On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 10:15 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 4/4/2015 6:19 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > Hi John > > On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 10:10 PM, John Mikes <[email protected]> wrote: > >> TELMO: >> I did not expect from you to point to the 2 centuries old obsolete and >> theoretical exercise of Marx-Engels (irrespective of Lenin's intermitted >> LATER speculations) as "blueprint" for a (still?) viable(?) political >> system. >> > > I don't think it was ever viable, and I don't think it's relevant to the > current times, as it is based on too many assumption from an era that is > long gone (early Industrialism). > > What I mean is, when people use the word "communism", there is a > document that describes precisely what this word is supposed to mean. A > blueprint for communism. > > I do think that Marx-Engels correctly identified social problems that > remain being problems to this day, namely the self-reinforcing nature of > wealth inequality. The issue is that their proposed solution seems to > equalize society by throwing the majority of people into extreme poverty > and servitude. > > >> It never got further than a tyranny of 'leftish-sounding' slogans by >> pretenders. As the original authors dreamed it up, it never (and nowhere) >> did get off from the ground. >> I know, I lived in a so called "Peoples' Democracy" (Called 'commi' >> system - ha ha) which was neither "peoples'" nor democracy. Nor Marxist, >> nor Leninist. >> It was a Stalinist tyranny. And Maoist, Pol-Pot, plus a KimIrSen-istic >> one. >> > > I would be very interested in any story you had to share about those > times. > > I agree that these societies never achieved anything resembling what > Marx proposed. The remaining communists of today tend to argue that all of > past communist movements were not sincere in their motivations. That might > very well be true, but even then it is an important piece of information on > human nature. If we are trying to get from A -> B and we always stumble on > the same horrors along the way, maybe the plan is just not viable for this > world. So far we have learned that either communism is a terrible idea or > communist revolutions always end up being hijacked by sociopaths. To be > honest, I think both are true. > > > Communism is not a terrible idea - it works fine for families. A lot of > political problems come from trying to extend ethics that evolved for > families and small tribes to nation states of millions of unrelated people. > Agreed. > Capitalism has problems from the same source. Owning a flint spearhead > you made is unproblematic. If you own it you can prohibit its use, sell > it, bequeath it, etc. But when this idea was extended to owning land it > created problems. > Also true. However, it seems, empirically, that the problems created are not of the same magnitude. We only have History, which is famously written by the winners, so I might be biased. However, there is one unintended large-scale social experiment that makes this very convincing for me: the Berlin wall. The GDR was the closest thing that ever existed to a communist utopia, because it was heavily supported by the USSR to be exactly that. Still, many citizens of the GDR risked their lives to get to the other side. There were never attempts in the opposite direction. This is an almost perfect experiment because both groups had the same cultural background, ethnicity, language, etc. > John Locke thought owning land was an oxymoron...you could only "own" > the temporary use of land. Didn't matter for hunter-gatherers, but it was > problem that had to be solved for agricultural society. > John Locke won, at least in Europe. The property taxes are so high that you don't really feel that you own land or property. You lease it, and the government will take it away if you are no longer willing or capable of paying said tax. > > That now a lot the world's GDP comes from capital has created the same > kinds of questions about ownership of capital. Given that r>g in Piketty's > analysis, is it a good idea to allow the Koch brothers to inherit a billion > dollar business (that their father built by drilling for Stalin). > The question is if there is a better alternative. My country did exactly that in 1974 -- nationalize big factories. After 6 months almost none were left. I grew up in front of the ruins of a previously thriving flour mill. The currently richest guy in the country was a chemical engineer at one of these factories. He bought it back from the government for almost nothing when it was about to collapse and grew it back to a thriving business. Now he owns a multinational retail chain, which no longer pays taxes in my country because we moved the HQ elsewhere after a law was passed to increase taxes on capital gains. My point being: wealth inequality is a real problem but I believe all attempts to fix it so far have been worse. At the risk of being repetitive, I believe that withdrawing the power of nations to print money out of thin air and determine interest rates would reduce inequality. > > > > >> >> >> Capitalism - in my view an advanced form of slavery, following >> feudalism - started to destroy the entire human experiment on this Globe - >> way before the "warming" entered the picture. >> It never 'faced' a competition of any 'socialistic' challenger. It >> succumbbed to the authoritarian religious tyrannies (brutal and violent, or >> just retracting and philosophical). >> > > As with communism, there is a big gap between the theory and the > implementation. "Advanced form of slavery" might be a way to put it, but an > even more cynical view would be that there's always been slavery to some > degree. > > I believe that the big challenge that we face is how to move to a > jobless society. Worse, I think this transition already started but there > is still no political will to admit it. Robotics and AI are Marx's worse > nightmare. In the limit, the number of employees required by a business > will tend to zero, while the ability of a business to provide goods for the > rest of us keeps being more and more leveraged by technological advance. > One of the realities about the current economic crises that few are willing > to admit: there simply are no longer jobs for everyone. > > I think the best idea that we have so far is the universal flat salary. > > > The trouble with that is that when everyone has the same income nobody > feels rich...and people like to feel rich. It's Nietzsche's "will to > power". So people who have $100 billion don't want to give up $99 billion > to the general welfare, even though it would make the world better and make > no discernible difference in their life style. So they instead use a few > billion to persuade people to vote for politicians who won't tax them. > This is why I think it can work. Everyone gets a base salary, but anyone can still get a job or start a business. If you want to be above average, you will have to do one of those things. Telmo. > > Brent > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
