At 2:49 PM -0700 on 7/10/99, Alain Farmer wrote:
>SPECIAL NOTE : Below are my counter-arguments in the context of an
>on-going debate on Altruism. This has little to do with OpenCard
>development, but it becomes somewhat relevant where OODL and
>OC-licencing are concerned. And because so many have responded too.
>
>Anthony : Yep. With communism, you quickly find that no matter how hard
>you work, you still don't have enough food on your plate. And the more
>labor you do, the hungrier you are... so the only logical action is to
>site around all day and do nothing.
>
>Alain : First of all, we were not specifically talking about Communism.
Communism is the idea of everyone working for the good of society. The idea
of everyone working for the good of their neighbor. Altruism is the idea of
everyone workjing for the good of society, for the good of their neighbor.
WHile it is certainly true that no one has ever implemented 100% communism,
pure communism is the same as pure altruism, at least so far as what you
get for your work -- or rather, the work you are doing for your
neighbor/for society.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" I
beleive is how it went. Or at least something to that effect. But is this
not altruism in its fullest?
>We were discussing whether people (and our economy) are driven
>primarily by Need and, if such needs were met, that these fortunate
>people would do absolutely nothing from then on. Or whether people are
>inherently and spontaneously driven to working because work is
>gratifying, because allows one to express one�s self, and because it
>provides opportunities to socialize with other like-minded people.
I would say this: People work because they expect to get something out of
it. People expect that if they work, they will earn compensation with which
they can buy food, toys, luxeries, etc. People fully expect that the more
they work, the more they produce, the more they are rewarded. This has been
the case since the dawn of time: If you worked harder collecting berries,
you had more berries to eat. When people discovered fire, they could keep
food for longer times and became healthier: Cooking kills germs. After the
Neolithic Revelution, if you farmed more grain, you had more grain to eat.
If you came up with a neat way to farm better (ex: a animal-drawn plow),
you could grow more. With the dawn of civilization, the more you could
grow, the more you could trade for. The more things a blacksmith could
smith, the more he could trade for. The more a miner could mine, the more
he could trade for. All along, the constant wish to produce more with less
effort led to innovations that improved the quality of life. Such simple
things as wheels were probably first used to move products around (with a
cart, you could carry far more than without!), iron and other metals
allowed better farm equipment, better furnaces allowed better metal
products, etc. And each time someone came up with a better method, he was
rewarded: He could produce more, he could have more for himself and his
family to eat. This encouraged him to think and to innovate even more. Of
course, there have always been people who would prefer to loot over
produce; they were the thieves, the crooks, the con artists. But all in
all, the world was advancing at a fair pace, and each step made mankind's
life easier: By the rise of civilization, not everyone had to farm; there
was enough food (brought about by the innovations) to feed more people than
there were farmers. This allowed people to spend time doing other things.
Some were the blacksmiths, some were scholars, some were mathemeticians.
All of these contributed to the advancement of humanity.
There were, of course, problems. Slavery, for example, was rampant. And
slaves did the most menial chores, and were not allowed to innovate. They
were not supposed too think. And when they did, they recieved no rewards.
They lived their lives solely for the sake of their master, by force. They
were, perhaps, history's first altruists, though not by choice. However,
there was a sufficient class of free people to continue innovations, and
most of the time mankind marched ahead.
