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My simplistic understanding of Oppenheimer is "we all lived in perfect harmony, then some strong men came along and forced everyone into hierarchies and pay tax

My simplistic understanding of Oppenheimer is "we all lived in perfect harmony, then some strong men came along and forced everyone into hierarchies and pay tax. If only we could get rid of politics and go back to living in harmony." It's a common reaction to bad politics - dictators and purges and so on. It's surprisingly common in post Cesaer Rome - but at least they wanted to go back to a Republic. Sorry but humans work better when they work together - from hunting Mammoths to building skyscrapers. So the answer is to find better ways to work together. I see that outcome as society and the process as politics. Edit: an interesting example is right in the front page - https://www.leidenmedievalistsblog.nl/articles/why-medieval-city-builder-video-games-are-historically-inaccurate https://www.leidenmedievalistsblog.nl/articles/why-medieval-... which roughly says "video games allow private industry to grow a village into a town pretty linearly, it it never worked like that because (weather / war / some bugger owned the land and would take more surplus than would let you grow - plus it was often planned like urban planner planned) Oppenheimer would say that's evil politics, let's stop politics, I would say that's incentives and power balance and economics and military power imbalances and lack of medical and public health. In my (again simplistic view) it took the English and Dutch to build strong Parliaments abs financial systems that kept the monarchy in check and allowed private industry to begin to grow, and advances in public health to lay foundation for industrial revolutions. Oppenheimers not wrong I guess, just the solution is a moderation of the politics not going back to a simpler time.

_0ffh 5y ago
> Sorry but humans work better when they work together - from hunting Mammoths to building skyscrapers. So the answer is to find better ways to work together. I see that outcome as society and the process as politics. None of that requires politics, it requires a free market. Things do not get done forcibly, but voluntarily. Trying to get things done forcibly is immoral as well as inefficient, but it's an oh-so-sweet temptation for the profiteers of the arrangement. Getting rid of politics will not get us back to a simpler time, it will bring us forward into a time where we can concentrate our energies on our own lives and endeavours of making the world a better place bit-by-bit instead of permanently having to fight off the incessant hectoring of wannabe know-betters, do-gooders and world-savers with grand schemes and utopian visions who think that everyone should do everything the way they think is best, "for their own good".
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  I dont understand how people think the "free market" works without politics. Free as in if you make money someone kidnaps your children till you had over the cash? Thats forcible and immoral. Or do we have a police force to stop that? If we have a police force, who pays for that, who regulates the police? We would need some politics to decide all that. Honestly it seems politics is just the bits of the current system that you don't like. We all don't like some bits. If we want to change them we need to, work together to compromise on which bits we keep and which we get rid of. Like turtles, its politics all the way down.
  - _0ffh 5y ago
    No "we" don't need politics to decide anything! Politics is only needed to decide for other people, without their consent. A market works by voluntary interaction of individuals. And please stop trying to explain my own motivations to me, it's really grating. It's not "bits of the current system that I don't like", it's the whole inhumane, extortionary and murderous shebang that I don't like! It's politics all the way down only until you hit what's been buried beneath, the bedrock and basis of a true society worthy of the name, as opposed to enslavement light: the individual's freedom to make their own choices!
    - lifeisstillgood 5y ago
      I genuinely don't understand the idea that markets can somehow operate outside a social / political framework. Barter economies maybe but anything involving money or contracts. Imagine a free market without say any legal framework for contracts? I remember a few years back the Libertarian party candidate saying "yes a driving license seems a good idea" and almost being forced from the job. Is that where you are coming from? I disagree that politics is "deciding for others without their consent". That seems to describe violent dictatorships. (Yes that's a form of politics but not one I am advocating)
      - _0ffh 5y ago
        I'm giving up, you just keep conflating the social and the political this is getting tiring! And no, you don't need politics to draw up contracts or have money or a legal framework, that's a thoroughly confused point of view. And yes, politics is exclusively about coercion, because if you can convince somebody to do something voluntarily you don't need politics to make them. Ultimately, all political power comes from the barrel of a gun.

_0ffh 5y ago

> Sorry but humans work better when they work together - from hunting Mammoths to building skyscrapers. So the answer is to find better ways to work together. I see that outcome as society and the process as politics. None of that requires politics, it requires a free market. Things do not get done forcibly, but voluntarily. Trying to get things done forcibly is immoral as well as inefficient, but it's an oh-so-sweet temptation for the profiteers of the arrangement. Getting rid of politics will not get us back to a simpler time, it will bring us forward into a time where we can concentrate our energies on our own lives and endeavours of making the world a better place bit-by-bit instead of permanently having to fight off the incessant hectoring of wannabe know-betters, do-gooders and world-savers with grand schemes and utopian visions who think that everyone should do everything the way they think is best, "for their own good".

lifeisstillgood 5y ago
I dont understand how people think the "free market" works without politics. Free as in if you make money someone kidnaps your children till you had over the cash? Thats forcible and immoral. Or do we have a police force to stop that? If we have a police force, who pays for that, who regulates the police? We would need some politics to decide all that. Honestly it seems politics is just the bits of the current system that you don't like. We all don't like some bits. If we want to change them we need to, work together to compromise on which bits we keep and which we get rid of. Like turtles, its politics all the way down.
- _0ffh 5y ago
  No "we" don't need politics to decide anything! Politics is only needed to decide for other people, without their consent. A market works by voluntary interaction of individuals. And please stop trying to explain my own motivations to me, it's really grating. It's not "bits of the current system that I don't like", it's the whole inhumane, extortionary and murderous shebang that I don't like! It's politics all the way down only until you hit what's been buried beneath, the bedrock and basis of a true society worthy of the name, as opposed to enslavement light: the individual's freedom to make their own choices!
  - lifeisstillgood 5y ago
    I genuinely don't understand the idea that markets can somehow operate outside a social / political framework. Barter economies maybe but anything involving money or contracts. Imagine a free market without say any legal framework for contracts? I remember a few years back the Libertarian party candidate saying "yes a driving license seems a good idea" and almost being forced from the job. Is that where you are coming from? I disagree that politics is "deciding for others without their consent". That seems to describe violent dictatorships. (Yes that's a form of politics but not one I am advocating)
    - _0ffh 5y ago
      I'm giving up, you just keep conflating the social and the political this is getting tiring! And no, you don't need politics to draw up contracts or have money or a legal framework, that's a thoroughly confused point of view. And yes, politics is exclusively about coercion, because if you can convince somebody to do something voluntarily you don't need politics to make them. Ultimately, all political power comes from the barrel of a gun.