Okay. I probably shouldn't do this because it's so tangential to the topic of the thread but at the same time I am unwilling to simply let it go, so here goes:
No, I don't accept capitalism as a default "good", however I do recognize that commercialism is an easy way to provide for a workable society which doesn't run on wishes and pony farts. Every time someone says "Let's do away with capitalism, it sucks!" the entire basis of their argument is rooted in the world being a perfect utopia where nobody has to work unless they want to or it's based on the dysfunctional notion that "there has to be a better way".
On the flipside, it's extremely easy to argue for the status quo as you don't have to do anything at all to work to change it. It's also the most small-minded route to take as you don't have to even consider answering those difficult questions about fixing the problems of our world.
Needless to say, I refuse to accept that.
There's that utopia. May as well crawl into a VR headset if you're expecting that level of technology being available to the public at an affordable rate to the masses any time soon, or that we'll even ever reach a perfect utopia.
Utopia, as a concept, is something everyone should strive towards. It should never be held up as proof that the current system is broken because it's a cheat. You're starting your argument with the deluded "In a perfect world..." qualifier without recognizing a simple fact: The world will never be perfect.
That's why we're talking about escaping the world into a VR headset, here.
Obviously I am NOT arguing that it would happen all at once.
Obviously there would have to be a transition period as we work
towards the goal of making the world a better place to live for everyone instead of just those who are fortunate enough to be born in the right place at the right time, with the right circumstances to enable their success.
Allowing people the basic right to have shelter, electricity, food, and water (which, I should remind you, are essentially required if one is to continue their 'pursuit of happiness') would go a looooooong way to helping with this, and it's something we can do
today.
Would those scientists still be motivated to learn if they had to devote their time and energy into sweeping up garbage and altruistically helping out with the harvest every fall? Would those scientists have the drive to push the boundaries of human knowledge and make things better if that didn't pay?
Some would. A fraction of what are currently researching, because if they had to do menial work to upkeep their own existence, they wouldn't have the time, energy, or motivation to do the research necessary to expand humanity's collective knowledge.
False premise. We already have technology that enables us to harvest food with a minimum of manpower, hence there is absolutely no need for people to volunteer themselves to help with that.
And before you (inevitably) bring it up, the same goes for construction and manufacturing. We can build houses out of prefabricated parts and assemble them on-site. A large part of the reason we don't do this is because those construction jobs are so important to the people who hold them, because without them they have no livelihood. That manual labour also drives up the price of the housing, which is of course desirable when your motive is profit.
And no scientist, worldwide, has ever gone into that field because it pays well? Not one? I'd love to see some sort of proof behind that naive statement.
I don't even need to go specifically into scientists as a collective. Just in society as a whole,
money does a very poor job of motivating anyone.
I should also note that this is the same line of argument global warming liars (calling them "denialists" gives them too much credit) use when they try to argue that scientists are somehow being bribed into creating a global warming conspiracy. It's false. No way around it.
There's that utopia argument again. If your "better" society requires that nobody does any work they don't want to do, ever, the argument is a moot point. You're basically arguing with the same sort of logic a theist priest would argue: "God is right, because he's always right."
"Utopia is perfect, because Utopia is always perfect."
Of course it is, in concept. That's why it's called a utopia.
You're completely fixated on the concept of a utopia above all else, and ignore my underlying arguments.
Quite frankly, I am beginning to wonder if I have anything to gain from engaging with you, given that you are so far being rather disingenuous in your argumentation.
But let's try this again. We already know that money is a very poor motivator and only really works to get people to perform uninteresting tasks that they would otherwise have no interest in. Those same uninteresting tasks can be performed with automated machinery in place of people (which we already do for a lot of manufacturing tasks), which displaces a lot of long-standing jobs that people used to depend on for their livelihoods.
These jobs will continue to disappear over the long-haul due to technological unemployment. This creates a paradox wherein we are more capable of productivity than ever before within human history, yet, for whatever reason, we can't quite seem to work out how to distribute these goods in an equitable manner because we lack the jobs to pay people to buy these goods.
How do you plan to address this in the confines of the monetary system?
Man, it's almost like monetary value evolved from a system where people exchanged goods for labour, and came up with a simplified way to say "Fred will fix your fence if you give me six steaks, because I make Fred's hair look pretty."
