Occupy Wallstreet

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

This raises an interesting question (or series or questions).

Why has egalitarian collapsed in the post-Agricultural Revolution civilizations? (Inversely, was a collapse in egalitarianism what brought about the AR, as libertarians might argue?) Why have attempts to regain egalitarianism (in modern terms/economies, communism) failed? Does technology and the surpluses it creates simply bring out the worst of our instincts (greed), while the scarcity of HGing forced us to work together? If we were somehow able to form "techno-tribes," as I theorized in the past, could we create a successful modern egalitarian society? Could we maintain our means of production if we became "techno-tribes?"

Yes, but only by achieving post-scarcity.

[Pa'li Makto]

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

This raises an interesting question (or series or questions).

Why has egalitarian collapsed in the post-Agricultural Revolution civilizations? (Inversely, was a collapse in egalitarianism what brought about the AR, as libertarians might argue?) Why have attempts to regain egalitarianism (in modern terms/economies, communism) failed? Does technology and the surpluses it creates simply bring out the worst of our instincts (greed), while the scarcity of HGing forced us to work together? If we were somehow able to form "techno-tribes," as I theorized in the past, could we create a successful modern egalitarian society? Could we maintain our means of production if we became "techno-tribes?"

I think the rise of mass industry has seen egalitarianism fail and revolutions since fail because there has to be a status quo with industry where there are classes to be downtrodden so that they will run the industry for those who have the money and status to run them. Industry won't work if everyone are workers and are equal and the bosses know this and threaten to lay off people if they complain about their conditions and hire people who are willing to work for thr pay and hours. People won't want to abandon industry if it means that they go out of pocket and have no food to live off.

[Raptor]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

I do not understand why. But I do not understand anyways why some jobs that require the same investment in time and education should be paid differently. This free market stuff based on dog-eat-dog bullsh1t is something that will never understand - I understand its mechanics all to well, but I do not understand why anyone except those who make the most profit of it would support it.

Should we support Marxist Communism then? Capitalism definitely isn't perfect, but what are you suggesting we do?

Reagrding this whole topic about bankers and the top 1% - here is an interesting article about a study done this year. It says basically that at least some of these 1% (the investment traders) have quite a few things in common with psychopaths:
Going Rogue: Share Traders*More Reckless Than Psychopaths, Study Shows - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

I am pretty sure that similar tests done with the rest of the 1% - bankers, investment managers, CEOs, managers,... would show results not that different. We are putting the psychopaths of our society in positions of power and wealth instead of shunning or treating them, like a sane culture would do

CEOs and managers didn't get their positions for nothing. Granted, there are always those who engage in bad or unethical business, but many CEOs and managers are also hard working individuals who put in a lot of time and effort to reach their positions. Just because they may be more competent, more dedicated, or more hard working doesn't mean they are psychopaths...

[Tsyal Makto]

^ Remember, though, that doesn't give them the right to manipulate government, pollute the planet, or scam consumers, either. Like I said before, the whole point of Occupy Wall street is to bring attention to the fact that the top 1% is breaking the social contract.

Originally Posted by Clarke

Yes, but only by achieving post-scarcity.

Ever heard of the Venus Project?

[Fosus]

Originally Posted by Advent

I have conflicting views. Sometimes fascists can be useful, sometimes communists can be useful. Hunter Gatherers can't exactly compete in our current economy. Sad, but true. I'm a realist.

What do you mean by "competing in our current economy"? FFS all hunter gatherers need is an unspoiled piece of land, for what would they ever want to compete anything for? All I said is that they "got it right". And they do.

You say "Sometimes fascists can be useful, sometimes communists can be useful.".. What does that even mean? Both have always failed and both will always fail no matter what we do. One might say the so called true communism has never been achieved anywhere. That sure is true, just like Zhuangzi probably never intended anarchists to throw petrol bombs. All attempts to achieve "true communism" have always failed and they *will* *always* *fail*.

What appears to be the unchangeable fact in this world is that no good way to control the masses exist. At all. And I, am a realist too.

Why hunter-gatherers got it right, then? Because they didn't form a large group. Apparently it was profitable for them to have many smaller tribes instead of one big.

Oh, and by the way. Humans didn't invent agriculture because there was not enough food for everyone. They did it for beer. This is actually my fathers theory. Humans needed fields to get enough beer for gatherings and feasts of near-by tribes.

[Ashen Key]

Originally Posted by Fosus

Oh, and by the way. Humans didn't invent agriculture because there was not enough food for everyone. They did it for beer. This is actually my fathers theory. Humans needed fields to get enough beer for gatherings and feasts of near-by tribes.

