The dream of less work
 

In the 50:s and 60:s it was often heard that in the 21:th century machines (robots and similar) would do all hard and boring work for us. This would free us humans and give us the oportunity to fulfill ourselves and spend our time with cultural, social, artistic and scientific activities. It was also thought that the revenues from the work of the machines should be distributed fairly equal and give us all a descent standard of living.

But those dreams have not materialized yet. Instead capitalists and politicians encourage, and even force us, to work more and more. They claim that we must work more hours and also a longer period of our lives (which will delay our pensions) just to keep our standard of living (and even more if we want to grow economically). The politicians even claim that also ill and sick people shall be forced to work in a higher degree and that wage labor is the only way to fulfilment, economically, personally and socially.

So what happened? Where did the old visions of a labor free (or at least less labor) society go? How did we end up in a society that despite a lot of technical progress forces us to work more and more and more, with increased stress and stress related diseases as a result?

Where did it all get wrong?

You have nailed it. Sadly, I have no useful answers.

It didn't.

The sci-fi writers of the 1960s make two major mistakes in the stereotypical vision of the future:
1) That we'd have human-like AI by now. Obviously, AI that can imitate a human in most tasks is stupendously difficult; it takes humans themselves years to learn how to do it, and we're still very far away from working out how the brain learns as well as it does.
2) That human-like AI is necessary. :D The Jetsons' future has Rosey with a vacuum cleaner; come around the actual future, and what emerges is a Roomba. It turns out that it's easier and more efficient for the vacuum cleaner to wander around on its own, then it is for a robot to use a "dumb" one.

As for why we are not working 9 hours a week, (a.l.a. George Jetson) the answer to that is essentially the... effect, the name of which has slipped my mind at the moment. However, the gist of it is that if efficiency increases, we don't do the same amount faster; we do more in the same amount of time. Assuming we work the same amount of time as we did in 1960, (which I'm not sure is true) we get more work done, especially in information-processing jobs.

Re: the politicians, they're mad. :P

IMHO ... You already answered your own question Redpaintedna'vi!

So what needs to change, then?

You CAN "Break out" of this. FIRST of all you have to realize that most of what is viewed as this great standard of living uses a house of cards as it's foundation. There are a number of forces, both external, and internal, that can cause it to collapse almost overnight, just look at what happened in the states when the housing bubble burst.
I think that one of the biggest problems is the mindset that most Americans have, that they "own" all this stuff that the BANK holds the paper on.
It is FAR better to live on a two acre plot up in the woods, growing your own food, powering your house with wind and solar, in a small house on land that you OWE NO MONEY ON, than in a beachfront ivory tower that costs a quarter of a million, and you will only be making payments on till you die, and then the Bank takes it back, and sells it to someone else. Impossible? No, I know, and have known MANY people that have done this in several States.
If you want to "live niNa'vi" on THIS planet, you MUST become a proud "Dropout of the American Rat Race".
It IS doable, you CAN do it, but like Jake, boarding that Starship, you MUST be willing to leave the entire phoney lifestyle behind, in a clean break.
Atero and I live in the house that we are building by ourselves, on land that we paid for, and own outright. We moved here in a small 16 foot long camping trailer, and every month, would buy a pickup truck load of building materials with CASH, no credit. At first it didn't look like much, but as the months progressed, this hanger home rose out of the prairie, and while it is not finished yet, we now live in the 1,800 square feet of the eventual 8,000 square foot, (mostly hangers, and a 3 car garage), home, that there are ZERO "convenient monthly payments" on.
If you want it badly enough, and are willing to walk through the door that leads to a much more natural, less stressful life, close it behind you, and never look back, you CAN do this.
I know MANY starting with the "back to the land movement" back in the seventies who HAVE done this, and PULLED IT OFF. We are are now living stress free lives, in cooperation with the nature that all of us are part of, whether or not we choose to admit it.
COME, join the "dance".
Niri Te

A dream is about the right way to describe that. It's a lot of work and isn't fungible, meaning it can't be exchanged for anything you require, you have to find someone willing to exchange for what there is, the entire reason currency was developed in the first place - that is, if you have resource foo and need bar, but the person who has bar only wants baz, you have to find a way to convert some of your foo to baz, which without currency could potentially involve dozens of intermediaries. Need communications, building materials, medical supplies? You can't exchange food you grew for it, you have to find an intermediary who can sell it, who will of course not do it for free, the very reason barter failed and currency was developed to solve its inherent problems.

I think the idea of calling it a 'dream' is because it was misundersood. There is never going to be 'no work' without proper AI and post-scarcity resources, but work today is better and easier - you won't get lung infections from working in a coal mine, or lose an arm in a factory or farm accident; and you get more for your time thanks both to higher pay rates (remember that back then, the middle class did not exist) and greater availability of items and methods that were previously rare or hard to produce/perform. The truth is that the reason people specialise is because it allows them to perform tasks they are skilled at in return for receiving others from people who are good at that, if everyone had to do everything for themselves, humanity would never be able to support its own population in numerous ways, from physical space and resources to service-wise to socially, to production of anything even moderately advanced that requires specialisation from more than one skillset.

