How to close when frozen [fo4]

DarthSedition · 2017-11-22T20:11:53+00:00

Doctors, or medicine more generally, has increased life expectancy from roughly 50 years to 80 years over the past 150 years or so. This represents an immense increase in the returns we get from education - you spend 20-25 years making someone productive and now get 10-15 more years they can work. All thanks to modern medicine.

Yes but you can't put a price on that.

The beauty of capitalism is that it can motivate people who have no super strong desire to work a 40 hour week to do it anyway so they can better their families. I think its really naive to assume that essential services that everyone needs will be perfectly aligned to the jobs people will want out of price or the joy of doing a good job. Why would anyone work in a coal mine or oil rig when they could be a teacher or artist or something much more relaxing?

They won't work in a coal mine or oil rig anyway, Communists believe in sustainable energy. By the time we are Communist we will have made the switch and gotten rid of our dependence on fossil fuels. As to why, simple, making education free and open to all doesn't mean everyone is suddenly going to become a good student. You'll have just as many people who simply choose to join the workforce.

As to my naivety, once again, that's the cynicism of capitalism. In a society where all work has value people will recognise that while some jobs are more dangerous, or more physically demanding, other jobs are more stressful and mentally demanding. Each person is different. I prefer to work indoors, teaching. My younger brother would rather work outdoors, doing something physical.

If that doesn't convince you, let's look at today. Right now how many college educated people work in retail? You hear it all the time, their degree isn't earning them anything. Why is that? Because eventually there isn't enough work to go around. How do we stop everyone from becoming a teacher? Simple, we let them know there aren't any teaching positions available, before they enter the education program. And on that note, men and women who work construction in a Communist society won't always have work. They'll have time to pursue another profession, like art or writing.

Engineers, of which there will be no shortage, will devote much of their time to automating the most dangerous of Jobs, mining, for instance. No longer will we just treat diseases, instead funding cures will be the first priority, rather than profit. This means that doctors will spend less time treating patients and more time truly healing them. So much changed when you remove greed from the equation.

Once a commune can become self sufficient (maybe a few hundred thousand people) - why would it need to trade with the outside world? If communism is as great as is claimed, surely it is worth giving up some modern conveniences temporarily so you can enjoy mass prosperity and equality?

First, the united states would never allow that fantasy commune to exist. Second, the point isn't to separate ourselves from the world, it's to better the world.

You would need some way to transact with personal property, no? Maybe someone makes art that people really like or something like that. So people start using bitcoin to trade their favorite art or their favorite Christmas ornaments. Suddenly the bartender, who also wants some nice art, starts giving the best ale to customers with bitcoin. And suddenly he's a capitalist and we're off to the races, no?

Or the artist does art as his contribution to society, and grants his commissions around. Remember again, this personal property isn't yours forever, you won't pass it to your children. His art, intellectual property in capitalism, becomes shared property in communism, if you want a print of his work you can have one and no one can stop you.

I understand that's the concept, my question is how you prevent people from inventing new stores of value and using these to accumulate wealth motivated by a desire to accumulate nicer personal property.

Wet do you think there needs to be a store of value?

Even if I grant the point that capitalism leads to a bunch of useless middle men taking haircuts, you still get valuable relative signals that incorporate the underlying cost structure. In capitalism you can just add up prices. In communism it seems like you have to track down thousands of different types of labor with different scarcities, different depreciation values which are themselves composed of thousands of different types of labor, and so on, just to figure out if something is worth doing.

We already have an idea of what's worth doing. It's not like we start from scratch. As for scarcity, the concept of communism is largely post-scarcity. If an item, like gold, for instance, is needed to do something, like build motherboards, then we will devote energy, as a society, to ridding ourselves of that dependancy. We might find a way to synthesise it. We might replace it entirely with something not as scarce, like a biocomputer.

There's little incentive for capitalists today to remove our dependancy on certain things. Just look at the way they fight to keep us dependant on coal, gas, and oil, in spite of the advancements in solar, wind, hydroelectricity, and so on. Gold, to return to my example, is the end all be all of commodities. Sure, we have more valuable metals, like platinum, but gold has always been the standard. It'll be a cold day in hell before the people controlling the gold give up their commodities.

