Capitalism and Socialism: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

[Neil]

I don't know, the Standard Oil monopoly seems to be a pretty good poster child for a laissez-faire natural monopoly to me, it is the dream of any committed capitalist, and it looks like to me like the only way balance got restored was by "socialist progressives." Anyway, I do have a little bit of sympathy for those who defend capitalism, because where I think it excels is providing a supply when there is a demand. It is really difficult for any centralized authority to outmatch it in this domain, because supply and demand is ultimately a dynamic that occurs between individuals. Is the ruling class capable of knowing the individuals better than they know themselves? On the level of mundane desires and everyday needs, I would say that usually the answer is no. However, on the same token capitalism is also bound by its dictate to balance the market by maximizing profit, which strikes me as making it great for getting people what they want, and terrible for what they need, which is where some form of socialism comes into play. "Oh you can't afford the water bill from the private water utility? Well that's not my problem, you just aren't valuable enough to the market and that's just how it works, natural selection and all of that, you know. So long," says the capitalist. Finding the optimum equilibrium price for your product by definition means that some people will not be able to afford it, and if it's necessary for survival and you can't afford it you deserve to die, according to capitalism. So on the one hand we have this wonderful free market mechanism which can spontaneously and organically organize markets without the need for central authority (ultimate efficiency in overhead costs) while on the other hand legitimizing the idea that only the strongest deserve to live and the role of the weak is merely to be food for the strong. In this context, I am interested in designing a philosophy which preserves capitalism's benefits while eliminating its tendency to lead to chaos. So I come back to the 4 fundamental axioms of capitalism.

1. The individual is the basic unit in society.
2. The individual has a natural right to freedom.
3. The physical order of nature is a harmonious and self-regulating system.
4. Corporations are creatures of the State and therefore the citizenry must watch them closely due to their propensity to disrupt the Smithian spontaneous order.

I propose the following philosophy:

1. The individual is the basic unit in society.
2. The individual has a natural right to freedom.
3. The physical order of nature is intelligently designed to be self-perpetuating and always seeking balance.
4. Corporations exist to serve themselves by providing services to others; therefore, the rights of firms exist in a symbiotic balance in relation to the needs of individuals.
5. The needs of the self are not any more or less important than the needs of others; an ideal market operates at the equilibrium point between these two extremes.

Some esoteric axioms that infuse this economic philosophy:

1. Consciousness is the basic unit of all existence
2. 7D unified consciousness has ultimate freewill governing all manifestations of existence; therefore all facets and subdivisions of this consciousness possess freewill in some degree or in potential.
3. Some of these subdivisions choose to serve self and some choose to serve others
4. The balance between STS and STO is what drives creation.
5. There are always three forces at work in any interaction, good, evil, and the specific context which determine which is which.

This is basically a yin-yang philosophy, at some point the planet would polarize towards STS or STO, but that doesn't seem to be the purpose of Earth. The purpose is to provide an environment in which to make the choice. Ra describes most planets as having positive or negative harvests, but Earth appears to be a "mixed harvest" planet, so all things here are experienced as a duality. The Cassiopaeans also described themselves as the front line of defense for the universe's system of balance. After polarization, the relationship with the fundamental divine laws governing Earth would change, and the economic philosophy would no longer be valid. In it's current state, I see Earth as sort of a mirror image of the Cassiopaeans' reality where the STS and STO polarities coexist and are moving into unification. On Earth, the STS and STO polarities sort of coexist, but are moving into separation. So my intent was to have the microcosm serve as this reflection of the macrocosm. In this vein, as someone mentioned earlier, having a system that is biased towards STO is actually violating the principal purpose of the school which is to be able to make an unweighted choice. This is actually a violation of the 7D law of Freewill, and is why it never works; you can't choose someone's polarity for them especially STO. The purpose is to maintain an environment where the choice can take place. The planet has become unbalanced towards STS, where it is presented as the only viable choice, which is also a violation of the Law of Freewill unless just that specific scenario is exactly what is chosen. That is the precise angle that has been worked by 4D STS for so long.

Lastly, some policies that might be implemented to this effect:

-I actually like the idea of capping executive pay. I think CEO pay should be capped at 20X the average hourly earnings for the employees of the company, and 60X the hourly earnings of the lowest paid employee. There would be no absolute cap on how much a CEO could earn, but if he wants to earn more he needs to spread the wealth around to those who support him. If you run a crappy country where the average wage is $20K per year, you can still make $400K a year, which ought to be enough for any reasonable person. There would be no maximum price a company could pay a private inventor to purchase an idea, the market can determine that. If an inventor wants to run his own company, he will probably make more money in the long run, but must be fair to the people who he depends on for the day to day business.

-Due to the above, it would probably be unnecessary to mandate a minimum wage, the market can do that.

-I do not think it is the role of the state to guarantee anyone a job. If you are unemployable, your survival will still be taken care of, but only the basics, food, water, and some spartan apartment somewhere; similar to the walled enclave idea from the post imperialism thread.

