On the basic problem with Capitalism (Scarcity)

In this conversation Silhouette do not forget that I am a socialist that believes in employee trade unions, universal healthcare, free universal public education, and freely accessed government funded work style occupational apprenticeships. I also believe in wages where everybody has some common standard of basic living or what others refer to as a livable wage. I understand that inequality will always persist but I believe that we must minimize it as much as possible for greater social, cultural, racial, economic, and societal cohesion. Too much social inequality rampant will completely destroy any society, nation, culture, or civilization in a matter of generations, this always happens every time in history. While my viewpoint of human nature is a purely negative one compared to others where I certainly don’t have a rosy picture of human nature or human beings ourselves I firmly believe that the solution to human nature’s many faults is an enlightened state of government that helps us transcend our natural petty basic primitive impulses. A capitalist government of course doesn’t do this but instead commodifies this human weakness or nature within the project that it calls the free market, it doesn’t transcend human nature at all but instead makes sure that it doesn’t where it is locked away in material vice.

Centralization isn’t the problem, it’s the specific kind of centralization we have now that is the problem. Decentralization is chaos and anarchistic, it always amazes me when people who support decentralization complains about criminal lawlessness in the highest echelons of government where my retort is almost always, what the hell did you expect to happen differently?

Your world view where you see things getting better historically I just don’t see. Such a position is incomprehensible to me.

Also, yes I am autocratic and I don’t see how your individualistic atomization of political democracy will solve or deliver anything at all especially in the libertarian- capitalistic western sphere of the world.

As far as political reform in modern democracies it is a moot point because the wealthy, banks, corporate conglomerates, and special interests controls it all. It is all rigged and there will never be any kind of political reform. They control the pocket books of presidents, prime ministers, senators, congressman, and the like. No, if we’re to change anything we will need an army with firearms and bayonets pointed at all the bastards and bitches of the world where we say to them you blink when you’re told to where if you do not comply we will pull the trigger. Revolutionary uprising is the only answer and democracy is an ideal of fools.

Right so you want trade unions, universal healthcare, free universal public education and freely accessed government funded work style occupational apprenticeships, the living wage, greater social, cultural and racial cohesion, less inequality and revolution, but you believe it is in the nature of all people without exception to be amoral, violent, unequal, conflicting, selfish, cruel and hyper competitive.

How in the hell do you marry these things such that these animals are going to want, never mind enact and maintain all these things you want in a society? Forced enlightenment?

It sounds to me like you are actively anti-human and at war with our nature, wishing for a state army to threaten all civilians with death should they step out of line and act too much in line with their very nature. Who do you want to be your autocrat? You fancy yourself as the reincarnation of Stalin? What is your plan to cause this vision to come about and to maintain it in the long term? How are you going to rally the necessary resources from the pool of barbaric animals available to you? Without a specific workable plan, your fantasy is just a kind of mental revenge against people for doing whatever it is they’ve done to you that’s made you so negative about them.

I would rather be realistic and objective about working with what we’ve got - people don’t take kindly to oppressive control, and most of them are dumb and many are barbaric. How are you going to enlighten them? Our current government is aimed at bullshitting them to keep them feeling disenfranchised and Capitalism is designed to turn their blame on themselves rather than on the system itself. Honestly, at the moment I think this is the best that we can hope for - my problem is with everyone else getting caught up in this as collateral. The silver lining is that if you’re lucky, you get to own a lot of material stuff and maybe even have some influence, but to me this is no silver lining. I’m not interested in money and power, and I am against those who are. The solution to this is spreading out the power through increased pluralism. The intention is for individual power to be diminished and spread out, watered down, reducing inequality. The historical tendency is moving in this direction whether you can comprehend it or not - I’m not saying it’s gone far enough, but I am saying it used to be a lot lot worse.

