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I empathize with this a ton. Reminds me of a David Foster Wallace commencement speech in which the takeaway point was something to the effect of 'you graduates

I empathize with this a ton. Reminds me of a David Foster Wallace commencement speech in which the takeaway point was something to the effect of 'you graduates don't yet know what day in, day out really means.' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFt7EzpsZQo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFt7EzpsZQo) Come on folks, let's think up a better primary waking activity for the average person than "attach yourself to someone else's dreams, and help build their wealth, at the expense of your own intellectual freedom and sanity." It's a first world problem, but I think privileged first world people should put some effort into thinking up something better for everyone. Effort meaning an intentional foray into some creative economics. The economic world is something that can be shaped. The problems, of course, are where to start, and how to do it :-)

unimpressive 13y ago
>Come on folks, let's think up a better primary waking activity for the average person than "attach yourself to someone else's dreams, and help build their wealth, at the expense of your own intellectual freedom and sanity." Part of the reason that efforts to do this have cooled down some is that the previous attempts didn't go so well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internationale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internationale
- skyraider 13y ago
  Socialism is about attaching yourself to the community (or usually the Politburo's) 5-year dream for production. Doesn't have anything to do with individual freedom. In the 21st century, there is little valid reason to coordinate production centrally - it's inefficient and causing industries to bumble along, generally. The direction now is to automate production and have universal minimum income that can be used for competitive purchasing of goods and services. Sounds like a market economy to me.
  - unimpressive 13y ago
    >Doesn't have anything to do with individual freedom. Generally 20th century enterprises employed millions of factory workers as machines in a giant productive machine, with the benefits going to the founders/owners/etc. Socialist movements were an attempt to capture this value for the people creating it. Which would presumably mean you didn't have to work as much. As a casual reading of history will tell you, it didn't work. >In the 21st century, you there is little valid reason to coordinate production centrally I wholly doubt that decentralized manufacturing solutions benefit from economies of scale as well as their centralized kin. (Assuming you're talking about 3D Printing/etc/all.) >Sounds like a market economy to me. I would hope so. Command economies are generally a bad idea.
    - skyraider 13y ago
      The economic concept of centrally-coordinated production has nothing to do with 3D printing (?) or "centralized" / "decentralized" in the computing or distributed systems sense. It has everything to do with economic planning (the Argentinian government at one point literally had a room where they president and staff would sit in command chairs and plan out production across the economy, although I don't think it was ever used). Sure, socialism was designed to let the employees capture value. But intellectual freedom is different from who gets to capture the value. Even in America today, there are employee-owned companies. If capturing the value is what you care most about, you don't need socialism - just work for an employee-owned company.
      - rhizome 13y ago
        just work for an employee-owned company. How is this different than, "attaching yourself to a community," which you denigrated above?
        skyraider 13y ago
        Two ways: It's voluntary, and you might get some of the profits if the company goes in the green. In a state socialist economy, you have to go work on the pig farm or whatever. In a market-ish economy, the attachment to a particular community is more voluntary. You can, more often that not, choose which one you want to join.
  - yk 13y ago
    Marxism has a lot to do with freedom. Unfourtunatly the only form of socialism that was ever tried was Leninism, which is a specific form of state socialism. And Leninism is easily corruptable. ( Or perhaps was designed to be easily corruptable.) And your decentrelized economy sounds to me a lot like socialized ownership of capital, the very definition of socialism.
    - gyardley 13y ago
      A classic No True Scotsman fallacy. If you really want to dig into this, I recommend Andrzej Walicki's 'Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom'.
      - pessimizer 13y ago
        It's really not. yk is not saying: "it's not 'real' Marxism that has failed, but Leninism as 'fake' Marxism, therefore Marxism hasn't 'really' been tested." That would be a No True Scotsman fallacy. yk said that a type of Marxism called Leninism failed, but other types of Marxism may succeed. Declaring statements like that equivalent to NTS is fallacious. Saying: "although a type of Marxism called Leninism didn't work, other types of Marxism might" is about as fallacious as saying "Frisky the horse didn't win the Kentucky Derby this year, but next year Trigger, who was trained by the same trainer, might."
      - yk 13y ago
        Actually I fail to see, why this is a No True Scotsman fallacy, since I specifically acknowledge state socialism as one form of socialism. However, if you are concerned that I am shifting goal posts, see for example Libertarian Marxism [1] as a Marxist school of thought that opposes state socialism and predates Leninism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Marxism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Marxism
        gyardley 13y ago