Systems of government were invented. Many of them were monarchies; many of
them were based on a divine right of the rulers: No where else could the
ruler's power be justified. And this was one of the first times in which
the people who were innovating, who were producing the most, were ruled by
the looters: The rulers produced nothing, yet consumed heavily. The rulers
led quite lavish lives (comparitevly speaking), and, not to surprisingly,
their subjects were often quite poor: The rulers took a good deal of the
produce. For an example, consider the Pharoahs of ancient Egypt. (More on
this later)
There were a few attempts to curb rule of monarchs. One example is ancient
Greece, which (at least in the Western world) invented democracy. However,
their democracy had few (if any) protections for individuals. Consider that
for the high crime of speaking -- of disagreeing with the establishment --
it put Socrates to death. Greece's democracy demostrated itself in that to
be no better than mob rule. In mob rule, whoever has the support of the
largest mob has near-absolute power. In democracy of that form, whoever has
the support of the largest faction has near-absolute power. Democracy
itself is merely a nicer term for mob rule. Greece's democracy obviosuly
did not recognize the right to the freedom of speech. Ultimately, democracy
ended, to be replaced by monarchy by Caesar. Rome did, however, leave a
very important contribution to society: They left a system of objective law.
When Rome fell, the western world plummeted into the Dark Ages. If
anything, mankind degressed instead of progressed in those times. The Dark
Ages were a time in which kings and the clergy held absolute power over
everything and over everyone. They not only demanded goods, but they
forbade learning: They actively destroyed innovation and knowledge, because
innovation and knowledge threatened their power. They looted when they felt
like it. They produced nothing. And, since they believed in their absolute
right to rule everything, everywhere, they fought countless wars. Their
wars were also caused, no doubt, to stop rebellion in their own territory:
They needed a scapegoat to explain starvation -- the starvation they had
caused by looting the world to the point of complete plunder.
But this is of no surprise: They wanted no innovation for the same reason
the slavemasters of the past had: It would require thinking. And thinking
was a danger to their power. And when there was innovation, the innovator
did not recieve the benifit from it; the king (or lord) did. The feudal
system in place at the time created a wholly enslaved Europe, only they
were known as "serfs," not "slaves."
Eventually, the Renaissance did come; innovation did resume. It was allowed
only by the decrease in the power of the kings and of the clergy. And, as
we all know, the Rennaisance was not a small group of innovations; it was
quite large. Knowledge once again became valued. Innovation was rewarded.
People once again could be fed without working on a farm 24/7. Yes, there
was still the underclass, but overall Europe was better off. The
Renaissance's revival continued.
Later, came a recognition of the basic rights of any human being. The
rights to life, liberty, property, and the persuit of happyness and the
first government mostly based on them. That country was not ever perfect;
it, for example, allowed slavery. But there were a significant number of
people who were free to innovate, who were free to sell their innovations,
and who kept the products of their innovation, that there was an amount of
innovation unprecedented in all of history. The political-economic system
that accomplished it banned the initiation of of physical force -- and was
one of the first in history to do so. It protected the producers from the
looters by saying, for the first tine in history, "That is not yours. Get
your hands off!" to all -- even to its democraticly elected leaders. It was
the first, and the only, system to recognize the rights of individuals of a
fundamental principle to be violated by no one. And its successes spread
like wildfire across the Atlantic. In a short span of less than two
centuries, it procuded some of the greates innovations and discoveries
known in all of history. There were also no wars in the civilized world
because it is one of the few systems that actively discourages war: Trade
can not exist when one's boats are being sunk by enemy armies and when
one's produce are taken to support armies. This system is know as
laissez-faire capitalism.
It is this system that Karl Marx and his comrads hated. It is this system,
responsible for the greatest increase in wealth -- across the board -- that
history had ever seen, that he called unfair. Whether well meaning or not,
he created a system that was the exact opposite: From people getting
compensated according to their ability, according to their innovation --
according to their thoughts -- to people being compensated for their need.
>From the recognition to the rights of an individual to the recognition of
no rights of an individual: Under his system, there is no right to
property, for example. The system itself is consistent and logical -- if,
and only if, you do not accept the rights of an individual. If, and only
if, you believe in the enslavement of the individual to his neighbors. For,
in Marxism, a person lives only for the sake of his neighbors at the point
of a gun. Once again, altruism. If for no other reason, that is why it will
never work: While you can enslave a person's body with a gun, while you can
force them to do manual labor with a gun, you can't force them to think or
learn. And, being slaves, neither would you want them too.