People in the West aren’t desperate enough for revolution, even if you did have a detailed plan to bring it about. The vast majority certainly don’t want to replace what we have with an even more oppressive regime, and there’s definitely not enough trust going around for people to be happy with who runs it. Many do want social mobility and curbed inequality, and I’m siding with them. In the meantime I am waiting on technology to take over low skilled jobs, and potentially higher skilled ones in future, because this puts Capitalism in mortal danger. Creating so many jobs for low skilled people once all the low skilled work is relatively suddenly automated, without resorting to the equivalent of digging holes and filling them back in, is not going to be acceptable. A living wage without having to work for your income will become necessary - a government that doesn’t enforce this will not be tolerated. The alternative of starvation is what brings around the kind of revolution you’re hoping for - so there you go, step one in your plan. I’m not rallying to your cause though, I would rather be left alone, not forced to work, and able to work and create what I want to work on and create in my own time in my own way - that’s all I want. And if this has to be funded at the expense of all the capitalists in power then so much the better - with all this untapped creativity and desire for purpose in a newly unemployable chunk of our population, we can instead devote our energies to increasing pluralism instead of numbing most of our waking life in 9-5 monotony. If capitalists don’t want to be taxed, they will be forced by government to offer things for free - antithetical to the profit incentive, and hopefully a motivator to not desire such a role. This is realistic, your ideas are not.

I like your term forceful enlightenment Silhouette as I may have to borrow that for myself. What people are unwilling to do on their own independently I very much believe an outside state must be established to force them into check and that’s how I reconcile these opposing viewpoints you illustrate in bridging the gap. If people are unwilling or incapable of changing society on their own which for me that is where we’re at now then the state must intervene instead forcing that change onto society militarily if necessary. Reincarnation of Stalin? No, I equally detest communism as much as I do with capitalism. I am am an alternative third positionist. I believe in creating a third platform in opposition to both communism and capitalism simultaneously. Who would the leader be? I don’t know, such a leader of a movement has yet to present themselves in world history but I do believe it is a sort of inevitable manifested destiny that such a leader will present themselves eventually as every historical crisis individuals come forward where all others fail. I know ideally what such a leader would represent and be however. I am not anti-human as the goal of civilization would be to take the raw primitive form of humanity fashioning it into something better than itself where it transcends its original nature and I believe that the state I have in mind would do just that in facilitating. Yes, it is a very dark enlightenment I embrace.

The west in my mind is on the verge of total collapse and that is how my political proclivities will enact itself. When nations reach economic collapse, massive starvation, political social upheaval, infighting, and civil war that’s when my politics will be realized where the interesting component to all of this is that it will be your useless corrupted sham of a democracy that will bring that all about. It is from the ashes or those ruins the third position will rise with fury and bring about the necessary world change we so desperately need. We will rise and purge all communist or capitalist influences out of the world enacting our own political agenda. Both are blights on humanity that must be eradicated.

Also, technological transhumanism and A.I. is not the answer. As I was telling somebody else in another thread that is just another form of elitist entrapment and is a garbage perception of looking at things that should be disposed of. Technological enslavement of humanity is not the ideal future.

i’m more like you, Norepic types → rarer (especially due to assembly line miseducation), true, you’re right about plurality of human nature, nothing could be more absurd than the idea of “1 type: homo sapiens sapiens” (ref: youtu.be/OdhBRSF6fIE) …
and of course, the real divide is not “racial/national” etc.

There are many genetic different species of foxes that exist all throughout the world however the universal underlying theme of their social behavior is the same everywhere that constitutes their nature. They can all be said in a rudimentary fashion to live and act identically to each other despite adapting to different environments.

to say so is a sort of reductionism which is only acceptable (i guess) to the mediocre majority

Elaborate.

Sil wrote

I’m not sure what to make of this statement. Known resources on earth are finite, okay. Knowledge here is finite which logically makes sense, limited until discovered verifiably, so new resources may be discovered but they too will be finite. Knowledge everywhere would be finite by the same token, the lack of originality or newness and all that (the proverbial well of content, ideas, has long since run dry). Could you say then that formal logic/reasoning makes knowledge finite? In other words, there are a limited number of thoughts in existence ever. Have we as sentient beings reached the apex of thought already? I believe so. Sure we can keep advancing technologically, but those are revisions of already formulated theories/premises simply elevated to new levels not new in and of themselves. Even if the supernatural and paranormal become normalized, there would be nothing new there other than a realization that it always existed although undetectably, ahead of the revealing gaze of science’s technology.

The true scarcity is of novel ideas.

