by EnergySpin » Wed 06 Jul 2005, 07:56:10
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 's')tay at work during night (why would emergency doctor stay at work at night? He can sleep just like others do.
Because it comes with the job description. I am a doctor and I accepted I would have to stay up all night, sometimes without sleep for 44 hrs straight. No more money by the way. So this argument really makes no sense, there are some things that are outside the market economy and will never be captured by it. It is the same reason that lead highly qualified professionals to write open source software, or work for relief agencies in the 3rd world, or come up with theorems
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')Why should person in shop stay there at night
This at the same passage as the doctors who work all night? I do not think that having shops open all night is a social priority.
Was it the lack of free enterprise that crushed morale or the lack of freedom of expression? Or the fact that due to the secrecy and the police snooping, people were turned against each other, afraid of each other? Or a combination? There is pretty low morale in the west as well. I am handing out anti-depressant prescriptions faster than the pharmacist can refill the inventory .. what does that mean I wonder? And as you can see in this web site, the mentality I will survive and the others will end up being my slaves (a corollary of free market enterprise thinking) is pretty widespread. Too bad that it this attitude that guarantees collapse. And yes your civil servants should be fired, as with any civil servant or public employee in the whole world.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '-') cleaning streets and picking up and sorting waste - doing unpopular "dirty" work
- work on the fields or in mines or doing other hard, boring or dangerous manual work
In the technate (original system) you had to do 2 years of service to the system .... many democracies still have that, Roman and Athenian citizens had to serve in the army as soldiers and then through their participation/performance could be elected to become generals. That was the original system, then they fucked up and ended up either loosing or become dictatorships - the original word came from the Roman empire)
So the point is mute ... you can find people to do the dirty work.
I still think you confuse communisto-fascist utopias with the technate proposal. They are extremely different in the way they work and are organised. Once you can only spend your material assets and not store them in a bank or get more ... you have no basis to create an oligarchy.
Going back to the original capitalist systems: I'd suggest you research Cobb Douglas production functions and how the whole market/state debate is centered around a model of economy that has no physical basis and runs against physical laws. I was a free market believer till 1 yr ago when I saw that what they told me was God, was not compatible with the conservation laws of thermodynamics. Capitalism is good only when you rapidly have to build a medium scale basis and no prior organisation/infrastructure pre-exists and energy surplus (even low quality but still accessible by anyone) can be used. That situation pretty much describes a good part of the human history so far, and it is only under these circumstances that the Holy grail of free market production theory (Cobb Douglas) is a valid approximation. Once energy scarcity hits, then the system rapidly becomes irrelevant and dangerous
because it assumes that its physical basis is an externality To see this within the context of PO, free market would let people die (there is no low tech substitute for our energy crisis) while others still enjoyed their jet travelling; the financial meltdown would lead to the erosion of the physical capacity to produce anything (financial de-industrialization) and pretty soon the system would collapse (there would be no more industries to supply the households in their fictional world). Aa controlled energy descent akin to the Uppsalla protocol or any other proposal that involves global
governmental cooperation would make sure that the people had the basics while the scientific/engineering community went full throttle constructing the alternatives.
Please read the thread on the Verhulst model or the Lotka Volterra population/energy modeling to see what we are talking about.
Any attempt not to modify the energy crunch dynamics lead to environmental and societal (global) collapse.It is only global knowledge of the system that can mitigate the fall. And capitalism works by assuming local knowledge by the players. The reason we can forecast the Peak and the decline is because we use global knowledge i.e. data on the whole planet. Under the free market these data would not even exist , so ... do your math.
I will continue this conversation, only if you are willing to throw in some economic arguments. I already acknowledged that fasisto-communism was a bad theoretical system with a bad implementation. Free market is the same - but it separates (physically) the serfs and the masters so you do not see the 3rd world kid who workes as s slave to have your Nikes.
If you want to continue the argument about Technocracies and or steady state economies ... it has to be theoretical. None of these systems have been tried, they do not violate physical laws, and by definition they do not sacrifice future generations for a short lived pleasure. If you can appreciate the math, I could direct you to a web site with many interesting papers, where they discuss how to factor in intergenerational equality and justice in the production system.