-I think that everyone should be taxed at the same amount, regardless of income. I don't care that someone makes $10K a year and has two kids and has to pay $3K to the government and can barely make ends meet. You chose to have those kids and their bare necessities will be provided for anyway; you have to grow up some time. There should be a flat income/capital gains tax that pays for everything, no sales taxes, gas taxes, etc.

-Corporations have the right to appeal any government regulation. Regulations could be overturned by a referendum in the jurisdiction which is effected by the corporation. (This is of course predicated on an honest voting system)

-The private sector shall function as a check on the public sector. If sufficient demand exists for private utilities, hospitals, schools, etc. they shall be allowed to function and shall not be regulated any more stringently than public institutions. It would be unconstitutional to regulate them out of existence de facto or de jure.

-Companies that severely violate ethical guidelines and cause widespread harm and found guilty by a judge are subject to seizure and nationalization of assets.

-The concept of lending at interest shall become illegal.

-Private property rights would remain more or less the same as in the current US system.

-A major problem with ancient societies seems to revolve around the accumulation of debt. There should be some type of debt jubilee once every century. This will of course lead to an artificially induced economic crash close to the end of the cycle, but I see it as choosing to suffer in a specific way now, instead of suffering more greatly in an uncontrolled way later.

Eventually the system will crash and be due for a major reset beyond the centennial. The axioms and ideas here can be reinterpreted and twisted in various pathological ways. What I have tried to do is reconnect economics to something higher, predicated on intelligent design, because all I ever hear about capitalism from western theorists is markets, markets, markets; a materialistic obsession with markets as the be all end all. In my opinion, the true study of economics is more like "econotheology." Since 4D STS seems to be the ultimate arbiter of what is allowed to occur on this planet, this whole post was likely a futile waste of time, but I felt compelled to publish my stance on this topic in context of all of the interesting ideas circulating around it.

 

[luc]

(I'm quoting this here from the Darwinism thread since it is more about capitalism/socialism)

I'm not sure about this connection. I don't think the free marketers are entirely off.

Yes, I probably went too far in my comparison between free markets/random mutations (pattern recognition and all that).

While it's useful to look at the other side of the coin and think through the problems of capitalism, this of course doesn't mean the free market hasn't a lot going for it.

I think the distinction you made earlier and again in your latest post on this thread is useful: "free markets" is a good concept to the degree that it's rooted in common sense, i.e. give people freedom to do business/compete etc., which is natural and always has been, and not force them into some super-structure, socialist mega-plan or what have you. Problems arise once this turns into a "money-ideology" that puts "dog eat dog" and "market ideology" before common sense, values and human decency.

As someone having a consultancy business myself, one thing I like about being part of the free market is that it's rooted in what is, it's a reality-check. Either people buy your products or services or they don't; you can't rationalize, lie to yourself etc. I used to hate that in the past because it's easier to live in illusions about yourself, which you can do much better if you are funded by the taxpayer, i.e. in some NGO, government body, subsidized business etc. No wonder that all those postmodern ideologies flourish there. The free market is kind of an antidote to such ideologies. For example, everyone who's selling chainsaws knows perfectly well that it's 98% men who like and use such things, and you have to market accordingly. Otherwise you're toast - the market doesn't care about your gender ideology.

And Laura's point about unleashing creativity is important too - as a business, you must constantly come up with new ideas, grow, try something new etc. It's either up or down, you can't just keep doing the same thing and expecting it to work forever.

 

[luc]

Could you give some examples, because based on my reading, this doesn't seem to be true. It seems to be truer to say that free-market capitalism can lead to one business having a large market share and the lowest prices temporarily, but as long as competition is legal, there will always be competitors, and the 'monopoly's' position isn't guaranteed. For example, this article gives multiple examples from U.S. history showing that what are often considered natural monopolies were nothing of the sort, until they were made so by the government:

Hm, I don't think it's a black and white story. I don't buy the Marxist theory of "inevitably monopolies", but there also are problems such as the ones Pierre mentioned.

I think a great example is Amazon. Here are some of the things Pierre mentioned, applied to Amazon:

1/ Economy of scale (production).
Amazon is so mighty they can get the best prices not only for stuff they buy, but also for things like post delivery. With that kind of purchasing power, they can pretty much dictate prices.

2/ Capital intensity.
Automation, complex logistics systems, advanced IT - all very capital intensive. Once you are the big guy like Amazon, you can throw an almost unlimited amount of money at such things and get further and further ahead of your competition.

3/ Merger and acquisition.
Amazon isn't exactly buying everyone, but then again, it does things like using algorithms to see what products sell on their platform and then copy-cats them undert their own brand (such as "Amazon Basics"). They have such power that they can go straight from "this guy had a good idea which sells" to "let's have our guys in China produce the same thing". But if you think about Google or facebook for example, the acquisition thing is so strong that hardly anyone can (or even wants to!) escape it.

4/ Dumping.
Amazon runs algorithms that figure out the prices of competitors and stay below it, sometimes considerably so. I wouldn't be surprised if they make tons of losses doing such things, but they just don't care. Video on demand is a good example here in Germany: at some point, they started selling movies at such low prices that other, existing platforms can hardly compete. Frankly, I have no idea how they can even get away legally with such practices.

