[onlooker]

Seeing how Capitalism has bought us to this dismal state in planetary affairs. I would like to open this thread to discuss alternatives to Capitalism as a way for humans to organize their economic lives. Perhaps in the near future matters will unravel so much that not much of a world-wide economy will endure. Nevertheless, if humans like the Phoenix rise from ashes we must be ready to implement an Economic System that can afford humanity a way to conduct it's economic affairs in a just and sustainable manner. I am persuaded by the member American Dream that Communism as Marx contemplated it would be such a desirable system. Comments from AD and others welcomed.

[americandream]

I will be happy to contribute. However, before people get themselves in a state of hysteria at the word communism, remember it is shorthand for communal living....and we all know how popular communes are when wrapped up in self indulgent new ageism.

Also, to set the record straight, Marx did not hate capitalism as is the popular myth in many quarters. He declared it the best set of social relations evolved at the time, the close of feudalism in Europe. Capitalism is meritorious, it adheres to principles of due process and is social democratic, even in its most economically liberal form. It takes the tools of modernity and applies them for the betterment of our collective lives and there cannot really be any detractors as regards these remarks....we have only to look at how we live by and large in capitalist economies for evidence.

Where it must ultimately fail is in its personalising globally, ways of living that are toxic on many levels, human unit by human unit and thus it behoves us to consider how best to take the best that capitalism has to offer and combine it with a way of life that minimises that toxic profile.

And that other point which generates hysteria is this absurd notion that communism is all about generating hatred for the sake of hatred. Marx simply and logically viewed those with the greatest investment in the commons, and with a secular basis in modernity as the most likely group vested in communal modernity, the working class. Peasant societies being deeply embedded in the high subjectivity of superstition were less likely candidates.

So before we run around wringing our hands hysterically due to the folly of others in misapplying scientific socialism, contemplate its contours as a set of social relations for a new humankind, modern yet in tune with its planet, each, sovereign individuals, yet together forging a future with unlimited potential for life on this planet and in our cosmos.

I will try and limit my contribution so as not to hog this debate but please, lets leave the name calling in the schoolyard and where we do feel strongly about issues, at least articulate robust rebuttals and attempt to persuade by reason. Communal modernism offers us the hope of arresting further degradation of our planet and if we are really the loving individuals we purport to be for family and country, we need to build on reason which after all surrounds us in our daily life, not fantasise a hysterical future overrun with warlords.

I hope this captures the essence of your objective Onlooker.

[Simon_R]

First, whats your definition of Capitalism, before you ask for alternatives

Second, can I be the one who determines the will of the collective ?

[onlooker]

Wonderful opening salvo AD. Yes my objective is served in that this thread will serve for all to debate and thus coalesce and crystallize certain ideas which hopefully will resonate with others. I also support the appeal of AD for this thread to be about a intelligent exchange of ideas and not degrade into name calling or attacks as this will only alienate potential contributors. As long as humans are around even if only two persons, we need to be able to have mutually beneficial interactions. Communal modernity is suitable for that purpose and is a system that has already been studied and articulated. I am not the expert here AD is, so any in detail questions direct toward him. I am just a disciple haha.

[Sixstrings]

I've said for years that what we're going to wind up with is some kind of "new communism." Or call it a new Socialism, or whatever.

Because it's just the reality of the extreme ends of automation, where things are going with robotics and sentient AI. Software will literally be able to do anything you or me could do.

When the AI singularity gets here, that will be a real revolution, we're talking about computers being able to do even CREATIVE work.

There are many steps between here, and the "sentient AI singularity.." -- and more and more jobs will disappear, with those steps.

To keep the economy going, since people need money in their pocket to buy the things the robots make, then it's just a reality that gov distribution of wealth will have to increase. Not saying this is good or bad, just a reality of the 21st century.

As for economic models.. nothing beats capitalism.

It's the most efficient, by far, at innovation and production and distribution and above all -- efficiency. No central planner can ever react as FAST and efficiently as a market can. Again, not saying that's good or bad, it's just how it is. (but it breaks down at the extreme end of super efficiency, when business is so efficient and labor cost free that it actually has no customers because every other business ain't paying anybody either.)

P.S. On a SMALL scale -- if we're talking about a literal "commune" or village, then that's when communism is more efficient. At the larger scales is where it breaks down, and a dynamic market is more efficient.

[SeaGypsy]

We have been doing this dance for years with AD Onlooker. Persistent is an understatement. Yet I doubt these days there is much lambasting of communism (small c) as there is near consensus that the current system is a train wreck in the making.

Similarly small c capitalism, a system of tokens, is an immense convenience not likely to go away.