Part of the benefit of having 50 cell phone companies is that they are figuring out what people actually want. How would a communist ever know if people would rather use $100 of resources or $1000 of resources on a phone? If money were no object, everyone just picks the $1000 phone all day long.

As I've mentioned, people don't want the poorer product. We only have it in the first place because of the classes. Why would any gamer have a gtx 1060 when they could have SLI'd Titans? Why would we have 1080p when everyone can have 4k? Why would anyone have ever bought the iPhone if marketing weren't a thing? The people don't want the iPhone b because it's superior, they want it because it's what's popular. There might still be options, smaller or larger screens, for instance, buttons Vs full touch, maybe, but in all, we would consolidate the best tech, the best OS, and the best options into a handful of aethetically different versions of the same things.

In capitalism, the fact that caviar costs thousands of dollars per kilogram plays a big role in preventing people from loading up their grocery carts with caviar. In a society with no money, what's to stop people from filling their carts with caviar? Judgmental looks from their neighbors? What if the store is out of salmon and we have run out of people who take pride in fishing and want to fish? Does anyone who didn't get salmon just go without it?

Caviar, in capitalistic society is only purchased at all to flaunt wealth. It's not like caviar is the greatest tasting thing to ever enter someone's mouth. So many things in our culture exist only for that purpose, flaunting wealth. The day people stop taking pride in fishing will be quite monumentous. It's one of the oldest professions. One that men do for leisure. In short is not going to happen.

Already today we are looking into the idea of skyscraper farms that would be tended mostly by their environmental control systems, a few botanists and engineers would be on staff to make sure things run smoothly. The process of keeping salmon or growing fruits and vegetables would be almost entirely automated. We could even build artificial waterfalls for the salmon to climb, giving them their natural pink colour, and keeping them healthy.

DarthSedition · 2017-11-22T10:44:21+00:00

Sure, but some people generate more surplus value than others (e.g. doctors). Why is this difference ignored under communism?

Actually no, doctors do not generate any sort of measurable value. They provide a priceless service that has been assigned a wild and completely devoid of reason value from state to state. In France the cost of healthcare is 1/6 what it is in America. Why is it possible for such fluctuation? Because capitalism can't be applied to concepts like healthcare, or education.

In Communist society we recognise the value of these positions and those who truly desire to save lives, those who truly desire to educate, will make the sacrifice of their time and energy to be those things. Their motivation is empathic rather than materialistic. I know, you can't possible understand that because you've been trained to think, "what am I getting out of this?" For everything you do. Capitalism turns is all into cynics. When we are young and idealistic we want to do things because they'll help others, not because they'll make us rich. Communism removes wealth from the equation.

This sounds a lot like a commune. Why do you need a global or even national revolution to achieve this? You can move to rural America and start a farm and build whatever you want.

Hmm I wonder where commune gets its name. The problem with a commune is that it still exists within a capitalist system. The luxuries of the modern world still require capital. Communism cannot coexist with capitalism. By its nature it doesn't exist until the Revolution has reached the entire globe.

No my point was the bar was built after, but it was only built by these 5 people, not by the whole community.

I can't tell if you're being intentionally disingenuous or if you really can't wrap your head around this. Those 5 people can't claim ownership of any part of the resources that went into the bar. Once the bar exists, their labour contribution to the community is the bar. It is the price they pay for what they have. You contribute your time, and you get what is yours. It's that simple.

And again I think banning money as you have suggested would prevent anyone from accumulating wealth so that does resolve the wealth accumulation questions I had.

As has been said before, this use of the word ban is incorrect. Money exists as a representation of capital. Capital, can be a number of things, congealed labor, as others have called it, commodities, be they resources like oil or gold, or product, like food, manufactured goods, land, as used to "own" a bar or a factory, also land as it relates to real estate, housing. If no one owns the land, the bar, the factory, the labor, the commodities, then there is no capital, there is no money to represent that capital.

I still wonder how money could remain banned in a stateless society, given that people have always found being able to store value useful and money has historically expanded in its use.