5/ Economy of scale (customers)
Amazon and other internet platforms are a prime example of this. By schemes such as Amazon Prime they effectively use their leverage to make it impossible to compete with them. Platforms such as facebook or whatsapp are a great example as well for "winner takes it all" type of businesses: it doesn't matter if a competitor comes up with something far better; what matters is that everyone's on facebook or whatsapp.


All that doesn't mean that free markets are bad per se or anything, or that Amazon will never have any serious competition in the future, but I also think free markets are not the "magic, infallible" system some of the more radical free-marketeers think it is - especially if we talk about large-scale stuff. And perhaps this is the kernel of truth that the socialists/Marxists picked up on: that free markets tend to morph into something different on the macro-level?

 

[Woodsman]

I went hunting through the transcripts looking for a particular passage about runaway systems. Where big, successful things create success cascades and swallow up/monopolize everything.

20+ years of reading this stuff and trying to pull particular passages out when I need them has demonstrated that fallibility of my brain, how it morphs disparate ideas together, etc. I am seriously thinking that it might be time to re-read the entire transcript record again just to put things straight and see what pops up.

Anyway.., turns out the thing I was looking for was composed to two different passages, one from the C's and the other from Barbara Marciniak's book, "The Bringers of the Dawn"

I've included them both here and bolded the parts of interest so you can see what I was seeing. I think it is revealing wrt the Capitalism/Socialism problem being puzzled over in this thread...



"Bringers of the Dawn ~ Teachings From the Pleiadians"

-Barbara Marciniak, 1992

Chapter 4
MEMORIES IN THE FREE-WILL ZONE (excerpt)

[...]

The Original Planners are after much more than this particular zone here: they are after a shift in the universal DNA. They want the entire universe to orchestrate a new symphony in consciousness. They are not only after the reestablishment of frequency availability on Earth. Their game is much bigger: they are after a restructuring of the vibratory rate of this entire universe. They are creating this by going into key zones to infiltrate and bring about a simultaneous implosion. There will be a universal awakening within these various centers so that the entire universe will change its frequency in its own time.

The Original Planners have solicited the interest of Prime Creator. Prime Creator learns from all things that exist because it is all things. Just as you are learning to honor your lessons, the things that you manifest for yourself, Prime Creator honors all creations. Prime Creator lets its creations be and learns about its own potential by watching what it has birthed, just as a wise parent learns from its children. Prime Creator needs you to go out and bring the newest inventions unto it so that it can experience and evolve.

Prime Creator has turned its energy toward this free-will zone because, from a vast point in your future, it has been shown where this experiment will go if left unchecked and unattended. Energy could simply run rampant and own other energy. There is a vast probability that reaches out for hundreds and thousands of years of a dictatorship in this universal system. From a place far into the future, this experiment is being reworked: its essential energy is being transmuted and transformed. You are a part of that transformation by going into the bowels of the system in various disguises and becoming awakened.

The human portion of you has delineated who is a good guy and who is a bad guy and who is who in the space hierarchy. There have been tremendous amounts of literature on this subject, and you have bought it all. Smash all of those ideas. Smash every one of them, including who you think we are.

Over the next number of years, those who come from the skies may not be members of the Family of Light. They will be the mirror of those upon the planet. We have said to you that your lesson is authority-to become your own authority and to stop giving over your decision-making process to governmental people or parents or teachers or gods. It is time for the people of Earth to become sovereign.

Humans are going to need to be tricked before they can become aware. Many of you may find that you will be very frustrated. You will see things that others will not see; you will see a mass mania occurring upon this planet, and you will not be able to live with it. You will see masses of people walk toward a false god that is foolishness.

You are beginning to feel what may be coming. It is an awesome task to carry light: once you put it in your body, there is no stopping it. There is no saying, "I quit the light team. I won't be recognized as a member of the Family of Light." Some of you may want to do this sometimes, but once light is there, that is it."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And from the C's...


C Transcripts 980704

A: Did you catch the significance of the answer regarding time table
of cluster and brown star? Human cycle mirrors cycle of
catastrophe. Earth benefits in form of periodic cleansing. Time to
start paying attention to the signs. They are escalating. They can
even be "felt" by you and others, if you pay attention.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


My memory of these two ideas formed the conclusion at the time that monopolistic systems were an inevitability, that as the dust of creation settled, you would simply end up with Some Energies Owning Other Energies, and in order to mitigate this, God had built in a periodic self destruct sequence to blast everything apart, to create a clean slate.

And that may indeed be the case,

But it also sounds like the Pleiadians had far more complex ideas on the subject. Perhaps solving this old, hard nut of a problem, or at least trying to, is more important that we realize.

 

[Pierre]

Could you give some examples, because based on my reading, this doesn't seem to be true. It seems to be truer to say that free-market capitalism can lead to one business having a large market share and the lowest prices temporarily, but as long as competition is legal, there will always be competitors, and the 'monopoly's' position isn't guaranteed.

First let's define what a monopoly is and why it is considered as detrimental.

