Caltrops - Motherfucking News





	[quote name="Senor Barborito"][quote name="Lizard_King"][quote name="Senor Barborito"]I'm surprised you missed this, honestly: Of <i>course</i> it does nobody any harm the Bill Gates is wealthy, that much is obvious. But if his wealth was reduced 99% and that 99% redistributed to <b>working</b> Americans below the poverty line relative to how far below the poverty line they are, he'd still have half a billion dollars and millions of people who cannot otherwise support themselves despite contributing to society would be able to do so. Stripped of example: it does nobody anybody harm for one to be rich, but it does many good for one to be substantially less rich.[/quote] 1. Unless you believe that majority consensus (ie mob rule) is inherently moral, there is no way your system is morally acceptable. Like it or not, that wealth was earned by Gates until proven otherwise. It is his to do with as he pleases, not for politicians to spend on their constituencies or the poor. There is no way such free money would do anything except defeat the purpose of money; it is not a useful commodity in and of itself, but rather a standardized system of value representation. These hordes feeding at Mr. Gates' trough would have done nothing to earn that wealth, thus making money as valueless as it was in the Soviet Union or as it is in Cuba. It is not by accident that neither of those societies produce much that is really worth buying for consumers. [/quote] First of all, 'morals' and 'morality' are the realm of the religious, and we have little enough to discuss if you're going to sidetrack us with the mumblings of witchdoctors intent on continuing to hold undeserved sway over their communities. You say you believe that this money was Gates' to do with as he wished, not for politicians - which leads me to believe you do not believe in taxation of any kind. Without taxation there can be no government, so the question then becomes - are you an anarchist? Cavemen with clubs is about as far from a utopian society as it is possible to get without organized destruction of rational thought (fascism). Of course, you're not. Furthermore - the Soviet Union was not at all a true socialist system in the utopian sense, but rather a protectionist oligarchy, much like what America is currently demonstrably sliding into due to corporate influence of politicians via their unlimited reserves of money. In short your system is dragging itself down into the very state it wishes to avoid, but with entirely worse facets at work, as corporations have no interest but the bottom line of gathering yet more 'resource' in whatever fashion they can. Eventually rational thought will stand in the path of resource acquisition, and it too will be terminated. Would you then have us live a system containing both the worst aspects of the Soviet Union and fascism? I didn't think so. [quote]Think about; the value of money is based on inequality and individual tastes. Seek to normalize it, and you return to barter for all practical purposes, destroying economic fluidity and progress as we know it.[/quote] I understand this in a way that many socialists have not and do not - which is why I propose limitations within reason instead of true normalization. It is still possible to earn 266% of your neighbor's income in the system I propose - the question here for everyone is whether their insecurity so great that it requires a greater differential between their status and that of those whom they consider themselves superior to? Are the lives of households in America earning $80,000 a year so cruel as to be unbearable in any way? Having come from a household that went from the start to the end of that range over the course of ten years - we were slightly poorer than was comfortable at the start, and slightly wealthier than was comfortable at the end. Having lived off of $5,000 in grants a year as a student, and lived as the de facto child of a person with tens of millions of dollars in their possession for three months, neither situation was in any way tolerable. The near starvation at one end and despicable excesses of the other ought to have both been criminal. [quote]2. Bill Gates does not, in fact, simply sit on his money. It is invested or in a bank, either way providing capital in a manner that he deems in accordance with his desires. Microsoft BOB aside, I am willing to bet that Gates is a better investor than most people, and certainly than the government, and thus a better judge of how to use that money to greatest effect. The profit motive alone ensures that he will seek to make his money work for him, and thus for whoever he hires/invests in. [/quote] I realize that he invests it in stocks, but I also realize that the vast majority of it sits holding Microsoft stocks so that he can maintain his majority ownership status - this is not at all healthy for either the economy or those in the lower echelon of it. [quote]3. The government has proven time and time again to be the least efficient and most corrupt system of wealth management. When you remove an objective standard like how much money a person has by forcing everyone into coerced mediocrity, you inevitably replace it with a wholly subjective system of favours. I would urge you to see the excellent film "Brazil" if you are looking for an amusing take on that sort of world. [/quote] I'm not suggesting we force anyone into mediocrity at all, but rather insisting that everyone who works ought to be able to afford food, shelter, clothing, health care and information services for their families. Those who work harder, require more knowledge for their jobs, and (minor