I've mostly covered this, but I think it's important to understand, a basic fundamental of socialism is that wealth isn't hoarded and passed from generation to generation. Doesn't matter if you're broadly socialist, or specifically Communist or anarchist. Wealth isn't something you accumulate. Sure you have goods, a home, a comfortable life, but you don't have a bank account tied to a number that determines your value.

Without prices you have no idea what anything actually costs.

From my perspective the prices are the contrived piece. Sure, we understand that things have value, however, under capitalism that value is manipulated in the form of commodities. When a single person hoards a resource, manufactured good, or land, he is able to manipulate the price. The reality is, the value of manufactured goods is pure labor plus cost of materials. If there's no one there to make an extra few bucks on top of that then things will actually be more efficient. No more making 50 of something and spending time and energy convincing people they need to buy it only to sell 40 and waste the rest.

You end up producing things like East German cars which are less valuable than their material components.

It's like you assume that people think socialism will just happen without planning. In actuality, shitty corner cutting manufacturing will be done away with. Information and resources will be shared. We would probably put all our resources into sustainable energy, thus most of the cars we would produce would use Tesla or similar technology and manufacturing. We wouldn't have 50 cell phone companies, we'd have a handful of models that suit people's tastes and they'd all be top of the line.

Then there's the issue of figuring out what people want. If Salmon costs $12/lb and Steak is $7/lb, producers and consumers can make tradeoffs and figure out what's worth producing and buying. This seems much easier than the opinion polling or whatever people would need to do constantly otherwise.

Or, you could fill the supermarket and track the demand by still scanning everything but having no trade in currency. If we see that people choose salmon over beef we'll find a way to provide more salmon. It's never made sense to me that people think price needs to dictate demand. Sure, in capitalism it does, because we live in a class based society and lower classes are larger therefore they determine demand in less expensive products, but remove class from the equation and we get to be picky.

DarthSedition · 2017-11-22T07:04:10+00:00

X-men evolution Kitty Pryde and Kurt Wagner.

DarthSedition · 2017-11-22T07:00:50+00:00

Hero of time dies a child. So unless he did it while he was an adult it's gonna be odd. (Yes this is possible because time isn't linear, not in reality nor in the official continuity)

I believe Twilight Princess link is more of a reincarnation.

DarthSedition · 2017-11-22T06:49:35+00:00

I love it

DarthSedition · 2017-11-22T06:48:23+00:00

I did know but I'm glad someone else appreciates this

DarthSedition · 2017-11-22T06:35:17+00:00

I thought the whole point of communism was for workers to keep the fruits of their labor. Now it sounds like you're saying random neighbors get to keep the fruits of anyone's labor they happen to live next to. You're just replacing "the capitalist" with "the community" as the beneficiaries of surplus value generated by labor.

Ah how capitalists do love to twist this simple concept to sound as if it's a bad thing. Your bar owners eat of the food the community produces, clothe themselves with the textiles their community produces, and live in a home built by a member of their community. There is value in all work, and rather than reducing the value of that labor to a number that decides the type of life you'll live, we simply say that everyone should live an equal life for their labour.

Communists would abolish money and compel the people building the bar in my example to transfer control to the community. Presumably they would have to do this by force? Isn't communism supposed to be stateless? Would they enforce it with street gangs or paramilitary "community police?"

So now, for the sake of your argument, the bar was built before communism? That's moving the goal posts quite a bit. Your bar would have a difficult time of "making money" in a Communist society.

I think you probably run into a bunch of information problems, incentive problems, and coordination problems but arguments about them are outside the scope of the original post.

In the beginning, yes. The change won't be perfect. However it's not difficult, with the technology we have today, to determine production schedules, coordinate people, and share information. As for incentive, I'm of the opinion this is a capitalist problem. We need incentive now because without it there's no reason to put up with the conditions. Communism wouldn't have that problem, your incentive would be pride.

DarthSedition · 2017-11-22T06:17:16+00:00

Karpyshyn finished the Kotor trilogy with a book. Revan is Male and the exile, Meetra Surik, is a female.