People no longer have to take clothes to a river and rub rocks on them; they don't have to spend hours producing food unless that is their actual profession. Nobody has to know a little of every plausible skill to get by, because it is easier and more efficient to let people who are good at it to take care of it in return for (indirectly) providing services to them or to those they are a client of.

That won't change unless/until humans reach the singularity.

By all means, claiming self-sufficiency is a goal some people find ideal, but without post-scarcity resources and methods (such as 3D printers capable of self-replication), it's never going to be possible for everyone to survive. By everyone splitting themselves to provide everything, there is no opportunity to improve and innovate in the areas a person is skilled in. Even the vast majority of people who do more than most themselves still require external support, which tends to be acquired via currency; attempts as covering this via like-for-like exchange without it inevitably collapse.

This may very well be true in Europe, but I can show you entire sections of the mountains of northeast Washington State where I used to live in the late eighties, where huge sections of the DeFacto economy are by barter. The same for the entire County in extremely rural west Texas where I live now. Medical care? Ateyo got a bad infection from a bad tooth a year ago. Did we run into the "big city" of El Paso? No, the head of the Emergency management District of this County is one of my "Back to the Land" neighbors. His backhoe broke several years ago, and I fixed it. As a result, if Ateyo has a medical problem, he fixes it. He has me "on retainer" for any heavy equipment problems that he may have in the future. If you get in with the right groupof people, you CAN make barter work.
HNM is right though, there ARE some things that ARE difficult to barter, although we will trade it back and forth out here in 5 gallon cans, buying Gasoline, or Propane takes currency, and that's where the "two worlds" members of our communities are very valuable. They have jobs, usually part time, in the City, and are willing to trade pieces of paper for goods and services out here. I have no personal experience with that as I am retired Army, and get a monthly check from the Veteran's Administration, but that makes me one of the "Two Worlds" members of the community, and when I see someone with monetary needs, that I can barter my paper for something that they can do, or have, I will trade my paper with them, rather than with someone who has an income stream who also barters.
Niri Te

Niri Te, I really admire you for walking your talk. The original utopian dream was that technology would give us more free time; I'm practically old enough to remember it when it was still real. See the House of Tomorrow at Disneyland for instance. The reality has been very different. Wages for Americans have fallen since the 1970s and the number of hours they work has increased (see the two charts on page 339 in Financial Reckoning Day Fallout: Surviving Today's Global Depression - William Bonner, Addison Wiggin, Kate Incontrera - Google Books) and this Harris poll: US Leisure Time Plummets 20% in 2008, Hits New Low showing US leisure time reached at all time low in 2008. Clearly we are not using technology to our advantage.

There is a lot of disagreement if you research this. http://weber.ucsd.edu/~vramey/resear..._Published.pdf says as much, but says that leisure time per week is essentially unchanged since 1900. It is instructive for pointing out that the original utopian leisure dream is probably due to a 1930 paper by Keynes. Cumulative lifetime leisure time is up because people live longer.

While it seems self-evident that the working classes appear to be better off than they were during the Victoria era, that period may have been an anomaly that is revealed when we look back further. Primitive culture - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia says that it's a defining feature of primitive cultures that they have more leisure time.

Some anticipated that work would be optional in the future. Robert Heinlein's first novel "For Us The Living" depicted a "social dividend" (presumably from automation) that was enough for everyone. Closest equivalent I can think of is the oil dividend for Alaskan residents. The original Star Trek series showed work being more or less optional and money no longer necessary (they weren't consistent on that point). Now that seems like a cruel hoax.

Partly I think this is a result of ruinous central bank policies and national debt, a topic that I used to find immensely boring until I discovered how much it was affecting my life. And also that we have not as a people matured enough to deal with the social implications of our changing technology.

Sempu,
I think the biggest reason that people are working longer and harder, is due to the Corporate "Fat Cats" manipulating the job market.
They use the threat of replacing the disgruntled, or those that are in THEIR estimation, "lazy", with either those out of work, who will do anything for anything over minimum wage, or the threat of moving the company production to China, and design and public relations to India "in an effort to stay in business", to turn hard working Americans into indentured servants. The fact that many Americans are in hock up to their eyeballs and can't afford to miss a single payment, acts as sufficient pressure to cause many working people into two jobs for scandalous wages.
Niri Te

The situation seems rather similar here in Sweden too. Here we now have got ourselves a government that, inspired by the US, goes along with the capitalists and which has launched a political agenda called “The line of work”, ie that everyone must work, else they get no money or allowances. Even the ones that are sick are forced to apply for jobs, otherwise they do not get any financial support from the state.
People who are unemployed are put into programs so they will not stay at home (people who just sits around home are considered a problem) but are forced to attend specially created “jobs” for only fractions of a normal salary in order to be able to get some financial support.
At the same time executives and owners of big companies and corporations, and also higher officials of the state, get richer and richer.