modifier) take on more responsibility ought to have nice food, a nice abode, nicer clothing, slightly better health care and the same information services for their families. That, and that alone is the objective here. Furthermore, those on the upper end of the scale will more frequently be able to participate in the 'investment similar to petition' system I mentioned, and thus the more educated will dictate whether or not malls, monorails, and the like are built or not. I share your doubts about government, but that is an entirely seperate system from socio-economic design, requiring an entirely different discussion. I would venture to say that my single highest priority in any proposal, however, would be democracy by the people and for the people - not by and for artificial conglomerations of people known as 'corporations.' [quote][quote]And nobody, at all, would be the worse off for this proposed redistribution. Not even Bill Gates. The same applies to the top 50 wealthiest individuals in America. Lower it to 80% and you can apply it to the top 50,000. I believe Krugman's finding was that the top 1% of Americans hold 50% of the nation's wealth (at worst it's 5, at best it's 0.1%, sorry for my poor memory here) - and what's more hold the majority of it out of circulation. That, frankly, is a problem that does hurt everybody involved in our economy. This might be why whenever I talk about what I'd like to see for an economy, I talk about a 'limited capitalist' (meritocratic earning yes, meritocratic earnings outside the $30,000-$75,000 range for all who work no) system devoid of inheritance or the ability for money to last longer than a year from when it was earned. [/quote] I disagree with Krugman's conclusion. Worst case scenario is a millionaire simply stashing his money in a bank (well, even dumber would be buying low interest bonds, but that would be directly in the govt's hands and thus no doubt preferable to Krugman) account. Even there, you have a profit guided enterprise making efficient decisions about whom to loan the money; it does not simply stagnate. In any case, why is the scope of your redistribution focused only on the most wealthy? Shouldn't you be consistent, and demand people sleep on single beds as they do not "need" king size, and wear uniforms as they do not "need variety, etc. Think of all the "excess" you could avoid![/quote] Uniforms and single beds, the kinds of things most fundamentalist socialists insist upon, reveal exactly the reason their 'pure' systems never work - they provide no incentive for one person to gain more education than his fellow man. No incentive for him to try harder if it all goes to the government. The system must provide incentive, but not so much incentive that one or even a hundred men can easily subvert the government and thwart the will of the governed. This leads to another point about the found philosophy and aims of each system that I'll get to in a moment. [quote][quote]The downside of this is that it makes investment, while not impossible, significantly harder than what we see in our current system. One only has to glance at the NationStates game we all played a few months back to see the nature of the problem - everybody has several ideas they want others to invest in, and it's impossible for the people who know what they're talking about to be heard above the ambient babble.[/quote] That is the understatement of the century. Your system would create chaos for any long term investment. It would remove incentives to be financially prudent, and it would abolish incentives to excel on a truly grand scale as, say, Mr Gates has. [/quote] Why should any individual desire to excel as Mr. Gates has? Shouldn't the desire be to cause one's species to excel as a whole? Isn't it time we left childhood behind? As above, I'll return to this shortly. [quote][quote]Homework assignment: solve this problem and you've provided the final key major element (there are roughly a billion minor flaws that need attending to here) necessary to a workable utopist economy. Certain USENET groups still manage to maintain a good S/N ratio, however, so while difficult to solve there may be a solution to the problem after all. Good luck on this one, --SB[/quote] By the USENET groups I assume you are referring to those that trade in pirated goods. If that is what you consider as a legitimate example of success, I think you had better think what it means that the nearest examples you can think of are based on theft. If that is not the case, please explain in greater detail what you mean by "certain".[/quote] Many USENET groups do actionally function as one might hope - I've often gotten an enjoyable amount of information out of comp.compression, as well as comp.programming. Your problem is that you've only seen the alt.* side of things, and those are an unmitigated mess that ought to be abandoned, I agree. [quote][quote]bouncing this question/idea off of everyone is something of a hobby of mine, so once you're done criticizing the part where I'm actually responding to you, let's see your attempt at completion of my utopist system[/quote] I am afraid I will be of no use in this capacity. Even purely as a thought experiment, I cannot even see your foundational premises as rational or useful, much less work further down the chain built on logical fallacies.