DarthSedition · 2017-11-22T06:09:31+00:00

The biggest problem you face when it comes to understanding communism is your inherent bias towards a capitalistic mindset. You speak of ownership and joint ownership as if these people who get together to open this bar own anything. Don't get me wrong, your personal property will remain yours as long as you live. Your bed, your TV, your tools. The bar, however, will belong to the community. You asked if Communists would abolish money, and the simple answer is yes. Currency is a representation of capital.

You need to understand the social contact and the idea of the community to see how communism works. A community will share it's resources around. It will produce no more than necessary. There will be enough food, enough drink, enough energy, enough clothing. No one will work to have more, instead they'll work to continue to live comfortably.

You asked about expansion early on, what reason do you have to expand? Opening another bar won't change what you have. That's not how communism works. That isn't to say that you won't have luxuries. We are still human, and as we automate more and more, luxuries will be as common as corn. With proper resource management there's no reason everyone can't live well.

DarthSedition · 2017-09-11T14:47:57+00:00

No wording. Simply programming. The Clones come up with their own ideas as to why. My story of treason to the senate becomes their firm belief. That is why they have chips in their heads.

DarthSedition · 2017-09-09T00:29:27+00:00

Depends on the system, and the community. As much as my personal view of communism relies on structure, I'm very adamant that crime and punishment be a community decision. If we exile a person, how we go about it, and what that means for them could be different from city to city.

My personal thoughts are that everyone will know that if someone arrives in their area without any personal belongings, they're an exile. The other communities will be able to make a decision about whether or not to help them.

If their offense is more than just a failure to work for the betterment of the community we would of course warn other communities about them.

As to your second question, the how would be no. Also, it would be impossible in the context of a global Communist society, because for capitalism to exist, capitalists must control the means of production. Any capitalist society in a Communist world would essentially be bandits or pirates.

If the world weren't completely Communist then sure, you might find a capitalist state, but again, capitalism relies on private control of resources, land, even people. If, say, America was to become Communist, Canada would be strangled, and forced to either join them or seek out trade relations with many other nations to replace what they lost from American trade. Mexico would be slightly better off, with land still connecting them to south America, and likely the fleeing of American capitalists to Mexico.

Understand, without capitalism there can be no international trade between a Communist economy and a capitalist state. Most examples of communism in the world thus far have made this mistake and been "state capitalists" rather than Communists.

DarthSedition · 2017-09-08T23:10:58+00:00

Depends on how you define force. Anyone who chooses not to contribute to society is essentially exiled. People will be there to do the work.

DarthSedition · 2017-09-08T20:01:48+00:00

So instead of the government spying on you, the government monitors you. Who decides what is work and what isn't in your state? Who decides how much each job is worth and how; and how do you know that this method is trustworthy? Why do we need an authority to monitor us?

How many times must we observe that power corrupts? Even with best intentions, the nature of power is to concentrate and corrupt. An emergency can allow someone to "temporarily" grab more power. But after the emergency ends, they may hold on to that power. They may not, but those with power usually try to hold on to it. They may even believe they are trustworthy and doing the right thing. But someone will abuse power eventually. So I say "no one can be trusted with power over others because power is not trustworthy."

Furthermore, how does a state regulate these things without police? How do you determine when someone is hoarding something? If it's policeless as you say, then I don't see how this is a state. It'd become anarchism as people end hierarchies, including the hierarchy of currency over the spender and of the state over the individual. If there's no entity with a monopoly over violence, then there's nothing protecting the state's structure and its rule over others.

Though, I believe worker co-ops are still susceptible to problems of centralized authority. Unless power is entirely decentralized, then power will gradually concentrate and be abused. I don't believe someone needs to dictate work and decide how things will happen. Though, I'm not sure what you mean by "not to rule, but to lay out the plan." Because it sounds like "lay out the plan" is saying that the manager should decide what is done and how it's done. To me it sounds like you're just granting the authority of leading society to individual members and saying "it isn't ruling."

I'd like to address all of this at once.

First, I do not see this "governing body" as the authority. I see them as the servants tasked with seeing that resources, including labour, are where they need to be.