And...it would have had NOTHING to do with the women who were the gatherers recognizing that if they planted certain seeds, when they came back to the same place in a few months/next year, there were plants to harvest. Which meant food. Which meant their children and fellow tribesmen didn't go hungry/starve if other resources were low (or that they might get away with keeping the baby this year, instead of killing it/aborting because there wasn't enough food/the other child was still too young to walk without being carried between camps). No, it was about alcohol, which...if they hadn't gathered the food and stored it in order for the food to spoil and ferment, I'm not sure how they KNEW about alcohol in the first place. But I could be wrong on the latter, I haven't researched the history of alcohol.

Also, hunter-gatherers don't need unspoiled land, if by unspoiled you mean 'untouched by humans'. The Australian Aborigines used to set fire to their landscape for various reasons, and I'm pretty sure other groups in other areas regularly did the same. Humans tend to try control their environment when they can (although methods differ, obviously) because we really don't like being at the mercy of nature. It's just a question of how.

[Fosus]

Originally Posted by Ashen Key

And...it would have had NOTHING to do with the women who were the gatherers recognizing that if they planted certain seeds, when they came back to the same place in a few months/next year, there were plants to harvest. Which meant food.

Of course it would. Is this even supposed to be a conflicting theory anyway? I didn't mean humans made the fields first, then began thinking what to do with them.

I have done my research, and I have yet to find a good reason for the dawn of agriculture. You are saying hunting and gathering did not get enough food for the tribe. Prove it. Without you providing me any links, any evidence, I'm not going to buy that. And before you start googling, read this:
Dawn of agriculture took toll on health

Btw you really are making my blood boil with those unnecessary child killing accusations. Just please leave them out of your posts for apparently you know nothing about hunter gatherers.

Originally Posted by Ashen Key

Also, hunter-gatherers don't need unspoiled land, if by unspoiled you mean 'untouched by humans'. The Australian Aborigines used to set fire to their landscape for various reasons, and I'm pretty sure other groups in other areas regularly did the same. Humans tend to try control their environment when they can (although methods differ, obviously) because we really don't like being at the mercy of nature. It's just a question of how.

By unspoiled land I meant land, which rivers are clean. Land, that is not poisoned by waste from modern industries nor by nuclear fallout.

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Pa'li Makto

I think the rise of mass industry has seen egalitarianism fail and revolutions since fail because there has to be a status quo with industry where there are classes to be downtrodden so that they will run the industry for those who have the money and status to run them. Industry won't work if everyone are workers and are equal and the bosses know this and threaten to lay off people if they complain about their conditions and hire people who are willing to work for thr pay and hours. People won't want to abandon industry if it means that they go out of pocket and have no food to live off.

I think it's just more likely that agriculture meant society could become big enough to break the monkeysphere.

[Ashen Key]

Originally Posted by Fosus

Of course it would. Is this even supposed to be a conflicting theory anyway? I didn't mean humans made the fields first, then began thinking what to do with them.

I have done my research, and I have yet to find a good reason for the dawn of agriculture. You are saying hunting and gathering did not get enough food for the tribe. Prove it. Without you providing me any links, any evidence, I'm not going to buy that. And before you start googling, read this:
Dawn of agriculture took toll on health

Well, I would never argue that the accumulative effect of agriculture hasn't been detrimental over all, because that would be, uh, foolish. And incorrect. But there were REASONS people invented, REASONS it spread so far. What I find lacking is any curiosity as it why that happened.

Originally Posted by Fosus

Btw you really are making my blood boil with those unnecessary child killing accusations. Just please leave them out of your posts for apparently you know nothing about hunter gatherers.

...*tilts head* AFAIK, hunter-gatherers try and space out their children by at least four years, due partly to resources and partly to the simple fact that the mother has to carry her child until it is old enough walk by itself. Rhythm method alone isn't very reliable, particularly when you throw in the fact that women's periods can be thrown off schedule by things such as stress, low body fat, or just being not a schedule at all.

In North America alone, the Eskimos (I think 'Inuit' only refers to a couple groups within that larger group, but I could be wrong), the Kaska, Creek Nation, and Comanche all practised various forms of infanticide in the past. Australian Aborigines also used to practise it - would you like me to quote book and page number? If a culture doesn't believe that the infant is a proper person until a certain date (common enough given how high infant mortality was), and if conditions are that harsh, then logic follows. It's not an accusation, more fact (and for heaven's sake, it's not like infanticide is UNCOMMON throughout history, so I'm not 'accusing' hunter-gatherer groups from being any different from the foreparents of Western culture, such as Ancient Greece and Rome). I'm certainly NOT condoning the practice in any way shape or form just saying that if extra, reliable food could make the difference in some cases, and if the conditions were right for farming, I could understand that.

