Creative jobs and research jobs have increased

The term "starving artist" has real meaning behind it.

Do you seriously believe most folks can make a living with "art" ?!

(( In the US, roughly 98% of art students are unable to find art related jobs ))

Creative jobs and research jobs have increased

The term "starving artist" has real meaning behind it.
Do you seriously believe most folks can make a living with "art" ?!
(( In the US, roughly 98% of art students are unable to find art related jobs ))

My $0.02 ...
Not a single communist/socialistic/marxist/'some other name' has ever lasted very long.
Historically, dictatorship/monarchies/'divine right' are the longest lasting continuous governments in the world.

They're just *different* jobs, and that's totally okay.

My $0.02 ...
Not a single communist/socialistic/marxist/'some other name' has ever lasted very long.
Historically, dictatorship/monarchies/'divine right' are the longest lasting continuous governments in the world.

Yeah, but in which one of those were the citizens happier, on average

.

Records show "happy people" and "sad people" on both sides of the ideological divide.

The elite class on both sides always come out on top, while the rest of the country eventually suffers.

I can point to the Chinese experiment from over 1,000 years ago - were every one received food and shelter from the government. They were very happy at first, until everyone eventually stopped working and the country fell into chaos [*1].

I can also point to Rome during hundreds of years of prosperity for all it's citizen. Everyone was happy until a couple bad Caesars ruined everything.

Of course you can also point to historical situations were the people were severely repressed ... the Soviet States, many Middle Ages monarchies e.t.c.

*1 - If I remember correctly this experimental period lasted about 65 years - I'll have to look it up again to be sure.

They're just *different* jobs, and that's totally okay.

Sort of. It's a problem when someone loses their current job because the entire occupation is becoming obsolete. If they can't use their existing skills in a new job, they have to fall back on something else. Other than menial labor, do people really have anything to fall back on?Learning a completely different trade to replace your old skill set can be extremely time consuming and expensive. Anyone without a safety net might be completely out of luck at that point.

"Its always worked itself out" is kind of a worthless statement if you're supporting the idea that humanity should continue to blindly follow capitalism in its current form. "Working itself out" can just as easily be people coming together and saying "This is insane, and we need to radically reform how we choose to do things."

How we deal with housing, food, clothing, health care, and education at the very least deserve to be revised.

"Oh, you no longer have any more Made Up Points to your name, because other people felt they could make more Made Up Points for themselves by no longer employing you? Well, I guess you no longer deserve to be able to eat, and get the hell out of your shelter. Also screw you if you want to learn to do something different to earn those Made Up Points if you don't already have a bunch of Made Up Points."

I also love how people keep pointing to the failures that were the past attempts at various forms of communism and saying "Lol! Look at that and how badly it failed! See! Communism never works!"

It is sad and short sighted. Look at all the past attempts to build a flying machine... They all failed, therefore anyone who thinks humans could ever build any manner of flying machine is clearly an idiot. Please ignore all the things like planes, jets, the space station, and probes on other planets. They clearly don't count, and we should all just give up on such a stupid and silly pipe dream.

The other point that I really love about the "Failure of communism", is that it has never been actual communists who have been at the heart of the failure.

In truth, communism rose a century too early. It lacked the foundation of education and communication capacity that we have today, and to continue on with the "Red Scare" line of Communists being lazy, and that "It can never work", is to be lazy. It is lazy because you aren't even willing to try to devise a means by which the goals could be achieved. It is to look to your own short sighted narrow problems and to say "To hell with everyone else". It can't work, because people have told me it can't and I can't be bothered to even sit down and talk about how it can be made to work.

In truth, communism rose a century too early. It lacked the foundation of education and communication capacity that we have today, and to continue on with the "Red Scare" line of Communists being lazy, and that "It can never work", is to be lazy. It is lazy because you aren't even willing to try to devise a means by which the goals could be achieved. It is to look to your own short sighted narrow problems and to say "To hell with everyone else". It can't work, because people have told me it can't and I can't be bothered to even sit down and talk about how it can be made to work.