        It's a No True Scotsman fallacy because Marxism has been tried in wildly different cultures under wildly different circumstances using wildly different methodologies, and in each and every case you've lumped them under a single type of 'non-free' Marxism called Leninism, which then allows you to claim that 'Marxism has a lot to do with freedom' - despite a large body of contrary evidence collected, like I said, under wildly different circumstances. Yes, it's true that in each and every case, no matter what the initial circumstances, things wound up devolving into totalitarian dystopias, but it's not because they all started off as Leninism. The more obvious conclusion is that since Marxism, despite the intentions and backgrounds of its adherents, always seems to lead to a not-so-good, not-so-free outcome, there is something about Marxism itself that is not compatible with freedom. This is nothing unusual - ideas often have unintended consequences that differ from the motivations of their holders. But it should make you pause before making statements like 'Marxism has a lot to do with freedom'.
  - roguecoder 13y ago
    Guaranteed income is the simplest way forward to this future in the age of wide-spread automation. Originally a conservative idea, it's unfortunately been dismissed as "conservative" has come to mean "member of the current elite".
sixdimensional 13y ago
I want to agree with you - I really would like to find out what that activity is. But, if people aren't willing to "attach themselves to other people's dreams and help build their wealth", how are people going to work together enough to build bigger things than they can build on their own? It seems like a catch-22 - perhaps the the balance is working with people who care about your intellectual freedom and sanity?
- skyraider 13y ago
  Yeah, wealth-building activities that are truly valuable to society probably should remain incentivized by the possibility of great wealth. It's not the only incentive but it's one that works well. What about most economic activities, though? Trinket selling, farming, programming CRUD apps, fishing, working at grocery counters, the duller parts of research, etc. Technology is already automating many of these things away and replacing them with more fulfilling work, or maybe not replacing them in the sense that new jobs are there but the workers have to be retrained. How badly do we need a human incentive structure for tasks that can and will be automated? Also, where can I work with people who care about my intellectual freedom and sanity? (Not a rhetorical question; if you know of any, please do tell!) I think you are right in that, if people who care about intellectual freedom can achieve it en masse, we will have found a great balance.
  - sixdimensional 13y ago
    "..where can I work with people who care about my intellectual freedom and sanity?" I love that question, and it is one I am going to really ponder further. The answer to that question sounds appealing to me, even if I don't know what it is! What follows are some not necessarily connected brainstorming thoughts about said place to work: - No, I don't know a specific place we can work where people truly care about that (and I wish I did too) - I think that's because survival driven needs (and financial ones) generally tend to overpower the needs/wants of intellectual freedom/sanity for both organizations and individuals. - The place to work where you can achieve that is probably relative to each individual - I mean, one person might achieve that stability/freedom through farming and another might through writing code. However, for a moment let's suspend that idea and pretend there was one answer that would work for everyone to achieve intellectual freedom and sanity. - True story - I met someone once who told me that their goal was to pay employees whatever they wanted, with a wide open vacation policy, super flexible working hours, with the best benefits money can buy. The reason for this was that the person wanted to hire people who would devote themselves completely to the problems the organization wanted to solve, and wanted people to reach the point of self-actualization so they could do their very best work - as in fulfilling all of Maslow's hierarchy of needs (plus a reasonable number of "wants"). Unfortunately, I wasn't able to work with this person but I have always been intrigued by the idea/theory - one only made possible by access to considerable financial resources. What are some elements of such a place to work? It makes me wonder if we can use project management's cost/scope/schedule to define them. In other words, freedom from fear of cost, freedom from scope (free to explore any direction), and freedom from schedule? More thoughts: - it feels good to know your presence is appreciated (i.e. people want to have you around) but not required - you have a place to "belong" virtually or in person. - freedom from schedule (free to come and go as you please, no project schedule requirements, completely flexible and unlimited vacation time). - freedom to work on any type of project, invention, idea, in any area at all. - freedom from having to worry about paying/taking care of yourself/family? guaranteed stable income at a level commensurate with the expenses relative to the local area? - what you do has to produce something, eventually, otherwise how does it fund itself? Umm, how about some sort of combination of a hackerspace with a community-run or collective based organization/business - people come together in a shared workspace whenever they want, they build ANY kind of projects and ideas together without limit - if those are able to generate revenue, a portion of the revenue goes back into the collective/organization and the rest to the individuals who were the source of the revenue? Also, very little restrictions on who can join - technical, non-technical, it doesn't matter - all that is needed are people who want to work on ideas together, a place for them to work with resources for them to work with/share, and time. Kind of like a wide open incubator I guess. I have always wondered what people could generate working together in a truly open way with complete freedom to explore any and all ideas and freedom from any related fears (i.e. a basic code of conduct).
varunkho 13y ago
Though not living in the first world, I feel it the same way.