The supreme court defined monopolistic power as “the ability to raise prices above those that would be charged in a competitive market "

In order to assess monopolistic power the department of justice primarily focuses on market share and concludes that "the lower bound for monopoly power at 50%". The DOJ adds that "a rebuttable presumption of monopoly power exists where a firm has maintained a market share in excess of 66% for a significant period "

Notice that the 50% and 66% numbers are quite a high number and a monopoly (the ability to raise prices above those that would be charged in a competitive market) can occur when the leading firm has a market share that is lower than 50%. Especially, when the second largest firm is way smaller than the market leader.

When a company holds 40% of a market while its main competitor holds 10%, i.e. a 1:4 size ratio, it usually is not fair competition any more but pure predation. The lowest amount of market share determined by a court to be monopolistic is 35% (MasterCard, monopolist of the market for credit card network services).

That's why, in the US the stock Exchange Commission (SEC) or in the UK the Competition Commission investigate mergers between firms that lead to a combined market share of 25% or more.

Anyways, let's stick to the 50% market share threshold. There are actually plenty of firms controlling 50% or more of their market.

Historically, De Beers, a private firm, controlled more than 90% of the world diamond market for almost a century. In the US, the standard oil company (Rockfeller) enjoyed a monopoly for more than 70 years. Bosch controlled 80%+ of the world market for magneto ignition system in the first half of the 20th Century. The Bell Telephone then AT&T controlled the whole phone system in the US for more than 3 decades. In the 19th century, the East India Company controlled, 50% of the total trade made in the whole world including 100% of several commidities.

Maybe these 5 examples were only historical glitches, so let's have a look at today's corporations and identify some of the existing monopolies:

- Internet: Google (94% of world tablet search), YouTube (73% of online video), Facebook,(88% of search advertising and 53% of social network market), Netflix (75% of online video streaming), Amazon (64% of books sold online, 74% of e-books, 49% of e-commerce), Paypal (91% of the online transaction market), Spotify (40% of the world music streaming, more than 50% in several countries).

- High speed Internet provider: GCI ( 63% in Alaska), Time Warner (57% in Maine), Cablevision (57% in Wyoming)

- Electronics: Intel (98% of the servers microprocessor market and 93% of notebooks processors), Cisco (80%+ of routers market), Sirius XM(100% of the satellite radio market, 70% of US cars are equipped with satellite radio)

- Software: Microsoft (90%+ of OS market for more than a decade), Oracle (79% of cloud software market), Microsoft (85% of the office productivity market)

- Blue chip industry: Arcelor-Mital (83% of the cold roll steel market), Corning (60% of glass for LCD screens), Owens Illinois (glass bottle - monopoly or duopoly in 21 countries), Whirpool (50 to 80% of the US market for washing machines, dryers, dishwashers), Nike (86% of the basketball shoes in the US), Altria (51% of the cigarette market in the US and 60% of the e-cigarette), Luxoticca (30% of the global eye wear market, more than 70% in several countries)

- Retailing & services: CVS (58% of the US drug store market) , Broadridge Financial Services (50% of the investor responsibility communication market, 80% in the US), Home Depot (55% of the US home improvement market - 90% when combined with Lowes). Pearson (60% of the North American standardized testing market).

- Food: LVMH (60% of the world Champagne market), SABMiller (45% of the US beer market), Coca-Cola (42% of the US soda market), ABinBEV (66% of beer market in Brazil, 35% worldwide), Monsanto (80%+ of U.S. corn seed market and 90%+ of U.S. soybeans seeds market).

- Health: most rare disease markets are monopolistic because of the powerful combination between patent, FDA approval and limited size of the markets. One example, Vertex Pharmaceuticals (100% of the cystic fibrosis market).
Intuitive Surgical (50% of the world surgery robot market, 80% in the US), Illumina (90% of the world gene sequencer market)

- transportation: ferry routes, railroads are often operated by one single private firm. As a consequence, to go from point A to point B, there is only one private company available. But monopolies can also be found in transportation solutions that are not capital intensive. For example Uber controls 90% of the taxi market in London area.

This list could become way longer, but I guess at this point we get the picture. Notice though that the concentration process is on-going, even accelerating. There are more and more oligopolies, duopolies and monopolies as illustrated by the recent number of mergers & acquisitions.

In a previous post I wrote that monopolies are intrinsic to capitalism. Actually, monopolies are one of the goals of capitalism. Profit-wise, oligopolies are good, collusive oligopolies are very good, monopolies are the best.

Indeed, the capitalist does invest according to one single criterion: return on investment. Most capital is detained by institutional investors (banks and investment funds) that direct their financial portfolios towards the most profitable investments. Most of those operations are actually made by computers (high frequency trading for example)

Investors/capitalists like monopolies, but how do they attain it? Take Amazon for example. Amazon was not the first e-retailer, there was nothing strikingly innovative in Amazon's strategy.

Amazon's competitive advantage is somewhere else, where it really matters. Unlike its competitors, it gathered massive amounts of investments. For 14 years Amazon didn't generate any significant profit. For several years it lost hundreds of millions. All the available funds (investments + sales) were used to literally buy market shares which eventually led to a monopolistic position and the excess profits that come with it.

