A rather random muse on political systems

[The Desert Fox]

So I see quite a few people on here talking about various political systems they support. Communism, libertarianism, anarchism, numerous other ones that are a mix of multiple parties or something, and with all the people discussing their views and whatnot I always see one thing in their views. Number one, they say capitalism is horrendous, it should be abolished, etc, etc. Capitalism is flawed, no doubts about that. However, in all your predictions of "what if x system came to power" For the second thing. You all think that things will be A-OK, society will be happy, and the people will hold hands and walk off into the sunset.

Sure, maybe you mentioned that there would be some problems here and there (as there always will be, anyone smart knows that) but people tend to think that their paticular political system would work out in society. Hey, here's a fun fact: When the idea of capitalism was put into effect, people thought the same exact thing about it. If my memory is correct, capitalism started out as an idea for people to have an opportunity to have a buisness and get money or something. Now it's some sort of mutated offspring of the initial idea. I also seem to recall people saying "Capitalism was doomed from the start, it always was terrible" or something. So I ask you this.

What makes you think that your paticular system won't have the same happen to it?

This isn't so much of an "I'll argue with your views here" topic as it is an "I'll just leave this here for people to think about and discuss" topic.

[Faby]

I don't so much hate capitalism, as I hate what capitalism brought about.

Oh, by the way, can I have a date when capitalism first appeared? What country? Etc.

[Ceiling Cat]

Capitalism was beneficial to a country like Poland, where USSR-forcefed communism was around for a long time and poverty was common everywhere, while availability of goods was scarce as hell. The very same system worked in oldfag (19th century) America, as everyone recalls how much a dollar was worth back then, and how the place prospered.
Now, countries in Europe and the America itself are suffering. Why? Because we let government control capitalism. I don't have anything against trading, it lets everyone have access to goods that can't be produced on the spot. But, what if you let money become the priority instead of resources?

It all collapses.

Compulsory schooling became a very harmful element in our economy, because it ensured distribution of goods only to those who are obedient. Therefore, people's mentality of peace and prosperity = happiness changed to money = happiness.
Nothing could be more of a mistake than that. We need to fix the system, but in order to do that we must start over. Experiment with small communities of people who would be independent.
The problem is, governments would never allow this - either trying to extort some profit from this, or outlawing it whatsoever. Trying to create a nation, a separate country anywhere would be deemed a crime of treason. The worst thing about this world is, that every single fucking piece of land is claimed by someone, owned by someone, having laws put in place - there's no freedom anywhere except maybe in some barren wastelands nobody would even want to claim. If you proceeded to defend your new homeland with arms, you'd be crushed by the country you wanted to take the unused land from, or trapped in a border siege with no choice but to return the land to the country.
This sucks on so many levels, as my dream is to actually try creating something like this in future. But it's hard to get a place to start this, even a fucking artificial island (unused oil rigs, anyone?) is hard as hell to come by. Colonizing a new planet might be an answer, but then again we're years from doing that and sure as hell nobody would let a poor revolutionary to reach outside of the already claimed Earth.

edit: phpbb fucked up the paragraphs, I need to recall how to make the triforce-space.

[Faby]

I don't know what's worse, having government-controlled capitalism, or having people-controlled capitalism.

No matter how we hate governments, they at least impose laws that people, either because of fear or profit or whatever, obey. If there were no laws, people (read: corporations) would be able to, I dunno, restore slavery or something.

[Ceiling Cat]

Slavery is a form of government too. Economy isn't bad, as long as the government doesn't hog the resources and money. Which is what happens now.
I'd like to see laws that limit the wealth per a single person, or per a collective(company, organization or whatever). Don't bring up taxes because it's just the government's way of profitting from people who hog resources. I would pay taxes only if this money was distributed to those who fucking NEED it, because now we have no control whatsoever.

[HeartofShadows]

Capitalism was a nice idea at first(Anybody from any working class could make it as long as they worked hard) but then when people get rich their wealth stays even when they die and all they do is pass it on and the power stays and builds(New game effect) and they use that power to limit and make sure others don't rich their level or even close unless the wish it while doing whatever they can to squeeze profit out of anything they can touch.

Desert fox: I'm not saying everything is gonna be perfect but things need to change and like ceiling cat said experiments need to be done in order to try and at least find a better way of things.

To be honest I see society as a deck of cards that is destined to fall from under itself no matter what form of fairness or equality it preaches.

The best most fair society would chances are be the society from brave new world but that form of society destroys individuality and personal freedom at the cost of security and stability(guess we have to lose something).

[Ceiling Cat]

Go fuck yourself. Anything but individuality, or we might as well do a mass suicide as a species.

Capitalism would be fair, but only if inheritance was forbidden - redistributing the resources of the deceased as launch-out funds for those who get into the age of responsibility (12 years old is fucking ENOUGH by the way, if school doesn't dumb them down - however we all know on SS that this is something to be done as highest priority).