[/quote] It has application to many other systems as well - weblogs for instance, are a movement sitting on the brink of something quite probably extremely profound - perhaps nothing so earth-shattering as the World Wide Web, but something great and terribly useful and impossible to live without afterwards. I suggest you check out some of Clay Shirky's articles at <a href="http://www.shirky.com">www.shirky.com</a>, it's illuminating reading at the very least. [quote][quote]I was trying to put it into terms he'd favor. In my mind, I call it 'rewards-based socialism.' It's the same thing either way - a hybrid hoping to combine the push to perform of capitalism with the lack of the accompanying excesses. [/quote] What is your hatred of other people's excess based upon? Say Ted Turner decides to gild all his toilets in gold...that's still money that is used to employ and pay people.[/quote] My disgust would be based upon living with the extremely rich - that post-million crowd, for three months and sitting on their gold toilets, watching them get fat and bore the hell out of each other with their droll conversations while their Corvette's baked out on the driveways of their million-dollar houses. Then switching not long after to a college life where I could barely afford to eat while working far harder than 99% of those I had just been lounging with ever had in their worthless lives. Nearly all of them had inherited their money, you see. Also take into account that many of these people had an incredible amount of political influence both locally and nationally despite being profoundly simple-minded creatures and you begin to understand my concerns about our current economic system. [quote][quote]Yes, large amounts of money can be gathered in private hands - you just have to convince a hell of a lot more investors. Gathering capital is less like giving presentations to a few wealthy investors and more like getting a massive petition signed. Please don't tell me that this is impossible, one of my family's friends raised $5 million to create his dot-com by talking to thousands of people, the overwhelming majority in the $50-80K salary range. Similarly, my own mother ran a funds drive for the new church building project for my family's church three years ago - and raised $1.7 million in about three weeks. Larger amounts of capital (hundreds of millions) may be problematic depending on the amount they capture public interest, but if the public really wants that mall built, it will happen. Furthermore, the next fifty years, nanotechnology or no nanotechnology, are going to see a wealth of new extremely efficient construction/manufcaturing techniques - significantly lowering the barriers to manifestation of the public will. [/quote] Why is such a "democratic" system so virtuous in your eyes? Think of all the advances in the modern age relative to the past in education, literacy levels, basics like that; has that made the masses any less susceptible to demagoguery? Mind you, I include all humans under that category; the difference between smartass Ivy leaguers and Mexican immigrants is what kind of demagoguery they are susceptible to.[/quote] To have the intelligentsia guide the nation would be to have the brain guide it, to have the rich guide it would be to have the stomach (resource acquisition) guide it, and to have the unspecific nationality immigrants guide it would be to have the penis guide it. I don't find this a terribly hard choice, despite my agreement that, yes, the intelligent are very susceptible to demogoguery of a different type. Only one of these three will try to keep the whole body unharmed and in forward motion. [quote]The solution lies in economics just as it does in politics (where the republic is the supreme form of effective and moral government, as it most effectively balances the interests of the elite and the masses by filtering the latter through the form, but still keeping the men in charge reasonably accountable). In the free market, both rich and poor must exist, since they are comparative judgements. A greater disparity, just like in heat transfers, leads to an increase in the rate of trickle-down. It still cannot hope to catch up, but who says it should have to? The rich are richer in America than nearly anywhere else; but the poor are also better off than they used to be without necessarily having had to do much for themselves. The poor can't afford toilet paper because the government legislated it so; they can afford it because it trickled down.[/quote] A 'moral' government requires believe in absolute 'good' and 'evil'. Please define each and provide an ontological basis for this definition. Furthermore, the rich in America are richer because the lower classes in America work considerably harder than the lower classes in most other nations, and because the intelligentsia provided them with the technology to create more wealth more quickly. Many poor, on the other hand, work themselves nearly to death for a bowl of Ramen noodles at the end of the day, and quite a few are no less intelligent than those who rule over them - why then are they not the ones making the decisions? [quote]Amenities that were once luxuries of the rich are now common among the poor, and it is because wealthy people could afford them first, and thus spur further development. Remember when the computer was a tool of the wealthy alone? Other countries can afford to stagnate technological progress because globalization permits other nations to take on the rapid rate of technological advance that wealth disparities produce.