Vladimir Lenin was far worse.  He didn't kill nearly as many people, but he infused communism with its tactics which have caused a century of political turmoil and even today is threatening to collapse the United States into communism.  So far... Vladimir Lenin always wins in the end.  Always.  His tactics can't be beat.  Communism is pure evil on every level, Stalin and Mao are just two of their shining examples of "achievement", Hitler being yet another.  There are very few examples of atrocities committed by anyone other than communists since communism came into being.  More importantly, though, is that there is no example, ever, of a "fascist republic".  There has never been a republic that was an "evil empire".  It is the only form of government of which that is true.

Just for the heck of it, here's a cartoon that would certainly be highly educational to anyone under the age of 25 or so ("The Brainwashed Generation")...

So, to re-iterate, even though mass automation and AI may well mean collective ownership of the means of production could be the most rational solution for covering the needs of the many in the 21th century, we should abandon it because communist revolutionaries enacted too much force in order to achieve this "plan" in backwards, agricultural, semi-feudal countries of the 20th century.

Does that make sense? I mean, we could skip the red flag and the hammer&sickle if that's what's bothering you, Kavik.



Remember kids, Medicaid and Obamacare leads to gulags!

...and even today is threatening to collapse the United States into communism...

8 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

I'd argue that eventually capitalism in its current form will not be able to sustain automation. There will be a point when large swathes of people will find themselves out of a job. Take for example truck driving in the US. It is one of the largest professions in the US. It won't be long before it's automated. What then? What will truck drivers do?

Well....

The question here comes down to: will society bow to technological advance? I don't think so.

What will truck drivers do? They will rebel. They will start attacking autonomous trucks. They will try to sabotage them. Maybe some will try to compete and work themselves to death. Some of the political caste will side with them and try to regulate or downright ban autonomous trucks. They might get crafty and attack those drone trucks based on the dangers of autonomous driving (where currently, they would actually be justified).

I don't expect human workforce to go down without a fight.

And even if truck drivers accept their fate and stop working as druck drivers... you really think that this will automagically lead to society moving in the "right" direction (from your point of view)? No, I can tell you the populists on both side will try to use it to instantiate an authocratic state of their design. The right will stick to capitalism far longer than it can sustain itself because of "muh freedom".... the left will **** up their ideas, probably going in the direction you envision, because they always do.

Automation will only lead to social unrest, a widening gap between the rich and the poor, and revolution in the worst case short or mid term. I am sure society can find a way to integrate automation into an evolution of its current economy.... I don't think a readical revolution like algorithm driven communism will be that evolution, and I don't think we can make it work before automation bites us in the ***.

1 hour ago, mikeman said:

So, to re-iterate, even though mass automation and AI may well mean collective ownership of the means of production could be the most rational solution for covering the needs of the many in the 21th century, we should abandon it because communist revolutionaries enacted too much force in order to achieve this "plan" in backwards, agricultural, semi-feudal countries of the 20th century.

Does that make sense? I mean, we could skip the red flag and the hammer&sickle if that's what's bothering you, Kavik.

Well, I think there is way more than 50% of the population worldwide currently alive that would say this justification of communism because "it has never been tried" or "automation will solve all problems" is a rather optimistic view on a very complicated matter.

Communism has a bad name because it failed every time it was tried.

Was it ever tried in a region or country were the starting conditions were anything else than piss poor? No, of course not. But will a revolution like this ever happen in a country were the starting conditions aren't piss poor. No again. If the system is running, no politician worth his salary will ever change it.

Its all fine and dandy crafting ingenious theoretical economies that are far superior than the subpar one we currently are soldiering on with. But lets not forget Murphy: a plan (or theory in this case) never survives contact with the enemy (or real life in this case).

Unless you are very, VERY careful how you test and rollout such a system in smal chunks, are ready to roll back or only implement partially, and take a loooong time to achieve all of this, you will never be able to ease a bigger population into such a communist system.

To add to what I said before communism has a bad name because it failed every time... but also because it always lead to faschism and tyranny. Replacing the human tyrant with an algorithm will not make this any more acceptable for most human beings.

