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With communism, wealth is redistributed and centrally controlled by the government (or governments). I can't even trust my government will put my money to good

With communism, wealth is redistributed and centrally controlled by the government (or governments). I can't even trust my government will put my money to good use now. It will also have a negative effect on innovation and technology. Some of the greatest technologies we have today is a result of fierce competition in the marketplace. I run my own business now (it took many years of working for many terrible bosses and managers). I have many freedoms. Why would I want to take away the chance for anyone to ever have the chance to also achieve this freedom? The answer is to invest more in education and bring more people to a level where they can make a living. Not to completely destroy the current system and bring everyone down to nothing. I hope I'm not still around ever see this happen.

virtue3 12y ago
just because you benefited from the current system doesn't mean that everyone else can or even wants to. (just playing devils advocate). Things are going to change very soon. I've yet to meet anyone in a currently stable industry that I couldn't replace with a robot in the next 20-30 years. Hell, programming has gotten SO tremendously easy now that _almost_ anyone can do it. We're quickly approaching an age where learning how to code is the equivalent of knowing how to read. So once we've automated everything. and everyone knows how to program things. Where do we go?
- xienze 12y ago
  Sure, you can teach just about anyone to perform simple programming tasks but that doesn't mean they possess the knowledge, experience, and problem solving ability to actually be a competent programmer. The thing you're forgetting is that development involves a lot of abstract thinking and years of understanding how "A" fits into "B". People with basic knowledge of a programming language can bang out easily conceptualized tasks like plotting their car's monthly gas mileage but ask them to write a simple Twitter clone and you're likely to receive blank stares. A seasoned developer could knock that out in an afternoon though (not at real Twitter scale of course!) because they have years of experience knowing how dozens of loosely-related systems and libraries can be assembled to create the bigger picture. Saying that knowing how to "code" means anyone can create anything is like saying that anyone can paint the Mona Lisa given a canvas, paint, and a six week bootcamp session.
- ArkyBeagle 12y ago
  You spend your time fixing bugs. You can teach that but it takes up to decades.
virtue3 12y ago
And for the record I'm absolutely with you on not being able to trust the current establishments with my money. We can easily change that with computers and diplomatic voting... and much MUCH better transparency.
jjoonathan 12y ago
> The answer is to invest more in education Suppose that you could snap your fingers and give every person in the United States a college education. Not just a degree, but the knowledge that comes with a degree (a high-quality degree for the sake of argument). What do you think would happen? 1. Employers would use the increased leverage to play members of the new labor force off one another until none of them were earning more than minimum wage, if that. By "employers" I mean to include venture capitalists because supply and demand still applies in VCistan -- a flood of entrepreneurs fleeing a crummy labor market means that VCs have all the leverage and can impose similarly crummy terms. 2. Enough new positions would appear (either through companies growing their staff or through investment in new companies) that everyone could earn a decent salary. I'm 90% sure the answer is #1 and that your "solution" would have the effect of "bringing everyone down to nothing." The supply of labor is fixed (everyone needs to eat) but the demand for it is not (and lower every day in aggregate). It's that simple. The game is rigged. In low-growth sectors of the economy, capital concentrates no matter how educated the players are (see: non-CS, non-petrol engineers). Just because we can run fast enough to win a slice in our sector (which is high-growth right now but won't be forever) doesn't mean that teaching others how to run fast is a strategy that leads to asymptotic success in the limit of teaching everyone how to run. You don't have to implement a communist system to shut down the mechanism that rigs the game. BI/MI will suffice. So would some kind of total-employment system. But I see no reason to believe that the supply/demand gap for "average" labor would close for any realistic definition of "average" in a "free" market (I put scare quotes around "free" because Maslow's hierarchy ensures that no BI/MI-less market system is ever "free"). If it somehow did happen it would certainly go against the historical trend. Do you have a narrative to explain why the post-educational-revolution employment landscape would be fundamentally different from today or is it all wishful thinking?
- mattmcknight 12y ago
  More people would be able to create their own economies, create their own businesses.
  - jjoonathan 12y ago
    Yes, but would the growth in new businesses suffice to absorb the deluge of educated labor? I strongly suspect that it would not, which would make the proposition a big win for those looking to purchase labor and a huge loss for those looking to sell labor.
chongli 12y ago
With communism, wealth is redistributed and centrally controlled by the government (or governments). I can't even trust my government will put my money to good use now. What? No! Communism doesn't even have a state, let alone a powerful central government.
- pjc50 12y ago
  [citation needed] This differs from all the existing and previous Communist states. You can't just "no true Scotsman" your way round the problems of government under communism.
  - phaer 12y ago
    Most states which were controlled by a communist party did not see themselves as communist states, but rather as socialist states on the way to communism. (State) socialism was/is seen as a form of bootstraping mode to communism but communism itself is mostly state-less in marxist theories.
    - crpatino 12y ago
      That does not preclude the fact that once there is a elite that runs the socialist state, they will put every resource, big and small, available to them to the task of perpetuating "bootstrap mode" forever. Meanwhile, intellectuals who dream about the next coming of Communist Paradise on Earth will do nothing. Dreaming is cheap after all.
  - chongli 12y ago
    Citing examples of Communist states is a bit disingenuous when we're talking about Communism which is stateless by definition.
- ArkyBeagle 12y ago
  This time we'll kill the right people... :)