The biggest problem is the scale of change required to be meaningful versus inertia. It is like the entire human energy currently devoted to Capitalism needs to about face, work a lot harder for a lot less, with an holistic primary objective over a personal one.

(I believe you are on the zeitgeist AD, keep going & developing ideas & networks, who knows where it might actually lead? I told you many years ago we would be great neighbours, but you would have to ignore my massive hemp crop & me your alcoholism)

[SeaGypsy]

Here's an idea/

Revolution by social currency revolt. Enough countries & states can do as Greece is doing, what if a bioregion can do a local version of bitcoin & over time withdraw from participation in the megalopolis? What scale is realistic for a trial run, small enough to make a viable example in real time, big enough to make the news big time.? Where? When? Who?

(I know this is an old topic to most of us here but it is still one of the greatest powers the population actually own, especially easy to do now with common technology)


We have the tools right in front of us to have a global bloodless social revolution. We can invent currency & therefore subvert the entire money system. We can expose the fraud & sham passing for government & nominate our own, have our own elections & run our own strikes & decide who goes to the newly freed up jail cells occupied by people who did shit which is no longer illegal. We just have to realise we can do it, then that we must do it. The least we can do is have some fun with the topic.

[onlooker]

hmm, I see Sea well I must be a sucker cause in a short span of time I am a convert. Seriously, I have been drifting towards Marx for years. I think circumstances afford humanity the opportunity to do this about face you mentioned Sea. In a world less bountiful, more aware of limits and whereby capitalism has proven woefully inadequate to deal with problems of it's own making then alternatives will be sought. Communal Communism affords just such an alternative. A system of common vested interests, of sharing, of cooperation, of protecting the commons and seeking to satisfy human needs for everyone rather then wants for a few is precisely what the doctor ordered.

[Timo]

As for economic models.. nothing beats capitalism.

It's the most efficient, by far, at innovation and production and distribution and above all -- efficiency. No central planner can ever react as FAST and efficiently as a market can. Again, not saying that's good or bad, it's just how it is. (but it breaks down at the extreme end of super efficiency, when business is so efficient and labor cost free that it actually has no customers because every other business ain't paying anybody either.)

P.S. On a SMALL scale -- if we're talking about a literal "commune" or village, then that's when communism is more efficient. At the larger scales is where it breaks down, and a dynamic market is more efficient.

Fair enough, but i'd suggest you just identified humanity's achilles heel: "FAST." Human evolution has undergone a very dramatic advance (or retreat) during the 20th Century (industrial age). We've achieved the ability to do anything and everything FAST, and now we're seeing the environmental and climatic consequences of these abilities. These abilities have also become engrained into our expectations as a species. The expectations of speed, and on-demand consumerism has reduced our mental capacities to think longer-term. On the whole, humanity cannot project the consequences of our actions beyond next week.

Just as a shallow example, take a look at all of the global stock markets. Financial advisors all tell us to think "long term," but the traders, and most of us actual investors follow the markets by the minute, and are overly motivated to BUY, or SELL at the slightest sign of immediate turmoil in some sector of the markets, thinking short-term only.

As another example, i'm sure many people who started reading this post here have gotten bored with my sentiments about humanity, and have already hit the backspace button to go on to something else. MTV and Sesame Street have very sucessfully reduced out attention span, where we can focus on only one thing for less than 1 minute.

Capitalism is immediate. Anything else takes too long for us to even consider as an alternative. We are a species of Veruca Salts, with very few exceptions. There are alternatives to capitalism. There are much better alternatives to capitalism, but the only way we'll ever change this system will be by force, and that force will inevitably be the result of some global catastrophy that forces our current economies, and our current environment to cease entirely. We will consider and adapt to a new alternative only when we are forced to do so. Until then, those who suggest alternatives as a better practice will be vilified and condemned in childish schoolyard ways. Humanity is not currently capable of anything else.

We are a product of our enviroment, and for the past 100+ years, our environment has provided us with everything we need, practically on demand. Accepting anything less (different) is a personal threat to our livelihood, and we've evolved to supress those threats at all costs. We are now willing to sacrifice our future for our own personal, immediate satisfaction. That is the extent of our mental capacities.

Have a nice weekend, everyone.

[GHung]

AD: "Communal modernism offers us the hope of arresting further degradation of our planet and if we are really the loving individuals we purport to be for family and country, we need to build on reason which after all surrounds us in our daily life, not fantasise a hysterical future overrun with warlords."