Some parties and political groups have been lobbying for a six hour working day (today we have eight hour mandatory workingdays, but many ofcourse work much longer days) as a first step towards a more work free society, but most of the leading political parties, and ofcourse the companies, have opposed to that idea, claiming that it would ruin our economy.

At the same time stress related illnesses and disease are increasing at an alarming rate. Many people get burned out and/or severly depressed. But the authorities and companies do not care, they perhaps think it is an appropriate price to pay for incresed economic growth.

Redpaintednavi, how scary :S Seems like some governments don't care about helping individuals anymore.

I didn't know they ever cared about helping individuals.

Damn it, I stared at the screen for ten minutes trying to figure out how to word that, and I blew it.

Recommended reading: Debt: The First 5,000 Years - David Graeber - Google Books
Pure barter economies never existed, so no one lived in these and then invented money. What usually happens is that within a group of people that have a social connection (tribe, town, clan, island,...) there is a more free exchange of goods and services. People contribute if they have something to contribute and they are given in times of need. If this is done more formally, tokens of remembrance can be exchanged that remind someone of bein "in debt" to someone else because of such unilateral exchanges. From that source, money can develop when the social relationships are getting worse, which happens if the size of the group gets bigger or other reasons destroy trust. Barter economies did exist between such groups, e.g. one town or clan or island or whatever exchanging goods with foreigners. In that case, there is an uncertainty if a unilateral exchange would ever be rewarded, so the deal has to be made final and no debt should arise.
But that is just a technicality here - no matter if the "currency" is fame, tokens, "I owe you"s, money or gold - some have different properties than others but that connects to the topic at hand only on a secondary level.

Sigh. I can just say that this is incorrect if you take the 1950ies and 60ies as a reference point as the OP did.
For once, it is rather well shown, that the factual wages (corrected for inflation) dropped since then, that work time is now higher and that in a family of four, in most cases 2 parents have to work at least part time. There was a "peak" when it comes to the existence of a middle class, of low work hours and high income and that was in the 1950ies and 1960ies. Incidentially this was also when the taxes for the rich were the highest in the US and elsewhere.

Compared to the early industrial age, it certainly is true that many people do enjoy less work and more safety and pay than the industrial workers of that time. Farmers were a bit different, they had a better status than wage workers and there were a lot of farmers. Interestingly going back a bit further to a preindustrial age, the amount of work drops, which is part of why there was some resistance against the industrial revolution. As much as I dislike the christian church, it provided medieval craftsmen and farmers with over 100 work-free days in a year (Sundays, Holidays, special services,ceremonies, festivals...).

The promise was clear though - less work and more leisure time. While it may be true in respect of physical manual labour, it is not true for time, which is what is the essence of life itself. And it is true, that certainly we could today work only 10 hours if the technological advances would be used for that goal. But instead they were used to increase profits and produce more stuff and waste.
A simple example, the washing machine. Lets say it takes a man 100 hours to build one. If he builds that and shares it among 5 families living in a house, each family has to "pay" 20 work hours for that machine and they can from then on save work when washing clothes. Now new technology comes along and with some good tools and a CNC cutter that guy can make the machine in 20 hours. Now what could happen is, that he does the same as before, in which case each family would only have to spend 4 hours for their share to use that machine. What happens in a consumerist economy is that instead that man works 100 hours just as before, produces 5 washing machines, each family gets one and still has to "pay" 20 work hours to get it. The result is more washing machines, a bit of comfort because one can use the machine at any random time without asking anyone. In addition each family can feel more "independent" and of course to some degree there is an issue with wear and tear of the machines, but here we get into planned obsolescence and the quality of manufacturing which goes too far.

This is "Jevons paradox" applied to work.

The interesting debate now would be WHY this happens. Is it greedy capitalists who pull the strings on that (some evidence points to something like that) - is it "human nature", is it consumerism, is it maybe the concept of money or of lending money only against an interest, demaninf perpetual growth?

Thanks for providing these links, Sempu.
And yes - I am also close to an age where I can remember this. When I was little, only my dad had to work in an office for rather regular work hours. When I was 15, he did the same but with unpaid overtime while my mom started to have a fulltime job as well. And no, that is not meant sexist - I would not care if it would be the other way around (which would as a possibility truely be womens equality) but the point is that both of them together had to work more and more.
Governments are now even pushing the limit of pension times up because people get older. What now - I thought we could surely afford to have more free time at least when we are older and enjoy these longer lives instead of working them away. Despite of that, unemployment is rampant - if the problem really would be that there is too much work to be done, that would not be the case. So something else drives the combination of unemployment and increased work hours for those that have employment.

Again, it depends on the metric. I'm sure people crippled in factory accidents, coal miners with lung disease, people with no appreciable skill and no means of gaining one would have disagreed.

That was always going ot be unrealistic, and expecting it is naive.

Yes, their economics would never have worked without a post-scarcity society (which they arguably had via replicators, but not fully), but it took until well into the 22nd century.
I think you need to read The Logical Fallacy of Generalization from Fictional Evidence - Less Wrong .