unimpressive 13y ago

>Come on folks, let's think up a better primary waking activity for the average person than "attach yourself to someone else's dreams, and help build their wealth, at the expense of your own intellectual freedom and sanity." Part of the reason that efforts to do this have cooled down some is that the previous attempts didn't go so well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internationale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internationale

skyraider 13y ago
Socialism is about attaching yourself to the community (or usually the Politburo's) 5-year dream for production. Doesn't have anything to do with individual freedom. In the 21st century, there is little valid reason to coordinate production centrally - it's inefficient and causing industries to bumble along, generally. The direction now is to automate production and have universal minimum income that can be used for competitive purchasing of goods and services. Sounds like a market economy to me.
- unimpressive 13y ago
  >Doesn't have anything to do with individual freedom. Generally 20th century enterprises employed millions of factory workers as machines in a giant productive machine, with the benefits going to the founders/owners/etc. Socialist movements were an attempt to capture this value for the people creating it. Which would presumably mean you didn't have to work as much. As a casual reading of history will tell you, it didn't work. >In the 21st century, you there is little valid reason to coordinate production centrally I wholly doubt that decentralized manufacturing solutions benefit from economies of scale as well as their centralized kin. (Assuming you're talking about 3D Printing/etc/all.) >Sounds like a market economy to me. I would hope so. Command economies are generally a bad idea.
  - skyraider 13y ago
    The economic concept of centrally-coordinated production has nothing to do with 3D printing (?) or "centralized" / "decentralized" in the computing or distributed systems sense. It has everything to do with economic planning (the Argentinian government at one point literally had a room where they president and staff would sit in command chairs and plan out production across the economy, although I don't think it was ever used). Sure, socialism was designed to let the employees capture value. But intellectual freedom is different from who gets to capture the value. Even in America today, there are employee-owned companies. If capturing the value is what you care most about, you don't need socialism - just work for an employee-owned company.
    - rhizome 13y ago
      just work for an employee-owned company. How is this different than, "attaching yourself to a community," which you denigrated above?
      - skyraider 13y ago
        Two ways: It's voluntary, and you might get some of the profits if the company goes in the green. In a state socialist economy, you have to go work on the pig farm or whatever. In a market-ish economy, the attachment to a particular community is more voluntary. You can, more often that not, choose which one you want to join.
- yk 13y ago
  Marxism has a lot to do with freedom. Unfourtunatly the only form of socialism that was ever tried was Leninism, which is a specific form of state socialism. And Leninism is easily corruptable. ( Or perhaps was designed to be easily corruptable.) And your decentrelized economy sounds to me a lot like socialized ownership of capital, the very definition of socialism.
  - gyardley 13y ago
    A classic No True Scotsman fallacy. If you really want to dig into this, I recommend Andrzej Walicki's 'Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom'.
    - pessimizer 13y ago
      It's really not. yk is not saying: "it's not 'real' Marxism that has failed, but Leninism as 'fake' Marxism, therefore Marxism hasn't 'really' been tested." That would be a No True Scotsman fallacy. yk said that a type of Marxism called Leninism failed, but other types of Marxism may succeed. Declaring statements like that equivalent to NTS is fallacious. Saying: "although a type of Marxism called Leninism didn't work, other types of Marxism might" is about as fallacious as saying "Frisky the horse didn't win the Kentucky Derby this year, but next year Trigger, who was trained by the same trainer, might."
    - yk 13y ago
      Actually I fail to see, why this is a No True Scotsman fallacy, since I specifically acknowledge state socialism as one form of socialism. However, if you are concerned that I am shifting goal posts, see for example Libertarian Marxism [1] as a Marxist school of thought that opposes state socialism and predates Leninism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Marxism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Marxism
      - gyardley 13y ago
        It's a No True Scotsman fallacy because Marxism has been tried in wildly different cultures under wildly different circumstances using wildly different methodologies, and in each and every case you've lumped them under a single type of 'non-free' Marxism called Leninism, which then allows you to claim that 'Marxism has a lot to do with freedom' - despite a large body of contrary evidence collected, like I said, under wildly different circumstances. Yes, it's true that in each and every case, no matter what the initial circumstances, things wound up devolving into totalitarian dystopias, but it's not because they all started off as Leninism. The more obvious conclusion is that since Marxism, despite the intentions and backgrounds of its adherents, always seems to lead to a not-so-good, not-so-free outcome, there is something about Marxism itself that is not compatible with freedom. This is nothing unusual - ideas often have unintended consequences that differ from the motivations of their holders. But it should make you pause before making statements like 'Marxism has a lot to do with freedom'.
- roguecoder 13y ago
  Guaranteed income is the simplest way forward to this future in the age of wide-spread automation. Originally a conservative idea, it's unfortunately been dismissed as "conservative" has come to mean "member of the current elite".

