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None. The system will find balance on its own, as always. So, a big chunk of US workers are left behind b/c their jobs are now in Mexico, China, etc. So, capita

None. The system will find balance on its own, as always. So, a big chunk of US workers are left behind b/c their jobs are now in Mexico, China, etc. So, capital owners have found ultra efficiency producing goods and services thanks (in part) to Globalization. But now fewer people with stable jobs can buy them goods and services. Oops! Ok. Let's give them credit cards. Ok that works for a while but now they can't pay back. Boom! The system adjusts itself. Whats next? Who knows. Maybe universal minimum wage. Maybe resource-based economy. Maybe modern socialism. Who knows. But something WILL happen. Meanwhile, our duty is with our own.

llamataboot 11y ago
That's silly though. It's like saying, well, even if we nuke the earth and kill all humans that live on it, the radiation will eventually disperse and something new will evolve. Yes, that's fundamentally true on a birds-eye level, but that doesn't mean it's a sane or moral choice. If we know dynamic systems with feedback loops and delays tend towards overshoot and collapse, and collapse will really suck for a lot of people, we should try to build other feedback loops that make that collapse less likely, etc. Saying there is a self-correcting system in place doesn't mean that we should let all current trends just continue because they will eventually somehow correct. Violent revolutions are also a correction of sorts... Also, not sure with "our duty is worth our own" - who is "our own" and what social fiction is it built on? Family? Community? City? Nation-State? Race? Favorite board game? I think widening the empathy gap until you can view the people that grow your coffee as "your own brothers and sisters" is the name of the game for human evolution at the moment.
- deleted 11y ago
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- bikamonki 11y ago
  By our own I meant family, I do not think it is a social fiction as human beings are born helpless and would just die if there is no family to take care of them. I do not mean family from a cultural perspective, I mean family from a biological perspective. Now, my comment may sound silly to you because we are comparing apples to floppy disks. Have you read GED? One interesting understanding I gather from that book is the concept of "levels of meaning". His example goes along these lines: an ant colony seems to act with intelligence from our point of view but such interpretation is out grasp from an ant's perspective; though a smart ant could imagine the colony viewed from above! Therefore, what you call social fictions have a meaning in the layer we all call society and if such layer was our only reality I would definitely agree with any moral argument against Globalization and Capitalism. But if you just move one layer above, if you switch your perspective a bit higher and see our species interacting with millions of other species in a planet with a certain expiration date: morality has no meaning. In that layer of meaning, the goal of each and all species is one: survival. This ecosystem couldn't care less if we leave the economically poor behind. In conclusion, I was commenting from a layer above, you replied from a layer below. If we both speak on the same layer most likely we would agree. If we speak from different layers (perspectives) time is lost. Now, speaking from my perspective, my best guess is that we humans are evolving from bio to bit. We know now the planet will be gone and at some point we would want to leave looking for a new home. These bodies are not the ideal spaceship. A computer is a good alternative. The drive to evolve and develop the technologies that will make this space trip happen may be out of the control of ourselves and our consciousness. It may be genes programmed to do so. It may be bacteria in our guts driving us to do so. I do not know. However, it seems that whatever the social system we invent on the layer below in order to keep us ruled and moving forward, that invented system simply responds to a higher drive.

llamataboot 11y ago

That's silly though. It's like saying, well, even if we nuke the earth and kill all humans that live on it, the radiation will eventually disperse and something new will evolve. Yes, that's fundamentally true on a birds-eye level, but that doesn't mean it's a sane or moral choice. If we know dynamic systems with feedback loops and delays tend towards overshoot and collapse, and collapse will really suck for a lot of people, we should try to build other feedback loops that make that collapse less likely, etc. Saying there is a self-correcting system in place doesn't mean that we should let all current trends just continue because they will eventually somehow correct. Violent revolutions are also a correction of sorts... Also, not sure with "our duty is worth our own" - who is "our own" and what social fiction is it built on? Family? Community? City? Nation-State? Race? Favorite board game? I think widening the empathy gap until you can view the people that grow your coffee as "your own brothers and sisters" is the name of the game for human evolution at the moment.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
bikamonki 11y ago
By our own I meant family, I do not think it is a social fiction as human beings are born helpless and would just die if there is no family to take care of them. I do not mean family from a cultural perspective, I mean family from a biological perspective. Now, my comment may sound silly to you because we are comparing apples to floppy disks. Have you read GED? One interesting understanding I gather from that book is the concept of "levels of meaning". His example goes along these lines: an ant colony seems to act with intelligence from our point of view but such interpretation is out grasp from an ant's perspective; though a smart ant could imagine the colony viewed from above! Therefore, what you call social fictions have a meaning in the layer we all call society and if such layer was our only reality I would definitely agree with any moral argument against Globalization and Capitalism. But if you just move one layer above, if you switch your perspective a bit higher and see our species interacting with millions of other species in a planet with a certain expiration date: morality has no meaning. In that layer of meaning, the goal of each and all species is one: survival. This ecosystem couldn't care less if we leave the economically poor behind. In conclusion, I was commenting from a layer above, you replied from a layer below. If we both speak on the same layer most likely we would agree. If we speak from different layers (perspectives) time is lost. Now, speaking from my perspective, my best guess is that we humans are evolving from bio to bit. We know now the planet will be gone and at some point we would want to leave looking for a new home. These bodies are not the ideal spaceship. A computer is a good alternative. The drive to evolve and develop the technologies that will make this space trip happen may be out of the control of ourselves and our consciousness. It may be genes programmed to do so. It may be bacteria in our guts driving us to do so. I do not know. However, it seems that whatever the social system we invent on the layer below in order to keep us ruled and moving forward, that invented system simply responds to a higher drive.