Right. If you want to get technical, according to the marxist theory(at least as far as I understand it, which isn't a whole lot tbh), a society must first pass through the stage of capitalism and exhaust its potential, before it gives rise to the new system, which in Marx's thought would be socialism/communist. AFAIK, none of the "marxist" states where even close to fullfilling those conditions. Marx was certainly not thinking of Russia, he was thinking of Europe. The 1917 revolution actually came in 2 stages, the first in February and the next in October. It was February's revolution, which was pretty much spontaneous and grass-root(Soviets), that brought down the Tsar, which was replaced by the Provisional Government, an alliance between liberals and socialists. Then, the October revolution, which had the Bolsheviks seize power and claiming they would start towards building socialism without the capitalism phase being necessary, by having the communist party be the "vanguard" of the revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and all that.

There were veteran marxists then, like Plekhanov, that opposed this and believed it was contrary to marxist theory and the objective laws of history. Plekhanov, while always being a marxist, believe that the conditions in 1917's Russia were such that the proletariat should actually assist in creating a capitalist society, and in doing so it would actually help usher the conditions(and also grow in size) that would result in its own socialist revolution, when the time was right. In the end, they were pretty much proven correct, IMO. A socio-economic system gives it place to another because the conditions are mature, not just because a group of people seize power and decide to shape society according to their ideology. All marxist states where pretty much fundamentally anti-marxist efforts to fit a square peg into a round hole believing sheer force and will would do the job. They didn't.

Of course, all this is theoretical, the reality of the situation is that the Bolsheviks did rule Russia, and the crimes they committed(believing they were justified if they brought the communist utopia) are the legacy us socialists have to deal with today. If you mention you're a socialist/communist, you inevitably get the retort "everywhere it was attempted , it failed and people died". Which is actually true. Saying "the conditions weren't right and none of those countries were communist" might be also true, but it sounds hollow. Like a No True Scottsman fallacy. Which is a sad state of affairs, but it is what it is.

Grrr... I wrote this in Notepad because the forum's builtin editor sucks so much, and now I forgot who/what I replied to in the next paragraph.
Anyway... it was something about "why no-greed isn't going to work" :lol:

Why? It is our nature, and this is not going to change any time soon. It's an evolutionary thing buried deep inside us, and you cannot educate that away in a hundred years, let alone in our lifetime. We like to believe that we are so superior, the image of God. But we are primitive animals. Evolved animals with an opposable thumb over-proportionally sized brain, yes, but still only animals.

We hoard because evolution had it that those who hoard survive, and those who don't starve during a cold winter. More is better. Even more is even better. We eat when we are not hungry -- even though we know it's bad for us -- because evolution had it that the slightly fat guy is less likely to starve if no food is found for a week (as long as you aren't so fat you can't run from the next predator, all is good).

High-calory, high-fat-high-sugar food tastes well for that exact same reason. Evolution wants us to swallow as much of it as possible, just in case we don't find any tomorrow. Because when that happens, it's what makes the difference. Try and educate this out of people, it won't happen.

We want prestige ("be better than others", or "have power", or "be rich", whatever) because this attracts females, and attracting females is substantial to passing on your genes. Females are attracted to prestige because it is beneficial for the survival of offspring.
Hopefully I didn't invoke the feminists now. Equal rights, all nice and dandy, but they can't change what millions of years of evolution have made of us. Also, prestige means that one way or the other we get more stuffs in general. More stuffs is good. Yet more, even better.

Even hardcore socialists try to be better than everybody else (although, without working, and they will not admit to it). Why? It is our nature.

If even socialists can't say "all are equal" without adding "but I'm more equal", how do you want everybody else to achieve it? It's not possible.

(rant on basic income)

Agreed. It does not work. Imagine you were being paid 2,000 per month starting tomorrow. What would it mean?
It would mean either the government would have to take up massive debt and print more money (devaluating currency, rendering what you gain worthless), or those who possess something will have to pay substantially more tax (you can't steal from a naked man's pocket).

Now, the people who possess are also the people who e.g. own the apartment you rent. So... they will just raise the rent according to what they pay in additional tax...

Zero sum game, except everyone will be tempted to do it. It's no secret that you have 2,000 more currency in your pocket now, so municipials will just double the fee for trash cans and water. After all, you can afford, and they wouldn't want to risk being left out.