Clearly you don't know enough about it then.
Without banking, there would be no money, nothing would be financed. No large scale projects would be possible.

Again, your beliefs don't align with reality.

It isn't possible to arbitrarily fire someone without paying them. Many does not mean all; it is only the fault of people who took out bad debt and now struggle to repay it (and possibly the banks for taking on too much debt they knew people were going to default on, but that's beside the point).
In al truth, people are lazy. Offer someone two jobs at the same pay and they'll take the easier, or shorter hours. Offer someone a marginally harder one at 2x as much as they'll take that one.

You mean you think people should be entitled to sit at home and claim money from people who DO work?
Here, you only get benefits if you apply for jobs, and I completely support that, even as it is there are far too many chavs who have neither intention or action to apply for jobs, yet still live at the taxpayer's expense more or less permanently.

I'm sure that anyone with a job would oppose it too. Since there's already 30 min mandatory break that is't paid, that's a huge reduction in income (and in Sweden, tax levels are stupidly high anyway).

Wasn't that exactly my point? - it arises as barter trade systems fail.

I don't see why people should be forced to assume historical circumstances never change.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presen...ical_analysis)
In many cases, two parents work because they want to. Because they chose to have children, which are hugely expensive, not to mention how even someone financially worse off than the '1950ies[sic]' equivalent has access to so much they never did, has a greater life expectancy and better prospects of gain. Also, I don't see how it's something to complain about; do you honestly believe that one parent should be forced to stay at home and not be allowed to work if they wanted to?

That's a failure to understand economics.
That's convenience; the alternative is soviet-style queueing up while everything is handed out. The same argument can be made for anything that someone owns; are you honestly believing that people should not be allowed to have their own things? If so, then nobody would ever do ANY work, because there would be no motivation to if they weren't allowed to use the result (or, indeed, if everything was handed to them on a plate); and nothing would get done.

Nobody wants to be dependent. Nobody wants to be forced into a communist situation. People value their independence, freedom of choice, and ability to express themselves. Attempting to take that away will always fail.


...That's just MORE sexist. Admiring the 1950s doesn't mean your mindset has to be stuck there.
Argument from authority aside, what makes you think your experience is representative? I never do any unpaid overtime; as yes, I do work despite your previous insult towards me in another thread by claiming I 'wanted to be' as if I didn't do anything.

People get older; people live longer.
If someone hasn't made their own preparations, they have to accept what there is. If there were fewer people in the world, they wouldn't NEED to.
In case you hadn't noticed, it's a recession.

What I mean is that there must be alternatives. More people could share the same jobs, it would at least mean less working hours. And ofcourse the revenues from the work should be divided much more equally among the population and not be allowed to slip into the pockets of capitalists share holders and similar who get an unproportionally big peace of the cake.

The benefits from technological development and mechanisation should be used to create wealth that is distributed among people, and used to reduse working hours and create more leisure (and other forms of prosperity). As it is now most money and resources are gobbled up by all sorts of company owners and share holders and their henchmen (politicians, ceo:s and similar). They actually steel the life and time of people.

About Swedish tax levels: We do have high taxes in Sweden, but we also use at least some of the tax money for social purposes. Because of that we do not yet have the alarming high rate of social problems that one can see in the US and also in the UK. Sweden is still somewhat more equal. For references on that you can read Wilson and Pickets excellent book "The Spirit level".

Unfortunately many people are so caught up in the capitalist system, and have been so used (or misused) by employers and others, that they have not always had the possibility to make their preparations. It is better that the society (in the end we all) does an effort to ease each others burdens instead of increasing them, as we currently do just to feed a few capitalists who want to live high life on the revenues of others work.

You have to work longer because we're living longer.


Retirement needs to move up to 70 since everybody's living to be 80 and 90, and its only going to rise.

I think there's two different tiers of "smart" going on here. There's the smart you need to survive as a soldier in the field... and then there's the far more powerful and more technical smarts you need to make the first lot obsolete. Because, in truth, DARPA wants to replace you(r job).

And personally, I can't really see how cutting the military's budget 50% can hurt the U.S., considering you're technology is two steps ahead of everyone else's, and your military large enough to fight several wars simultaneously. You don't need all of that. :P

"The choices you made 40-50 years ago didn't pan out? Tough!"
I'm half-expecting you to recommend that the severely poor die quickly so as to decrease the surplus population. :P

iron_jones: STOP making posts solely to aggravate people.
Niri Te: Stop feeding the troll; you're just giving him the attention he wants. Stop going on and on and on and on and on about the army and yourself in every single post no matter how unrelated.

