4 ms·
Stuff like this will slowly stop further evolution of society and lock down the status quo. Right now we still have ways to change society peacefully but in a s
by maxxxxx 8y ago
Stuff like this will slowly stop further evolution of society and lock down the status quo. Right now we still have ways to change society peacefully but in a surveillance state either nothing changes or change has to come with force.
I think societies with massive surveillance will stagnate until they collapse.
- facialwipe 8y agoOr more frightening, the Communist experiment is successful long-term and becomes the dominate model for 'stability' globally.
- ffwacom 8y agoDoubt, there's no pure communist states left, they all fell after killing a bunch of their citizens by "knowing what's best". The economy is a chaotic system and any earnest attempt at top down control will fail, let alone communism which historically was more about transferring power to your friends than any real belief in an ideology.
- mojuba 8y agoJust FYI (has been said a gazillion times on the Internet): no state on this planet was ever communist. Communism is a society without money, no such thing existed on a state level anywhere. The states you are referring to were 100% socialist, i.e. no private property in any form or share with very very few exceptions; money tightly controlled by the state; all businesses are state-owned. The comment above though probably meant the true communism, i.e. society without money.
- ffwacom 8y agoA society without money is even more absurd.
- lightbyte 8y agoThe Inca Civilization had no money was was pretty darn successful http://www.discover-peru.org/inca-economy-society/ http://www.discover-peru.org/inca-economy-society/
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ffwacom 8y agoTiny fiefdom. Think of the insane size of what we call society even 100 years ago, money is what makes us cooperate.
- lightbyte 8y ago>Communism is a society without money, no such thing existed on a state level anywhere. While it might not be something you can compare to communism, the Inca Civilization had a centrally planned economy with no form of money at all and was HUGELY successful [1] [1]: http://www.discover-peru.org/inca-economy-society/ http://www.discover-peru.org/inca-economy-society/
- yostrovs 8y agoCommunism in practice is the unending struggle to achieve the imaginary, theoretical communism you refer to.
- apocalypstyx 8y agoCouldn't the same be said for what most people call capitalism?
- maxxxxx 8y agoThat's pretty much how all ideologies work. Listen to some hardcore libertarians and you will hear them longing for the imaginary, theoretical free market that never has existed and probably never will.
- hueving 8y ago>The comment above though probably meant the true communism, i.e. society without money. Why would you think that? The term "communist experiment" implies that it's one being conducted right now. There are no states with even hints of plans for this "true communism" you speak of.
- maxxxxx 8y agoThis may be true for a while but eventually there will be more and more pressure until the system explodes.
- d4nt 8y agoAt first I was terrified of this, in the short term this could cause a lot of suffering but I’ve become convinced it will fail in the long term. Human societies have evolved a very sophisticated mechanism for moving people up and down hierarchies using a distributed reputation tracking system. This system is interesting in that they’re trying to centralise the reputation tracking system and thereby control it. To the extent that it replicates what people, on average, think about you I think it’ll work. But planned economies loose to unplanned ones because distributed decision making outperforms centralised decision making. Eventually this system will be misused, make bad decisions, or get ridiculously complex. Then people will loose faith in it. When that happens there’s very little China’s government can actually do to control 1.4 billion people. (That’s not to say that there their remaining options aren’t very worrying though, e.g. tanks)
- maxxxxx 8y agoWith enough computing power and ruthlessness it may actually be possible to control 1.4 billions. I don't know how things would have worked out if Hitler or Stalin had had current or soon to be technology. Thank God North Korea doesn't have the money to buy or develop the latest surveillance tech either. They may have succeeded for much longer. In the end I think dictatorships will always blow up but tech makes their life much easier.
- pdkl95 8y agoBruce Sterling's book Schismatris, when the technologically advanced decedents of humanity returned to earth: > "Do you see the cable system? The mausoleum has an information line, the only one in the village. Whoever lives there holds all links to the outside world." > [...] "Stability," he said. "The Terrans wanted stability, that's why they set up the Interdict. They didn't want technology to break them into pieces, as it's done to us. They blamed technology for the disasters. The war plagues, the carbon dioxide that melted the ice caps... They can't forget their dead." "Surely the whole world isn't like this," Vera said. "It has to be. Anywhere there is variety there is the risk of change. Change that can't be tolerated." "But they have telephones. Aircraft." "Enforcement technology," Lindsay said. > [...] The parting had come with hatred: with those in space condemned as antihuman thieves, and Earth's emergency government denounced as fascist barbarism. Hatred made things easier: easier for those in space to shrug off all responsibility, easier for Earth to starve its myriad cultures down to a single gray regime of penance and pointless stability. > But life moved in clades. Lindsay knew it as a fact. A successful species always burst into a joyous wave of daughter species, of hopeful monsters that rendered their ancestors obsolete. Denying change meant denying life.