virtue3 12y ago

just because you benefited from the current system doesn't mean that everyone else can or even wants to. (just playing devils advocate). Things are going to change very soon. I've yet to meet anyone in a currently stable industry that I couldn't replace with a robot in the next 20-30 years. Hell, programming has gotten SO tremendously easy now that _almost_ anyone can do it. We're quickly approaching an age where learning how to code is the equivalent of knowing how to read. So once we've automated everything. and everyone knows how to program things. Where do we go?

xienze 12y ago
Sure, you can teach just about anyone to perform simple programming tasks but that doesn't mean they possess the knowledge, experience, and problem solving ability to actually be a competent programmer. The thing you're forgetting is that development involves a lot of abstract thinking and years of understanding how "A" fits into "B". People with basic knowledge of a programming language can bang out easily conceptualized tasks like plotting their car's monthly gas mileage but ask them to write a simple Twitter clone and you're likely to receive blank stares. A seasoned developer could knock that out in an afternoon though (not at real Twitter scale of course!) because they have years of experience knowing how dozens of loosely-related systems and libraries can be assembled to create the bigger picture. Saying that knowing how to "code" means anyone can create anything is like saying that anyone can paint the Mona Lisa given a canvas, paint, and a six week bootcamp session.
ArkyBeagle 12y ago
You spend your time fixing bugs. You can teach that but it takes up to decades.

virtue3 12y ago

And for the record I'm absolutely with you on not being able to trust the current establishments with my money. We can easily change that with computers and diplomatic voting... and much MUCH better transparency.

jjoonathan 12y ago

> The answer is to invest more in education Suppose that you could snap your fingers and give every person in the United States a college education. Not just a degree, but the knowledge that comes with a degree (a high-quality degree for the sake of argument). What do you think would happen? 1. Employers would use the increased leverage to play members of the new labor force off one another until none of them were earning more than minimum wage, if that. By "employers" I mean to include venture capitalists because supply and demand still applies in VCistan -- a flood of entrepreneurs fleeing a crummy labor market means that VCs have all the leverage and can impose similarly crummy terms. 2. Enough new positions would appear (either through companies growing their staff or through investment in new companies) that everyone could earn a decent salary. I'm 90% sure the answer is #1 and that your "solution" would have the effect of "bringing everyone down to nothing." The supply of labor is fixed (everyone needs to eat) but the demand for it is not (and lower every day in aggregate). It's that simple. The game is rigged. In low-growth sectors of the economy, capital concentrates no matter how educated the players are (see: non-CS, non-petrol engineers). Just because we can run fast enough to win a slice in our sector (which is high-growth right now but won't be forever) doesn't mean that teaching others how to run fast is a strategy that leads to asymptotic success in the limit of teaching everyone how to run. You don't have to implement a communist system to shut down the mechanism that rigs the game. BI/MI will suffice. So would some kind of total-employment system. But I see no reason to believe that the supply/demand gap for "average" labor would close for any realistic definition of "average" in a "free" market (I put scare quotes around "free" because Maslow's hierarchy ensures that no BI/MI-less market system is ever "free"). If it somehow did happen it would certainly go against the historical trend. Do you have a narrative to explain why the post-educational-revolution employment landscape would be fundamentally different from today or is it all wishful thinking?

mattmcknight 12y ago
More people would be able to create their own economies, create their own businesses.
- jjoonathan 12y ago
  Yes, but would the growth in new businesses suffice to absorb the deluge of educated labor? I strongly suspect that it would not, which would make the proposition a big win for those looking to purchase labor and a huge loss for those looking to sell labor.

chongli 12y ago

With communism, wealth is redistributed and centrally controlled by the government (or governments). I can't even trust my government will put my money to good use now. What? No! Communism doesn't even have a state, let alone a powerful central government.

pjc50 12y ago
[citation needed] This differs from all the existing and previous Communist states. You can't just "no true Scotsman" your way round the problems of government under communism.
- phaer 12y ago
  Most states which were controlled by a communist party did not see themselves as communist states, but rather as socialist states on the way to communism. (State) socialism was/is seen as a form of bootstraping mode to communism but communism itself is mostly state-less in marxist theories.
  - crpatino 12y ago
    That does not preclude the fact that once there is a elite that runs the socialist state, they will put every resource, big and small, available to them to the task of perpetuating "bootstrap mode" forever. Meanwhile, intellectuals who dream about the next coming of Communist Paradise on Earth will do nothing. Dreaming is cheap after all.
- chongli 12y ago
  Citing examples of Communist states is a bit disingenuous when we're talking about Communism which is stateless by definition.
ArkyBeagle 12y ago
This time we'll kill the right people... :)