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We tried that. It ended in disaster. People thinking like this really makes me furious. This is such a narcisistic thinking, that I feel disgusted. Human bein

We tried that. It ended in disaster. People thinking like this really makes me furious. This is such a narcisistic thinking, that I feel disgusted. Human beings are driven by incentives. From drinking a glass of water, to writing a book it is all incentive based. If you have your basic needs covered, you have no incentives. When you make policy, you have to think about the lowest common denominator, not the select few top speciments. It is extremely vain and naive to think removing incentives to educate yourself and work will end in anything other than disaster. Apart from that, the model you describe fosters enormous corruption at every level of society. From the factory workers who go drunk to work and steal, because when everyone is a principal, noone is a principal, to the political leaders who engage in atrocities to keep and grow their power. PLEASE stop trying to make communism happen. It has destroyed so many lives already.

Karunamon 12y ago
If you have your basic needs covered, you have no incentives. Self-betterment is an incentive. Betterment of everyone else is an incentive. The idea that people must be forced to work to make money or else they won't do anything else is a capitalist ideal, NOT absolute fact. Wouldn't it be nice if people could actually do things that interest them instead of worrying about putting food on the table?
- blumkvist 12y ago
  Self-betterment is an incentive for you and maybe the people you are friends with.
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    It is an incentive for some amount of people - the larger question, how many, has insufficient data for a meaningful answer. This mechanism of entitlements and requirements and such enshrined by capitalism is deeply engrained, but it is not above challenge.
- ehvatum 12y ago
  Living in Norway taught me that faceless charity embitters and dissatisfies most recipients. Far from considering how to better themselves, too many internalize their implied uselessness, while blindly groping for someone or something to blame. An obvious path to self worth is then to view oneself as intelligent for taking from the hard working sheeple too dumb or deluded to win. Charity to help someone achieve their goals is very different from payouts for having no aspirations or abilities.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Living in Norway taught me that faceless charity embitters and dissatisfies most recipients. Far from considering how to better themselves, too many internalize their implied uselessness, while blindly groping for someone or something to blame. What if that's the result of being charity (to those in need)? Right now, there's a divide which separates the "useful" - who get a salary - from the "useless" - who get a pension -, which leads to those feelings of alienation and self-deprecation. But does anyone feel useless because they didn't have to work for the sunlight they get, or the air they breath? I'm not affirming anything, but it'd interesting to know if the problem you identified would disappear if everyone got those resources, instead of just those "in need".
tree_of_item 12y ago
No, "we" didn't try anything. Please stop assuming that a few corrupt governments "trying" to do something vaguely similar to what was suggested half a century ago and failing implies that it simply doesn't work ever under any conditions.
- blumkvist 12y ago
  Maybe not under any conditions but the conditions are not met, maybe never will be. Simply because you were born, doesn't mean you are entitled to anything. Is a lion entitled to anything when it is born? Yes, we humans strive to be better than lions. This doesn't mean we've achieved that yet.
  - c22 12y ago
    > Simply because you were born, doesn't mean you are entitled to anything. The United States and most of the rest of civilization disagrees with this statement. We call the things you are entitled to "human rights" and while there may be disagreement as to which rights ought to be applied, it is a completely radical view to claim that society should not offer any basic protections. It is from the complex interplay of society that we obtain our unique and impressive powers, this is why lions are not running shit on this planet.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    > Maybe not under any conditions but the conditions are not met, maybe never will be. Maybe so, but a key point is that the conditions have not been met anywhere where people tried to force socialist revolutions. The idea that you could manage to make socialist revolutions work in underdeveloped agrarian economies stems from people like Lenin and Mao, not Marx. Marx, on the contrary warned against it decades before. > Simply because you were born, doesn't mean you are entitled to anything. There you are in violent agreement with Marx. Marx spent a lot of effort arguing against the idea of a welfare system that would give everyone the same without contributing. E.g. in. Critique of the Gotha Programme, he goes as far as pointing out that too much emphasis had been put on redistribution and "fair distribution" and points out various unintended consequences of the proposed program that he saw as counterproductive to the development of socialism and later communism. One of the most famous tenets of Marxism is exactly "from each according to ability, to each according to need". There's nothing there about being entitled to anything just for being born. On the contrary, there is an expectation of duty. Only those totally unable to contribute are left off the hook if they want to expect society to in help. The "welfare entitlement" comes from the social democrats - the beginnings of which were the main influence Marx was arguing against in Critique of the Gotha Programme.
glesica 12y ago
> It has destroyed so many lives already. So has capitalism. What's your point? Just because something was done poorly in the past doesn't mean we can't iterate and improve. Capitalism has no ready answer for some of the problems we are beginning to face. Eventually people like you are going to have to admit that Marx was definitely right about at least one thing: socio-economic class is a critical social cleavage that drives much of history. So unless capitalism figures out a way to pull its stubborn head out of the sand and deal with its own shortcomings to prevent society from tearing itself apart, we're going to get a chance to find out whether Marx was right about anything else.
- blumkvist 12y ago
  Communism lacks understanding of the human nature. It fails to recognize that humans are sometimes apathetic, vile and corrupt. Darwin's theory does not apply only to evolution pre homo sapiens. It manifests in all of nature. Communism refutes that theory at it's very core and removes the mechanism society rewards individuals for following their instinct. In fact, it punishes them for it. Communism/socialsm has noble ideas. But those ideas live in a silo. When they touch reality everything shatters.
  - ConfuciusSay 12y ago
    The problem with your thinking is that you ignore the fact that socialist policies have been implemented successfully in all modern western democracies and somehow those societies haven't shattered yet. It's called a "mixed economy" and you're living in one right now. The idea that we have to construct a society based on idealistic absolutes is nonsense. Some problems are more efficiently solved collectively, others are better solved by the power of the market. Let's harness the power of both. If the day comes when AI abruptly puts huge percentages of the population out of work and our society faces collapse, one can easily envision a solution that implements structural changes that incorporates both the benefits of market forces and the efficiencies of collective resource pooling.