You can at least say your leader is a **** if its a human (well, at least you can think that without getting executed... until we get mind reading technology). He can be made responsible for his own deeds.

An algorithm cannot be made responsible. You end up with the worst form of tyranny, because you handed over responsibility to an irresponsible device. You kinda created "a god"... a being that decides on the fate of humans, devoid of emotions, devoid of responsibility, and if that system should work as designed (and thus humans cannot simply control the algorithm), with not way of control over it safe revolution and destruction of that mechanoid god.

A pretty serious dystopia, if you ask me.

I feel like we're arguing about 2 separate things here.

1) Automating large amount of jobs like truck driving, farming, construction, data processing, service sector, etc. Essentially leaving only creative jobs available to humans - science, art, engineering, and so on(or are we talking about strong AI that can even do these jobs? I feel like that's a bit further down the road).
2) Now that we have a vast "army" of "slave robots" to do our bid, while we relax and/or do creative work of our choosing with our time, how do we decide resource allocation?
 
I don't agree with (2) being automated away by an "all-knowing AI". A central entity like that, either an AI or a human government can never have enough accurate information about the wants and needs of the public. I don't think it's not ideal at all. A council-based, de-centralized system, close to direct democracy, assisted by technology of course, would be better.

Of course, like the above poster said, those are all "theoretical" plans anyway that are kinda besides the point. There are socialist plans like that, but marxist-oriented socialists(like yours truly) tend to dislike them - they're part of a tradition of "utopian socialism" which is basically having a set plan and then trying to implement it, in contrast with "scientific socialism" which Marx introduced

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopian_socialism

However, for the sake of it, I will link the work of a modern utopian socialist.

http://www.participatoryeconomics.info/

And here's a marxist rebuttal.

https://louisproyect.org/2016/09/21/michael-albert-versus-karl-marx/

The reality is that history in general doesn't work like that. If(when?) automation starts destroying more jobs than it creates, there's gonna be a lot of upheaval and a lot of confusion that will throw the best plans of men and mice in the bin. Especially since the world is not on the same page at all - and to answer deltaKShatriya's question on that, my view(after what I've read on the matter that is) is that Africa/S.America/Asia have been "left behind" because their resources have been, and still are, exploited by the West, via colonialism and imperialism. Not because their civilization is not as "advanced" and they lacked innovative investors and industrious workers.

9 hours ago, mikeman said:

So...what do you think is the reason for the inequality between the 3rd world(or Global South) countries and the West? Are people there just less industrious and/or intelligent than westerners? Acts of God? Fate? Pure luck? 

I would say the mere expectation of goods being distributed totally equal is a pipedream. In a real life setting, perfect equity is impossible to reach.

But I know where you are going. Lets say europe would have never had colonies, and the colonies had little contact with the europeans, while everything else would be equal... what would be the chance that african civilizations would have come up to the same technological standarts the europeans had at the beginning of the colonization period? When that technological advancement was mostly due to the contact of european civilizations with other cultures (which were also pretty bloody often, lets not forget the constant battle between the occident and orient)... neither would the oriental cultures in the near east ever be that advanced in the middle ages without having had a lot of contact with the ancient greeks and romans. Nor would the european nations ever get out of their dark ages without their contact with the oriental cultures.

Where would that leave african cultures, given they never have been visited by the europeans (the chinese did abandon their plans to branch out to africa quickly, so lets disregard them), yet never would have developed the technlogy needed for long distance sailing, nor the drive to do so (which is mostly lacking resources).

By the time they would come into contact with whowever would be the top dog on the eurasian continent (and without colonization, that might have been the oriental powers. Probably not the chinese, given they were completly shutting themselves off. Maybe the russian tzars given the vast, resource rich empire they had), you would still have the african cultures vastly outgunned in technology compared to the eurasians.

Technological advancement, especially in older times, was driven by war, and the contact with other cultures. Colonization sadly was one very one sided example of that, and probably the inevitable outcome of a culture with vastly superior technology meeting one with inferior one. In a world with finite resources, there is always a drive to colonize others.