I agree with what you say about DARPA 100 percent Clarke. The military now is getting to the point to where if you don't have a college degree, they can't use you. The days of a Judge telling a Juvenile Delinquent that they had a choice, the Army, or Jail dissapeared when the Vietnam War ended.
My job would NOT be eliminated for quite a while though, I was a ground Attack Pilot, it WILL morph in the near future however, and as a matter of fact already has started.
There are MANY pilots who kiss their mates goodbye and are told, "Have a nice day at the war dear" as they make their way to a heated or air conditioned room with satellite uplinks on it's roof, to fly Predators. Their only fear is, "I hope that they have something good for chow.
That is WHY many of the computerized "war games" get the assistance of the military when they are being developed, we WANT a generation of "Nintendo Warriors".
For those of us who went in during Vietnam however, we have no worries, most of the "old guard" in the U.S. Congress are combat veterans themselves, and we will go to the grave with the Government's end of the agreement that we took when we raised our right hands fulfilled.
Niri Te

It also means less pay. If someone could only do half their hours, they'd just take a second job to make up for the huge chunk of their income that was just stolen from them. Since a company would likely pay two people doing less work LESS than one person doing both people's work (due to doubled training, provision, doubled loss of employee time due to mandatory breaks, etc), someone would still earn a lot less with two jobs paying at the same rate than they would now with one even before the wasted time/money from additional travel comes into the equation.

In other words, you want to remove motivation to succeed? If there's no possibility of becoming successful, nobody will work. Everyone will become perpetual benefit claimants, or else get by only doing the bare minimum and stifling innovation and growth, which itself drives unemployment up, driving up government spending as wastage, driving up taxes.
Give someone a choice between two jobs doing the same type of work, paying the same amount; if one requires them to do the bare minimum and the other is highly demanding, unless the work is the person's favourite thing in the world, or else highly interesting or linked to a cause the person feels strongly about, almost everyone will choose the former, and with good reason.

I don't think you understand economics. Wealth isn't created like that; simply moved - you can't just print free money to hand out. Zimbabwe 'creates' wealth by printing money with nothing to back it and no meaningful economic activity, which is literally not worth the paper it is printed on. The Weimar Republic did the same, the former is in state of economic ruin and the same practice drove the latter into one.
Entrepreneurship is what causes jobs to exist. It's what causes unprofitable or inviable ventures to fail and successful ones to thrive and grow. Government tends to do the opposite by pouring billions into sunk costs. By all means, that has a place, such as essential services that would be prohibitively expensive otherwise, but more often than not, they are simply subsidised, whether by direct aid or tax relief than nationalised, because private industry will always be capable of running things more efficiently by its very nature; all that is needed is for controls to be placed where appropriate to guarantee standards, and then let market forces do their job.

You have to put oil and petrol in a car and periodically check everything is within normal parameters for it to keep working; it won't maintain itself. Most people realise that; but some people just don't realise that the same goes for their finances. Nobody is going to do it for them unless they pay them to. If pension schemes were private, it is likely people would see a lot more return from them for the investment; but people who didn't think they would need it would miss out. governments rightly don't want that to happen, but the money has to come from somewhere; they do not want to be perceived as taking too much money to feed into an impending demographic collapse; neither do they want to be seen as doing nothing. It's the same as provision of any other service: If you think it's enough, fine and good for you - if not, pay for it yourself - doing so will provide better return than if the extra was taken away and used for the same ends without consent in any case. What one person finds sufficient will be another person's excessive and yet another's insufficient.

I wasn't ignoring you HNM, I was typing my reply to Clarke as you were posting this.
Niri Te

It's no problem :) - just learn when a post is intended to get a response out of you (and often you specifically - trolls tend to learn who responds easily and keep on subjects that will guarantee an easy response), all they want is for someone to respond and take it seriously, to be bothered by it. The best bet is not to acknowledge the post - if it really bothers you or is outright breaking rules, use the report function. It's just one thing that has to be learned by experience, one of the facts of the internet.

That post was in no way meant to aggravate anyone. You can't be serious.

Noone would ofcourse be forced to work less, but if they like they could. And by reallocating resources those who work less still will be able to earn the same salary. The cost for that is, seen in a broader societal persective, compensated by a healthier and more productive workforce. Experiments have actually shown that people who work 6 hours many times are more productive than people that are working eight hours.
And the pay that the workers receive could be regulated by rules and laws so the company is not tempted to pay less.

Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation | Video on TED.com


You do not have to print out money, you have to distribute resources (which money is a representation of more equally among the population. That can be done by taxing the rich and redistribute their wealth. Also companies can be owned by the state, by all people together and the revenues be distributed in a fair way. Not impossible if one can fight of the selfish greedy capitalists.

You can also have jobs in a state owned, or collectively owned enterprises where the revenues are distributed between the workers and to the society in general. It is contraproductive to let the money be concentrated on a few rich people, it creates an unequal society with increased risks for conflicts and unhealth.

No, but people can still own the resources collectively and work less hours, and with more mechanization the amount of work could still decrease.
And the pensions should also be managed collectively to decrease the risk that a few individuals (owners of insurance companies and similar) gets rich on other peoples saved money.

:shock: Cool, now I wonder how many hundred years it'll take us to switch over :xD:

...Just like people can take a part time job today if they want to and can live with the lower income?
Nope. See my previous post - just printing money to give out will cause economic problems.

That's already done.