Even worse if the idea of society. Society, by definition, is a collection
of individuals. Who speaks for society? Who decides who gets what? Usually,
some self-appointed tyrant from the dictator-of-the-month club.
Notice that by recieving based on need, not on production, that communism
is the ultimate victory of the looters over the producers: The looters, who
produce nothing, are free to take while the producers, who produce it all,
must only give.
>
>Alain : Secondly, the problem with Communism is not so much its
>political philosophy (Marx and all of that) as it is the rigid
>bureaucratic socio-political structure that concentrated power in the
>hands of very few individuals who, �for security reasons�, were not
>held accountable for their actions. Lots of power and no one to answer
>to. An explosive combination that is hard for anyone to resist and,
>sooner or later, leads to corruption and abuse of power of the ruling
>class, which in turn does not go un-noticed by those who are ruled and
>THAT leads to the drain of motivation that you speak of.
See above.
>
>Alain : If, on the other hand, the same political philosophy had been
>supported by a democratic system, with checks & balances on the
>exercice of power, with full accountability of those who wield it, and
>no one body or person that wields too much of it, then it might have
>succeeded.
No it would not. Democracy is a cute word for mob rule, see above.
>To those who would qualify this as communistic, I would like
>to point that these are precisely the principles upon which the
>Constitution of the USA were founded, but didn�t quite live up to
>either!
I would suggest you read the constitution, specificly the Bill of Rights. I
would also suggest reading the Declaration of Independance.
The idea it supported was (and is) the rights of the individual.
>
>>Anthony, what you're describing is a particular
>>implementation of communism, which was faulty.
>>Communism as Marx envisioned it, wouldn't have suffered
>>this fate as everyone would have had enough to eat.
>
>Alain : Especially in our times, with automation to assist us with the
>production side of things, and computer-mediated communication and
>collaboration where political debate, decision-making and
>accountability are concerned.
Hah. No, with communism, there would be no computers. They are not a
"need". They would be amoung the first to go.
>
>Anthony : Well, you can write anything you want in a book, but reality
>is reality.
>
>Alain : Reality is what each individual makes it out to be. Even
>perception of the (alledged) reality that is objectively out there is
>conditioned by the on-going modeling process in our brain.
A car is a car. A rock is a rock. Food is food. A rock is not food, nor is
a car. That is what I mean by reality. And no amount of 'perception' can
make a rock edible.
>
>Uli : It's like with Velocity. Even though Velocity was slow as a dead
>cat, that doesn't mean all interpreters have to be as slow. It was only
>this particular implementation, while the basic concept allows for
>speed.
>
>Alain : One should indeed be careful about generalizing from one
>specific case.
I've got the cases of over a third of Europe (formerly), of a billion
Chinese, etc., to generalize from.
>
>Anthony : But in comparison with a real compiler,
>the basic concept is _far_slower.
>
>Alain : Sure. Human affairs do indeed require more time and effort.
The point was that while one communist implenentation may well be better
than another, none can compete with capitalism.
>
>>>Anthony : But it's also damaging to the giver: You
>>>don't have the food that you gave to the animals
>>>anymore. And if enough animals were to come begging,
>>>you would have no food for yourself. And you would not
>>>have food for them, either. That's the ultimate ned of
>>>altruism: Death.
>
>Alain : Dubious argument. It allows the non-givers that could afford to
>give the rationale for doing nothing. You don�t give everything you
>got, as above, but you give what you can. And giving doesn�t
>necessarily imply money either.
It implies something that you produced. And the ultimate result of altruism
is heaving nothing for yourself, let alone anything to give away. Sure, if
you only give a small amount and refuse to go over that, it will never come
to this. But if the principle of "each according to his need" is
established, it will come to this.
>Should we let the Third-World make due
>the best they can without providing them with any assistance
>whatsoever? Would they be better off? Would WE be better off?