Nor am I, reading back. Fortunately it doesn’t affect my point, which was more to do with finite resources (the earth is spatially finite and has a finite number of atoms - indisputable) and you seem to be ok with that. Finite knowledge? I guess the current amount of knowledge each person has is finite, the amount of knowledge in a finite number of receptacles of knowledge is also finite: knowledge is currently finite. Is it potentially infinite? I would say yes, given that knowledge is just an interpretation of our experiences, and you can interpret things in a potentially infinite number of ways - although practically speaking, as you say, this requires novel thinking, which isn’t a common occurrence. I might also say no, given that no knowledge is certain. Knowledge can be better or worse making it a sliding scale, along which presumably there is a threshold of whether it is sufficient to be deemed knowledge, meaning that knowledge doesn’t need to be certain to be regarded as knowledge - so I don’t think I might say no in this way…

Anyway, tangent.

How does this work, though? A state is just a bunch of humans going to work. How do you persuade them to do this? A lot of manpower is necessary to effectively oppress an entire population, so even if the current army were ok with just following orders, it probably wouldn’t be nearly enough people for what you have in mind. Perhaps you are relying on the same kind of consent to do terrible things as we saw in Nazi Germany, given that you probably think it’s just human nature to act in such a way - maybe the incentive is to join the state military just so you can do the oppression rather than be oppressed. The required discipline to be in the military is oppression in itself, though perhaps less so compared to what you might have in mind. Who oppresses the oppressors? I guess they just need to oppress themselves into dishing out oppression… I can tell you though, that the reported mental toll of people “just following orders” and doing terrible things was significant - I’m unconvinced that the majority of the population would be able to oppress in the long term. Psychopaths sure, but they’re only about 1% of the population.

In short, I don’t think “get the state to force people into check” is a notion that you can just throw around.

It really does sound like Stalinism, what you’re suggesting. Or at least a kind of North Korea. Not a model society in practice at the very least. And who said anything about Communism? Perhaps you didn’t read the various things I’ve been saying about what Communism was originally designed to be (as opposed to the bastardised use of the term that we hear the uneducated masses using today). It’s a decentralised working class run economic model, not a centralised authoritarian oppression of social freedoms like Stalinism - that’s literally the exact opposite.

So basically you’re waiting on a world leader to emerge, convince enough people to forcefully enlighten civilians (a dark enlightenment? Was that an intentional contradiction? Perhaps an endarkenment ), like I’m waiting on technological advances to replace at the very least unskilled jobs. How long do you expect to wait? You think the state of our democracy is on the verge of total collapse, starvation and civil war. Given how things are in the worst places in the world right now, never mind even worse places historically, there’s a longer way to fall for things to get really really bad than I think you’re appreciating. Honestly I don’t think primitive humanity can be transcended - the way that the brain is structured, it’s basically moderated and imperfectly channeled into socially acceptable behaviour, and I believe it’s based on necessary tendencies for humanity to endure. I think if you transcended it, you’d end up weakening and killing off humanity… I’m not saying I support what you mean by your reductionism of human natures, I just accept that it could be no other way. Technology though? It can be built to be foundationally different to the human brain, which cannot so easily be fundamentally rebuilt. Computers, the internet, mobile phones, GPS, technologies tend to be passed down to the masses and not just kept by elites. This is at least one good thing about Capitalism that you can rely on, there’s simply more money to be made if you make technologies available to the plebs. Self-driving cars is basically a dead-cert, it’s happening and it will be soon that huge numbers of people will be made redundant - forcing a response that will shake the core of capitalist workings and its fundamental assumptions and tenets. This is far from transhumanism and technological enslavement and it’s already threatening the status quo significantly - I’m not talking that far into the future.

How does any kind of state persuade people? It’s the same for any kind of government.

There’s always manpower in every kind of nation or government to keep people in order and check. Dark enlightenment for those that are uninitiated to understanding the greater implications at work here or the understanding of the realization of what human nature is.

Human nature is very dark but under the right kind of existential discipline that can be changed for the better under the directed leadership of an enlightened state. Human nature cannot be changed or altered but it can be controlled and restrained. With it under direct control it can be molded into something better than itself left to its own vices.