But that still leaves the question as to WHY agriculture? If it was such a bad idea in the long term, what were the SHORT-TERM payoffs? We all started out as hunter-gatherers after all, so there has to have been some payoff for various groups to decide to stick with it.

[Human No More]

I think this explains the problem with this more eloquently than I managed before.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/op...cals.html?_r=1

"If there is a core theme to the Occupy Wall Street movement, it is that the virtuous 99 percent of society is being cheated by the richest and greediest 1 percent.

This is a theme that allows the people in the 99 percent to think very highly of themselves. All their problems are caused by the nefarious elite.

Unfortunately, almost no problem can be productively conceived in this way. A group that divides the world between the pure 99 percent and the evil 1 percent will have nothing to say about education reform, Medicare reform, tax reform, wage stagnation or polarization. They will have nothing to say about the way Americans have overconsumed and overborrowed. These are problems that implicate a much broader swath of society than the top 1 percent."

"The Occupy Wall Street movement may look radical, but its members’ ideas are less radical than those you might hear at your average Rotary Club. Its members may hate capitalism. A third believe the U.S. is no better than Al Qaeda, according to a New York magazine survey, but since the left no longer believes in the nationalization of industry, these “radicals” really have no systemic reforms to fall back on."

"Don’t be fooled by the clichés of protest movements past. The most radical people today are the ones that look the most boring. It’s not about declaring war on some nefarious elite. It’s about changing behavior from top to bottom. Let’s occupy ourselves."

[Advent]

Originally Posted by Fosus

What do you mean by "competing in our current economy"? FFS all hunter gatherers need is an unspoiled piece of land, for what would they ever want to compete anything for? All I said is that they "got it right". And they do.

You say "Sometimes fascists can be useful, sometimes communists can be useful.".. What does that even mean? Both have always failed and both will always fail no matter what we do. One might say the so called true communism has never been achieved anywhere. That sure is true, just like Zhuangzi probably never intended anarchists to throw petrol bombs. All attempts to achieve "true communism" have always failed and they *will* *always* *fail.

True communism could work, if people didn't keep mixing it up with right winged politics, and fascism can be useful in some instances. For example, a fascist government in a time of war, if done right, can be far more beneficial then a different type of government. The same with dictatorships. Only thing is, dictators are for more likely to be corrupt.

And yes, Hunter Gatherers 'got it right'. Over 1000 years ago. There is just too many people now, and not enough land. That's why skyscrapers exist. We're building up now.

[Moco Loco]

I've got my eye out for communism However, I'm well aware it probably won't succeed (if ever) until long after I am dead

[Advent]

Originally Posted by Moco Loco

I've got my eye out for communism However, I'm well aware it probably won't succeed (if ever) until long after I am dead

Alas...

[auroraglacialis]

I'll not comment on the agriculture subthread - I have written extensively about this topic, the possible origins and the multitude of its failures. Especially totalitarian agriculture which differs from planting seeds in that it requires the elimination of competitive species.

Instead this is more about economics.

Originally Posted by Clarke

It is, for instance, possible to make a profit simply by taking advnatage in a discrepancy between exchange rates.
...
They are more or less efficient at generating wealth.

And where does that profit in the end come from? Understand this please that no profit exists without people providing something useful to society - Profit is in fact a measure of that. That can be production of goods or programming of software or someone cutting someones hair, heck even an economist looking at what ideas of production are good and which are bad and then making a decision in investment. People taking these profits to themselves by a number of financial tricks (speed trading, discrepancies in exchange rates, hedgefonds, "betting" on higher or lower prices and so on) do not provide any truely useful product. The profit has to come from somewhere else. The "financial industry" does NOT create wealth, it only manages and controls it. Wealth is created by what communists would call the workers (in our times it is also software programmers, IT service departments and scientists)

Absolutely everything is quantized in economics because it's impossible to make a "rational" (or the facade of rational, anway) decision with non-quantified information. If you can't make decisions, you can't trade.

Exactly. A global quantification of all that is in commodities is needed to run the global market as it is now under the pretense of rationality (something that is not really true because traders do not really act rational). This is why the whole compound has to go - if not, soon air, love and friendship will start to be commodified. The beginnings of that are already there (carbon trading, protitution, social internet networks). There is a pricetag on human organs, clean water, land to exist on, animals, human lifetime, "consumer behaviour" and so much more. I will not stand by and watch everything that is not really quantifyable to be quantified according to a system of economics that is so much in opposition to life.