...then don't talk about 'creating wealth' in such a context.
If you overtax someone, they will go elsewhere, bringing all their investments, bank accounts and businesses with them, and more profit to Switzerland, various island nations, Monaco, etc. Indeed, if you go too far, people will have no motivation to get a better job or promotion if they are not making any more money but have more/harder work. That's why the USSR collapsed, because you got your food from the bread queue, your 2 toilet rolls per year, and got to use the village bath plug once per month no matter whether you worked your assigned job at People's Soviet tractor Factory enthusiastically with an eye towards efficiency and quality, or did the bare minimum while producing shoddy products by the same flawed old process and still got the same either way. Nobody went into advanced fields because there was no reason for them to; nobody is altrustic towards an authoritarian regime itself.

As I said before, state owned business is not viable. They tend to succumb to overbureaucracy, lack of cost-effectiveness, and become massive money-sinks thanks to their tendency to throw good money after bad. Paying the same amount of money to provision services or goods via private industry will prove superior every time on quantity/quality or return.

Most people would rather have freedom of choice, not to mention a more lucrative job, since the entire point of a proper business is that they can attract people by offering more money. Look at Cuba - everyone earned the same there, and professionals got completely screwed over in comparison, so it became something nobody wanted to do compared to something easy and unskilled.

[citation needed]
Without investment, nothing works. Including government; and therefore including statist micromanagement.

Who do you think pioneers such processes? That's right, entrepreneurs; who you just eliminated with such an idea. Authoritarian systems do not produce anything other than unskilled, unmotivated workers en masse, who are controlled by coercion rather than their own initiative.

I don't think you understand economics. The point is that what is provided by government is less efficient, so the recipients of the fund make less money than they would having invested with a private company. There is not a set return per unit that is consistent across all funds. Better managed funds with better investments perform better and produce more return on capital across the board, for employees AND members. It's understandable not to leave everyone free to invest for their future themselves as some people would not and therefore become dependent on tax-funded welfare drawn from others, but by doing so, they are reducing the potential return of those that would do so themselves.

In that case, just boil the frog.

Fundamental question: Who exactly are "capitalists" and why are they generalized as greedy? With regards to rich people, what if many of them earned their wealth through innovation, hard work, and outperforming competitors?

Capitalists are those who make a lot of money on other peoples work. Even if you are an innovator, and starter of a business you can only work a certain amount of hours every night and day. If your business shall grow and expand other people most work for you. But to many owners, enterpreneurs or what you like to call them keep an unfair amount of money for themselves, not sharing it equally with those working there. In many companies the owners earn millions, or billions while the workers sometimes get so miniscule salaries that they hardly can cover their every day expences (food, housing, medicine and similar).

Well, if you have a more even distribution of resources at least less working hours can cover basic expences. That is not always the case today in many countries. Even if you for some reason do not want to or cannot work you shall still be guaranteed a basic income. If the state cannot guarantee a basic income for its citizens whay shall we even have a state? Just to police us or to start wars in our names?

Money is coupled to real physical resources. As long those values exists the money that are a representation of them can be redistributed fairly equal. Now and then some states have succeeded with it, at least relatively well, compared with others. The problem is that in several countries the unequality in the distribution of money and resources is increasing because of bad political descisions, which many times are masked behind economistic rhetorics.
Not enough.

The state, or collectively owned businesses can also create wealth by selling their products. The main difference is that the wealth are distributed more equally and do not end up on the accounts of a few rich shareholders.

Some will go, but there are always competent people who will stay and create wealth and work for the benefit of many and not only for themselves. But ofcourse it is more unlikely in hyper-capitalist countires like the US where people are brainwashed to believe that everything that benfits many people instead of the few is communism.


It is possible with state or other collective owned business, but ofcourse one must be aware of the dangers you point out.
That all collectively owned business should succumb is just a myth.


Freedom of choice for what? To be outsmarted by some rich businessmen, but still go around believing in some impossible dream about sudden richness? Like the American dream where people are to brainwashed to see the benefits of collective solutions, but instead go around and dream about the fortune that never comes (at least very seldom for the 40 millions+ that must live on a meager welfare and food stamps from the state)?


Conflicts, hopelessness, mental illnesses, drug abuse, violence, instability and insecurity increases in more unequal societies. In the most unequal countries both rich and poor live in constant fear and anxiety in a hellish world that every minute can erupt in violence. Is that the price of the so called freedom?

There can be people that pioneer such processes but they can also be employed by authorities or in other collectively owned enterprices. They can even be private, but that do not mean that they shall be able to get an unfair amount of the revenues or that they have the right to steal the time and lives of other. Also they will benefit from a more equal distribution of wealth.
Once more, read the book “The spirit Level”. Also listen to Dan Pinks lecture where he explains that money is not the main driving force for creativity, rather money rewards are detrimental to creativity.



Often it has been the other way around. When the funds are trusted to private companies that shall manage them, they are often drained and quickly loose in value..

Reality often contradicts capitalist economic rhetorics.

