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To elaborate on my previous comment: if you want people to be less individualistic and more community-minded, and especially if you want economic organization t

To elaborate on my previous comment: if you want people to be less individualistic and more community-minded, and especially if you want economic organization to be more cooperative, decentralized and bottom-up, then people are going to need to feel a deep sense of buy-in and belonging, and you don't really see that in an undifferentiated mass of atomized "consuming and producing units". But you do see it among the Amish, and the Basques, and the Boers, and in the kibbutzim, and in families generally, because kin relations are meaningful among humans and elsewhere in the animal world. And I'm not arguing that "collectivist success requires ethnic purity", just noticing a correlation. Where you see apparent altruism in economics -- including nepotism in hiring -- you tend to find kin relations. Probably the game theorists and evolutionary psychologists have it figured out.

harwoodjp 2y ago
It's true that, in those groups, a shared ethnic identity enables economic cooperation. But the lack of solidarity you observe is the result of a regime of coercion. The official policy: leave your neighborhood, family, friends, and passions for 40+ hours a week to build a capitalist's business. You have to do it to survive. And the police are there to make sure revolts don't break out.
- ertian 2y ago
  The claim that work is inherently coercive is crazy to me. In order to live, we need food, clothing, shelter, comforts. Those take labor to produce. We've abstracted labor using money, allowing for specialization, so you can perform some specialized labor to provide for all your needs. The needs aren't forced upon you. They're inherent. Labor is required to meet the needs you must meet in order to live (and live in comfort). They'd be needed even if no board of directors had ever sat in a meeting room. So who's coercing you? It's like a farmer hating his field: you're mad that companies 'make' you work to survive; a farmer might hate his field for 'making' him plant seeds to produce food. I don't get it. It seems delusional.
  - harwoodjp 2y ago
    Automation makes jobs unnecessary. We should build social infrastructure that allows people to pursue their passions with basic necessities guaranteed. This has been possible for awhile now.
    - chongli 2y ago
      Nonsense. You can’t feed people with machines. You need raw materials and you need land to produce those materials from. That productive land is already owned by a bunch of people who currently use it to grow food and sell at market for profit. Are you proposing we seize their land? That’s what the Soviets did. Millions died. With the weaponry we have today it could be hundreds of millions or billions. All for what? So people don’t have to work? Now suppose we do collectivize all the farms, this time miraculously without killing everyone, and we successfully set up the automation to feed everyone (despite the fact that a lot of crops still need to be picked by hand due to a lack of robot technology). We still don’t eliminate the need for work. There’s tons of other stuff to be done. Building houses, computers, trains, planes, automobiles, and new factory robots. There’s still tons of research going into all this stuff, maintenance and repair. People still need to do all this work. Who is going to pay them? Who is going to own what they produce? If I build a robot in my garage to automate harvesting the peppers I grow in my backyard, do I own it?
      - harwoodjp 2y ago
        > Are you proposing we seize their land? Not necessarily, but I think the workers should operate their farm democratically. > That’s what the Soviets did The USSR was state capitalist. Workers' councils (or soviets) stopped being considered very early on. > If I build a robot in my garage to automate harvesting the peppers I grow in my backyard, do I own it? Yes, it's your personal property. Private property is something else.
      - kaibee 2y ago
        > Are you proposing we seize their land? And how did they come to own their land? You trace the claims back enough and it'll resolve to "some ancestor took it from someone else at the point of a spear". But we don't need to seize the land. A land value tax achieves the same goals while leaving in place all the nice free-market stuff you're talking about.

harwoodjp 2y ago

It's true that, in those groups, a shared ethnic identity enables economic cooperation. But the lack of solidarity you observe is the result of a regime of coercion. The official policy: leave your neighborhood, family, friends, and passions for 40+ hours a week to build a capitalist's business. You have to do it to survive. And the police are there to make sure revolts don't break out.

ertian 2y ago
The claim that work is inherently coercive is crazy to me. In order to live, we need food, clothing, shelter, comforts. Those take labor to produce. We've abstracted labor using money, allowing for specialization, so you can perform some specialized labor to provide for all your needs. The needs aren't forced upon you. They're inherent. Labor is required to meet the needs you must meet in order to live (and live in comfort). They'd be needed even if no board of directors had ever sat in a meeting room. So who's coercing you? It's like a farmer hating his field: you're mad that companies 'make' you work to survive; a farmer might hate his field for 'making' him plant seeds to produce food. I don't get it. It seems delusional.
- harwoodjp 2y ago
  Automation makes jobs unnecessary. We should build social infrastructure that allows people to pursue their passions with basic necessities guaranteed. This has been possible for awhile now.
  - chongli 2y ago
    Nonsense. You can’t feed people with machines. You need raw materials and you need land to produce those materials from. That productive land is already owned by a bunch of people who currently use it to grow food and sell at market for profit. Are you proposing we seize their land? That’s what the Soviets did. Millions died. With the weaponry we have today it could be hundreds of millions or billions. All for what? So people don’t have to work? Now suppose we do collectivize all the farms, this time miraculously without killing everyone, and we successfully set up the automation to feed everyone (despite the fact that a lot of crops still need to be picked by hand due to a lack of robot technology). We still don’t eliminate the need for work. There’s tons of other stuff to be done. Building houses, computers, trains, planes, automobiles, and new factory robots. There’s still tons of research going into all this stuff, maintenance and repair. People still need to do all this work. Who is going to pay them? Who is going to own what they produce? If I build a robot in my garage to automate harvesting the peppers I grow in my backyard, do I own it?
    - harwoodjp 2y ago
      > Are you proposing we seize their land? Not necessarily, but I think the workers should operate their farm democratically. > That’s what the Soviets did The USSR was state capitalist. Workers' councils (or soviets) stopped being considered very early on. > If I build a robot in my garage to automate harvesting the peppers I grow in my backyard, do I own it? Yes, it's your personal property. Private property is something else.
    - kaibee 2y ago
      > Are you proposing we seize their land? And how did they come to own their land? You trace the claims back enough and it'll resolve to "some ancestor took it from someone else at the point of a spear". But we don't need to seize the land. A land value tax achieves the same goals while leaving in place all the nice free-market stuff you're talking about.