No, we're not; we're putting excessively reckless people in charge. Unintentionally, because no government planned economics this far ahead. Unlike with Communism, nobody sat down and decided how capatalist economcics should work, it just evolved out of neccesity. Nobody is putting anyone anywhere in any sort organised capacity; they're just ending up there because they're being filtered through a set of processes no single human can possibly comprehend together.

This is only partly true - at least modern consumer capitalism was indeed planned. As was the present day money system and the whole concept of the "self regulating free market". Unintentionally - yes maybe. I'd rather say they were simply wrong in their planning because they were hoping for different results. But what comes out in your words is what many call "the machine" - a monstrous economic system that we do not control, that we do not have agency over, that we do not even understand - but that controls us, our daily lives, our work, our homes, our world. This is what one of the slogans in OWS means that says "the economy should serve the people instead of people serving the economy". What does it tell us if heads of states declare that they cannot provide people with good education or healthcare but can provide banks with money because it is "beyond their control". One has to ask, who has control then if not the presidents and prime ministers of the industrialized nations? There is somethign wrong with this picture, don't you agree?

there is no easy fix. There is no magic bullet-type law that people could implement to solve everything.

Of course not and if one can say something critical about the OWS movement, then it is that they are not radical enough, that they belive to some part at least in hotfixes - more taxes for the rich, financial trade tax, bank regulation laws,... - which will not work, because the whole conglomerate of economics as we use it now is broken.

Originally Posted by Advent

Hunter Gatherers can't exactly compete in our current economy. Sad, but true. I'm a realist.

Maybe not if one looks at a few remaining tribes. But the ideas of freedom and cooperative living that form these societies can compete. Not within the rules of the present system - that would be like trying to tear down prisons while being in solitude confinement. But by other means. Cooperative economies and social systems cannot compete with ruthless competitive behaviour that is encouraged now as long as it tries to play the competition game. It has to loose, just like the USSR had to loose. Instead what might work better is to set up alternative structures - good societies that attract people. Did you know that the white settlers in North America had to set up rigid laws to keep people from running off and live with the indians? The indians had no such rules. The black spot in that idea is, that the present system has grown to be overwhelmingly powerful in many ways. The most important one however is violence. It is the means of choice for the present system when it comes to eliminating alternatives and reenforcing itself. Try living on a pice of land that is nice and proclaim that land cannot be owned like it would be in such a culture. You'd be arrested under threat of violence. Or take the guy who invented the zipper and decided to give away his wealth to poor people. Mental hospital, pharmaceutical violence. Some country declaring secession to form a new self-controlled governance. Armies, wars, bombs...

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

Could we maintain our means of production if we became "techno-tribes?"

It would be a nice idea. There is some hope something like this can be done with a different way of looking at technology though. But as long as all else stays the same (economically, socially) and we remain captured by the use of technology to control the world and people, more of the same will just lead to more of the same...

Originally Posted by Clarke

Yes, but only by achieving post-scarcity.

How do you define scarcity and why do you think that we have scarcity? What exactly is scarce and why?

Originally Posted by Raptor

Just because they're more competent, more dedicated, or more hard working doesn't mean they are psychopaths...

No, they are psychopaths because they are competent, dedicated and hard working first and foremost to their own profit (and secondly to the profit of the company because that profit will create higher benefits for them) and because to reach that goal they will cheat, lie, manipulate and trick others.
We have been told that this is "human nature", that we are all just "survival machines" trying to maximize our own profit and this is then reflected in the behaviour of the followers of that ideology. But there are countless examples that this is NOT human nature, that humans are by nature compassionate, cooperative, sharing and helpful. But this culture chose to promote an image of humans that makes psychopaths look like normal people and people who give away their wealth to the poor are considered crazy. We have not only let the crazy bastards rise to power and control the wealth of the world, they have also managed to make us belive that it is us who are the crazy ones!

[Clarke]

(This turned out to be a very long post, sorry. Economics is complicated?)

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

And where does that profit in the end come from? Understand this please that no profit exists without people providing something useful to society - Profit is in fact a measure of that.

There is a section in the novel of Catch-22, where we learn that a soldier called Milo Minderbinder sells eggs from Malta to the Air Force mess hall for 5 cents a peice, having bought them for 7 cents a peice. He absolutely insists he makes a profit from this. It turns out, he does: he's buying those same eggs from somewhere else for one cent, and then selling them to vendors in Malta for 4 cents. He then buys them back, and sells them at a "loss" of +1 cent an egg.