Amazon illustrates how capitalism in general, and the subsequent private monopolies in particular, increase wealth inequality. Indeed the main competitive advantage here is capital intensity: the ability to invest massively over years to benefit from monopolistic excess profit. Only the richest institutional investors can sustain and win the capital intensity race and with this victory they become even richer.

At the same time the poor get poorer: the monopolistic excess profit, generated through artificially high prices, is done at the expense of customers. Employees who work for monopolies don't benefit from this excess profit either. An Amazon worker doesn't make more money than a equivalent worker in non-monopolistic company. Meanwhile, the small retailers, on-line and off-line are driven out of the market by a giant they can't compete with.

Lastly, I think it is a mistake to equate capitalism to free enterprise. Free enterprises have existed for millenia. Capitalism didn't invent the free enterprise but what capitalism did (as pointed by Blanc and Proudhon) is to change the fundamental goal of enterprises (at least the big ones) by erecting the maximization of shareholder's wealth as the sole objective at the expense of any other legitimate objectives (social utility, customer satisfaction, employee's well-being, environmental responsibility, technological progress, balanced distribution of profit...)

In this sense, capitalism is the opposite of free enterprises, since it submits enterprises to one very reductive role: the maximization of the shareholder's profit.

 

[genero81]

But it also sounds like the Pleiadians had far more complex ideas on the subject. Perhaps solving this old, hard nut of a problem, or at least trying to, is more important that we realize.

I always enjoy seeing Bringers of The Dawn quotes. It reminds me however, of the idea of Wanderers. Fifth and sixth density volunteers who are inserted into this timeline to essentially prevent the lock down described above.

 

[goyacobol]

MEMORIES IN THE FREE-WILL ZONE

Thanks for those excerpts, Woodsman. I woke up this morning half dreaming and pondering about FREE-WILL and its relationship to being a conduit.

You are beginning to feel what may be coming. It is an awesome task to carry light: once you put it in your body, there is no stopping it. There is no saying, "I quit the light team. I won't be recognized as a member of the Family of Light." Some of you may want to do this sometimes, but once light is there, that is it."

Those ideas make me think of what the Cs said about being STO and FREE-WILL.

Session 14 January 1995:

Q: (T) So you can move back and forth as you so desire and it is all still free will?

A: If you move from STS to STO in 4th level, you don't move back.

Q: (T) Once you are STS in 4th density you have to stay there? (L) No. (J) If you move from STS to STO in 4th density you don't go back to STS, you stay at STO, is that correct? (T) That's what I mean, once you have decided to do STO, that's where you stay because you don't have any desire to go back to STS?

A: Yes.

Q: (T) So, it is not so much that you don't have a choice, it is just that you don't want to go back to STS?

A: Yes.

 

[goyacobol]

In the US, the standard oil company (Rockfeller) enjoyed a monopoly for more than 70 years.

I have been thinking of how important the oil seems to be in all wars currently being planned and fought (like the Middle East, Venezuela etc.). Once you have the oil it affects so many aspects of the economy.

Heck, why do they now call it the Petrodollar.

"Petrocurrency" or (more commonly) "petrodollars" are popular shorthand for revenues from petroleum exports, mainly from the OPEC members plus Russia and Norway. Especially during periods of historically expensive oil, the associated financial flows can reach a scale of hundreds of billions of US dollar-equivalents per year – including a wide range of transactions in a variety of currencies, some pegged to the US dollar and some not.

And also the money is now the post Atlantan hunger for a crystal energy replacement.

Session 19 November 1994:

Q: (T) Am I correct in saying that if they knew what was really going to happen that they would still continue with their stupid little plans to make money and try to control the world?

A: Yes. Greed is a sickness.

Session 6 February 2016:

Q: (Joe) In a previous reference to Atlantis, you said that they ended up causing their own destruction because of their greed for energy. Like an energetic hunger, energy weapons, or whatever... But that probably precipitated geological destruction as well. The two are linked.

A: Similarities abound. Money equals energy.

 

[fabric]

Here's an interesting article originally published on Quillette that advocates for the introduction of a $1,000 monthly universal basic income in the US in response to the impending proliferation of AI and automation that is projected to cause massive job displacement in the next decade.

Interesting. UBI in principle is a ‘nice idea’ but I think suffers the same problem as many other socialist band-aids to take care of the dispossessed. As was mentioned previously, it’s still not really ‘free’ since the money comes from somewhere, and usually it’s the taxpayer. Maybe if this was payed for by the corporations it could work since it’s often the larger corporations that dispossess greater numbers of people and should be responsible for the greater share of assisting them. But to do that is to tax the rich, which is a no-no for imperialist countries.

However, giving people money to do whatever they want with won’t solve the problem of being dispossessed since you can’t guarantee that they won’t spend it on their vices or useless things, and thus not truly improve their quality of life. Before implementing anything like that, the temptation to burn money away everything except rent, food, clothes needs to be accounted for. So yes, the person working a low-end job won’t quit to stay at home to live off the extra $1000, but he might be more inclined to booze it away or find it easier to ‘numb-the-mind’ to escape the dreariness of the job.