Why sell a TV for 500 if you can sell it for 2,500? After all, you have 2,000 extra in your pocket. you won't even notice the difference!

Our world has a human population carrying capacity, and we're rushing towards it. The carrying capacity is determined by our ability to grow food, provide homes and shelter, and by our ecological health
[...]
as we begin to reach the asymptote, more and more human beings will suffer as we all barely get by and survive.
[...]
You would have the same problem in a non-capitalist society.

Totally. This can be verified by looking at Europe's population growth during the century following the discovery of the Americas and with that the discovery of... potatoes.
Potatoes are big win food-versus-surface wise. More food, more people. Population exploded with potatoes being planted on a large scale (and then, compare the drastically different situation in Ireland during the 19th century).

Nowadays, agriculture is highly optimized, we get a lot more out of everything from the same surface thanks to fertilizers, weed killers, and a diversity of poisons. But there sure is an asymptote, and it is very close. This is not going on forever (especially since more and more surface is being redirected for non-food purposes).

One interesting observation is that as a society goes more "modern", the birthrate declines substantially. Japan [...] Is this the fate of all modernizing societies, or just something particular to japanese culture?

I think it's common to all (effect sure is visible in Europe, too), though Japan is extreme in that respect.

One reason may be that having children is extremely unlucrative in many more modern countries. It's particularly pronounced in Germany, where unlike e.g. in France it's almost a stigma for a working woman to bear a child. That's why shrinking population is much less of a problem in e.g. France, too.

In Japan, there seems to be a very unlucky combination of many factors (among them tradition, but also a funny disinterest among the younger people to bond, plus what I'll just call the "weird stuff"). That, and the kinda weird work/living conditions in the single biggest metropolitan area.

human beings are ultimately creative people

That may be a somewhat biased perception. The human people that you know are a very small, very select sample.
The overwhelming majority of human beings is very different from what you think the "normal, average" person looks like. That may also be a problem of education, but a not entirely insignificant proportion of the population does not even have the mental capabilities to receive the education needed to perform the "better" tasks. I am regularly stunned how very, very... (trying to find a less offensive wording) simple and uneducated a lot of "random, normal" people are when I encounter them, for example in the gym or in the sports club.

Playing Minecraft is one thing (and sure 100 million copies sold cannot be denied as being "successful"), but doing e.g. design work or planning a robot manufacturing cycle of "something" is something totally different, still.

The question is, what do you do with your abundance of time if there is no work left to occupy it?

Here you bring up something very important. People with nothing to do (as well as people with nothing to lose) are very dangerous people.
They will have all kinds of stupid ideas, and they will do all kinds of stupid things, too. People without work (and also without the need to work) are a catastrophe.

If you look at who is at one of those sometimes less, sometimes more violent "against everything" or "against something/someone in particular" marches, swinging some silly flag (whether it's "No to Nuclear" or a svastika flag, there's no real difference), the vast majority of them has no job,
and no need to work because welfare sustains them anyway.

They only have all these stupid ideas because they have nothing to do. Give them work, and give them something they could lose, and all problems are instantly solved.

You don't set a car on fire so easily if you own a car yourself. You don't smash a window if you fear that you will be held responsible and will have to pay for the damages from your own money. You don't shout "Kill the <insert ethno>" in the streets if you have been working all day
and are happy if only just nobody disturbs you while you enjoy your after-work beer. You don't go to a mass brawl if you still have to mow the lawn and trim the trees in your garden.

No work, nothing to lose, and a flag to sway, those are a certain recipe for desaster.

Imagine [...] completely mastered the resource supply chain and production

Problem: Resource supply is not infinite, nor free. For example you need all kinds of rare-earth stuff for modern electronics, and while they are not truly "rare" (as suggested by the name) they factually are because of the produciton process and the devastating waste.
Even if everything runs 100% automatic, there is a huge "cost" becaue you can only produce so and so much before dying from environmental poisoning.

But more importantly: Price is not necessarily related to cost in any way, indeed it is not most of the time. Just look at those many, many, many things that are basically a molded piece of plastic worth at most 10 cents, and which are being sold for 29,99 or 49,99.

