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Paraphrasing a comment I read years ago: if your hypothetical economic system depends on everyone in the society behaving in a way that humans have never behave

Paraphrasing a comment I read years ago: if your hypothetical economic system depends on everyone in the society behaving in a way that humans have never behaved in all of recorded history, it's pure fantasy. Eliminating the daily struggle for survival via something like UBI is not intrinsically a bad idea IMHO. Eliminating profit incentives altogether is effectively impossible - given the chance, most people will always act out of self-interest without even pausing to think about it. Or do you think socialist countries are magically free from corruption and greed?

TaylorAlexander 7y ago
a couple of things: 1) Much of what I advocate for is based on how many human societies have operated for millennia. Collective management on the tribal level seems pretty common historically. 2) Some innovation is possible. Our society every day does things we didn’t do for thousands of years. Technology definitely changes this, but for example we didn’t do very large representative democracies until recently. It stands that there still exist some unpopular ideas that would work better that what we have today.
- natechols 7y ago
  There is a huge difference between "collective management on the tribal level" and abolishing the profit incentive in an advanced industrial economy. People who've never known anything other than prosperity have a tendency to idealize pre-modern societies - they vastly underestimate how miserable life was for most people, and how much violence was involved in organizing these societies. Imagine a typical homeless camp in the Bay Area, only more violent: sure, it's easy to forget about profit when you're engaged in a daily struggle to not die from starvation, disease, wild animals, bandits, or natural disasters, and close cooperation is the only thing saving your tribe from sudden extinction.
  - TaylorAlexander 7y ago
    You and I have very different ideas about both what is possible in the future and what is acceptable today. It’s funny that you mention homeless camps, which would not be needed in a socialist society.
    - natechols 7y ago
      Getting rid of homeless camps does not require getting rid of the profit motive; most capitalist countries manage to not look like the Tenderloin. I'd even argue that the modern Western welfare state requires capitalism to generate the surplus wealth required to pay for it. Applying totalitarian social engineering to the problem is just overkill.
      - TaylorAlexander 7y ago
        I don’t advocate for totalitarian anything - quite the opposite. I advocate for the development of a society where people voluntarily collaborate to eliminate things like homelessness.

TaylorAlexander 7y ago

a couple of things: 1) Much of what I advocate for is based on how many human societies have operated for millennia. Collective management on the tribal level seems pretty common historically. 2) Some innovation is possible. Our society every day does things we didn’t do for thousands of years. Technology definitely changes this, but for example we didn’t do very large representative democracies until recently. It stands that there still exist some unpopular ideas that would work better that what we have today.

natechols 7y ago
There is a huge difference between "collective management on the tribal level" and abolishing the profit incentive in an advanced industrial economy. People who've never known anything other than prosperity have a tendency to idealize pre-modern societies - they vastly underestimate how miserable life was for most people, and how much violence was involved in organizing these societies. Imagine a typical homeless camp in the Bay Area, only more violent: sure, it's easy to forget about profit when you're engaged in a daily struggle to not die from starvation, disease, wild animals, bandits, or natural disasters, and close cooperation is the only thing saving your tribe from sudden extinction.
- TaylorAlexander 7y ago
  You and I have very different ideas about both what is possible in the future and what is acceptable today. It’s funny that you mention homeless camps, which would not be needed in a socialist society.
  - natechols 7y ago
    Getting rid of homeless camps does not require getting rid of the profit motive; most capitalist countries manage to not look like the Tenderloin. I'd even argue that the modern Western welfare state requires capitalism to generate the surplus wealth required to pay for it. Applying totalitarian social engineering to the problem is just overkill.
    - TaylorAlexander 7y ago
      I don’t advocate for totalitarian anything - quite the opposite. I advocate for the development of a society where people voluntarily collaborate to eliminate things like homelessness.