At the core of every healthy human relationship is an equal exchange of some sort. That's what birthed the idea of barter and eventually money. It puts an easily tracked, expansive model towards those equal exchanges.
Money isn't just some nasty "thing" that holds society back, it's the thing that holds society together. Money is a necessary component of human interaction in a society as large as ours is, barring, of course, a magical utopia where nobody has to work or do anything they don't want to do and will still get food, shelter, and meaningful interaction in their lives regardless of what they contribute to the whole.
Yes, money worked
for a long time.
Its time is over. It has long since outlived its usefulness. About the time we started instating the use of planned obsolescence and creating an artificial consumer culture that breeds a desire for
more, more, more when it was completely unnecessary to do so is about when money began to become a net negative for society instead of a net positive.
The funny thing is, after the industrial revolution, we could very easily have remodeled our society into something far more reasonable by, say, for example, cutting work hours in half across the board and accepting a new status quo where constant growth is not the norm. But instead we
created the consumer culture, and look where it's got us now. Hardly something we can be proud of if we ever have to explain all of this to extraterrestrial visitors.
Well this is a laughable simple statement. Inflation is a result of the ridiculously complex economic system which keeps the world running. We'd be back in the feudal ages at best without it.
Now
this is a laughable statement. Part of the reason why our economic system is so complex is because we've created this artificial need for
more, more, more, and part of it is because we keep applying bandaids to it in an attempt to keep things running smoothly.
Doubtlessly a new resource-based economy would be highly complex simply due to the nature of managing billions of human beings all across the world... but if we can get rid of awful shit like planned obsolescence, artificial scarcity, poverty, war, and the incredibly irrational trend that is globalization (why do we need to import food from the other side of the goddamn planet?!), it'll be well worth the effort.
Two points: One, you're talking about universal income the in the same sentence as you're talking about eliminating money. Two, this goes back to the utopia argument: You don't get to bring up an imaginary, perfect world to highlight why the imperfect world we have is bad.
Well, you can, but it doesn't really work as a cohesive argument.
A universal basic income would be a stepping stone on the road to the "utopia" as you call it. It's definitely one of the easiest ways to ensure people get their basic needs met, which is a large part of the goal of dropping the monetary system entirely (the other part, obviously, being our need to stop our infinite growth paradigm from destroying the human habitability of our planet).
Okay,
this is stupid. Stop it. You do not get to summarily dismiss my points by plugging your ears and screaming "utopianist! utopianist!"
We have so much evidence now that high inequality results in enormous social problems
across the board. You do NOT get to ignore that. If you want me to take you even halfway seriously in this "debate" (and I am being charitable to you right now), you WILL address these points with more intellectual honesty.
Christ, utopia argument.
What you're basically saying is "The world will be perfect when it's perfect." Great! How do we get there in a way which won't involve a massive depopulation of the planet as the economic system collapses. Got nothing? Neither does anyone else.
Capitalism works the best of any method of global governance humanity has discovered thus far. Despite the massive amounts of wealth and privilege it confers to the ruling class, it also provides the lower-class members of society with more than any other system ever created.
I'd love it if the world were perfect. Everyone would. The world never will be, and expecting it to be and frowning at anyone who accepts that is no argument at all.
This argument is the equivalent of plugging your ears and going "la-la-la-la-la everything is fine I can't hear yooouuu". It is the opposite of an argument. It is a childish dismissal and I won't stand for it.
Address the problems of our monetary system or bow out of the debate. If you cannot propose a solution to these many, quite frankly, terrifying issues that have arisen as a result of our continued dependence on this archaic system, then the real solution is obvious: we must drop it. Dropping it, of course, involves a long transitional period where we gradually work towards the end goal, but it's either we do that or billions of humans perish as a result of our catastrophic shortsightedness and inability to adapt to slowly changing conditions (to use an overly tortured analogy, as if we were sitting in an oven and too numb to realize that we needed to jump out before it cooked us to death).
These problems are
real, and we deal with these problems on a daily basis, especially those of us who are unemployed or only part-time employed. Simply ignoring them solves
nothing, and if anything, only allows the problems to continue to fester and get even worse over time. It is only when we, collectively, as a society, recognize these problems and begin to push for change that we can see anything truly get better.