[/quote] This reminds me of a common complaint against the Japanese in the early 80s, now thanks to Sony and others' incredible R&D efforts rendered mostly mute. This was the point I wanted to hold off on above: ultimately a socio-economic system will reflect the economic philosophy of its founders. The question is, what philosophy does capitalism reflect? That of someone interested in creating an enlightened, progressive and forward-moving society or that of a selfish person blindly pursuing resource acquition without reason or worry? Which of these two personalities should be in charge of designing the societal system? [quote][quote]The real problem here is the public. Better education methods, eugenics, genetic engineering, creation of a new country with an IQ test as part of immigration - I don't care how it's done, the public needs to be made far more intelligent and far less trusting than they currently are. --SB[/quote] I think here we come to the crux of the problem: contempt for the common man combined with the conviction that all should be ruled by your plan for the future, in defiance of everything we are led to be by our very nature. The difference between Rousseau and Hitler is only one of the degree of ambition and nuance.[/quote] Absolutely not - my belief is in pushing everyone forward into the position of decision maker. The problem is, the more I see of the general public's mindset, the more frightened I am by lack of ability to decide wisely as the public consistently demonstrates through its self-contradiction and adherence to voodoo mysticism. I do not believe that what I say should be taken for gospel, but I do believe that my general thrust - socialism with incentive or capitalism within reasonable boundaries - is dead on. I also believe that society should be designed by people of a selfless nature, who only wish to see the species as a whole pushed forward - not anyone who wishes for personal gain or has a vendetta. I certainly wouldn't let myself be included in any committee responsible - I'm far too focused on death avoidance. [quote]Think of all the places where your ambitions have been practiced. The New Soviet Man. The Ubermensch. It is not by accident that the search for utopia in defiance of nature is accompanied by atrocities.[/quote] Both of these involved selfish individuals bent on the death of rational thought (especially the latter) designing the society. They had to fail. [quote]The problem lies not with the public so much as with the demogogues that lead them astray. Ingredients like IQ are far from the only factors in success. Those changes you list, apart from being morally questionable, would only slide the bell curve up the scale when applied on a grand scale, and put an upgraded mass of people in the bottom 75%. Remember, ignorance and poverty are not objective standards but comparative ones except in all but the most extreme cases.[/quote] I do agree that demagogues are problematic - but just as Noam Chomsky has pointed out a few interesting things to me in his lunatic ravings, so has Ann Coultier in her neo-racisct screeching and Rush Limbaugh in his bellicose pomposity. It's important to have icons who will bring the diamonds to the fore along with the rough. Again, the problem here is S/N ratio and filtration, which was your homework assignment - I find it odd for you to refuse my assignment and then list it as the problem you have. I agree it would be better to filter without these personalities involved outside of their local university or underground secret militia group. Finally - it has been my experience that the more intelligent an individual is, the more he is able to seperate himself from causes or crusades. I myself fail my own test in my desire to escape death at all costs - but I believe that the people I have met more intelligent myself ought to have a chance to design a society based on the rough major outline points I've established here for the good of the species, and not any speciifc individual. [quote]In fact, I would argue that your changes would actually lead to a worsening of aggregate human ability. Natural selection would be removed as a factor more and more in economics and life in general, meaning that the most efficient methodology yet found for human improvement at its most basic would be short circuited.[/quote] Nothing can restore natural selection save anarchy - civilization destroys it plain and simple, with the possible exception that in another decade or two average American obesity rates might well result in the death of quite a few people unable and unwilling to control themselves. [quote]For all my dislike of most humans, it is impossible to ignore that they are better judges of what they want than central planners. It stands to reason that their funds as well as their choices should be left to them as much as is practical. If Joe Jackass is happier buying a big screen tv than feeding himself well, who am I to tell him otherwise?[/quote] This is why I scrapped my prior idea of a 'credit' system, where each individual was given government issued clothing/shelter/food/health/info service and could purchase upgrades depending on how far along the bell curve they were in terms of job performance and went back to suggesting a more traditional system that is more easily adopted by capitalist societies in any case. [quote]For all your wisdom, your not omniscient, and cannot be. Omnipotence without omniscience is a murderous goal. I get the feeling this is not a debate either side is likely to yield much on, as it is fundamentally ideological in nature rather than rational...[/quote] Yes, it is. I don't believe that the well being of my own self should be my highest priority. Rather I believe, foolishly, that preventing my own death should be my highest goal, and that pushing my species forward should be my next highest. Figuring out what would be model society in the first place - an end goal if you will - is necessary before making any other progress in that second goal, which is why I bounce this set of ideas off of people rather a lot. --SB[/quote]