One could say to just provide food, clothing, housing and medicare (so basic needs) is a better alternative. But the problem still remains of people in that it doesn’t matter what you do - you can’t make someone a productive member of society if they don’t want to be. Even more so if there is no higher aim to strive towards. People needed something meaningful to do – without it there’s nothing to encourage people to choose something ‘better’ over the ‘now’. The full swing into hardcore materialism has done all to completely eliminate ‘higher ideals’ as a valid way of orienting oneself in the world and for which to aspire to.

And then as ScioAgapeOmnis has pointed out – who gets it? Everyone? No conditions? Oh, you have to be a citizen? What about all the undocumented immigrants, or even documented ones? What if you are in jail, waiting for trial (you’re not guilty but it doesn’t matter since you can’t pay for bail or a lawyer)? Ok, so there are conditions, just different ones so it’s not welfare? If anything UBI will be used by the PTB for further control rather than actually help the dispossessed.

In this interview Peterson talks about how hierarchies develop, which I thought was a good explanation:

People have problems that have to be solved. Life is a sequence of problems that have to be solved. If you don't solve the problems that life puts forward you suffer and you die. So assuming that you don't want those two outcomes then there are problems you have to solve and you have to set an aim and the aim is to solve the problem.

Then because we're social creatures we have to solve the problems by organizing collectively and the way we do that, generally speaking, in relationship to an aim - is to produce a hierarchy.

The reason for that is that if you have a problem and you want it to be solved and you get a variety of people working on it, you're soon going to discover that some people are much better at solving the problem than others and that will inevitably produce a hierarchy. It should because then even the structure of authority is in sync with the aim and the aim is valuable because it's a problem that everybody agrees that is an actual problem. So, you're going to get hierarchical organizations and you should.

Now the problem with that is that as soon as you produce a hierarchical organization two things happen: one is that a small minority of the people do almost all the creative work. That's the pareto principal. The other is that the benefits of the hierarchy flow disproportionately to a small number of people at the top. And that's another manifestation of the pareto principle. It is something that Marx pointed out although he blamed it on capitalism which is a big mistake even if you're concerned for those the hierarchy dispossesses.

So, you produce a hierarchy, the work flows from a minority of people and the benefits flow to a minority of people - and those might not be the same people by the way, because hierarchies aren't perfect in their ability to distribute resources as a consequence of productive effort. That's part of the problem with hierarchical organizations.

Then what the hierarchy does is produce a layer of the dispossessed that stack up at the bottom near zero and it's the majority - it's always the majority - so that's the price you pay for hierarchies.

Now I don’t think that they always necessarily produce the effect where the “work flows from a minority of people and the benefits flow to a minority of people” but in terms of how these large monopolies scale it does often end up that way and is the most obvious example. It’s easy to see why Marx would blame it on Capitalism but as we’ve ascertained it’s not solely based on that.

In any case, if through the act of tackling problems we create hierarchies, and we know that they inevitably create a layer of the dispossessed, then it seems to me that focusing on how get the benefits to flow to a majority rather than a minority will lead to better results. Of course, with the capitalist model being the way it is, that’s not the focal point – rather the opposite - as in to maximize shareholder profit.

The socialist model makes an attempt to do that but goes too far in demanding complete 'equality' which is also not good because it esssentially brings everything down to the lowest common denominator. You need the individual to be allowed to function and bring about innovation. Full bore collectivism shoves that down into the black hole of 'equality' where everything 'fair' but quality is crap and creativity stifled.

Now what the left does is say look at the dispossessed and keep the hierarchy flexible enough so that it can twist and bend and transform when necessary but also so that the dispossessed don't fall so close to zero that A, that they're done, they're in misery; B, that the talents they might possess can't be utilized and see that the whole structure doesn't become so untenable that it destroys itself because of the inequality. Perfectly reasonable propositions.

It's so reasonable I have a hard time accepting that the left said that! But yes, a reasonable proposition and perhaps what something like UBI is trying to address. But as long as we have these large corporations in tandem with the government the inequality produced as a consequence of their expansions/actions will not be alleviated by UBI.

The problem of how to take care of the dispossessed is not easily managed even before the fact. Even if we were to assume a benevolent system where the hierarchical structures that arise from humanity’s self-organization confer the work of the few to the majority there will still be people at the bottom of the pyramid.

What makes it such intractable problem is there will always be some that won’t want do a thing to help themselves or others, (and you can’t help them either). Then there are others that will be happy with just enough to be comfortable (I’d say that’s the majority) – to an extent. There’s only so much money can buy. And to feel that your only purpose in life is to simply be another cog in the wheel isn’t all that appealing either.

I think my main issue with all of these ‘socialist fixes’ for taking care of the disenfranchised is that they only consider a materialist approach (ie, the poor? Let’s just throw more money at them!). Then again I don’t blame them. Look around you – how could it not be?

But they fail to address what seems to be the at the root – an environment that is designed to encourages nihilism/hedonism and obscures the ways through which people can derive some meaning from their lives. What’s needed is something that provides a richer sense of purpose and meaning to existence aside from simple survival. That’s not to say money doesn’t matter, but it needs to supplanted with instilling in people something better than material aims.

