On 05 Apr 2015, at 11:20, Telmo Menezes wrote:
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.
I agree.
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.
I agree.
It is in the interest of the rich people to enrich the poors, as this
enlarges the number of potential clients, and it lessen the troubles.
When there are poors, it means that some rich does not play the game,
and are actually stealing people, not necessarily consciously
(unfortunately, is it is harder to correct). Of course there can be
other factors including human factors/emoition/hate, etc.).
It is not so much a base salary, that a minimal decent life which
everyone has the right for. It is a question of human dignity.
It would help people like van Gogh who did not sold much of its
painting during his living (only one I think), when today some people
make colossal fortune with his work. It could help the long term
project, and people with passion.
It would make piece with the lazy contemplators, who appreciate and
share the works of the others.
Lazy is not a sin. It is a quality, I think.
You know, I should be the president of the defense of the right of the
lazy people, we dream organizing a congress since many years, but none
of us has enough will to make the slight move, including the election
of the president. Damn!
Sloth is called paresseux (lazy) in french.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES32UFlPOUA
Bruno
Telmo.
Brent
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