Posts
On January 19 2020 12:07 Belisarius wrote:There's a huge difference between "humans can be innately motivated by altruism", and "humans are not innately motivated by greed." That study demonstrates that children can be empathetic. That is cool, but it says nothing about whether they can also be selfish, nor about whether that is innate, nor about which of greed and altruism wins when the two come into conflict. Those are the things that you would need to address to get around this: Show nested quote +On January 19 2020 09:19 Gorgonoth wrote:
The main point I'd like to submit is that human greed is inherent in human nature and we have ingrained self-destructive tendencies. The corollary of this is that no matter what economic system you implement, you cannot get around the greed and pervasive self-seeking nature of man. Personally, I think innate selfishness is pretty hard to argue against. I don't know how many people here have had children, but I think everyone would be aware that if you watched those kids for another half hour, one would begin to throw a tantrum because another started playing with something they also wanted to play with. They do both, just as adults do both.
Your example is not greed, that's desire for equability. I don't have time to write a longer post today, but that I can address. I think humans have a very strong innate desire for being treated equally to their fellow man. I don't think the desire to have more than your fellow man is an innate desire (in most humans, it might well be a natural trait found within a small %, I dunno about that).
I don't have children, but I work with them, so I've definitely been exposed to my fair share of them. (Still just anecdotal, though. ) But my impression is they have an extremely strong sense of justice (especially when they perceive themselves as being victims of injustice, but also in general.) When I speak of 'greed' I talk about desire to have more than you need and more than what those around you have, not about desire to have as much as people around you do. And while I am no anthropologist, it is my impression that most hunter gatherer societies - that is, how humans have lived for the vast majority of our existence, are extremely equitable societies. (Very different from say, a wolf pack. ) To be clear, I don't really think looking at hunter gatherer societies in general gives much value to how we should organize modern societies - but I do think they give some insight into 'what is natural'. The 'natural' traits of humanity are the ones you can find in virtually all human societies. I don't see competition for resources within your own group as one such trait.
Essentially, my view of humans is that we are extremely malleable, and that cultural adaptation is our main 'natural' trait.
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Sorry dude, [citation needed] on pretty much everything in that post.
Also "equability" is very poorly defined. You said "fair" earlier. What a 5-year-old thinks is fair and equitable is... well... let's say that the one in my family has been known to argue that it's unfair that they can't own a unicorn.
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Attempting to determine what is or is not “natural” with regards to human behavior is largely an exercise in futility that serves as a placeholder for a defense-by-proxy of other values, which is one among many reasons why naturalistic fallacies are a thing in the first place. That said, some kind of baseline malleability being a core tenet of humanity has merits as an argument aside from whether it describes objective truths.
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On January 19 2020 21:04 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2020 12:07 Belisarius wrote:There's a huge difference between "humans can be innately motivated by altruism", and "humans are not innately motivated by greed." That study demonstrates that children can be empathetic. That is cool, but it says nothing about whether they can also be selfish, nor about whether that is innate, nor about which of greed and altruism wins when the two come into conflict. Those are the things that you would need to address to get around this: On January 19 2020 09:19 Gorgonoth wrote:
The main point I'd like to submit is that human greed is inherent in human nature and we have ingrained self-destructive tendencies. The corollary of this is that no matter what economic system you implement, you cannot get around the greed and pervasive self-seeking nature of man. Personally, I think innate selfishness is pretty hard to argue against. I don't know how many people here have had children, but I think everyone would be aware that if you watched those kids for another half hour, one would begin to throw a tantrum because another started playing with something they also wanted to play with. They do both, just as adults do both. Your example is not greed, that's desire for equability. I don't have time to write a longer post today, but that I can address. I think humans have a very strong innate desire for being treated equally to their fellow man. I don't think the desire to have more than your fellow man is an innate desire (in most humans, it might well be a natural trait found within a small %, I dunno about that).
I think this is an excellent direction. I don't think humans have an innate greed desire, at least not all of them. However, it doesn't take very many to take more than their share to make everyone want the same larger share. Then you inherently have a set of winners and losers because there isn't enough resources for everyone to be greedy.
I would also suggest that humans are absolutely horrible at determining what is a fair distribution.
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On January 19 2020 18:35 BerserkSword wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2020 14:58 Nebuchad wrote:On January 19 2020 14:10 BerserkSword wrote:On January 19 2020 12:55 Nebuchad wrote:
My argument on this would be quite different from Drone's. I certainly do believe that greed is a component of human nature. I just don't really know why people think that's an argument for capitalism or an argument against socialism. If you're entering the realm of questions of greed and altruism you're going into morality, and I can't tell what the correct morals are. Is it moral to have politics that are good for society, or is it moral to have politics that are good for you personally? I don't know. Neither do you.