In times past that role was filled by ‘god’ or the church (it was not perfect but it seems to me like there was a lot more cohesion in society when we were able to produce such incredible works of art, architecture, etc). I do find the parallels interesting as Russia’s current model seems to incorporate this higher ideal that their people can get behind and feel that they matter. Maybe it's not perfect but at least it's not falling apart like the rest of the West is. Unfortunately, all systems no matter how functional will eventually come apart, as history has shown us time and time again.

 

[luc]

Perhaps the following is an example of how "capitalism" can override human decency:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1103717087808290816

I don't know if that story is true, and if it is, you could of course rationalize such things, but the question must be allowed to ask what kind of mind even comes up with such an idea? Who would put something so basically human as giving a mother her baby on a friggin' bill? I think Tucker Carlson would agree: "Free markets, OK, but it's still disgusting!"

Now, I don't buy the Marxist drivel around that Twitter account in the least, but once you subject everything to the market while ignoring the higher values fabric talked about, sooner or later people will create perversions and justify it with their "freedom". Maybe one way to look at it is that free-market type organization is a great tool, but in the hands of people without higher values, it will be misused, and the evil results will be justified by recourse to this tool, which is kind of absurd.

 

[mabar]

I don't know if that story is true, and if it is, you could of course rationalize such things, but the question must be allowed to ask what kind of mind even comes up with such an idea? Who would put something so basically human as giving a mother her baby on a friggin' bill? I think Tucker Carlson would agree: "Free markets, OK, but it's still disgusting!"

Yes it is disgusting, but I suppose the problem is that it was broken down, but that action is charged/accounted for/it generates an expense, the quality of a service costs. A lot of times, one does not even know what is being paid for.

 

[mabar]

Interesting. UBI in principle is a ‘nice idea’ but I think suffers the same problem as many other socialist band-aids to take care of the dispossessed. As was mentioned previously, it’s still not really ‘free’ since the money comes from somewhere, and usually it’s the taxpayer. Maybe if this was payed for by the corporations it could work since it’s often the larger corporations that dispossess greater numbers of people and should be responsible for the greater share of assisting them. But to do that is to tax the rich, which is a no-no for imperialist countries.

However, giving people money to do whatever they want with won’t solve the problem of being dispossessed since you can’t guarantee that they won’t spend it on their vices or useless things, and thus not truly improve their quality of life. Before implementing anything like that, the temptation to burn money away everything except rent, food, clothes needs to be accounted for. So yes, the person working a low-end job won’t quit to stay at home to live off the extra $1000, but he might be more inclined to booze it away or find it easier to ‘numb-the-mind’ to escape the dreariness of the job.

One could say to just provide food, clothing, housing and medicare (so basic needs) is a better alternative. But the problem still remains of people in that it doesn’t matter what you do - you can’t make someone a productive member of society if they don’t want to be. Even more so if there is no higher aim to strive towards. People needed something meaningful to do – without it there’s nothing to encourage people to choose something ‘better’ over the ‘now’. The full swing into hardcore materialism has done all to completely eliminate ‘higher ideals’ as a valid way of orienting oneself in the world and for which to aspire to.

What if it is considered as a requirement/incentive like scholarships?
---Working in the institution that will be in charge of distributing UBI certain number of hours weekly, if they want to acquire it (it will be need people to do the distribution)
---Volunteering or performing community service for a set number of hours weekly or monthly (as far as it goes, US has a severe garbage problem and more since China no longer buys it. Can be something else, if that had bee already resolved, although, I doubt it... there are infinities of problems in any country, incluiding US.

And then as ScioAgapeOmnis has pointed out – who gets it? Everyone? No conditions? Oh, you have to be a citizen? What about all the undocumented immigrants, or even documented ones? What if you are in jail, waiting for trial (you’re not guilty but it doesn’t matter since you can’t pay for bail or a lawyer)? Ok, so there are conditions, just different ones so it’s not welfare? If anything UBI will be used by the PTB for further control rather than actually help the dispossessed.

It is very likely UBI will be used by the PTB for further control but, if unemployment that there will be due to massive job displacement, is not taking into account since now, there will worse problems with insecurity when people start attacking each other for food, clothing etc ... and more prisons will be needed. Either way, PTB will continue to control because is their reason for being.

 

[luc]

This is a proposal by 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who recently was on Joe Rogan's show.

Sorry for just dropping that Yang interview here without commenting on it. Basically, this guy claims he's approaching it not from an ideological basis but a 'technological, structural imperative', lending a kind of inevitability to it. I'm not convinced it's 'objectively so', but he does seem to have a good grasp on the numbers.

I gotta say that after having finished the Rogan interview and looking into some of Yang's other videos, I cannot help but like the guy. I'm still not convinced of UBI and as expected, Yang gets a few things very wrong, but I like many of his ideas and the way he approaches problems - cut the BS and find workable solutions. He's also smart as hell. You can tell he has lots of experience in business and problem-solving, and he knows how to market ideas and bring both sides of the culture war together.