[Rebelnerd]

Capitalism, at least from what I've seen, had an (ironically) very similar life cycle to communism. People were stifled by the tyranny of mercantilism and fought back against their rulers, replacing the monarchy with a system that promised equal opportunity for all (the American Revolution). And for a while it worked pretty well. But as the country expanded, human nature started to take effect, and eventually the "giants" of capitalism grew so big and powerful that their simple existence negated all of capitalism's supposed good qualities. All they had done was to substitute one ruling class for another.
Like communism, capitalism can only survive on a small scale. Barter, trade, and small businesses are an excellent way of getting people the goods they need, and yes, people do have the right to own possessions. But when the divide between rich and poor becomes so wide that the rich actually have the means to influence social mobility, then doesn't that defeat the entire purpose of capitalism? If a hardworking person with a good idea can't work their way out of poverty, then the soul of capitalism is dead, regardless of whether that barrier is Josef Stalin or George Pullman.
Two systems designed by intelligent people to benefit society, that were both defeated by their own size and ambition. Socialism was twisted into the totalitarian bureaucracy of the USSR, and capitalism turned into the dynastic oligarchy we see in American today. Honestly, I don't think there really is a system that's capable of running the entire world. Systems have to be kept small enough that they're actually in the peoples' hands.

[Ceiling Cat]

That's why it so fails to have the world overpopulated, and too unified. If each small town ruled itself with its own laws, the situation would be so much easier to control. Unification and merging is the worst, and I mean WORST thing that can happen to communities.

How is it proven? Take a look at any MMORPG. Observe a server from its birth to the very downfall, you'll notice one thing only that bugs them all.
All the guilds that participate in wars for territories, merge for collective benefit(companies). So, the number of participants is the same but the number of sides is smaller with each merge. The biggest take things by sheer force of numbers. Soon, they extort too many funds from the lands and take over the economy, controlling prices(monopolism). They sell the goods for an overpriced amount of coins, making the server inflated. Soon enough, the legit, system oriented ways of earning funds are screwed up because the system didn't change along with economy - starting players are ridiculously poor, and they can't even afford vended stuff in midgame. They need to resort to sucking up to the winning team (US capitalism, anyone?) and slowly but steadily there is even less and less competition. One faction at a point takes over the whole world map. There's not enough organizing, resources and force to bring the colossal system down - and it's prospering with every week of holding the grounds.
Soon, no players join because the game becomes very unfriendly to the outsiders. The old crew leaves, but anyone's too scared to bring down the faction - passing on the leadership by dynasty-like systems(Inheritance).
The server population drops to thousands, then hundreds. Slowly, there's nobody but a bunch of newbies and oldfags - who don't donate anymore because they have thousands of $ worth of virtual treasure, in daily income(Corporations plz). The admins decide to nuke the server due to being unable to support it, or corrupt the community bribing it to donate(the population is about 200-300 at this point). We see a lot of people disagreeing with the actions, oldfags too. They leave. The server is now 100 people at peak times, admins are desperate and banhammer anyone who speaks against them. Staff gets reformed, and they spend a lot more time with the players to keep them on. There's player-x-staff drama going on, even major protests. (look at similiarity to the end of every political system)
At the point of 50 people, server closes. There's nobody who remembers, and the admins have a stigma of failure and bad PR for the rest of their internet existence (look at ex-dictators of our world). If there's more people, they mass move on to a new server (New political system).

Simulations are great for experiments. The above is just something I figured from

[HeartofShadows]

Ceiling Cat Wrote:Go fuck yourself. Anything but individuality, or we might as well do a mass suicide as a species.

Capitalism would be fair, but only if inheritance was forbidden - redistributing the resources of the deceased as launch-out funds for those who get into the age of responsibility (12 years old is fucking ENOUGH by the way, if school doesn't dumb them down - however we all know on SS that this is something to be done as highest priority).

It was just a theorizing Don't get your panties in a bunch idealist.

I swear you people even hear a crack on freewill and you jump up in arms.

So small communities that don't get to powerful are the key..

When a group gets power and its allowed to grow than its nothing but trouble.

[Negative]

Somehow, I doubt there's enough resources for any political system to work well for the entire world.

[Ceiling Cat]

Wrong, we have a SHIT FUCKING LOAD of resources. Earth is so damn abundant that nothing stops us from doing anything except those few, less than a hundred people who hold over a half of the resources. Would be half the pain if they used them, but all they do with them is wasting, wasting and one more time wasting.
All the labor, minerals and rare materials spent on warfare in last century would get us terraforming Mars by now.

[Negative]

What do you think would happen to Earth's fossil fuels, pollution, forests, ecosystem, and land space if every country had the same standard of living and GDP as the United States?

[Ceiling Cat]

We can have much better standards and not even touch the environment at all.

[Negative]

And how do you propose we do that?

[Rebelnerd]

Negative Wrote:What do you think would happen to Earth's fossil fuels, pollution, forests, ecosystem, and land space if every country had the same standard of living and GDP as the United States?

They would be depleted. Which is why a luxurious state of living is bad for humanity. There is enough to supply everyone with what they need, but eventually the upper class will have to be dissolved because they're nothing but a drain on the rest of the world.