The enlightenment I speak of is about rooting out human nature helping it transcend itself so that all people have the opportunity to have a much better quality of life. For me the end justifies the means in that when specific goals are met there is a net benefit for all individuals.

This of course requires the enforcement of a different kind of social order but once again overtime will be worth it.

I have no intention creating needless oppression but I will not tolerate an out of control minority that seeks to impose themselves on everybody living at the expense of a majority of people. Those people are my real targets concerning social order enforcement. Those people deserve no quarter or mercy, those people will either fall in line or be thoroughly destroyed.

Your belief that artificial intelligence, fully automated society, or technology will save us all is naive. It is utter foolishness. You seem to have an inability of understanding the dehumanization that you suggest or how advanced technology can be used to oppress people.

The government I suggest is for people by people not machines.

Technology will free us all? So naive. No, only we can save ourselves.

The world will change once a massive enlightenment sweeps the world which I view more realistic than your technological wave taking over things.

Who said technology will free us all?

Of course that’s naive. I just say the next round of technological progress will cause a major disruption to the fundamental tenets of Capitalism.

Disruptions such as these have happened many times in the past, but I believe the magnitude and frequency of them, along with the lack of remaining options for humans is getting to a point where simply being required to find new innovative niches where human work is still relevant is no longer viable.

Does this mean that technology can’t be used to oppress people? Of course not.
Talking of naive, how about the idea that people can be forced into being enlightened? Have you no idea how human psychology works? You need to fool people into thinking that they were free to choose to be enlightened. Politicians and moreso businesses are already advancing this line of coercion by abusing loopholes in human psychology to make them think they freely chose to obey and/or consume in line with what the the politicians/businesses just so happen to want. It’s the height of all evil, but it’s in line with the methods you seem to advocate - except it works. Forcing people at gunpoint never worked.

It sounds to be like what you want to happen is already happening, just in a way that far outsmarts what you’re thinking of, and is ironically what is motivating you to react against it by using the same philosophy but dumbed down to the conspicuous.

You really ought to watch who you’re calling naive.

What would happen if everyone had everything they ever wanted?

What would these things amount to?

What is the world that everyone, as a collective, all contradictions inclusive, wants?

I believe that scarcity exists only because of this demonic formula. To keep us in check, as we are mad.

I dont think any of the noble sirs here present will deny that fact.

So scarcity helps the self preservation of the species.
A species that selects among its ranks the most lucky and vigorous, always occupied, always ready to destroy the threats in its environment and prevail.

If we would be nice to each other we would all be doomed.

Women always want to compensate for this fact. But when the fact is hidden they become the embodiment of it.
this dark feminine aspect is prevalent in a consumer society of uninspired politesse. But this society is dying. I am optimistic about where humans are going at this point.

Scarcity causes the ignorant to strive like hell, to overcome their situation of need.

They take it out on nature – as the GDP grows 10% each year*, the fools chop down 10% more trees each year, hunt available species to extinction, produce 10% more power plants and a hell of lot more plastic each year.

           * Because of the economic constraint that $110 must come in where $100 was given (thanks to the unnatural law of usury)

Meanwhile, when it comes to those who receive (via rent, usury etc.) – they use the “money for nothing” cornucopia in useless ways e.g. how cryptocurrency consumes power just for the sake of consumption of power without any productive result.

(theguardian.com/technology/ … tocurrency)

When it comes to those who receive (via rent, usury etc.) – by them, Land is cornered and caused to go barren due to their incompetence – denied to man, plant, or animal. This causes the onset of deserts.

Egotistic Ignorance degenerates freshwater-based life (PH = 7), breaking it down into acidic and basic, salty death.

And such idiocy is not by any means a prerogative of man! It is a more ancient zombiform disorder*, i cite the wildebeest as the modern creature closest to the original herbivorous desertifiers:

youtube.com/watch?v=LBa0mGZ7Hoo

• In zombiform disorder, the organism prioritizes quantitative aspects of life (consumption and reproduction) over the qualitative (novelty of thought and deed, lifespan, health), as dopamine dominates at the expense of Norepinephrine:

youtube.com/watch?v=OdhBRSF6fIE

I believe that we are mad particularly because of scarcity (how it supercharges the zombiform nature), rather than scarcity being brought to check our madness. Man was/could have been elf, much more than he’s reduced to.

