6 ms·

Common good: humans, according to systems theory, have the same needs and there's a finite set. We can map them & then design systems so as to satisfice all of

Common good: humans, according to systems theory, have the same needs and there's a finite set. We can map them & then design systems so as to satisfice all of them.

aianus 1y ago
One of humans' needs is for status which is by definition zero sum. Same with mating. If anything those two are probably the most important needs so it's not possible to build such a system.
- kelseyfrog 1y ago
  If one of human needs is status and status is zero-sum, then why does it matter what economic system is in place at all? We could equally rely on feats of strength, or games of chess, or rolling dice for all I care. Besides why can't one of human needs also be an economic system that doesn't have the failure mode of poverty?
  - Jensson 1y ago
    > We could equally rely on feats of strength, or games of chess, or rolling dice for all I care. Those aren't very productive, our current system makes people produce value for others in their chase for status. Older systems people destroyed value for others in that chase, creating wars or other miseries, we have much less of that today. I'd much rather have another billionaire than another authoritarian warmongering dictator.
    - bluefirebrand 1y ago
      > our current system makes people produce value for others in their chase for status I don't think most of the people who have extremely high status are doing anything remotely close to producing value They just own capital which they use to pay other people to produce value, which they then take credit for, which boosts their status So it would seem that we're pretty divorced from the idea of "produce value -> get status" these days, if you can just pay people to produce value for you instead
    - kelseyfrog 1y ago
      Billionaires are the warlords of the 21st century. The only difference is that we've switched the map. We don't compete on the land, we compete on economic territory. But the results are the same - they fill the same role. Expansionism, cult of followers, dispensing boons, and absolute control over their territory? check. The only reason we don't recognize them as warlords is because they don't wave scimitars and wear turbans. Neolibrral warlords wear Patagonia vests and beige slacks. We're terrible at mistaking asthetics for function. Fortresses have been replaced by platforms; trade routes replaced by data sharing agreements. Armies have been ursurped by legal teams and lobbyists. We barely escaped feudalism and it's not clear we're out of the orbit of neo feudalism. If we're able to be honest with ourselves, we need to learn that asthetics and function are different things. Just because they look different doesn't mean they don't fulfill the same function.
- wongarsu 1y ago
  If it's zero sum you can design a system where everyone gets three sane amount. That's what strict monogamy does for mating, and you can easily imagine some "everyone is equal" communism-like system. In practice that doesn't work, and the most successful "common good" systems instead ensure the disparity is limited and access is as equal as possible (e.g. not everyone can be wealthy, but the wealthy are not too rich and anyone had a chance to become rich instead of needing rich parents; or everyone can only have one married partner at a time instead of people who can afford it amassing big harems and not leaving any partners for the rest; or anyone can become famous, and famous people pushing their kids into fame is looked down on)
- crawfordcomeaux 1y ago
  Prove a need for status before building systems of oppression to meet it.
wonderwonder 1y ago
Over human history the best system we have come up with and implemented to ensure this has been capitalism. Nothing else has come close
- crawfordcomeaux 1y ago
  This is capitalist mythology. You'll need to account for "best" here because millions of people under the thumb of large-scale genocide, such as the policy decisions to implement poverty (which capitalism requires), likely have something to say about what you think is "best".
  - wonderwonder 1y ago
    Can you present me with an alternative that was implemented, ran for a significant period of time and resulted in a better quality of life for those under it? Also poverty is not genocide, if you are going to present an argument please make it factual. You insult victims of actual genocide and minimize what they have endured with this comparison. I didn’t say perfect, i said best.
    - crawfordcomeaux 1y ago
      I'm going by how people in the global majority, victims of imposed poverty by empires through debt slavery, who also experience OTHER forms of genocide & recognize poverty for the genocide it is. Check out the quality of life of the Aka, Baka, and Mbuti tribes. They're genetically and culturally linked to a mother tribe 150k years ago. So a culture has kept these people going for 150k years. Capitalism has no such capability. Collaboration, spontaneous improvisation, counterdominant play/decision making/protection, egalitarian, matrifocality, immediate return. Those are values that flourish in an infinite game theoretically and in real life. We just have been taught so many backwards ideas these ideas seem foreign & barely recognizable.
      - wonderwonder 1y ago
        Friend you are comparing civilizations that support hundreds of millions of people to small tribes of pygmies that total maybe 30k people and survive on hunting and gathering. Additionally they only exist in little groups of 50 to a few hundred individuals. How do you see billions of people surviving as hunter gatherers? Or do you forsee the need to cull 95% of humanity? This is not a realistic comparison friend and you know that. The only system that can keep hundreds of millions or billions of people fed and housed is capitalism.
ants_everywhere 1y ago
Humans don't generally have the same needs, and to the extent they do they're competing over limited resources. At one extreme you get theories like communism or socialism that treat humans as disposable cattle to be murdered or starved when they stand in the way of whatever the party leaders decide is the common good. The common good is something that has to be worked out deliberatively and is more like taking the resultant of a huge number of force vectors than it is like mass producing units of the same good for everyone.
- trinsic2 1y ago
  The word "Common Good" has a specific meaning. It steams from the word "Common" which means the people that share common values at our most basic levels, and "Good" means whats best for the people that share these common values. What you are talking about is imposed self-interest at the level of the population from one or a small population that do not represent the common good. Not the same thing IMHO.
  - ants_everywhere 1y ago
    That's not what common good is. Common good never requires that people share core values. Common good historically was what's good for the city/polis/country/band/family. Basically, you make some (ideally relatively small) sacrifice to your own interest for the sake of a larger group you share fate with. There are more formal/mathematical versions of it, for example in Bentham where the common good is essentially a weighted sum over the good to each individual. Rousseau described it almost exactly as the resultant of force vectors. There are more authoritarian versions like in historical Sparta and more recently in Marx and Engels where it's imposed through violence. > imposed self-interest I'm not sure exactly what you're saying here, but self-interest is almost by definition not externally imposed. In Marxism one particular vision of the common good is imposed externally via a "revolutionary terror."
    - trinsic2 1y ago
      Here is the etymology of the word: common(adj.) c. 1300, "belonging to all, owned or used jointly, general, of a public nature or character," from Old French comun "common, general, free, open, public" (9c., Modern French commun), from Latin communis "in common, public, shared by all or many; general, not specific; familiar, not pretentious." This is from a reconstructed PIE compound ko-moin-i- "held in common," compound adjective formed from ko- "together" + moi-n-, suffixed form of root mei- (1) "to change, go, move," hence literally "shared by all." Your confusing political language with what came before this. Common good is the will of the people. It has nothing to do with cities, countries, or states. All of those things were created by people that wield political power. This is not the same as the common good. Common good directly relates to what is good for the people that share common values. You have been misinformed, by political society unfortunately.