There's no production going on here. Milo is essentially magicking the Malta vendors' profits from nowhere.

People taking these profits to themselves by a number of financial tricks (speed trading, discrepancies in exchange rates, hedgefonds, "betting" on higher or lower prices and so on) do not provide any truely useful product. The profit has to come from somewhere else. The "financial industry" does NOT create wealth, it only manages and controls it.

Bizarrely enough, wealth is not conserved. Profit is not a zero-sum game, nor does it correlate to production of any useful thing. It's entirely possible to become wealthy simply by moving money around, as in the Catch-22 example above.

This is why the whole compound has to go - if not, soon air, love and friendship will start to be commodified.

You can't commodify non-scarce things. (It's also nigh-impossible to commodify emotions, not because they're infinite in supply, but because they can't reliably be produced.)

The beginnings of that are already there (carbon trading, protitution, social internet networks). There is a pricetag on human organs, clean water, land to exist on, animals, human lifetime, "consumer behaviour" and so much more. I will not stand by and watch everything that is not really quantifyable to be quantified according to a system of economics that is so much in opposition to life.

Why is it in opposition to life? It sounds you mean it's in opposition to emotion, and you'd be right; organised algorithms and logic will usually beat emotional decisionmaking in this context.

This is only partly true - at least modern consumer capitalism was indeed planned. As was the present day money system and the whole concept of the "self regulating free market".

...Really? Because the "free market" concept predates the US, possibly even pre-dating the Medieval period. The modern concept of money was, AFAIK, around during the Renaissance.

...Scratch that. I just looked it up: the Romans traded stocks in contracters who were working for the government. The Dutch East India Company issued shared ownership stocks in 1602. There does not appear to be any planning going on here.

But what comes out in your words is what many call "the machine" - a monstrous economic system that we do not control, that we do not have agency over, that we do not even understand - but that controls us, our daily lives, our work, our homes, our world. This is what one of the slogans in OWS means that says "the economy should serve the people instead of people serving the economy".

This is essentially impossible. "The economy" is just a name given to a set of interactions between people, and the issue is here that the number of people involved is in excess of 10 million. They all have different incentives, motivations, and critically, information. These can interact in, literally, trillions of different ways, and the speed of the Internet means that those interactions happen millions of times a second.

What does it tell us if heads of states declare that they cannot provide people with good education or healthcare but can provide banks with money because it is "beyond their control". One has to ask, who has control then if not the presidents and prime ministers of the industrialized nations? There is somethign wrong with this picture, don't you agree?

The leaders are not rational. All hail Friend Computer!

Of course not and if one can say something critical about the OWS movement, then it is that they are not radical enough, that they belive to some part at least in hotfixes - more taxes for the rich, financial trade tax, bank regulation laws,... - which will not work, because the whole conglomerate of economics as we use it now is broken.

Feel free to design Economics 4.0 then. I can virtually guareentee there'll be a flaw in it that results in a feedback loop of wealth. (Or the system collapses because of the incentives involved)

It would be a nice idea. There is some hope something like this can be done with a different way of looking at technology though. But as long as all else stays the same (economically, socially) and we remain captured by the use of technology to control the world and people, more of the same will just lead to more of the same...

How do you define scarcity and why do you think that we have scarcity? What exactly is scarce and why?

We have scarcity of physical objects and resources because there's a finite amount of them. This is compared to non-scarce assets like music, film, and other IP; economics goes really wibbly when you try to apply free-marketism to them.

No, they are psychopaths because they are competent, dedicated and hard working first and foremost to their own profit (and secondly to the profit of the company because that profit will create higher benefits for them) and because to reach that goal they will cheat, lie, manipulate and trick others.

...The majority of humans do that if they're confident they won't be seen, don't they?

We have been told that this is "human nature", that we are all just "survival machines" trying to maximize our own profit and this is then reflected in the behaviour of the followers of that ideology. But there are countless examples that this is NOT human nature, that humans are by nature compassionate, cooperative, sharing and helpful.

Are the circumstances the same?

But this culture chose to promote an image of humans that makes psychopaths look like normal people and people who give away their wealth to the poor are considered crazy. We have not only let the crazy bastards rise to power and control the wealth of the world, they have also managed to make us belive that it is us who are the crazy ones!

Peoples' sense of empathy collapses along with their monkeysphere, AFAIK. Unless you want to do fairly severe psychosurgery on most humans on Earth, you'll going to get "psychopathic" behaviour of most people when they interact with strangers.