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Any solutions that are in conflict with human nature will never be successful. Ambition and envy are basic human traits. At a deeper level, we are beings that m

Any solutions that are in conflict with human nature will never be successful. Ambition and envy are basic human traits. At a deeper level, we are beings that measure everything (including light, sound, smell, touch and taste) by way of comparison. Communism fails because no one has anything left to aspire to and everyone is therefore equally miserable.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
medo-bear 3y ago
Wealth caps of 15M is certainly not communism > Ambition and envy are basic human traits No they are not
- MightyBuzzard 3y ago
  Yes, they are. If they weren't you wouldn't care if someone made more than $15M.
  - medo-bear 3y ago
    If someone makes the grand claim that something is a basic (fundamental) human trait, the burden of proof is on them.
  - yellowapple 3y ago
    Is watching those around you starve/freeze to death due to having $0 (or less!) not a reason to care about whether some people make more than $15M? How many people could that hoarded wealth have housed and clothed and fed?
    - germandiago 3y ago
      I think that is a wrong perspective. Of course many people care about that. The problem is that by looting rich people you will not end up with the problem. In fact, you can make the problem much bigger mid-term by killing incentives and making people into poverty... Cuba or Venezuela were richer than Spain in the 50s just to give you a couple of examples. And Venezuela has natural resources. What happened? Well, yes, this kind of: let's take everything from the others and give to the poor.
      - thiagoharry 3y ago
        > Cuba or Venezuela were richer than Spain in the 50s just to give you a couple of examples. And Venezuela has natural resources. Sorry, I checked GDP per capita charts, and it appears that Cuba was not richer than Spain in 50s. It would be implausible that a small country with little natural resources would become richer than the country that colonized it in so little time. And Venezuela become poorer than Spain in 1982. So it had no relation with "take everything from the others and give to the poor". Counterpoint for your argument: outside the west, between non-alignment countries, only places where marxist-leninist revolutions happened produced powers that were able to seriously compete with the west. For example, URSS and China.
        germandiago 3y ago
        I never talked about GDP. I meant per capita. How people lived. I can tell you because many spanish families emigrated there. I know cases from friends whose parents are from those countries. I am spanish and it was common knowledge that those places had higher income at that time.
      - yellowapple 3y ago
        > I think that is a wrong perspective. It's the only perspective that matters. > In fact, you can make the problem mich bigger mid-term by killing incentives and making people into poverty... Being limited to $15 million is a far cry from "killing incentives and making people into poverty".
      - vonjuice 3y ago
        > What happened? Um, the US?
    - MightyBuzzard 3y ago
      [dead]
- nobleach 3y ago
  As someone who has worked extremely hard to acquire assets great than 15 million, who do you suggest has the authority to come and take some of it away from me. And what will they do with the resources they confiscate?
  - medo-bear 3y ago
    The same people that already have the power to confiscate your assets - the tax office.
  - yellowapple 3y ago
    By what authority are those assets "yours" in the first place? Whence did those assets originate?
    - nobleach 3y ago