If economic rhetorics are listened to too much we will get a world where the likes of RDA govern us and everything is turned into crap.

I just saw the movie Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room last night, and it made me think of this thread a lot :P

Edit: What do you know, the whole thing happens to be on youtube.

I make money from other people's work - I maintain and fix their networks and hardware and develop applications they use, but my pay comes from the profit they generate. What does that make me then?
Your definition is flawed. Anyone who makes money is a capitalist (although I would also add that someone who does so while espousing the virtues of communism is also a hypocrite).

If it was unfair, people wouldn't work for them. People go into business to make more money than they could as an employee.
There are really not as many billionaires as you believe. If you go by US$, there are only ~1,226 in the world. People who can't cover their expenses can be for any number of reasons. Generally, there is something called a 'minimum wage' which ensures pay covers reasonable cost of living. However, it does not cover excess expenditure or large quantities of bad debt. People should not expect to be bailed out from their own stupidity.
Do you honestly believe that everyone works hard and tries to make money as opposed to being content to live for free off the taxpayers' income?

Wrong. If you have a 'more even distribution of resources', it doesn't stay that way. Some people are intelligent, some people are not. Some people will spend money recklessly, others will invest it and see returns. Some people are content to spend the minimum, others will use it all as son as it becomes available, That is why any currency moves. By having an 'even distribution of resources', you are punishing anyone for being successful. IF you do that, nobody will bother, and suddenly the 'even distribution of resources' will run into a problem in that those resources will not actually exist.

Not every nation has full backing. Even so, the fact that there IS backing invalidates your own Zimbabwe-style 'just print more money!' point.

For some people, things are never enough. You will NEVER please every greedy person with a sense of entitlement and no willingness to actually do something themselves.

They need someone to sell it to. Again, you fail to understand the entire point of currency - the reason it is worth something isn't arbitrary; you can't just magic up an unlimited supply and give it out to everyone and suddenly make everyone rich - what happens is that instead, you simply multiply ALL figures by 1000 or so, while actually decreasing pay scales in real terms.

I would say that is communist brainwashing :P
The ENTIRE POINT of freedom of choice and private ventures is that it allows people to do what would be most viable. Compare the standard of living in North Korea, the former USSR, Cuba, or even China (although China is improving as they move away from overt communism) to that of the US, or even a more socialised but still capitalist country such as most of those in western europe. There's no comparison.

Did I say that? No. However, the failure rate is still orders of magnitude higher, and the product or services they produce are only rarely even competitive with equivalents.

So you honestly believe that people who are unemployed are all there involuntarily? You should take a look at the average benefits office and change your mind. Yes, some people do have a temporary bad situation, bit they are the ones who actively loo,, who may take a suboptimal job as a stepping stone, and for who is is never any more than a temporary situation; while it is the chavs who just see it as free money for doing nothing, perhaps even with free council houses and more money if they have children; and have no intention of ever working.

You'remisquoting me. The whole second part of that purported quote is pure bull**** you added.
See the actual post: http://www.tree-of-souls.com/debate/...tml#post172539

How often? Not so much. Government spending is enormous in comparison for comparatively scant results in both quantity and quality.

...and they don't.
Does someone with a difficult highly skilled job that requires an advanced degree deserve to potentially earn more than someone working a job in mcdonalds with no qualifications? If so, then someone who sets up a business and offers jobs, as long as they are following applicable laws, can choose their own rewards.

Again: Unless every single item is free, it doesn't stay that well. People with good financial sense, who are willing to take risks (and the right ones) will make greater return. Stealing from someone to hand it out just stops everyone from trying to do well.

Hiding your points in books so that they will never be accessed and therefore never be challenged is the mark of an inferior argument. If you can't reimplement it in your own words, you either lack confidence in its efficacy as a point, or simply seek to employ argumentum verbosium.

[quote]Often it has been the other way around. When the funds are trusted to private companies that shall manage them, they are often drained and quickly loose in value..[quote]
Not even in Iceland. Government-run schemes have HUGE missing funds, to the point that if it had been in a private enterprise, the police and various investigations would be all over them.

Much like communism. Not to say a pure capitalist market is perfect by any means, but it is time-tested and has produced success where 'alternatives' have failed and been forgotten.

They aren't a government; try watching the film rather than reading about it. It is ironic that communism is actually a highly environmentally destructive force, as are authoritarian regimes in general. If communist 'economic rhetorics' are to be believed, everyone will stand around holding hands and sharing everything for free with no problems when in fact, a few would exploit it with far fewer checks and controls, while it is actually a case of everyone else suffering equally. By all means, it might work if Earth's population dropped by about 6 billion people and there was sufficient automation and innovation to essentially remove scarcity as a factor, but the former seems unlikely ever; while the latter certainly is unlikely within the next half a century or so.

...What? You can't be serious? I think you'd be right if you said that people wouldn't work for them if it was unfair... and had a choice in the matter due to, say, geography, job availability, their skillset, etc. IOW, people will take completely unfair jobs (e.g. China) because that's the only option. Also, see the Cracked article later.

