vimothy
yurp
Also, you must realise that statements like that make any analysis that follows look rather "pie-in-the-sky".
Worst Mistake Never Made
- Thread starter zhao
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Also, you must realise that statements like that make any analysis that follows look rather "pie-in-the-sky".
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
I just mean 'set-aside'. We'll get around to mechanisms, it's not as if there isn't a case to be made. It's obviously helpful to talk about values and needs as well though.
vimothy
yurp
But there's some very important things that need to be established:
Can 6.6 billion people live lives of easy indolence and berry picking?
How?
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
Well i'm arguing that mistakes have to be recognised and values reshuffled. I actually do think that we have the means to provide much better living than we have now even for the numbers of people that are alive today. At present a huge percentage of our labour goes into totally unproductive, even counterproductive activities as regards human life. The rest of it, though immediately useful, often ends up propping up the system that allows that to occur. There's colossal inefficiency, waste, exploitation and corruption. These things are a consequence of misplaced values, of lauding the 'market', which is actually a scam, over human beings and sustainability.
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
Maybe we need to look at some of Buckminster Fuller's ideas about self-supporting (syergetic) systems and how he showed mathematically and rigorously how there were plenty of resources in our world to provide high living standards for every person as long as we realised how things were interconnected and worked together.
vimothy
yurp
Woa -- needs massive unpacking:
When you say "means to provide... better living", what do you mean?
How do you propose to enact this (unspecified) system?
How do you think that you as an individual will be able to attain the local knowledge (vertiginous in scope) to understand the global economy such that you will be able to re-structure it effectively?
What is productive labour?
What is un-productive labour?
Where does inefficiency occur and what are its causes?
What do you mean when you say "market"?
What do you mean when you say that the "market" is a scam?
Think there's a lot of unsubstantiated (though maybe just unexplained) assumptions in your thought here, mate.
vimothy
yurp
We have an economic system that can do that already.
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
Which economic system would that be and why is not being used?
What percentage of people have access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation for instance? How happy is the average city dweller?
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
Just because I do not want to continue trying to explain things in the limited terms you choose to accept does not mean that what I have to say does not have substance.
vimothy
yurp
Sorry, I'm not (deliberately) trying to be a cunt, I'm trying to say that you might think "oh we're not doing well and could do much better", but since it's not clear that we agree on what doing well is and what doing better would involve, it's going to be very difficult. There are massive and important systemic limits to knowledge.
You can explain or answer in any terms you like, I just want to know what you mean.
Don't you see what's wrong with this question? The economic system is capitalism, and it is being used, in a variety of contexts and institutional settings, all of them very different and unique to themselves. It's also not being used in a variety of settings, for a variety of different reasons.
Economics is about the management of scarce resources. Capitalism allows people to make those decisions themselves (other systems do it differently). You might not like the nature or the outcome of those decisions, but it is literally inconceivable that you would be able to make better ones.
I think this is a good question. People with access to safe drinking water live in capitalist democracies. People without access don't.
Relative to what? But really, I don't think that happiness is important, or an acheivable outcome for any economic or political system.
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
That's why need to get rid of all of them.
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
It's not working, by any yardstick except how many people can be exploited by how few.
The question was obviously rhetorical. You seemed to be claiming that we had an economic system that was providing high living standards for every preson on the planet. But I'm not so much interested in 'high standards of living' as in having real fucking lives. Maybe they are not comparable at all.
Different populations are exploited and suffer in different ways. We just happen to have water at the moment presumably because we are closer to centers of power and it is useful for us to function to a degree.
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vimothy
yurp
Hahaha -- but that won't make anyone happier either, it will just make them all dead!
What about this noel: why do you place such importance on human happiness? Don't you think that this is an unrealistically human-centric view of life, an unrealistically self-centred view of life?
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
Capitalism gives most people very little choice in how to manage resources, either locally or remotely. That's a joke.
But I'm not fighting against capitalism. It's 'civilisation' that is the problem. Or rather the fact that we don't even know what a real human society is like. All I want is for people to recognise that. If you don't even have the tiniest inkling of intuition that this might be the case then you are a part of the problem in my view.
vimothy
yurp
It is working according to any measure you would like to choose (except maybe "spiritual well-being").
That's a lame explanation. A misleading half-truth at best. Why do people feel the need to invent conspiracies? I guess I know the answer to that one.
Actually, it's probably the defining feature of capitalism, as you would know if you bothered to look into this in any depth.
Noel, weren't you the person who tried to tell me that the division of labour wan't good or necessary? Is this all a waste of time?
*sigh*
I guess so, yes. Me and 6.6 billion others.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Why should we have political and economic systems in existence that are centred around things other than humans? I mean, what use is money, when you really get down to it, apart from being spent on goods and services? Goods and services which (supposedly) help make us happy, or at least prevent from being hungry, homeless or ill, which are pretty high on a list of things that can make us unhappy.
So I think there's a lot to be said for the idea that a system that exists purely for making money for its own sake, with no importance placed on what that money can be used for, in the service of real live human beings, is pretty pathological. A religious analogy might be that it's like worshipping a church, rather than the god represented by the church. Er, if you see what I mean.
vimothy
yurp
Ok, I'm not explaining myself very well. There is no reason to expect that the universe will meet your needs. It's like people who say, in order to find your dream job, you should find out what you want to do most in all the world, ring up the head of HR and say "can I have a job?" Life doesn't work like that.
And since it's all subjective and relative, it's possible that I might be happier in some kind of dictatorial, socialist hell-hole, purely because of other variables, or even because I loved our Dear Leader so.
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
I can understand how money might be a useful abstract exchange mechanism. That makes good sense to me. What makes no sense at all as anything other than a TOTAL SCAM is interest. Banks issue money with interest attached from ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
vimothy
yurp
It's what's called the opportunity cost of money, i.e. what's the average rate of return I can expect on capital. If I put money in the bank, the bank invests that money (i.e. takes the long position I'm either unwilling or unable to take myself), and pays me interest, which is the opportunity cost, to me, of not haveing invested that money profitably myself. When the bank lends money, it's the same thing but in reverse.
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
You think my thought is unsubstantiated? You accept the reality of phantoms over things like people and happiness.
The institutions that are handed the ability to manufacture currency almost without constraint and based on no concrete wealth have no business attaching interest to it. They can not treat us as an investment risk, they are there to serve our need for an abstract exhange mechanism, if such a thing is necessary at all. The fact that the system is not set up that way should be very telling. I don't know why you insist on supporting it.
The institutions that are handed the ability to manufacture currency almost without constraint and based on no concrete wealth have no business attaching interest to it. They can not treat us as an investment risk, they are there to serve our need for an abstract exhange mechanism, if such a thing is necessary at all. The fact that the system is not set up that way should be very telling. I don't know why you insist on supporting it.