Latter
by Licho » Wed 06 Jul 2005, 08:33:36
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnDenver', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Licho', 'O')k, so who, and why will do following in technate:
- cleaning streets and picking up and sorting waste - doing unpopular "dirty" work
- work on the fields or in mines or doing other hard, boring or dangerous manual work
These two are interesting because this problem is not solved by providing financial incentives, even in the capitalist system. The general rule seems to be: the harder and dirtier the work, the cheaper the pay. On the whole, these jobs are done by illegal immigrants for sub-minimum wage. So I don't see how the people doing these jobs are any worse off under communism. At least they can make a living under communism.
Yes, but they woudln't work in technocracy - why should they? Only by forcing them to do (as EnergySpin suggest) you can make the work done in environmnent that lacks any incentives to work.. You have to make forced labor..
by JohnDenver » Wed 06 Jul 2005, 08:37:12
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergySpin', '
')In the technate (original system) you had to do 2 years of service to the system .... many democracies still have that, Roman and Athenian citizens had to serve in the army as soldiers and then through their participation/performance could be elected to become generals.
Excellent idea, ES. Every able bodied person has to work as a grunt for 2 years. Why not? That's equal and fair. I had the same idea myself in the context of food production (
Food and Shelter). It certainly makes a lot more sense to conscript people to produce food or energy, than to conscript people to kill people. It would also be beneficial because it would give everyone hands-on-experience with the material foundations of society.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')nce energy scarcity hits, then the system rapidly becomes irrelevant and dangerous
because it assumes that its physical basis is an externality To see this within the context of PO, free market would let people die (there is no low tech substitute for our energy crisis) while others still enjoyed their jet travelling; the financial meltdown would lead to the erosion of the physical capacity to produce anything (financial de-industrialization) and pretty soon the system would collapse (there would be no more industries to supply the households in their fictional world).
This is the critical point that Licho (and other capitalism proponents) need to address. Capitalism cannot function without growth. It may be better than communism, but it's still deadly. Yes, capitalism may neatly solve certain problems, like who gets the beach house, but does that mean we have to cling to it while it sucks us down into the abyss?
One of the most atrocious parts of capitalism is the notion of "economic efficiency", which is defined
here.
Lets develop their example with reference to petroleum:
"Suppose that we have a unit of diesel fuel which has two potential uses. In use A, it powers the yacht of a wealthy individual who is willing to pay $25; in use B, it fuels the generator of a hospital which is trying to save human lives, but has no money to pay for the fuel. The concept of economic efficiency says that the diesel fuel should be used to fuel the wealthy individual's yacht because it has the highest value. If the diesel fuel is in fact used in A, the result is economically efficient. If it ends up being used for B, the economic system is not producing as much value as it could, and the result is economically inefficient."
This notion of "efficiency" is ridiculous horseshit. Pseudo-science. It has nothing whatsoever to do with efficiency. In fact, it's simply a justification of waste by the rich, dressed up to look like a mathematical principle.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')f you can appreciate the math, I could direct you to a web site with many interesting papers
Post that link, please. I'm interested.
by JohnDenver » Wed 06 Jul 2005, 11:27:24
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Licho', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnDenver', 'R')ight, but the labor is forced under capitalism as well, so that doesn't seem like a good argument against technocracy. People don't clean toilets due to the financial incentive. They clean toilets because otherwise they can't eat. The job is forced under all systems.
But in capitalism, this work is done by people, who are often unable to do another job (for various reasons, like lack of education and skills).
Yes, but isn't that just another way to say they are forced into it? It's clear that they don't want to do it, and don't enjoy doing it, because its a job no one wants to do. So why are they doing it if they aren't being forced into it?
Just as a thought exercise, suppose you had a nation of educated people with other skills. Who's going to clean the toilets etc.? Everybody is able to do another job, and nobody wants to do the dirty work. You'd have to pay a lot of money to get someone to clean a toilet in that situation. In fact, the whole scale would be inverted, and the guy cleaning the office toilet would be getting paid more than the ad executive working in the office. Otherwise, the toilet would never get cleaned etc. I don't think capitalism would function very well under those conditions, so it seems that, at some point, capitalism must "produce" an underclass of people who have no skills/education. In fact, that is exactly what is happening in advanced economies like the U.S. The toilet cleaners are "produced" by importing them as illegal immigrants. If you sent all the illegal immigrants back home, and shut the borders, skilled people with educations would have to clean the toilets. So how would you decide who gets to be the underclass?
