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> If someone is giving you bread for free, you can be sure it's because they don't want you to rebell. There's no other reason you could think of to feed a hun

> If someone is giving you bread for free, you can be sure it's because they don't want you to rebell. There's no other reason you could think of to feed a hungry person? > That is why an economy must rely on the basis of voluntarily offering something of value. Because the alternative is literal enslavement. You don't see the irony in saying that a person must volunteer their value or be enslaved?

kebman 6y ago
> There's no other reason you could think of to feed a hungry person? Free individuals might give something out of benevolence. But a state institution is not a free individual. It can only represent the collective, and you cannot ensure that all individuals in such a collective would agree to such an exchange, or feel benevolent about it. As such, there is no such thing as a benevolent state. Instead, you can employ game theory on such entities, to the extent of making them look completely self-serving and even psychopatic, as proven by Nash. This is why it is so important to curtail the development of big and monolithic bureaucratic organisations, and instead use such principles as those given by Montesquieu, to make natural powers compete for authority. > You don't see the irony in saying that a person must volunteer their value or be enslaved? Do you think the person giving you bread should be forced to give you that bread? Nay, it would be far better if there was some kind of mutual exchange. There is none to be had, when the exchange is merely giving out a resource for "free." Except we know that it's not for free, but in return for your good behaviour. Then the exchange isn't free, but depending on an exchange anyway, except you have little to no say in it. Then the one in power of that resource in turn also have absolute power over you. So there should be a way for you to gain that power for yourself, or in the least make sure the one giving you bread does not have monopoly in doing so, because it will inevitably devolve into abuse of power.
- strbean 6y ago
  > It can only represent the collective, and you cannot ensure that all individuals in such a collective would agree to such an exchange, or feel benevolent about it. As such, there is no such thing as a benevolent state. A state is only benevolent if every single citizen is benevolent? That seems like a pointless assertion. In a democracy, in theory, the majority is what matters.
  - kebman 6y ago
    Ah, yes. The majority that forced Socrates to drink poison.
    - someguyorother 6y ago
      If democracy is majority dictatorship, then why do constitutions provide rights also to the minority?
      - kebman 6y ago
        Thankfully, it's because a lof of politicians have read Socrates, and taken his lesson to heart; that majority rule is indeed dictatorial, and so we should strive to also let the minorities be heard. That doesn't mean it is always fair, though. Sometimes it also leads to minorities gaining dictatorial rights when they shouldn't.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- someguyorother 6y ago
  This seems to be a kind of mixing of two concepts. First, that "a state that is big enough to give you anything, is big enough to take it all away". And second, that being provided resources "for free" is a forced exchange because you don't have a say. If the state was a dictatorship, then the point might apply. However, democratic states (to lesser or greater degrees) contain some measure of feedback; and that weakens both of the prongs. Plainly speaking, a democratic state provides its people bread for free because that's what the people want. The state can't take it all away since it is responsible to the people, and the exchange isn't a one-sided forced deal because the people in the state's jurisdiction have collective power on the state itself. If that power is the power of the ballot, then the mutual exchange could be seen through an adversarial lens to be "good behavior in return for free bread". But the consequence doesn't hold, as the state doesn't have absolute power over its people. The exchange is mutual because if either party reneges, so does the other party. But the stronger that feedback is, the less the adversarial model works. Consider a community small enough to support a direct democracy along consensus lines. If the tech existed, such a community could create an automated bakery and then hand all of that bread to its members. Here the members govern themselves; there is no external power that arises out of the state and then unilaterally controls the people. A larger state may be different, but that difference is a matter of degree. "The one in power of that resource" only has "absolute power over you" if you are not part of it.
  - kebman 6y ago
    This is not a concept, but an observation. What you're talking about already exists. It's the capitalist cooperative, where people voluntarily come together to pool capital in order to build some company that produces things or services that are of benefit to the collective owners and/or their customers. However, while the price of membership in such a unit decreases with every new participant, the ownership is also diminished with each new owner, until effective control over the unit or process becomes very difficult. This will inevitably lead to frustration and feelings of powerlessness as needed change is slowed more and more. As the saying goes, more votes, does not necessarily mean more democracy. It simply means that it becomes harder to get anything done. Meanwhile, bureacracies grow and rule uninterrupted under such conditions, since a vote every fourth year, and the meddling of one or two representatives, can only ever make small and incremental changes, instead of giving the organization the far-reaching and overarching reorganization that it actually needs in order to become fair and effective again; a thing that is usually contested and opposed by those making up the bureacracy of that organization in the first place.
nostrademons 6y ago
> There's no other reason you could think of to feed a hungry person? It's not what you can think of that matters, it's what the people who control the state apparatus can think of. The vast majority of human beings are capable of empathy. Such people are usually found towards the bottom to middle of most hierarchies, because their empathy makes it painful to fuck over all the other claimants and collateral damage that they need to crawl over to get to the top. You could look at capitalism is a sociopath-containment vehicle. If there were no sociopaths, there would be no need for capitalism: people would produce what was needed and freely share it with the people who need it most. However, there are sociopaths, and throughout history they've usually just taken all the excess production, enjoyed it, and left the people who produced it destitute. It was a big innovation to be able to channel that selfishness and will to dominate other people into productive uses that make the rest of society more efficient.