As the counterexample, see capitalistic Mother Russia. I am led to believe that a common Russian joke is that Communism was preferable, because at least the Party had to look like they cared. :P

So rearrange the benefits/tax system a bit so that minimum wage is better than benefits, but that the benefits are still enough to live on? It'd be stupid to support people who are wilfully not getting a job, but its even more stupid to let people starve because the former group have got the wrong incentives, or because we guessed that there were a lot more of them there actually are. (And, of course, you have cold hard numbers on this, and will be able to cite them on request. ;) )

In all likelihood, the MSci can be charged comparatively humongous tax and still come out far richer than the interchangeable McDonalds worker. It's not "Marxism or bust," as I'm sure you're aware. :P

It also shuts down the Unstable Equilibrium formed by unregulated capitalism. As John Cheese explains here, being poor is expensive. "Taking risks" isn't an option, because the risks you are already taking are already too expensive to afford.

They possibly aren't, (despite having access to Type 1-scale resources) but their historical counterpart, the Dutch East India Company certainly was. I've not looked into the quality of life involved, but we can see immediately that Indonesia (what the DEIC's territory's turned into) is not the richest country in the world.

Wether one thinks there are many millionaires or not (many is a subjective term) there is still a big gap in US, UK and many other countries between the 10 percent with least income and the ten percent with most income. Even old Platon warned for the consequences (in the form of social unrest and similar) if the difference between the most rich and the most poor parts of the population exceeded five times.

People who have an interesting job, with intellectual stimulus are many times content to work for less money. At least here in Sweden there are polls that have shown that. And other polls have shown that many people could think themselves earning somewhat less if they got more time left for their family and similar. If people work less, productivity will in many cases increase, there will be more incomes, and also more tax that can finance a reduction in working time. Also more people would get into the work market and share the jobs. The increase in health and productivity will in the long run cover initial expences.

In an equal and fair society even those who are less intelligent, or in other ways disadvantaged, still should have a fair share of the resources. To not distribute wealth equally is to ask for a violent society, with criminality and exclusion. Such a society will be a worse society for all. And actually in a society with equity there will be less alienation and less people who will not bother. It is in societies with more unequality, and where many people become alienated, you find that people do not bother but instead try to get easy access to resources (a quick fix, easy money) by stealing, cheeting and committing other forms of crime. Alienation and unequality creates violent societies where everyone walk on their toes and where people have no trust in each other or in society.


The more reason to curb the greedy peoples ambitions with regulations.

Noone has talked about giving everything away. But you can have more collective trade solutions where revenues are distributed to the many instead to a few who steal the products of other peoples labor.

That is only liberal and capitalist rethorics. Often uncurbed private ventures leads to advantages for a few on the expense of many others. The success of a few will lead to impoverichment and dependency of the many.

North Korea is a dictatorship with structures that have more likeness with a kingdom or feudal society than with the writings of Marx. Equality and equal distribution of resources do not have to be opposed to democracy, trade or wealth. On the contrary, only with a fairly equal distribution of resources there can be true democracy or true wealth.
There is no wealth for the 40 million+ people in the US that live on the handouts from a rich society that do not really care about its poor.



If some countries have failed in creating more equal societies where resources are owned by their people it is no reason to condemn the idea of equality. Instead we ought to work for better ways of collectively own, produce and distribute resources. When we succeed in managing such a system it will in the end turn out to be better than the capitalist system where wealth are concentrated to the few.

Sometimes capitalist rethorics depicts the liberal systems as some form of endproduct when it concerns economics, politics and way of living. It seems that the economistic thinkers can not envision a world beyond liberalism and capitalism, a world where democracy and equal distribution of wealth can coexist. It seems that capitalist thinkers seem to believe that the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few (on the expence of the poor) is some kind of natural law that inevitably will lead to a better world.

It seems that you after having watched the film Avatar a multitude of times you have not yet understood any of its deeper meanings. Instead you have just got stucked in unrealistic and unproductive dreams about how beautiful Neytiri is. Try to see the connection between the dying Earth and the RDA in Avatar with your precious capitalism. The dying Earth and the RDA are actually just logical consequences of raw capitalism.

Most are, since their skills and personalities are not sought after in the capitalist system.

Feel free to read the book, or at least you can google the book and read some summary of it. They actually express many points better than what I can do in a foreign language. If you are to lazy to look for the facts than your arguments can not be taken seriously.

It seems that your way of thinking are extremely narrow and limited. You talk as if there are no other ways of organizing a society than pure capitalism or pure communism. Instead of clinging to old systems that are harmful to people we really ought to find new ways that will benefit ALL people.


I did not say that RDA was the government, I said if we let capitalism loose we will end up with companies and big corporations governing our lives. And I have seen the film several times.
Capitalism in its raw form will inevitable lead us to the kind of Earth that is mentioned in Avatar, and already today there are many corporations that act in exactly the same way as in Avatar. That is the result of untamed capitalism.
And I do not advocate communism, I prefer a democratic system with equality as one of the most important core values.