Ignores the hard-limits reality of extreme overshoot. May or may not be valid in another reality, but 7+ billion humans on a small finite planet is tantamount to having screwed the pooch. 'Hysterical future' indeed. Starvation and reason don't play well. Mass dislocation and attempted assimilation into a new world order begets chaos. Sharing equitably what's left of habitability is a pipe dream which can only exist in threads like this.

Sorry......

[onlooker]

GHung, what you are saying is very true. I commend you for having the guts to look at our reality without any blinders. However, for personal reasons which I rather not elaborate, I retain optimism that humanity will make it through this bottleneck with a semblance of civilization and in numbers that while not so huge still a substantial amount of people. So that is why I created and am contributing to this thread. You admit in another reality perhaps. Well I think that other reality will happen in our lifetimes. I know this confession will raise some eyebrows. Yet I am not refuting the basis that many now on this site have for believing in catastrophic doom heading our way. It is a logically and reasonably based conclusion. I just have a reason to believe we may be surprised in a favorable way soon. Anyway that is it for now.

[americandream]

My experiences as a trader have curiously reinforced my belief in the intellectual potential latent in the human mind. Many of the problems facing the trading fraternity, the hedging strategies for example....are all down to the fact that they havent a clue.

As a self taught price discoverer, if there is anything I have learnt its that if you can discover price, all you need are the charts despite what so called seasoned traders may say. In trading people will talk at length about buying and selling levels but ask them to at least at least articulate a bare explanation of those levels (you cannot reasonably expect someone to give away a commercial secret) and you hear nothing original but the usual trend trading mantra. But the structure of the market is very specific, it moves in daily waves of sentiment whichflow at London opening and ebb at NY closing making trend trading for the retail trader a very dangerous game. The reality of market structure is totally unlike anything that is taught out there. In other words, the markets are driven by a small group of the competent, a very small group....invariably based in London and NY. These are the people who basically run the business of global capitalism.

I take a similar strategy in all other affairs.. In other words, one either makes sense or one doesnt. And a person does not have to give away much in making sense. In fact, the least said but succinctly, the better.

Similarly on climate issues, people are all over the place; Credit to those who go out there and gather the data but interpreting it is another matter and thus it pays to use discrimination in this area. I have long called on global issues and have been almost entirely correct.

The data on human behaviour is the same. People are by and large operating at half throttle at work and in their personal lives. They have the capacity to develop and enhance these skills if given the opportunity. I have a firm belief that given a reasonable pathway to clear facts, most people will have similar skills at reasoning. But invariably we tend to get dragged along or bullied into half baked thinking and then that sort of settles in and becomes routine. I faced extreme aggression with my trading endeavours but went my own way. Likewise with my political beliefs. Usually, I will have the natural selection argument thrown at me by people who then proceed to chirp on about how we should all be ethical. How inconsistent is that.

edit: My thinking on the global crisis coming our way is that we gather the best from capitalism bearing in mind that its has its roots in Reason and formulate a circular economic mechanism around this. It is critical that we develop a world community of self thinkers with an emphatic rejection of thought pathways that lead into the mists of mysticism. It is these very mists that are responsible for an Islamist murdering in the name of an eternity of sexual gratification or a redneck murdering in service to his Middle Eastern Christian messiah.

Combine an encouragement of scepticism with genuine inquiry and sound social economy and we may actually start something which will build on our modern era achievements in which we have much to admire.

[onlooker]

More then inconsistent - hypocritical. Revealing analysis AD. Certainly people display different ranges of intelligence and curiosity. I think one must always keep an open mind and be prepared to accept ideas previously rejected. Life as a way of humbling all by way of the unexpected. I mean that both in a good way and bad way. Yet all the more reason to analyze and think competently and without emotional prejudice or obstruction. We will see on this thread how the posting goes.

[Timo]

Letting nature take its course is not only unethical, it's immoral! How dare we succumb to the natural order of things. We are the ruler of our universe! We are the Gods of our own destiny! Survival of the fittest ONLY applies according to capitalistic principles, and WE are the ones who decide who survives, and who fails. THAT's the way the world has been destined to work. God made us Gods of our own destiny, and by God, we will change the course of nature to suit our own ends! God Damnit!

Letting nature dictate our future is immoral. If we do it, however, there's nothing immoral about it. That's God's Plan.

[americandream]

Letting nature take its course is not only unethical, it's immoral! How dare we succumb to the natural order of things. We are the ruler of our universe! We are the Gods of our own destiny! Survival of the fittest ONLY applies according to capitalistic principles, and WE are the ones who decide who survives, and who fails. THAT's the way the world has been destined to work. God made us Gods of our own destiny, and by God, we will change the course of nature to suit our own ends! God Damnit!