kebman 6y ago

> There's no other reason you could think of to feed a hungry person? Free individuals might give something out of benevolence. But a state institution is not a free individual. It can only represent the collective, and you cannot ensure that all individuals in such a collective would agree to such an exchange, or feel benevolent about it. As such, there is no such thing as a benevolent state. Instead, you can employ game theory on such entities, to the extent of making them look completely self-serving and even psychopatic, as proven by Nash. This is why it is so important to curtail the development of big and monolithic bureaucratic organisations, and instead use such principles as those given by Montesquieu, to make natural powers compete for authority. > You don't see the irony in saying that a person must volunteer their value or be enslaved? Do you think the person giving you bread should be forced to give you that bread? Nay, it would be far better if there was some kind of mutual exchange. There is none to be had, when the exchange is merely giving out a resource for "free." Except we know that it's not for free, but in return for your good behaviour. Then the exchange isn't free, but depending on an exchange anyway, except you have little to no say in it. Then the one in power of that resource in turn also have absolute power over you. So there should be a way for you to gain that power for yourself, or in the least make sure the one giving you bread does not have monopoly in doing so, because it will inevitably devolve into abuse of power.

strbean 6y ago
> It can only represent the collective, and you cannot ensure that all individuals in such a collective would agree to such an exchange, or feel benevolent about it. As such, there is no such thing as a benevolent state. A state is only benevolent if every single citizen is benevolent? That seems like a pointless assertion. In a democracy, in theory, the majority is what matters.
- kebman 6y ago
  Ah, yes. The majority that forced Socrates to drink poison.
  - someguyorother 6y ago
    If democracy is majority dictatorship, then why do constitutions provide rights also to the minority?
    - kebman 6y ago
      Thankfully, it's because a lof of politicians have read Socrates, and taken his lesson to heart; that majority rule is indeed dictatorial, and so we should strive to also let the minorities be heard. That doesn't mean it is always fair, though. Sometimes it also leads to minorities gaining dictatorial rights when they shouldn't.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
someguyorother 6y ago
This seems to be a kind of mixing of two concepts. First, that "a state that is big enough to give you anything, is big enough to take it all away". And second, that being provided resources "for free" is a forced exchange because you don't have a say. If the state was a dictatorship, then the point might apply. However, democratic states (to lesser or greater degrees) contain some measure of feedback; and that weakens both of the prongs. Plainly speaking, a democratic state provides its people bread for free because that's what the people want. The state can't take it all away since it is responsible to the people, and the exchange isn't a one-sided forced deal because the people in the state's jurisdiction have collective power on the state itself. If that power is the power of the ballot, then the mutual exchange could be seen through an adversarial lens to be "good behavior in return for free bread". But the consequence doesn't hold, as the state doesn't have absolute power over its people. The exchange is mutual because if either party reneges, so does the other party. But the stronger that feedback is, the less the adversarial model works. Consider a community small enough to support a direct democracy along consensus lines. If the tech existed, such a community could create an automated bakery and then hand all of that bread to its members. Here the members govern themselves; there is no external power that arises out of the state and then unilaterally controls the people. A larger state may be different, but that difference is a matter of degree. "The one in power of that resource" only has "absolute power over you" if you are not part of it.
- kebman 6y ago
  This is not a concept, but an observation. What you're talking about already exists. It's the capitalist cooperative, where people voluntarily come together to pool capital in order to build some company that produces things or services that are of benefit to the collective owners and/or their customers. However, while the price of membership in such a unit decreases with every new participant, the ownership is also diminished with each new owner, until effective control over the unit or process becomes very difficult. This will inevitably lead to frustration and feelings of powerlessness as needed change is slowed more and more. As the saying goes, more votes, does not necessarily mean more democracy. It simply means that it becomes harder to get anything done. Meanwhile, bureacracies grow and rule uninterrupted under such conditions, since a vote every fourth year, and the meddling of one or two representatives, can only ever make small and incremental changes, instead of giving the organization the far-reaching and overarching reorganization that it actually needs in order to become fair and effective again; a thing that is usually contested and opposed by those making up the bureacracy of that organization in the first place.

nostrademons 6y ago

> There's no other reason you could think of to feed a hungry person? It's not what you can think of that matters, it's what the people who control the state apparatus can think of. The vast majority of human beings are capable of empathy. Such people are usually found towards the bottom to middle of most hierarchies, because their empathy makes it painful to fuck over all the other claimants and collateral damage that they need to crawl over to get to the top. You could look at capitalism is a sociopath-containment vehicle. If there were no sociopaths, there would be no need for capitalism: people would produce what was needed and freely share it with the people who need it most. However, there are sociopaths, and throughout history they've usually just taken all the excess production, enjoyed it, and left the people who produced it destitute. It was a big innovation to be able to channel that selfishness and will to dominate other people into productive uses that make the rest of society more efficient.