Coming back to current day, I'd say that explains most of the discrepancy that is still existing today. Some civilizations just had a bad start, and would now need to be EXTRA industrious to catch up. Some do (asia for example), some don't (africa for example).... I could try to make an argument for differences in how people generally think and behave in this parts of the world when facing such economical problems, but that would be a gross oversimplification, ignoring local differences, different starting positions (asia had a stronger base before colonization took place there, or in case of China, the emperor decided to freeze any kind development by law and shutting his country off the rest of the world), different post-colonization history.

I still think the confuzianistic mindset that somewhat lives on in many asian cultures today is one factor in why asia seems to do way better than other regions that suffered from colonization in the past.

Of course, given that the biggest problem on the african continent is that african "politicians" and tyrants tend to be as greedy as they are incompetent save commanding a brutal militia, that isn't entirely fair to the african mindset. Probably the biggest issue is that africans are still caught in a neo-feudalistic mindset, where the masses hardly ever question the ruler, other than the individuals who want to become the new ruler. Under a good leadership, african countries probably would thrive.

@Gian-Reto : You make some good points. I am not saying, of course, that, have Africa for instance been "left alone", they would have invented the steam engine at the exact same point in history as the Europeans. But what I'm saying is that we would have a much more different world has each people be left free to carve its own path in its own land, and not have entire continent's resources be put in the service of Europe.

(Of course, you might say this was inevitable since they made contact - maybe so, I'm not moralizing here, merely trying to trace the reasons of why the world is fragment in such unequal pieces).

20 minutes ago, mikeman said:

to answer deltaKShatriya's question on that, my view(after what I've read on the matter that is) is that Africa/S.America/Asia have been "left behind" because their resources have been, and still are, exploited by the West, via colonialism and imperialism. Not because their civilization is not as "advanced" and they lacked innovative investors and industrious workers.

That is a half truth, sure. Just as the view I layed out above. The real truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

But some points I want to comment on:

1) Asia left behind? Really? When china is on the verge of becoming the biggest industrial power in the world, the other east asian countries doing fine economically themselves, and Japan being the most advanced nation for a long time already? I would say Asia as a whole does just fine.

Sure, you can argue about their political systems, with many being dictatorships and all... but that isn't directly the fault of the west now, is it?

2) Africa and S.America is still being taken advantage of by global companies, sure. But only because the local leadership profits from that. If the local governments wanted, they could throw those multinationals out of the country. Don't think the western governments would interfere with that at all given the current political climate.

Colonialism and Imperialism have become quite the scapegoats to make complicated matters sound easier IMO...

16 minutes ago, mikeman said:

@Gian-Reto : You make some good points. I am not saying, of course, that, have Africa for instance been "left alone", they would have invented the steam engine at the exact same point in history as the Europeans. But what I'm saying is that we would have a much more different world has each people be left free to carve its own path in its own land, and not have entire continent's resources be put in the service of Europe.

(Of course, you might say this was inevitable since they made contact - maybe so, I'm not moralizing here, merely trying to trace the reasons of why the world is fragment in such unequal pieces).

Damn the forum for not letting me add a quote to an existing post!

Sure, we can theorize about how the world would look today. But see, no matter how the world would have progressed without constant contact between cultures, the technological advancement would have suffered.

If that would be a good or bad thing depends on your outlook.

Given how technology has a chance to make a REAL impact today in 3rd world countries, without complicated AI or Algorithms (just see how the africans are using real low tech Cellphone technology for some real advancement in quality of life for farmers and people living in africa), I'd say overlooking the pains of advancement (which I would argue are inevitable, someone has to suffer for society to move on), it is a net positive.

The challenge of the current day were humankind has become aware of these injustices, and decided to no longer tolerate it, is HOW we can better share the benefits.

If we want to see what stagnation, and isolation leads to, just look at China in the years before the colonization. How the once most advanced culture in the world got powercreeped by what was "barbarians" to the ancient cultures just over thousand years before that in a matter of centuries.