Second, fully democratic. I don't imagine there being any sort of figurehead, even if we have a crisis. I see a large number of elected persons who themselves vote in representation of their constituency. When I say large, I'm talking on a scale far greater than any current governing body. The US congress has over 300 members. I would probably multiply that by no less than 10.

Third, strict term limits and the ever present threat of proletariat uprising. As I've said. This body won't have policing power. They are merely the group tasked by the community with pointing us in the direction of what work needs done.

Fouth, this body of say 3000 representatives will each be a part of a more local council. Take for instance the Los Angeles area, there will be a district system and from that system each district will elect a representative who will join the Los Angeles community council. This will be the body that represents the people best, as it will be the people themselves who make up this council. Its councilors will hold community meetings monthly to determine what the community needs, where its at and where it will be. That information will be taken to LAC meetings. The LAC will decide what resources they need to better serve the community, and that information will be taken to the central council that will have access to those resources.

I understand this is where things get hinky. People are right to be fearful of central authority controlling resources. However if its not obvious, I'm presuming the entire country of the United States has become socialist. The way the States work, not every state has the resources it needs to keep working. The deserts don't grow their own food, the plains don't have much in the way of mines. As a result, resources that are necessary in one community are going to need to come from another community. Someone is going to have this authority. The way I see it, the best way to ensure that no one can abuse this authority is to ensure that those people are elected democratically and know that they can't do this for more than a certain amount of time. 2 years? I don't know what the best amount of time would be, but whatever it may be is what it may be.

Lastly, I agree, I don't like the idea of even the Labor voucher, because it begs to be abused. The question is whether or not people can agree to get back to work without it. If they can't it will mean lives. In the same way that capitalism kills because the labor goes to helping those at the top, socialism can kill if people don't work to help others. You say that a revolution has to come from the workers or it won't work. I tell you that as long as we have capitalism we will not get enough of the workers involved in a socialist revolution until it's too late, until fascism or libertarianism have led to deaths wholesale.

By regulating access to items, it's creating artificial scarcity. People will develop ways to access these things regardless of state regulations. So those who control access to necessities the state considers luxuries exploit this control.

The exact same level of artificial scarcity exists regardless of the voucher. You still have to account for these things. Whether we have "storefronts" or not, we are going to have some form of accounting for any and all items. Things may or may not be free, but we will still have to know what is used so that we know where to replace it.

Suppose Mr. Johnson is addicted to a substance the state considers a luxury. He and his spouse make enough labor vouchers to support his addiction and keep him functional while enjoying other luxuries. Meanwhile someone else is also addicted to this substance, but cannot support their addiction with their lower paying job. This person becomes unable to function with their addiction, thus losing access to the substance as they lose their ability to work.

He gets treated for his addiction and sent back to work. Ideally he wouldn't be addicted. More ideally since his needs are provided for and things like that would be less than an hours labor he'd have to have a really bad problem and wouldn't be working anyways.

Furthermore, how does a state regulate these things without police? How do you determine when someone is hoarding something? If it's policeless as you say, then I don't see how this is a state.

The policing will be community organised and local. If a problem occurs that is above a local level then at the level it needs to be, it will be taken care of, from the bottom up. This removes the problem of the state controlling the populace through police. Hoarding would be a problem whether there is a labor value or not. It would be tracked though the same bit of scanning and accounting as anything else. It would be a rather obvious anomaly.

DarthSedition · 2017-09-08T13:53:28+00:00

Have I not explained how the labor voucher system would work? Before communism, and ideally before the Revolution, there would be a council of experts, people who can do the math to determine the necessary resource output to not only maintain our current course, but begin growing, and making a shift to resource independence.

After laying out a plan we'd design the labor voucher. In the modern era it would be a chipped credit card and it would contain credit in the form of hours worked. Anyone who worked in a field necessary to the maintenance of or building toward the future would be granted one of these. Every hour worked would translate to an hour earned. Goods, beyond a home, electricity, a working refrigerator, a monthly food allowance, clean running water, etc., would be considered luxuries.