I'm inclined to want to sidestep these types of debates because I don't think there's a way to get a definitive answer. I can just tell you that the mechanics of a society that rewards greed in individuals, but also requires a majority of individuals to be in a lower class while a minority benefits, will always have tensions around inequality. You should strive to be a winner, but the reality is that most people will lose. Those tensions will be solved either by a move to the left, which would be my preference, or using divide and conquer methods of diversion: have the people who are losing the most be from another country or another culture, that way the others won't feel like they're losing as hard, and won't feel as connected to the least fortunate in the society as they would otherwise. Also, isn't it those people's fault if you're not making a ton of money? They're driving down your wages by being willing to work for less! And don't let me start about welfare, you know that's the poor and the weak in society holding you back...
Similar methods were used to maintain slavery back in the day. You stopped having irish slaves because it was hard to maintain power over both the Irish and the Black people at the same time, so if the Irish could be something in between white people and black people instead of being just slaves like the rest of them, the system was easier to maintain.
Of course it's not exactly the same thing, I'm not trying to say nothing has changed. But the logic is similar. People who are given the capacity to systemically exploit others will, on average, exploit them as much as they are allowed to, or as much as they feel they can get away with; and they will work to maintain that capacity and increase it.
In a sense we're still going back to morals, because if you're on the side of greed, you could argue that society should be a place where "I" get to strive, not where "individuals" get to strive, and I don't think I can argue against that without using a moral axiom, except to say that in that case you probably should be arguing for absolutely monarchy where you are the monarch rather than for capitalism. But regardless, it's either a little bit more complicated, or a little simpler, depending on how you look at it, than "is greed a human characteristic". The basis for using greed/human nature as an argument doesnt really concern itself with morality. It concerns itself with economics. Simply put, if people are not allowed to profit from their productive endeavors, and instead have to yield to the priority of equalizing outcomes, they would lack motivation to work. The argument is that socialism, as an economic system, is basically incompatible with human nature. Even guys like Marx acknowledged this when he said his final-state Communist utopia would require the people ascending to a superior Communist individual. Yeah but this is backwards though. It is in capitalism that you don't fully benefit from your productive endeavor, as the profits go to a member of the capitalist class (your boss) and you get a wage that isn't representative of your productive endeavor but of the contract that you have negotiated with your boss beforehand. It is true that a system where the state just replaces the boss and acts like him for all workers, which is what you're refering to here, would go against human nature if we accept that greed is part of it, and wouldn't improve the situation that I find fault with. But that's not what I or democratic socialists in general are advocating for. We want the company to be owned by its workers, so that they are the ones getting the benefit of their labor rather than their bosses. Arguably what you described is not even what marxist-leninists (with the exception of tankies) are advocating for, but I'm not sure this is worth getting into at this stage. It seems a system like the one I aspire to would be not only acceptable for, but also superior for the vision of human nature that you describe here. It's not backwards at all. The market determines whether the wage is representative of your productive endeavor. Companies don't just grow out of thin air, and don't run themselves. Companies require vision, business acumen, capital, and risk. Your system falls prey to the same concept - there is no incentive to do much. Why take risks and enter the liquidity pool of a market when you can just let someone else do it and get ownership of someone else's endeavor by merely providing low skill work or something? Are you really suggesting that Amazon should be owned by all its employees, for example?
How is it not backwards? Under capitalism you don't get the full value of your labour, under the system I described you would. You can argue that it's not feasible like you do below but you can't argue that it doesn't match the desire of profiting for your productive endeavor that you described earlier.
You can democratically decide that the low skill work of a company is worth less to the company than some other form of work, that would incentivize people not to do what you described here. It's generally not very difficult for companies to make a type of job attractive to an individual if they need it, that's not going to be an issue.
Amazon and other very large companies probably should have a managerial team since they're way too big. That managerial team should be democratically elected by the people working at Amazon. My preference is for direct democracy but I don't think we have the technology yet for it to be feasible for such a large company today. There's an argument for just breaking Amazon to be fair, for fear of monopolies, but I think that argument also applies in capitalism.
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On January 19 2020 22:42 farvacola wrote:
Attempting to determine what is or is not “natural” with regards to human behavior is largely an exercise in futility that serves as a placeholder for a defense-by-proxy of other values, which is one among many reasons why naturalistic fallacies are a thing in the first place. That said, some kind of baseline malleability being a core tenet of humanity has merits as an argument aside from whether it describes objective truths.
I talked about it before but examining why people think Drone and Neb's argument need to be proven but anecdotes, beliefs, and hegemonic ideas are enough to maintain their position is probably worth the time.
I'd suggest some inordinately greedy people have always tried to rule the people around them. They set up systems to maintain/justify/legitimate their greed and power. Then convinced folks ('democratic' capitalism was an important part of this) that their lives are also organized by greed. That their failure to obtain what the greedier people did was a personal failure of theirs (as opposed to pre-ordained under feudalism and such) and wanting the wealth billionaires extracted with that system to be redistributed to the masses that produced it is a sign of jealousy, irrationality, etc...
I agree with Neb that even if greed is unavoidable and more prevalent than I presume, the systemic changes he's suggesting are better designed to deal with it.
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EPT