Common good: humans, according to systems theory, have the same needs and there's a finite set. We can map them & then design systems so as to satisfice all of them.

aianus 1y ago

One of humans' needs is for status which is by definition zero sum. Same with mating. If anything those two are probably the most important needs so it's not possible to build such a system.

kelseyfrog 1y ago
If one of human needs is status and status is zero-sum, then why does it matter what economic system is in place at all? We could equally rely on feats of strength, or games of chess, or rolling dice for all I care. Besides why can't one of human needs also be an economic system that doesn't have the failure mode of poverty?
- Jensson 1y ago
  > We could equally rely on feats of strength, or games of chess, or rolling dice for all I care. Those aren't very productive, our current system makes people produce value for others in their chase for status. Older systems people destroyed value for others in that chase, creating wars or other miseries, we have much less of that today. I'd much rather have another billionaire than another authoritarian warmongering dictator.
  - bluefirebrand 1y ago
    > our current system makes people produce value for others in their chase for status I don't think most of the people who have extremely high status are doing anything remotely close to producing value They just own capital which they use to pay other people to produce value, which they then take credit for, which boosts their status So it would seem that we're pretty divorced from the idea of "produce value -> get status" these days, if you can just pay people to produce value for you instead
  - kelseyfrog 1y ago
    Billionaires are the warlords of the 21st century. The only difference is that we've switched the map. We don't compete on the land, we compete on economic territory. But the results are the same - they fill the same role. Expansionism, cult of followers, dispensing boons, and absolute control over their territory? check. The only reason we don't recognize them as warlords is because they don't wave scimitars and wear turbans. Neolibrral warlords wear Patagonia vests and beige slacks. We're terrible at mistaking asthetics for function. Fortresses have been replaced by platforms; trade routes replaced by data sharing agreements. Armies have been ursurped by legal teams and lobbyists. We barely escaped feudalism and it's not clear we're out of the orbit of neo feudalism. If we're able to be honest with ourselves, we need to learn that asthetics and function are different things. Just because they look different doesn't mean they don't fulfill the same function.
wongarsu 1y ago
If it's zero sum you can design a system where everyone gets three sane amount. That's what strict monogamy does for mating, and you can easily imagine some "everyone is equal" communism-like system. In practice that doesn't work, and the most successful "common good" systems instead ensure the disparity is limited and access is as equal as possible (e.g. not everyone can be wealthy, but the wealthy are not too rich and anyone had a chance to become rich instead of needing rich parents; or everyone can only have one married partner at a time instead of people who can afford it amassing big harems and not leaving any partners for the rest; or anyone can become famous, and famous people pushing their kids into fame is looked down on)
crawfordcomeaux 1y ago
Prove a need for status before building systems of oppression to meet it.