Yes, yes, and yes, respectivly. Now is time for that "more on this later" I
promissed.
The third world is currently in this situation. Their rulers take all the
money we give as foreign aid and use it not for the people, but rather to
support their tyrany. They recruit and train armies with it. They feed
themselves with it. When we give them money, we are supporting the ruler.
We're feeding the #$@#^ guy who's looting his own country. Instead of
money, we need to export to them capitalism. So long as the ruler of the
country hold the life, property, and liberty of all his subjects in his
hands, there will be no wealth produced in that country. It would be far
better for that country to let them alone, and let them out their tyrant of
the month. Give them the tools (that is, capitalism) they need to create
their own wealth. Ultimately, what we do today is not only to create
dependants -- like those animals mentioned in another post -- but to
support their opressors.
>Sure we
>might each have a few dollars more in our pockets, but consider the
>ultimate consequences of millions of desperate people without hope that
>will be obliged to ravage the planet for their short-term survival.
Consider the ultimate consequences of people who come to depend on us for
everything. Do we intend to keep the third world as pets, to be dependant
on us for their very survival? Is it not we, who by always giving them
relief from the mess they get themselves into by planning only for
short-term survival, encourage it? Should we do this, or should we instead
teach them to fish.
Export capitalism so that they may create their own wealth. Then we'll both
be better off.
>Isn�t this precisely what is happening to the Rain Forest? 50% of the
>World�s oxygen supply is said to come from it. So it is
>NOT-helping-them that will lead to a global disaster.
50% of the world's oxygen does not come from rainforests. Nowhere near it.
>
>>Uli : Not if everyone is altruistic. Then everyone
>>helps everyone and all get what they need, when they
>>need it. Seen from this (agreeably one-sided)
>>viewpoint, altruism is a very good base for a state.
>
>Alain : I agree. As Kennedy once said : �Ask not what your country can
>do for you but, rather, what you can do for your country�.
That was not Kennedy, but, still, is that not best served by producing?
I'll put it this way: I don't care if you give away your money. It's your
money. But don't try and give away mine. You can be altruistic with your
own money, but not mine. And that's what government programs are: Being
altruistic with my money.
>For large
>collective initiatives like society-building to succeed, altruism must
>play a role.
I disagree. America was built not on altruism, but on profit motive.
>We do things for the ones we love. We do things for our
>children. We do things with the promise that we will be rewarded for
>them in Heaven (religion). Altruism is everywhere!
I agree that people do things because of altruism. But that does not
necissarily make it right or correct.
>
>Anthony : No, they don't. because if you are 100% altruistic, you can't
>take the stuff -- because that would be for your own good -- and you
>must give it to your neighbor, who gives it to his neighbor, etc.,
>until it rots.
>
>Alain : Hypothetical. Academic argument.
Of course. Because no one in their right mind would be 100% altruistic.
>
>Uli : The problem is that here comes in the fact Marx didn't realize
>(while he realized many things that are astonishing to see if you look
>at today's world and how it turned out so similar to how he said the
>future would be),that humans are not beings that are 100% altruistic.
>
>Anthony : Because if they were 100% altruistic, they'd die from the rot
>scenario above. And if they are anything less than 100%, the best
>alternative is 0%.
>
>Alain : I don�t believe that there are merely two alternatives here.
>All or nothing is very infrequent in Life. Everything is usually
>somewhere in-between. Shades of grey, so to speak. Only in computers
>and in formal logic are such either-or extremes frequent.
There are alternatives, I just don't believe them best. There are an
infinite many numbers between 0 and 100.
>
>Alain : We all look out for ourselves, to some degree, so we could
>never be 100% altruistic. But we have all, at some time or another,
>done something for somebody, without demanding anything (or as much) in
>return. So it is unlikely that anyone is 0% altruistic either.
So we'd have to figure out the best number inbetween. I'd argue towards the
0 side. And as to with other people's money, I argue for zero.