Since everyone has one already, the available customer base will shrink very drastically.

Planned obsolescence. Being done for at least a decade already, annoys the hell out of me. But it sure is effective, especially since you have no way of escaping. I used to say "Never going to buy anything from those cheating bastards again", but meanwhile that leaves nothing I could still buy because everybody is doing it.

Ironically, if you think about it, SaaS is not a new invention at all. They've been doing that all along with hardware.

there are other ways for people to distinguish themselves as being better or above someone without comparing economic status (just look at the social dynamics of a high school)

It's been a while since I was in highschool, but at my time having the biggest car and the best leather jacket certainly was decisive for your "social status", if what some losers thought about you mattered to you at all. I hear coma drinking is the new "in", as is Facebook mobbing.
Not an improvement, if you ask me. :)

Maybe there are no-money no-possession ways of distinguishing yourself, but I am rather sceptical about that. Although of course it might just depend. Maybe I'm only too old, too.

If you tell me "I got 5,000 clicks on YouTube", you'll not get much more than a shrug in return. Maybe a pitying look. Thing is, so many millions of people are sooooooo desperate to distinguish themselves that it's just meaningless without something you can hold in your hands and something that has a value.

(someone further up mentioned Roddenberry)

Well, you can see in Star Trek itself how their Utopia doesn't quite work, even though humans are so darn perfect in a universe where everybody owns a nice, large house in the green, and nobody is hungry or needs to suffer, and all starfleet personnel are perfect beings.

They still play Tongo. Oh yes, they have no money, sure, but they have replicator credits and transporter credits (and seeing how beaming home for dinner cost Sisko two weeks worth of credit, they don't even seem to be very abundant), they somehow pay for food in a restaurant (not sure how exactly, but there is occasional mention of "inviting" and "bill" so there must be a means), and they hoard latinum.

Why do you need replicator credits at all if everything is perfect? Well, because people are not perfect. Given unlimited access to almost-infinite supply of something (replicator, deus ex machina), they will inevitably drain that almost-infinite resource empty.

Plus, there's not enough holosuites, if everybody spends all their time with Vulkanian Lust Slaves part 4... Oh right, no sexism, no exploiting people, none of that kind. We're all sooooo good.

Fun fact: some weeks ago the episode "The Cage" aired here for the first time ever. I didn't even know there were non-Kirk episodes from back then.

Captain Pike's remark towards the stupid-blonde-in-miniskirt stereotype (I think she was his first officer?) how it was irritating him to have a woman on his bridge really did me. Classic. Yep, we are so much evolved.

"Its always worked itself out" is kind of a worthless statement if you're supporting the idea that humanity should continue to blindly follow capitalism in its current form. "Working itself out" can just as easily be people coming together and saying "This is insane, and we need to radically reform how we choose to do things."

How we deal with housing, food, clothing, health care, and education at the very least deserve to be revised.

"Oh, you no longer have any more Made Up Points to your name, because other people felt they could make more Made Up Points for themselves by no longer employing you? Well, I guess you no longer deserve to be able to eat, and get the hell out of your shelter. Also screw you if you want to learn to do something different to earn those Made Up Points if you don't already have a bunch of Made Up Points."

I also love how people keep pointing to the failures that were the past attempts at various forms of communism and saying "Lol! Look at that and how badly it failed! See! Communism never works!"
It is sad and short sighted. Look at all the past attempts to build a flying machine... They all failed, therefore anyone who thinks humans could ever build any manner of flying machine is clearly an idiot. Please ignore all the things like planes, jets, the space station, and probes on other planets. They clearly don't count, and we should all just give up on such a stupid and silly pipe dream.
The other point that I really love about the "Failure of communism", is that it has never been actual communists who have been at the heart of the failure.


In truth, communism rose a century too early. It lacked the foundation of education and communication capacity that we have today, and to continue on with the "Red Scare" line of Communists being lazy, and that "It can never work", is to be lazy. It is lazy because you aren't even willing to try to devise a means by which the goals could be achieved. It is to look to your own short sighted narrow problems and to say "To hell with everyone else". It can't work, because people have told me it can't and I can't be bothered to even sit down and talk about how it can be made to work.