Podcast on "Techno-Fixes", Scientism and apocalyptic thinking (incl. "singularity")

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by Clarke

...How do markets work in a way that doesn't just default to capitalism?

Why would they?
Markets are basically just ways to trade. Someone has something, someone else wants it. What leads to capitalism is to "liberate" markets and regard them as the rulers or as Charles Eisenstein puts it to make money a replacement for god (this analogy goes quite far in terms of the market being invisible, there is even the famous "invisible hand" that will regulate all things to the best and we submit everything to the market). That faith or religion that regards markets as benevolent despots that we have to submit ourselves to because they are wise is nonsense but it is the mythology of neoliberalism. Instead whenever in history there were markets and trade that did not lead to extreme capitalism, it was because it was regulated by rules made by people who imposed ethical values to it. Like a prohibition of making a profit by lending money, by disallowing large corporations or bulding of cartels and so on. Some of them had some capitalist elements but at least it was not running rampant. And in prehistoric societies, trade was also possible without becoming capitalist because simply a person that was seminomadic could never amass wealth and could never be sure to ever meet someone again to collect debt. There is a good book I am reading, called "debt the first 5000 years". It explains the origins of debt and money and ways of trade.

But to keep it simple - Germany had in the 1950ies-70ies a "social market economy". It was based on some capitalism but a lot of social elements were mixed in. People did not have to save up money for their pension, it was paid by the state and everyone paid the state a share while he was working. No huge amounts of capital was amassed, it went straight from the working people to the pensionists. The state owned infrastructure and allowed companies to build a market on using the infrastructure but did not give it away for some companies to use it as capital. If a company got too large, it was divided in smaller bits. Unions were encouraged and given a lot of rights to balance the power of employers. Sadly this is all in decline since the 1980ies due to pressure from the US and multinationals. It was far from perfect but it was a market based economy that was quite a bit away from the raging capitalism of our times.

And if you do the science, you will learn whether or not those values affect people negatively.

The effects of many technologies are known, but they are still used widely. Sadly, knowledge alone does not create change.

Originally Posted by Moco Loco

I wonder the same thing; how can this work without growth?

In fact market based economies work especially well without growth. Take gold as a currency - the reason it was used and it was a stable currency for a long time was that its amount globally did increase only slightly. This creates a situation in which things that are limited are also expensive, meaning they are valuable trade goods. Of course growth boosts profits and people are addicted to it but looking at history, there have been many times that had no economic growth to speak of and still they had markets and trade.

Originally Posted by Aquaplant

That is, technology can never solve problems that are the faults within the system, because each solution would automatically become part of the problem in every case.

Exactly!

The thing is, who is there to pay attention to?

Sigh - yes I know you are lonely

Our society is built on individualism, on personal success, consumerism and all that jazz. Society needs as many separate individuals as possible, because individuals will consume the most, and each individual must be successful enough to accumulate money in order to be able to consume and so on.[...] Technology doesn't produce these issues, society does, but technology is there to "alleviate" the problems caused by society by giving us illusions that keep us occupied.

This sounds a bit like a hen-or-egg problem here.
Lets say that at least there is a correlation here between individualizing technology and the rise of individualism and consumerism. Both are rather new. Consumerism was actually "invented" (literally by some people sitting together and thinking of it as a concept to make profits) in the middle of the 20th century, about at the same time as the TV and individual cars. At the same time the family size was declining to the "nuclear family" and people started to live in seperate houses. Before, people were living in larger houses with a whole family or maybe several families (e.g. a farm), people were talking to each other and spend time sitting together talking or playing games or doing choires or work at home. Now it certainly is possible that some freak human desire got expressed by chance at that time that sparked extreme individualism and consumerism and technology jumped in to fill that gap, but I think the likelyhood is more, that certain technologies at least co-evolved if not determined the outcome of how society changed. They transported the values of their inventors to the ones that applied it. The inventor of the TV thought it was a good idea to have a box to stare at - maybe because he was a loner or bored in the evenings - and by spreading that technology he spread the conditions that led hin to tat invention. Ok, that is hypothetical now - I have no clue of what the inventor of the TV felt, but I use this fake example to show what I mean by transporting the values of the inventor and what I mean by technologies having values embedded that actually shape society.
As I said - maybe it is a co-evolution and a feedback loop - that is possible, but I always am cauteous if something is called "human nature" or a fundamental desire that is expressed only for a very very limited amount of time in human history.