4 hours ago, Gian-Reto said:

1) Asia left behind? Really? When china is on the verge of becoming the biggest industrial power in the world, the other east asian countries doing fine economically themselves, and Japan being the most advanced nation for a long time already? I would say Asia as a whole does just fine.

This is a bit of a fallacy that China is suddenly about to take over the world with its industrial might. I'd argue that the post industrial nations are simply shunting their manufacturing to China, since it's cheaper, when you pay workers basically nothing. Sure some Chinese folks are enjoying a better standard of living, but it's a far cry from the whole population being better off. Remember, there's 1.2 billion people in that country. That many people can damn well make more than the US, and it's very telling that only now are they approaching and starting to pull ahead of the US. Doesn't this tell you that China is still pretty far behind in some ways?

Japan is the exception, since it was never directly colonized. China faced some form of colonialism, and of course much of Asia was directly under colonial rule. What other nations are there? India faces similar problems as China: it's doing fairly well, but not nearly as well as you'd think. The story is pretty much the same across much of Asia.

Most Asian nations are doing fine compared to African nations, which are doing even worse by comparison. Sure Asian countries aren't doing as bad as many others, but are pretty far behind the West even now.

4 hours ago, Gian-Reto said:

2) Africa and S.America is still being taken advantage of by global companies, sure. But only because the local leadership profits from that. If the local governments wanted, they could throw those multinationals out of the country. Don't think the western governments would interfere with that at all given the current political climate.

Yea and those governments were left in place through colonialism and imperialism. The local leadership is as poor as it is primarily because of the effects of colonialism.

4 hours ago, Gian-Reto said:

Colonialism and Imperialism have become quite the scapegoats to make complicated matters sound easier IMO...

Sure there are other factors obviously, but by and large, colonialism had an adverse affect on many of the former colonial states. It's only been maybe 70 or so years of independence for some places that were ruled as colonies for almost 3 centuries.

One thing I should clarify about as well, I'm not saying that an algorithmic allocation of resources needs to be equal. Everyone has different needs, and certain things are more desirable than others. I believe that any algorithmic allocation of resources would need to take into account what's needed to keep person x happy. This doesn't have to be the same as person y, although many basic things will be the same such as some form of food, water, etc. Person y might just be happy with reading books all the time while person x might want a fast car. It's a simple and rather dumb example, but demonstrates what I'm trying to get at. Of course a dumb equal distribution of resources doesn't make sense: everyone is different. But we can certainly have a distribution of resources where the majority of people are happy. This doesn't even have to be without some means of currency or markets: we can still have those. There may even be some form of reward system that rewards members of society for contributing to society (as opposed to doing literally nothing). 

I see this more as engineering a better solution, since we will ultimately have production systems that are by and large automated and don't really need much human assistance. 

Another thing I'd ask is does anyone have other solutions to mass automation? I get it that maybe this isn't an appealing idea, but are there alternatives that don't involve @ChaosEngine's dystopian future or even semi-pessimistic futures?

6 hours ago, mikeman said:

So, to re-iterate, even though mass automation and AI may well mean collective ownership of the means of production could be the most rational solution for covering the needs of the many in the 21th century, we should abandon it because communist revolutionaries enacted too much force in order to achieve this "plan" in backwards, agricultural, semi-feudal countries of the 20th century.

Does that make sense? I mean, we could skip the red flag and the hammer&sickle if that's what's bothering you, Kavik.



Remember kids, Medicaid and Obamacare leads to gulags!

 

Honestly what's most annoying about these arguments is that they aren't legitimate criticisms of what's being discussed. It's pretty much ad hominems really. I'm all ears for actual criticism and actual alternatives, but if your entire argument is basically "Mao was terrible, Stalin was terrible, Lenin was terrible, therefore, your proposed automated allocation of resources is also stupid", then what are we even supposed to debate here? 

I don't even identify necessarily with Socialism, but I mean clearly this line of 'reasoning' doesn't really advance the conversation.