      When one makes an agreement that if I set certain goals, and I achieve said goals, I will be compensated a certain amount. If I choose to buy land, goods, services, the seller chooses the "value". If I agree on the value, I have free will to to purchase the land, goods or service. If I do not agree on the value, I can either offer a lower price, or walk away. If I purchase said land, goods or service, and later decide that I no longer want those things, I can choose to sell them. At that point, I set a value. If the purchaser agrees on the value, I then sell/transfer ownership to that person. If the value has grown since I purchased said land, goods, service, I could potentially profit. If the value has not increased, I am at a loss. So, to directly answer your question about "authority". (In my case, land that was owned, and worked, for 100 years in an area that no one wanted to live). A price for said land was agreed upon. The sale was advantageous for the seller as he no longer wanted to tend it. I assumed the risk, taxes, etc. Working said land was extremely arduous. Shepherding it through multiple hurricanes, floods, etc bore a financial burden. Many years later, as the area began to develop, my asset grew in value. Selling it produced a profit. This profit allowed me more ability to purchase other land, goods and services. As I'm tying this, I'm certain you're aware of these basic economic principles, but simply don't agree with them. Disagreement is fine. But this is the way things are done in my country. And, I choose to live here because I agree with those principles. If I wanted to live in a country where an entity could come and confiscate my wealth, and redistribute it, those countries exist. I could likely move to one of them.
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
This presupposes there is some way to know what human nature is. The best definition I've ever found is "altruistic and cooperative with an in-group, competitive and aggressive towards out-groups". And that doesn't say much at all on this particular point.
- at_a_remove 3y ago
  The best one I heard, I am pretty sure was from a Stephen Baxter novel, was our tendency to create valuable "caches" of resources.
- jimbokun 3y ago
  > This presupposes there is some way to know what human nature is. Empirical observation. Look what happened in all the 20th century communist countries.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    Empirical observation is only a way to determine what is, and not what could be. Since we know that human behavior ("nature") is substantively malleable, we need to know what could be, not merely what is.
    - jimbokun 3y ago
      That's the problem. It's not ethical to perform experiments on human subjects without their explicit consent. That's why the Institutional Review Board was created: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_review_board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_review_board You can't just perform experiments on large groups of people to see what will happen.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
        So in short, neither you nor I know what human nature is, and thus setting up criteria for social organization on whether it aligns with "human nature" is impossible, and a foolish goal.
doctor_eval 3y ago
Communism fails because it’s just a different - and more difficult - kind of propaganda for politicians to make off with the loot.
amalcon 3y ago
Communism fails because giving everyone a voice in central planning can't scale up to an economy of millions of people. It requires a degree of central planning that permits too much corruption. The only known vaccine against corruption is high civic engagement. Every society has a given level of civic engagement; and thus a given maximum level of central planning before corruption becomes intolerable. No known large society has a high enough level of civic engagement to support the amount of central planning required by communism. Communism works just fine for small groups (<10), and passably up to a few hundred (e.g. kibbutzim). Your argument would apply equally well at those scales, but mine doesn't. Full disclosure -- there are other arguments that contradict mine while still differentiating these cases. Of course it doesn't super matter, because this proposal (though not a great idea) isn't communism and communism reliably fails anyway at the scales most people mean.
vonjuice 3y ago
> Ambition and envy are basic human traits. So are compassion and generosity. And contradiction. The role of systems in society should be to oil the pathways for the better parts of human nature to come forth, and make the other traits less convenient.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