Actually the social mammals that take care of each other tend to dominate, at least the other larger animals. Insects do well not giving a shit about each other or their weak, I suppose.

But taking care of each other doesn’t mean to be constantly nice to each other.
To begin with, most social species have at least sexual competition, which means putting each other at a disadvantage.

Id say humanity was at its most vigorous, in recent times, in New York in the 80’s.
It was dank, dirty and dangerous, and attained true cultural and financial world domination.
Now, New York has been turned into a petting zoo and no one wants to go there anymore. Its gotten to be known as supremely boring, bland, because it has become so scared to offend.

Angry rant.

No.

Most humans, generally start out nice, but become corrupted by the world.

That is the theme of the Joker, a man who started out nice, but became corrupt and angry at the world.

Of course there are also super-rich, inbred assholes who are just born mentally fucked up.

But corruption (evil) occurs for 3 main reasons.

Resource scarcity: No food, so people become criminals/savages, or no love, so people become mean-spirited and bitter criminals. Ie. someone is born physically strange (genetic inheritance), noone loves them, and they turn bitter.

Random tragedy: Someone accidentally runs someone over, they are bitter about it, and start a stupid feud over it.

Stupidity: People lack the emotional or logical clarity to make the best decisions, and the world suffers their idiocy. Or they believe in stupid nihilistic delusions, like religion, and so everyone has to suffer because of their idiocy.

No.

Of course not, but if you look at Zero-sum’s description of our animal nature, quote in the post above, it leaves out things like empathy, urges to cooperate and be in close contact with others.

Sure.

Well, I was in NYC at times in the 80s. And it seemed rather colder, less social in any sense and less interesting.

I don’t know what the balance point is, and I hate the disneyfication of New York. I certainly don’t think that deep down we are all fluffy cuddlers.

But we are more complex than reptilian brain creatures that only know competition. I do think competition and part of our nature. I also think cooperation is. Probably why I have tended to love most team sports, though I do like individual sports also.

And not all I do in relation to another person is to get an edge over them. Enlightened self-interest would be enlightening only a part of me. Now the number of people I want to collaborate with is small. But it is a strong urge also. Whether in arts/music or any facet of life.

It’s sometimes like humans get presented as, deep down, they are all Rasputin. that’s not what I find.

First I am not sure how many have a deep down. Then that deep down in those who have it, sure Rasputin is there, but so are other things.

Zero sum is a victim. We should leave him alone.
I wish he could just go to a farm with baby sheep and sleep there with warm milk by his side. Poor guy. Humanity is so harsh on a guy like that.

Really?? hat surprises me. I must admit I was there for the first time in '93, when it certainly was a hell of of a lot more alive than in 2008, with is the last time I visited. I had alway figured the 80s to be like the early 90s but rawer. I really loved it in '93.

Worse, I think the cuddler-wannabes or those that want everyone to be cuddlers are frequently bordering on sociopathy.
It is a logical result of being deliberately ignorant of human nature, and thus of ones own nature, and thus of ones actions, influences.

New York certainly does not appear more friendly now. Just more hypocritical, boring, expensive and emotionally flattened. It felt back in 2008 like everyone was on lithium.

For me a team is essential to a lot of things, certainly friendship is one of the highest ranking values in my universe. I do think that, in order to establish a team or a friendship, all the members must have tested each other. You can’t form a meaningful bond just out of pure goodly cozy friendliness. You have to know each other, know how you respond to pain, insult and adversity, among other things. Otherwise you can’t know if you’re really a team.

I think Rasputin is like a baby sheep compared to modern liberal politicians. But of course, yes. We are much like animal predators, full of empathic depths for our own, willingness to sacrifice ourselves for them, we have “infinite goodness” if you will but only those of us that have fierce dispositions. Sheep wont fight for their offspring, prey-animals don’t generally display traits of nobility, but predators often do.

Of course in the meek and the ideologues of meekness, this causes severe cognitive dissonance. But its rather inevitable, as as to be truly good, a lot of passion is required, and passion never goes well for an animal that needs to be edgy and calculating all the time for fear of being eaten. Passion, thus nobility, generosity, goodness - all that is reserved for those that live on the offensive.