Letting nature dictate our future is immoral. If we do it, however, there's nothing immoral about it. That's God's Plan.

Thats not quite true. Nature has endowed us with a conscious capacity to contemplate cause and effect in reasonable fashion and we have in a variety of clumsy ways been trying to give it effect for thousands of years. Rejecting that evolutionary tool is...hmmm...unfathomable.

[GHung]

Sorry, onlooker. Not really trying to rain on your party. My feeling is that we'll be reverting to smaller warring tribal-type bands who will be competing for salvage opportunities and the best habitable/arable lands. This would be after our darkest of dark ages, since humanity is overdue for its comeuppance. This assumes humans survive themselves at all.

Who knows. Those groups lucky enough to achieve the luxury of being able to afford higher-level social systems may, indeed, adopt some form of equitable communal/cooperative collective as you describe. Hopefully the Shaman will preserve the stories of mankind's downfall, helping their charges to avoid the same mistakes again. This, too, I doubt. We've been warning ourselves about the consequences of certain behaviors for millennia, with pretty poor results, collectively.

Klaatu: You've been out of contact for a long time.

Mr. Wu: I had a dangerous assignment. This is hostile territory.

Klaatu: I've noticed. I was hoping I could reason with them.

Mr. Wu: I'm afraid they are not a reasonable race. I've been living amongst them for seventy years now. I know them well.

Klaatu: And?

Mr. Wu: Any attempt to intercede with them would be futile. They are destructive, and they won't change.

Klaatu: Is that your official report?

Mr. Wu: The tragedy is, they know what's going to become of them.

[Both Klaatu and Wu turn to look at Helen, Jacob and Wu's grandson who are seated at another table]

Mr. Wu: They sense it. But they can't seem to do anything about it.

[They switching to speaking English]

Mr. Wu: I'm staying.

Klaatu: You can't stay here.

Mr. Wu: I can and I will.

Klaatu: If you stay, you'll die.

Mr. Wu: I know. This is my home now.

Klaatu: You yourself called them a destructive race.

Mr. Wu: That's true. But still, there is another side. You see, I... I love them. It is a very strange thing. I... I... I can't find a way to explain it to you. For many years I cursed my luck for being sent here. Human life is difficult. But as this life is coming to an end... I consider myself lucky... to have lived it.

[Timo]

Letting nature take its course is not only unethical, it's immoral! How dare we succumb to the natural order of things. We are the ruler of our universe! We are the Gods of our own destiny! Survival of the fittest ONLY applies according to capitalistic principles, and WE are the ones who decide who survives, and who fails. THAT's the way the world has been destined to work. God made us Gods of our own destiny, and by God, we will change the course of nature to suit our own ends! God Damnit!

Letting nature dictate our future is immoral. If we do it, however, there's nothing immoral about it. That's God's Plan.

Thats not quite true. Nature has endowed us with a conscious capacity to contemplate cause and effect in reasonable fashion and we have in a variety of clumsy ways been trying to give it effect for thousands of years. Rejecting that evolutionary tool is...hmmm...unfathomable.

Capitalism has compromised our capacity to contemplate cause and effect in reasonable fashion. Capitalism has removed us from the natural world. Nature's rules no longer apply.

Or so we believe. If evidence arises to the contrary, we reject that evidence as a liberal consipracy to force communism on the civlilized world. Agenda 21! We must resist the truth, even if it kills us!

Which it will.

[Pops]

Pretty sure the big holdup with becoming a commie world is the communal part. If you can come up with a way to get rid of evil capitalism and allow everyone to keep all their stuff, and get more, you have a winner.

Someday when everyone has nothing, maybe.

[americandream]

Timo

Contrary to your views, the reasonabel standard which marshalls much of our behaviour even if it offends you is recent. Prior to that life was quite arbitrary and at the whim of a divinely ordained elite, even in pre feudal primitive socialism. Granted you are disillusioned with the economic merry go round of consumerist capitalism but that is a function of the labouring social relations we live under, the social principles that govern our judicial processes for example are a hardwon gift that should not be dismissed lightly. They are worth defending and preserving. How we treat our planet is down to the way we work, not our notions of fairness and decency which are unfairly lumped in with capitals voraciousness.

[onlooker]

haha, Ghung nice discourse from "The Day the Earth stood still" I guess what endears us to ET is we are a tragic race so much potential yet unable to even come close to achieving it rather paving the way for our own demise. Lots to love there. Pops look at the native peoples of this continent, they lived thousands of years bereft of insatiable greed. It is doable. Wanton consumption is an artificial construct we created, we can destroy it. Humans have more profound needs and wants then acquisition.