[Ceiling Cat]

Fossil fuels would be obsolete by now if it weren't for oil corporations. There's so much more energy we can extract from other things and not fuck up anything here.

[CrayolaColours]

Ceiling Cat Wrote:Fossil fuels would be obsolete by now if it weren't for oil corporations. There's so much more energy we can extract from other things and not fuck up anything here.

Exactly, or at the very east, decrease the amount of fossil fuels we need.

Jesus, we can make energy out of garbage.

Why aren't we doing it?

Also, notice how 90% of the worlds problems can be solved if we stop having so many kids. And lower the population. With less people, could all live luxurious lives.

[HeartofShadows]

Its a damn shame that there are too many ways to improve the world and yet fuckers keep this shit the same just so the can keep collecting more and more pieces of paper that they have more than enough of.

Shit makes me angry(Guess I'm pulling a ceiling cat).

[Ceiling Cat]

CrayolaColours Wrote:Exactly, or at the very east, decrease the amount of fossil fuels we need.

Jesus, we can make energy out of garbage.

Why aren't we doing it?

Also, notice how 90% of the worlds problems can be solved if we stop having so many kids. And lower the population. With less people, could all live luxurious lives.

I watched a documentary somewhere that the best solution for fixing the economy, is to improve robotics and computing enough to have machines do the repetitive work for us. This would replace over the half of human population needed, and still have the renewable resource usage at peak. Oh, and you don't need to actually pay machines.

[psychopath]

Ceiling Cat Wrote:I watched a documentary somewhere that the best solution for fixing the economy, is to improve robotics and computing enough to have machines do the repetitive work for us. This would replace over the half of human population needed, and still have the renewable resource usage at peak. Oh, and you don't need to actually pay machines.

If companies found a way to use robots efficiently enough that it was pretty much free for them to manufacture products, but they still wanted money for their products, then how will people find the money to pay for the products if all the jobs in the world have been taken over by robots?

[Ceiling Cat]

Why would they NEED to pay for the products then? They came for free after all.
NOTE: This suggestion also proposes shoving capitalism up your ass.

[psychopath]

Ceiling Cat Wrote:Why would they NEED to pay for the products then? They came for free after all.

Because why would they give the products away for free while they can make profits without spending any money?

[Ceiling Cat]

They couldn't - people wouldn't have the money, as they wouldn't do such jobs.
That would be the end of capitalism, and going to something higher. That kind of economy has no name, really - where labor is automated and people have time for other things. Kind of like ancient civilizations, without the shameful slavery part.

[psychopath]

Ceiling Cat Wrote:They couldn't - people wouldn't have the money, as they wouldn't do such jobs.
That would be the end of capitalism, and going to something higher. That kind of economy has no name, really - where labor is automated and people have time for other things. Kind of like ancient civilizations, without the shameful slavery part.

Ah so since ALL jobs would be taken over by slave-like robots, people wouldn't need money in the first place, just tell the growing number of machine-slaves to do or give you whatever you want.

Unless the robots become corrupted or "self aware" through some random process

[Negative]

Quote: They would be depleted. Which is why a luxurious state of living is bad for humanity. There is enough to supply everyone with what they need, but eventually the upper class will have to be dissolved because they're nothing but a drain on the rest of the world.

The middle class of the United States and several other developed nations would be considered the upper class of many other parts of the world.

Quote:
Exactly, or at the very east, decrease the amount of fossil fuels we need.

Jesus, we can make energy out of garbage.

Why aren't we doing it?

Because fossil fuels do it the most efficiently, and we didn't really think about the pollution problem until after we already settled in with them. And unfortunately, every single energy source seems to have a major drawback to them, so even they would eventually lead to problems.

Quote: Why would they NEED to pay for the products then? They came for free after all.
NOTE: This suggestion also proposes shoving capitalism up your ass.

The products still require resources to make.

[psychopath]

Negative Wrote:The products still require resources to make.

But the assumption was that the robots find the resources themselves, that's why the humans don't need to do anything

[Negative]

I guess everything would be pretty much free then, until the robots end up running out of resources. Although one possible downside I'm seeing is the lack of incentive for humans to advance any further.

[Ceiling Cat]

Isn't that the top of civilizational tech tree? No. We still have the whole goddamn universe.
We need to take two contradicting assumptions at once...
Assuming we're the only intelligent life, we should do whatever necessary to spread and keep it alive, as well as we're responsible for life and existence.
Assuming we're not alone, we need to advance to be secure in imminent space shitstorms.

About the drones getting rights, I'm all for AI protecting laws - but as well as for laws that forbid giving drones any awareness, making them able to do their job.
If you were for a more radical plan - we can always hardwire the AI to feel good to help others, maybe possibly be our main sidekick in existence as an intelligent race(inb4 geth - quarians sucked for letting their AI hand their ass to them ).

[Negative]

That's not going to really solve resource shortage problems. As for expanding into space, unless you want robots to be inventors as well, that would require human work. It might not even be physically possible/practical for humans to expand into space.