wonderwonder 1y ago

Over human history the best system we have come up with and implemented to ensure this has been capitalism. Nothing else has come close

crawfordcomeaux 1y ago
This is capitalist mythology. You'll need to account for "best" here because millions of people under the thumb of large-scale genocide, such as the policy decisions to implement poverty (which capitalism requires), likely have something to say about what you think is "best".
- wonderwonder 1y ago
  Can you present me with an alternative that was implemented, ran for a significant period of time and resulted in a better quality of life for those under it? Also poverty is not genocide, if you are going to present an argument please make it factual. You insult victims of actual genocide and minimize what they have endured with this comparison. I didn’t say perfect, i said best.
  - crawfordcomeaux 1y ago
    I'm going by how people in the global majority, victims of imposed poverty by empires through debt slavery, who also experience OTHER forms of genocide & recognize poverty for the genocide it is. Check out the quality of life of the Aka, Baka, and Mbuti tribes. They're genetically and culturally linked to a mother tribe 150k years ago. So a culture has kept these people going for 150k years. Capitalism has no such capability. Collaboration, spontaneous improvisation, counterdominant play/decision making/protection, egalitarian, matrifocality, immediate return. Those are values that flourish in an infinite game theoretically and in real life. We just have been taught so many backwards ideas these ideas seem foreign & barely recognizable.
    - wonderwonder 1y ago
      Friend you are comparing civilizations that support hundreds of millions of people to small tribes of pygmies that total maybe 30k people and survive on hunting and gathering. Additionally they only exist in little groups of 50 to a few hundred individuals. How do you see billions of people surviving as hunter gatherers? Or do you forsee the need to cull 95% of humanity? This is not a realistic comparison friend and you know that. The only system that can keep hundreds of millions or billions of people fed and housed is capitalism.

ants_everywhere 1y ago

Humans don't generally have the same needs, and to the extent they do they're competing over limited resources. At one extreme you get theories like communism or socialism that treat humans as disposable cattle to be murdered or starved when they stand in the way of whatever the party leaders decide is the common good. The common good is something that has to be worked out deliberatively and is more like taking the resultant of a huge number of force vectors than it is like mass producing units of the same good for everyone.

trinsic2 1y ago
The word "Common Good" has a specific meaning. It steams from the word "Common" which means the people that share common values at our most basic levels, and "Good" means whats best for the people that share these common values. What you are talking about is imposed self-interest at the level of the population from one or a small population that do not represent the common good. Not the same thing IMHO.
- ants_everywhere 1y ago
  That's not what common good is. Common good never requires that people share core values. Common good historically was what's good for the city/polis/country/band/family. Basically, you make some (ideally relatively small) sacrifice to your own interest for the sake of a larger group you share fate with. There are more formal/mathematical versions of it, for example in Bentham where the common good is essentially a weighted sum over the good to each individual. Rousseau described it almost exactly as the resultant of force vectors. There are more authoritarian versions like in historical Sparta and more recently in Marx and Engels where it's imposed through violence. > imposed self-interest I'm not sure exactly what you're saying here, but self-interest is almost by definition not externally imposed. In Marxism one particular vision of the common good is imposed externally via a "revolutionary terror."
  - trinsic2 1y ago
    Here is the etymology of the word: common(adj.) c. 1300, "belonging to all, owned or used jointly, general, of a public nature or character," from Old French comun "common, general, free, open, public" (9c., Modern French commun), from Latin communis "in common, public, shared by all or many; general, not specific; familiar, not pretentious." This is from a reconstructed PIE compound ko-moin-i- "held in common," compound adjective formed from ko- "together" + moi-n-, suffixed form of root mei- (1) "to change, go, move," hence literally "shared by all." Your confusing political language with what came before this. Common good is the will of the people. It has nothing to do with cities, countries, or states. All of those things were created by people that wield political power. This is not the same as the common good. Common good directly relates to what is good for the people that share common values. You have been misinformed, by political society unfortunately.