I'm not counting on him becoming president, and even if it was to happen, he probably wouldn't get anything done anyway. But the way he talks is certainly light years ahead of the usual partisan fluff most politicians spit out on cable TV. With him in the race, Tulsi in the race, and Trump probably getting back to the "straight talk" that made him famous during the campaign, it will be interesting how this will change the public discourse. Will the "standard politicians" be able to get away with their superficial nonsense if others like Tulsi and Yang have in-depth, smart discussions on Rogan? If the only outcome of this will be an "update" of the political discourse, then that's something at least!

Sorry for the slightly off-topic post, perhaps we should create a new thread for Yang or the elections in general?

 

[genero81]

With him in the race, Tulsi in the race, and Trump probably getting back to the "straight talk" that made him famous during the campaign, it will be interesting how this will change the public discourse. Will the "standard politicians" be able to get away with their superficial nonsense if others like Tulsi and Yang have in-depth, smart discussions on Rogan? If the only outcome of this will be an "update" of the political discourse, then that's something at least!

God, you would think it quite impossible at this point. But I don't think the plastic politicians know how to go 'off script.' At the very least, maybe the American people will finally start to boo them off stage, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

 

[ScioAgapeOmnis]

It is very likely UBI will be used by the PTB for further control but, if unemployment that there will be due to massive job displacement, is not taking into account since now, there will worse problems with insecurity when people start attacking each other for food, clothing etc ... and more prisons will be needed. Either way, PTB will continue to control because is their reason for being.

Yeah pretty frustrating isn't it? We don't seem to have a choice, or at least that's how it's presented to us, and if the automation scenario does happen as predicted (it's still a big IF, how it actually goes down remains to be seen), then people go to the government for solutions (another frustrating part, why is this always the approach?), and expect an easy fix.

You know I always hated the term "consumers" - partly because it's dehumanizing, partly because most people actually produce more than they consume, so it's more accurate to actually call us "producers". Let's say you work and generate $100 of value - before you get paid, part of this value gets taken by the government for taxes, part of it is taken by your company for their profits for shareholders and executives and to grow the company, and when all is said and done, you're lucky to even have $50 or even $40 left over for yourself, even though your work produced $100 of value. So you're at most consuming half, probably less, than you actually produce in terms of monetary value. So objectively speaking, we're much closer to producers than consumers. The guys who use their money to make more money from loaning it to others or investing it, those are the actual consumers, as they produce nothing.

And one could argue that because most people are in debt, they live beyond their means thanks to credit, but I don't think that's true. You have to pay it back + interest eventually. So you have to give back more than you borrowed, which has to come from somewhere, so you cut back your own spending in other areas to do this, and because of interest, you now have even a smaller percentage of your earnings to keep for your needs. That interest goes to the real consumers who loaned you the money.

One thing about UBI that also doesn't make sense to me, is the need for money at all. To illustrate, let's take an extreme example - we have one magical AI with an army of robots that can produce everything for everyone. It is self-sustaining, mines its own resources, repairs/produces its own robots, obtains its own energy, etc. You just give it a blueprint and it can make the thing for you, and even create its own new things. Everything humans do is now voluntary. Any creative/scientific/whatever work is just because you want to do it, maybe the AI benefits from human creativity and ingenuity, so it still has value, but it's not "needed" to live a perfectly luxurious/comfortable 1st world existence anymore, as all that is managed by robots.

In that scenario, why need money? Why would the AI make a toaster, and then need to create $50, give it to someone, so the person can give it back to AI and get the toaster? Like... what? AI obviously doesn't need your money. Ok so maybe the government prints $50, gives it to you, you give it to AI for the toaster, and the AI gives it back to the government to give back to you again? Again... what? That makes no sense. Right now you generate value with work, and get a cut of your own value as a paycheck, with govt/company keeping the rest for their own uses. If AI does the work and generates the value, who decides how to distribute this value to the population? Why would anyone get more than someone else in that case? Because they invented the AI? Or because they happened to be the CEO of a company who employed an engineer who invented the AI? Because they're the government? Seriously, I don't get it.

So let's say you get $1000 a month as Yang proposes... why that amount? That's an oddly round number to be based on any non-arbitrary criteria. What prevents it from being $1,217, $10,000, 1 million? Is it because there isn't enough money/value generated by those who still have jobs + the robots? But if the robots constantly improve and take more and more jobs, and then do them better and faster, which increases efficiency/productivity, shouldn't the overall production/availability of resources go up too, and everyone gets more each month? No?

The point is, shouldn't this $1000 number change over time depending on how efficient the AI gets and how many resources/things it can create and generate etc? If it stays at $1000 a month for 10 years, while AI gets 10x bigger and better over that time and generates 10x more stuff, if we all still get $1000 a month, someone's profit margin is suddenly exploding and they keep the rest of the value - why?

I hope that made sense. At least in a free market economy, even though banks pretty much create money out of thin air and all kinds of similar shenanigans that are basically "cheating", the idea of generating value through work, and where that value goes, typically makes some kind of sense, you can trace it and explain it (usually). Here, it seems entirely too arbitrary, and if you question it or complain, they'll take away your $1000 a month and call you greedy and entitled. And because humans don't generate value anymore, what bargaining power do they have to complain or question their "free monthly gifts" etc? The whole thing stinks!