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:
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.
You're acting like the world has been stagnant under capitalism. Wanna know what's happened lately? Okay, here's some factage for you: Renewable power sources comprise 22% of the world's energy, the number of people in developing countries living in extreme poverty has
halved in the last twenty-five years, worldwide gender inequality is shrinking remarkably quick even in less-developed countries, crime per capita has been dropping steadily for the last two decades, and child mortality in third world countries has dropped down to
half what it was in less than three decades.
How's that for a status quo?
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.
Which we're doing as a collective society. See above. Throwing capitalism out with the bad practices of society is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
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.
I can tell you've never worked construction. I have. Even triple-checked, the parts which arrive on-site are never a perfect match for what needs to be done to install the manufactured parts.
Also, you're arguing about giving people jobs they need to support themselves as means of maximizing profit. That is a contradictory 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.
You're completely fixated on the concept of a utopia above all else, and ignore my underlying arguments.
When your arguments begin with "In a perfect world" or a statement close to that, it's why I'm fixating on it. You're talking about the end goal while glossing over the long, painful, and perhaps even impossible road which leads society from where it is from where we'd all like it to be.
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.
You can't just automate menial tasks. It is nowhere near that simple. You're saying "When this is automated" like it's a given that a task CAN be automated. Businesses aren't deciding not to automate because they want the poor huddled masses to have their minimum wage jobs, they're deciding not to automate because it's not worth the cost of automation.
As technology advances, outdated jobs are replaced. This isn't a new development. This has been happening for centuries.
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?
New jobs will appear. They always have and always will. Just as one example, because it's a growing industry I'm involved in, electronics recycling has been booming in the last decade and a half. There's no way to automate the process: There's too many electronics on the market and too many ways to dismantle them to recycle them. You
need manpower to do the job.
I work at a job for which the concept would have been laughed at two decades ago. The company I work at takes apart electronics and recycles 98% of the weight we take in, reducing the electronics which wind up in landfill. This is an industry which didn't exist in any noticeable form fifteen years ago, and is but one example of how new menial jobs appear to replace old ones as society advances.
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.
We've advanced our science and our technology by leaps and bounds. I'm damned proud of my society because the consumer culture fuels advancement, and advancement fuels the eventual utopia you claim to want.
We'd just be getting there far more slowly if scientific advancement were retarded by a socialist society.
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.
Inflation is dead simple, and the fact you don't understand that tells me you have very little idea what you're talking about outside of the pony farts and pixie dreams I mentioned last post: Inflation is the result of existing resources gaining value over time, no more and no less.
Truly finite resources, even ones with pure utility, gain value every second. Every gram of iron, copper, or platinum is more valuable than a gram mined yesterday because there's less of it in the world available for use. This applies to every resource.
Our society is nowhere near being close to running on renewable resources. That is why inflation exists.
Until 100% of the resources used to fuel society are renewable, inflation will exist. It's that simple.
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.
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).
Do you know why we import food from across the planet? Because those third world countries we import from can grow more food than they can possibly consume. It's the same reason some farms will grow tobacco and import food: The net gain from growing tobacco in a region where it grows easily, with little complications, is more than made up for by the additional expense of having to import food.
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.
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.
Calling me a kettle, pot?
You're ignoring basic economics (which is not a study of money, per se, but a study of how the exchange of basic resources facilitates human development) in order to state that capitalism is bad, while ignoring all the good it demonstrably provides.
Is the world perfect? No.
Is capitalism perfect?
No.
Do you have a better solution?
Not a chance.
You're basically saying "Well, we drop capitalism, and then eventually things will work out."
That makes no sense.