Karunamon 12y ago

If you have your basic needs covered, you have no incentives. Self-betterment is an incentive. Betterment of everyone else is an incentive. The idea that people must be forced to work to make money or else they won't do anything else is a capitalist ideal, NOT absolute fact. Wouldn't it be nice if people could actually do things that interest them instead of worrying about putting food on the table?

blumkvist 12y ago
Self-betterment is an incentive for you and maybe the people you are friends with.
- Karunamon 12y ago
  It is an incentive for some amount of people - the larger question, how many, has insufficient data for a meaningful answer. This mechanism of entitlements and requirements and such enshrined by capitalism is deeply engrained, but it is not above challenge.
ehvatum 12y ago
Living in Norway taught me that faceless charity embitters and dissatisfies most recipients. Far from considering how to better themselves, too many internalize their implied uselessness, while blindly groping for someone or something to blame. An obvious path to self worth is then to view oneself as intelligent for taking from the hard working sheeple too dumb or deluded to win. Charity to help someone achieve their goals is very different from payouts for having no aspirations or abilities.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Living in Norway taught me that faceless charity embitters and dissatisfies most recipients. Far from considering how to better themselves, too many internalize their implied uselessness, while blindly groping for someone or something to blame. What if that's the result of being charity (to those in need)? Right now, there's a divide which separates the "useful" - who get a salary - from the "useless" - who get a pension -, which leads to those feelings of alienation and self-deprecation. But does anyone feel useless because they didn't have to work for the sunlight they get, or the air they breath? I'm not affirming anything, but it'd interesting to know if the problem you identified would disappear if everyone got those resources, instead of just those "in need".

tree_of_item 12y ago

No, "we" didn't try anything. Please stop assuming that a few corrupt governments "trying" to do something vaguely similar to what was suggested half a century ago and failing implies that it simply doesn't work ever under any conditions.

blumkvist 12y ago
Maybe not under any conditions but the conditions are not met, maybe never will be. Simply because you were born, doesn't mean you are entitled to anything. Is a lion entitled to anything when it is born? Yes, we humans strive to be better than lions. This doesn't mean we've achieved that yet.
- c22 12y ago
  > Simply because you were born, doesn't mean you are entitled to anything. The United States and most of the rest of civilization disagrees with this statement. We call the things you are entitled to "human rights" and while there may be disagreement as to which rights ought to be applied, it is a completely radical view to claim that society should not offer any basic protections. It is from the complex interplay of society that we obtain our unique and impressive powers, this is why lions are not running shit on this planet.
- vidarh 12y ago
  > Maybe not under any conditions but the conditions are not met, maybe never will be. Maybe so, but a key point is that the conditions have not been met anywhere where people tried to force socialist revolutions. The idea that you could manage to make socialist revolutions work in underdeveloped agrarian economies stems from people like Lenin and Mao, not Marx. Marx, on the contrary warned against it decades before. > Simply because you were born, doesn't mean you are entitled to anything. There you are in violent agreement with Marx. Marx spent a lot of effort arguing against the idea of a welfare system that would give everyone the same without contributing. E.g. in. Critique of the Gotha Programme, he goes as far as pointing out that too much emphasis had been put on redistribution and "fair distribution" and points out various unintended consequences of the proposed program that he saw as counterproductive to the development of socialism and later communism. One of the most famous tenets of Marxism is exactly "from each according to ability, to each according to need". There's nothing there about being entitled to anything just for being born. On the contrary, there is an expectation of duty. Only those totally unable to contribute are left off the hook if they want to expect society to in help. The "welfare entitlement" comes from the social democrats - the beginnings of which were the main influence Marx was arguing against in Critique of the Gotha Programme.

glesica 12y ago

> It has destroyed so many lives already. So has capitalism. What's your point? Just because something was done poorly in the past doesn't mean we can't iterate and improve. Capitalism has no ready answer for some of the problems we are beginning to face. Eventually people like you are going to have to admit that Marx was definitely right about at least one thing: socio-economic class is a critical social cleavage that drives much of history. So unless capitalism figures out a way to pull its stubborn head out of the sand and deal with its own shortcomings to prevent society from tearing itself apart, we're going to get a chance to find out whether Marx was right about anything else.

blumkvist 12y ago
Communism lacks understanding of the human nature. It fails to recognize that humans are sometimes apathetic, vile and corrupt. Darwin's theory does not apply only to evolution pre homo sapiens. It manifests in all of nature. Communism refutes that theory at it's very core and removes the mechanism society rewards individuals for following their instinct. In fact, it punishes them for it. Communism/socialsm has noble ideas. But those ideas live in a silo. When they touch reality everything shatters.
- ConfuciusSay 12y ago
  The problem with your thinking is that you ignore the fact that socialist policies have been implemented successfully in all modern western democracies and somehow those societies haven't shattered yet. It's called a "mixed economy" and you're living in one right now. The idea that we have to construct a society based on idealistic absolutes is nonsense. Some problems are more efficiently solved collectively, others are better solved by the power of the market. Let's harness the power of both. If the day comes when AI abruptly puts huge percentages of the population out of work and our society faces collapse, one can easily envision a solution that implements structural changes that incorporates both the benefits of market forces and the efficiencies of collective resource pooling.