*Brent:* *your line * *"Communism is not a terrible idea - it works fine for families." * *i*s a cop-out. The discussion is not about some closely related peoples' lives, it is about a worldwide socio-economic political system - and you know it.
I never dreamed of wealthy people giving up their wealth. Not to general welfare, not to any other worthy goal. A NEW SYSTEM has to be established, definitely on NEW TERMS, the question is: W H O can make it and W H O can estblish it? Not anyone from our rotten slave-driving capital/politico establishment. What if 'people' cannot be pesuaded to 'vote' against their interest? if those millions turn out to be worthless? if - horribile dictu - VOTERS start to *T H I N K ? * *For starters: * when there will be a "NON" vote? (better: NO WAY vote). I entertained the stupid idea as well to the arrival of powerful aliens with more wisdom than Earthlings and install a new way of thinking. The result was: that could be no better than the present one, implementing new, but not becessarily better patterns (for us). We could corrupt those ideas in no time. Or: those would be useless under our circumstances. Hence my search for someone smarter than me. On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 4:15 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. 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. 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. > > 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). > > > >> >> >> 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. > > 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]. 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