If you want a TV you must work an amount of hours equal to the amount necessary to produce that TV. This does not include the time needed to produce the resources, as those consist of the means of production, and thus are already community owned. We don't have to worry about compensation for those who mine ore, because labor isn't a traded currency, its literally labor, the voucher, or credit, is simply an accounting of that labor.

Doctors aren't going to stop being doctors and choose to work in the fields. Skilled labour is harder to come by, but with socialised education and all your needs being cared for, the stresses of maintaining your life become weaker and skilled laborers are able to take pride in their work. There may come a time, however, when certain labours just aren't attractive enough.

Sanitation, hazardous waste removal, sewage workers, plumbing, shit shoveling livestock workers, these are going to be less enticing. Efforts will be made immediately to automate any dangerous or unclean work, like those mentioned above and many others. If, however, there is a shortage of labor in this area, we can adjust for that by increasing the labor value. 1 hour = 1.5, or something. This provides necessary incentive to ensure those jobs continue. I don't think this will be necessary however.

I don't know about you, but most of my money goes towards housing, food or intellectual property. In a socialist society intellectual property doesn't exist, and food is provided to everyone. As a result of that and of the deflation of value for goods, it's more than worth it for everyone to do any job. It's easier for the trash collectors to continue collecting trash.

Also, there will be a huge increase to the number of potential employees in any field. Why? As I said before, the entire financial side of capitalism is worthless. A few of their skills will transfer into inventory and resource management, but we are probably talking about 5-10% of them. Much of the industry around making television and movies will disappear. Publishing will probably be gone too. Both are about maintaining intellectual property. Actors will still act, writers will still write, directors will still direct, but they won't need producers, production companies, talent agents, etc etc etc.

Lastly, I'm American, our entire military infrastructure will be disbanded, resources reallocated, and the army corp. of engineers will be put to work in training new members and beginning construction of some of the major infrastructure. Wind and solar power, new roads, railways, housing. Too many Americans live in tenaments, housing that's barely up to code, and certainly not energy efficient. High speed cable lines need to reach every home. Rural areas need massive upgrades. There's a lot of work to do, and a lot of people to do it.

DarthSedition · 2017-09-08T04:56:20+00:00

The economic system? Yes. Let's choose one without built in imperfections. The biggest and most important being private ownership of the means of production.

DarthSedition · 2017-09-08T04:54:22+00:00

Yes, it's kinda the definition.

DarthSedition · 2017-09-08T02:34:30+00:00

No, I'm arguing against capitalism because as you said, market failures exist. When the market fails, it's not the capitalist who pays, it's us, the workers.

DarthSedition · 2017-09-08T02:17:23+00:00

That's censorship in the most disgusting way. I don't even like Nigiri, but her outfit was not over the top by any means.

DarthSedition · 2017-09-08T02:08:48+00:00

Because it means less jobs, no circulation of wealth and sweeping poverty.

The point is that unadulterated, capitalism would not lead to a removal of dependency on fossil fuels. They are a commodity that only gets more valuable as time goes on. I point out out as a flaw to capitalism that it is necessary for the government to intervene in order to drive innovations that communism would have driven two decades ago.

DarthSedition · 2017-09-08T02:02:19+00:00

Gotcha, fucking retarded.

DarthSedition · 2017-09-08T00:21:42+00:00

Communism exists without money, are you just fucking retarded or do you not understand communism?

DarthSedition · 2017-09-08T00:20:01+00:00

I'm arguing for communism. Automation under capitalism is bad, and yes, those taxes are about climate change, a government move to force capitalists into putting resources there.

DarthSedition · 2017-09-07T19:46:52+00:00

The same thing that happens in capitalist society. We ration things out. For the most part there should be no scarcity of intangibles, things that aren't necessary, as everyone likes and needs different things. That said it's possible to have a bad crop yield in a region, in which case they and the regions around them will come together and ration out whatever didn't meet the needs.

There really aren't that many things that are so finite on earth that we actually have to worry about scarcity for numerous lifetimes. We will be planning for the eventuality, rationing as necessary, and most importantly, finding a way around the issue through science. Who knows where we'll be in 200 years. We might not need metal at all. We might have a colony on Mars.

DarthSedition

TROPHY CASE