medo-bear 3y ago

Wealth caps of 15M is certainly not communism > Ambition and envy are basic human traits No they are not

MightyBuzzard 3y ago
Yes, they are. If they weren't you wouldn't care if someone made more than $15M.
- medo-bear 3y ago
  If someone makes the grand claim that something is a basic (fundamental) human trait, the burden of proof is on them.
- yellowapple 3y ago
  Is watching those around you starve/freeze to death due to having $0 (or less!) not a reason to care about whether some people make more than $15M? How many people could that hoarded wealth have housed and clothed and fed?
  - germandiago 3y ago
    I think that is a wrong perspective. Of course many people care about that. The problem is that by looting rich people you will not end up with the problem. In fact, you can make the problem much bigger mid-term by killing incentives and making people into poverty... Cuba or Venezuela were richer than Spain in the 50s just to give you a couple of examples. And Venezuela has natural resources. What happened? Well, yes, this kind of: let's take everything from the others and give to the poor.
    - thiagoharry 3y ago
      > Cuba or Venezuela were richer than Spain in the 50s just to give you a couple of examples. And Venezuela has natural resources. Sorry, I checked GDP per capita charts, and it appears that Cuba was not richer than Spain in 50s. It would be implausible that a small country with little natural resources would become richer than the country that colonized it in so little time. And Venezuela become poorer than Spain in 1982. So it had no relation with "take everything from the others and give to the poor". Counterpoint for your argument: outside the west, between non-alignment countries, only places where marxist-leninist revolutions happened produced powers that were able to seriously compete with the west. For example, URSS and China.
      - germandiago 3y ago
        I never talked about GDP. I meant per capita. How people lived. I can tell you because many spanish families emigrated there. I know cases from friends whose parents are from those countries. I am spanish and it was common knowledge that those places had higher income at that time.
    - yellowapple 3y ago
      > I think that is a wrong perspective. It's the only perspective that matters. > In fact, you can make the problem mich bigger mid-term by killing incentives and making people into poverty... Being limited to $15 million is a far cry from "killing incentives and making people into poverty".
    - vonjuice 3y ago
      > What happened? Um, the US?
  - MightyBuzzard 3y ago
    [dead]
nobleach 3y ago
As someone who has worked extremely hard to acquire assets great than 15 million, who do you suggest has the authority to come and take some of it away from me. And what will they do with the resources they confiscate?
- medo-bear 3y ago
  The same people that already have the power to confiscate your assets - the tax office.
- yellowapple 3y ago
  By what authority are those assets "yours" in the first place? Whence did those assets originate?
  - nobleach 3y ago
    When one makes an agreement that if I set certain goals, and I achieve said goals, I will be compensated a certain amount. If I choose to buy land, goods, services, the seller chooses the "value". If I agree on the value, I have free will to to purchase the land, goods or service. If I do not agree on the value, I can either offer a lower price, or walk away. If I purchase said land, goods or service, and later decide that I no longer want those things, I can choose to sell them. At that point, I set a value. If the purchaser agrees on the value, I then sell/transfer ownership to that person. If the value has grown since I purchased said land, goods, service, I could potentially profit. If the value has not increased, I am at a loss. So, to directly answer your question about "authority". (In my case, land that was owned, and worked, for 100 years in an area that no one wanted to live). A price for said land was agreed upon. The sale was advantageous for the seller as he no longer wanted to tend it. I assumed the risk, taxes, etc. Working said land was extremely arduous. Shepherding it through multiple hurricanes, floods, etc bore a financial burden. Many years later, as the area began to develop, my asset grew in value. Selling it produced a profit. This profit allowed me more ability to purchase other land, goods and services. As I'm tying this, I'm certain you're aware of these basic economic principles, but simply don't agree with them. Disagreement is fine. But this is the way things are done in my country. And, I choose to live here because I agree with those principles. If I wanted to live in a country where an entity could come and confiscate my wealth, and redistribute it, those countries exist. I could likely move to one of them.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

This presupposes there is some way to know what human nature is. The best definition I've ever found is "altruistic and cooperative with an in-group, competitive and aggressive towards out-groups". And that doesn't say much at all on this particular point.

at_a_remove 3y ago
The best one I heard, I am pretty sure was from a Stephen Baxter novel, was our tendency to create valuable "caches" of resources.
jimbokun 3y ago
> This presupposes there is some way to know what human nature is. Empirical observation. Look what happened in all the 20th century communist countries.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  Empirical observation is only a way to determine what is, and not what could be. Since we know that human behavior ("nature") is substantively malleable, we need to know what could be, not merely what is.
  - jimbokun 3y ago
    That's the problem. It's not ethical to perform experiments on human subjects without their explicit consent. That's why the Institutional Review Board was created: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_review_board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_review_board You can't just perform experiments on large groups of people to see what will happen.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      So in short, neither you nor I know what human nature is, and thus setting up criteria for social organization on whether it aligns with "human nature" is impossible, and a foolish goal.

doctor_eval 3y ago

Communism fails because it’s just a different - and more difficult - kind of propaganda for politicians to make off with the loot.

amalcon 3y ago

Communism fails because giving everyone a voice in central planning can't scale up to an economy of millions of people. It requires a degree of central planning that permits too much corruption. The only known vaccine against corruption is high civic engagement. Every society has a given level of civic engagement; and thus a given maximum level of central planning before corruption becomes intolerable. No known large society has a high enough level of civic engagement to support the amount of central planning required by communism. Communism works just fine for small groups (<10), and passably up to a few hundred (e.g. kibbutzim). Your argument would apply equally well at those scales, but mine doesn't. Full disclosure -- there are other arguments that contradict mine while still differentiating these cases. Of course it doesn't super matter, because this proposal (though not a great idea) isn't communism and communism reliably fails anyway at the scales most people mean.

vonjuice 3y ago

> Ambition and envy are basic human traits. So are compassion and generosity. And contradiction. The role of systems in society should be to oil the pathways for the better parts of human nature to come forth, and make the other traits less convenient.