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Societies across the world need to start focusing on Eternal Automation. The goal is for everyone to benefit from collective advances. So what if someone doesn'
by RyanAdamas 3y ago
Societies across the world need to start focusing on Eternal Automation. The goal is for everyone to benefit from collective advances. So what if someone doesn't want to work and has 10 kids; if even half of those kids end up working to contribute to the worldwide implementation of systematized structures which free us from corporate control; though that struggle will be very real, then it's worth paying people not to work and instead incentivizing those who do with advanced access to new structural creations.
There is no reason to continue as we have. What gets you to where you're going isn't generally needed once you get there. We don't hike to the park only to hike up the mountain; we drive, then hike, then picnic or have sex (generally both). We must not let corporations or the greedy define what work and prosperity means.
- mypastself 3y agoThe unstated suggestion here seems to be to impose such a system through governmental structures, putting great trust into another system of control…
- shrimp_emoji 3y agoThe unstated suggestion here seems to be that the government is not already THE (and best) system of control. The market didn't outlaw slavery (because it loved the profits); the government did. The market didn't limit the work week to 40 hours (because it loved the profits); the government did. The government is the moral conscience of the people. The market is a mindless paperclip maximizer. You can't expect it to care about anything individuals care about, like not being slaves or being healthy or having a life.
- mypastself 3y agoThe government also encoded slavery into law in the first place, and the move to the 40-hour workweek was driven by the automotive industry. The “moral conscience” of a people might well get us to a much worse state, if we permit it too much control.
- redwall_hp 3y agoThe move to the 40-hour workweek was driven by striking and spilled blood in the labor movement for multiple centuries. The auto industry doesn't even make the top ten. Then the FLSA happened and forced change. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
- sph 3y agoThe market didn't go to war; the government did. The market didn't put billions in some politician friend's pocket; the government did. The market didn't put people in jail because the system has failed them; the government did. The market didn't decide that drugs are bad while financing the very drug lords in tropical countries that are dealing in our streets; the government did. The market didn't pass a law to permit themselves to skirt the law. They asked, but the government signed. -- What you call the market is the combination of economics and politics. But the market itself, the free trade among people, is a neutral party and a chaotic self-driven mechanism. But if someone has the power to dictate what is a valid trade and what is not, to put tariffs on A and not on B, the market stops being a neutral chaotic equilibrium and instead tends to accumulate money on one side rather than the other. Because in the smaller scope, where government action is not as heavy handed, the market works beautifully. Every shop in my high street thrives and dies the same way: good products = profit. Bad products = death, and get replaced by someone better. That is, until someone that got huge thanks to government action (i.e. favour and corruption) can just destroy this equilibrium by opening a Walmart causing every shop to die. What you call the market, almost as a slur, is the same mechanism we have had for thousands of years. Monopoly, exploitation of labour, squeezing money from the poor to make the rich even richer is governmental action. You don't become a trillion dollar company without many good friends in the palace. Nor it is the "division of labour" that money and trade enable that made the trillion dollar company. The market is the convenient scapegoat for the thieves running the show. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_anarchism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_anarchism > The unstated suggestion here seems to be that the government is not already THE (and best) system of control. There are many form of government. Which form do you speak of? We must've lost so many idealists and visionaries in the past 150 years, that we have stopped dreaming a better, fairer world for everybody, and just decided that this is the best we can do. Maybe voting for the other colour next time will help, who knows. Whatever can one do?
- dragonwriter 3y ago> The market didn't [...] The market did all those things; acts characterized as government are services traded on the market. Yeah, there are formal restrictions on doing that, but just as free marketeers bleat that regulation of more conventional goods doesn’t stop them from being traded and creats a black market still guided by market forces, that's also true of government acts. People who use appeal to the market to sell political ideas never seem to apply their logic consistently, tailoring their description of what buying and selling is “market” based on what they are trying to sell you. > But the market itself, the free trade among people, is a neutral party and a chaotic self-driven mechanism. The market is not a party at all, it is an abstraction describing interactions of all the parties; and it is no more neutral than the ultimate outcome of the aggregate of interactions is.
- throwaway5959 3y agoIt’s insanely selfish to have ten kids with global population trends.
- jaredhallen 3y agoIsn't the trend that developed nations are starting to plateau, and global population is expected to peak in the next few decades? I'm actually more worried about the opposite problem in the short term. With birth rates so low, the folks being born now are going to be supporting a disproportionately large elderly population.
- RyanAdamas 3y agoThere is no population crisis that's 100% propaganda. We have so much arable land yet to be developed, oceans yet to be fully utilized. The Earth can easily hold 1 trillion people. The only ones promoting population control are the people who make money off of labor scarcity and fear.
- throwaway5959 3y agoA trillion people. 100 times as many people as today. Think about that for a second and get back to me with how we’re going to maintain our lifestyle with the demands we already put on lumber, copper, etc.
- 1123581321 3y agoFast-growing planting programs, new materials, new ways to live. Our current tradeoffs inherent to urban or rural life will look primitive. It won’t happen though because the planet is stalling out around 9-10 billion and will see wars and starvation from under population.
- throwaway5959 3y agoLess that two percent of the population is involved in growing food today. Not sure how we’ll have starvation as a major issue due to “under population”.
- _cenw 3y agoThat's slightly naive. Every time we get an uplift in efficiency, capitalism demands we produce more. Either by product diversity, by inventing and marketing things nobody knew they wanted (and usually, need) or just more (so we can throw away more; consider food waste alone). Systemic change needs more than technological preconditions. Or in other words: Why would "corporate control" just give up its power?
- asu_thomas 3y agoThis is literally Marxism. Not similar to Marxism, but literally Marxism.
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoMaybe little different. I think there is a concept that if we are not re-producing above the replacement rate. That industry will collapse, there wont be workers. There are plenty of capitalists, and free market capitalist countries that are advocating incentives to encourage more couples having more kids. The machine also needs humans. If that means paying people to have kids doesn't make it Marxist.
- asu_thomas 3y ago[flagged]