sixdimensional 13y ago

I want to agree with you - I really would like to find out what that activity is. But, if people aren't willing to "attach themselves to other people's dreams and help build their wealth", how are people going to work together enough to build bigger things than they can build on their own? It seems like a catch-22 - perhaps the the balance is working with people who care about your intellectual freedom and sanity?

skyraider 13y ago
Yeah, wealth-building activities that are truly valuable to society probably should remain incentivized by the possibility of great wealth. It's not the only incentive but it's one that works well. What about most economic activities, though? Trinket selling, farming, programming CRUD apps, fishing, working at grocery counters, the duller parts of research, etc. Technology is already automating many of these things away and replacing them with more fulfilling work, or maybe not replacing them in the sense that new jobs are there but the workers have to be retrained. How badly do we need a human incentive structure for tasks that can and will be automated? Also, where can I work with people who care about my intellectual freedom and sanity? (Not a rhetorical question; if you know of any, please do tell!) I think you are right in that, if people who care about intellectual freedom can achieve it en masse, we will have found a great balance.
- sixdimensional 13y ago
  "..where can I work with people who care about my intellectual freedom and sanity?" I love that question, and it is one I am going to really ponder further. The answer to that question sounds appealing to me, even if I don't know what it is! What follows are some not necessarily connected brainstorming thoughts about said place to work: - No, I don't know a specific place we can work where people truly care about that (and I wish I did too) - I think that's because survival driven needs (and financial ones) generally tend to overpower the needs/wants of intellectual freedom/sanity for both organizations and individuals. - The place to work where you can achieve that is probably relative to each individual - I mean, one person might achieve that stability/freedom through farming and another might through writing code. However, for a moment let's suspend that idea and pretend there was one answer that would work for everyone to achieve intellectual freedom and sanity. - True story - I met someone once who told me that their goal was to pay employees whatever they wanted, with a wide open vacation policy, super flexible working hours, with the best benefits money can buy. The reason for this was that the person wanted to hire people who would devote themselves completely to the problems the organization wanted to solve, and wanted people to reach the point of self-actualization so they could do their very best work - as in fulfilling all of Maslow's hierarchy of needs (plus a reasonable number of "wants"). Unfortunately, I wasn't able to work with this person but I have always been intrigued by the idea/theory - one only made possible by access to considerable financial resources. What are some elements of such a place to work? It makes me wonder if we can use project management's cost/scope/schedule to define them. In other words, freedom from fear of cost, freedom from scope (free to explore any direction), and freedom from schedule? More thoughts: - it feels good to know your presence is appreciated (i.e. people want to have you around) but not required - you have a place to "belong" virtually or in person. - freedom from schedule (free to come and go as you please, no project schedule requirements, completely flexible and unlimited vacation time). - freedom to work on any type of project, invention, idea, in any area at all. - freedom from having to worry about paying/taking care of yourself/family? guaranteed stable income at a level commensurate with the expenses relative to the local area? - what you do has to produce something, eventually, otherwise how does it fund itself? Umm, how about some sort of combination of a hackerspace with a community-run or collective based organization/business - people come together in a shared workspace whenever they want, they build ANY kind of projects and ideas together without limit - if those are able to generate revenue, a portion of the revenue goes back into the collective/organization and the rest to the individuals who were the source of the revenue? Also, very little restrictions on who can join - technical, non-technical, it doesn't matter - all that is needed are people who want to work on ideas together, a place for them to work with resources for them to work with/share, and time. Kind of like a wide open incubator I guess. I have always wondered what people could generate working together in a truly open way with complete freedom to explore any and all ideas and freedom from any related fears (i.e. a basic code of conduct).

varunkho 13y ago

Though not living in the first world, I feel it the same way.