So Inflation Is Killing Me - Video In Thread

[Toffer90]

I feel communism is basically state slavery of all but the few running the show.

Communism is basically an economical idea that states that cooperation is better than competition, that all citizens in a society should own equal shares in important infrastructure, production and services within the society. It does not exclude private property and business unless taken to the extreme.
Back in the 70's Norway was imo more a communism state than a capitalist paradise, but there were still privately owned properties and initiatives. China still carries on many communism principles (around 50% of GDP is from state owned business).
Democracy should in theory be a better fit for communism economy than for capitalism economy (the state represent the people and the people is the state, what is state owned is owned by all citizens in a manner of speaking), though through history communism has always manifested by being, too fast and recklessly (revolutionary change), forced by the few, upon the many.
Socialism (Distribution of wealth / The strong protecting the weak) is a natural part of communism economy, but it is not limited to it, nor always an integral part of it. Communist states without strong democracy and social security are doomed to fail.
The political party of mr. Adolf claimed to be a socialist party (but far from a communist party), but they were also social-darwinist (law of the jungle / dog eat dog) which in many ways is the opposite of pure socialism, so their form of socialism was more of a nepotist camaraderie only meant for the strong/healthy or successful people of the accepted race.

My point is that authoritarianism is bad regardless of the economical system in a nation.

There is probably many statements made here that people would like to debate, I'm not in the mood for such a philosophical and complex debate on a forum atm, so don't expect me to try and defend any of these statements much.
I'll just round off by saying that there are as many definitions for a non-simple word as there are people who understand the word, I don't claim that my definitions are more correct than others, but it is often so that people agree more than they think, and this is because they usually don't ask what the other person means by their words before judging them.

 

[Thunderbrd]

At the end of the day, in such a scenario you may have too few people left to take care of everyone.

The world we are entering thanks to our automation capabilities is making this a completely unnecessary concern. The solution is to stop worrying about what others want to do or not do, knowing we don't NEED them to do anything at all. You can always try to inspire others to do things you see need done. The right to survive should never be the way we 'force' people to work. I mean, we've arrived, as a species. We no longer have to do much of anything to have our needs met.

AI doesn't know how to program, and possibly will never will.

We're past this point already actually. They can and do program. They just cannot currently DESIGN any program they aren't programmed to design, aka, they cannot be truly creative. Though even that is probably in limited ways being made possible.

There are certain problems that an AI (or to be more precise, a turing machine) will never be able to solve. The easiest example is The Halting Problem: if the program runs, will it ever stop? Another one is: is this the intended result?

The new trinary base language chips are perhaps looking to become a solution to some of those but even if AI systems always need us, they will still only ever need us in a very limited capacity once they have been established to do what they do.

This is some great philosophical question. To be or not to be? What is the meaning of life?

Please don't tell me that the point of our existence is to toil. That would be the most fundamentally disappointing reality imaginable. I'd prefer to think that even those who do not 'labor', cannot help but BE and by BEING we are compelled to be creative and to manifest that creativity and that creativity is our means to be a channel both from and to the divine source and as a result it is actually the 'toil' that gets in the way of us being what we are supposed to be, which is WHY we balk at the concept of slavery while refusing to admit we've been effectively made slaves in every modern economic system on Earth. We should be free to manifest what comes to us to manifest. And if nothing is coming to us, explore to experience so as to generate the essence OF expression.(inspiration) 'Jobs' are a distraction from real achievement and a total waste of our efforts UNLESS they happen to BE the thing that we WANT to do. Honestly few people wish to do nothing and the idea of what doing nothing is is seriously flawed in most of us, corrupted by the competitive society we are in. Many would say I do 'nothing' when I mod because it has no financial value to me.

In a limited resources environment, this will always stay. But we can aim to remove the constraints, and hopefully from there we will manage to make this dream come true.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. Man should not need to 'toil' to survive. Our world is so filled with an abundance of provision that none should be required to have to pay for the right to live and live in some degree of comfort. The only argument against this is the belief that preservation of the right to personal property is more important than ensuring the right of all human beings to thrive regardless of their behavior.

@Toffer90 : I tend to agree strongly with all you just said... all of it. I try to divide the concepts of communism from socialism to say that, as you pointed out, communism as it has manifested has largely been a system run by an elitist few and as you point out as well, it is authoritarianism that is the ultimate problem regardless of the system. You also point out, very effectively, that the nations that have balanced state vs private economics are the ones that are really starting to shine in the world as being up and coming stars while those who lean too far one way or another are those that are careening and unstable economically.

 

[tmv]

The new trinary base language chips are perhaps looking to become a solution to some of those

You are not going to overcome the limit of Turing computable with a new number base. For reference: https://www.techopedia.com/why-not-ternary-computers/2/32427

they will still only ever need us in a very limited capacity once they have been established to do what they do.

I think we can be a bit more optimistic than that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice's_theorem states that Turing machines can not decide any property other than trivial ones (either a property that is always false or a property that is always true). Semantics seems to be a big problem for algorithms.

Please don't tell me that the point of our existence is to toil.

If the naturalists were right, our point of existence would be - nothing. While I don't believe that, it's a bit hard to find a compelling argument here.

effectively made slaves

Only if you are removing pretty much any part of the definition of slavery. We are not trade goods, the compulsion to work does not come from a person (a person might benefit from it but that is not at all the same thing), we can give notice (might be unwise but there is no punishment for it), there is compensation (perhaps never enough but that's still "infinitely" more than with real slavery), for employers there is actual incentive to save labor (not at all true for real slavery and perhaps a reason why slave societies didn't advance that much in history, a fact that I think is reflected in the mod?). Both the first and the last point are the most important IMO.

Honestly few people wish to do nothing and the idea of what doing nothing is is seriously flawed in most of us, corrupted by the competitive society we are in.

Perhaps not, but many would be content with "hobby work" that takes just a few hours per week.

Many would say I do 'nothing' when I mod because it has no financial value to me.

An upside of capitalism is that this is not their business unless they are particularly close to you. There is no exterior compulsion to work (even for money), it is up to you to live your life. Of course there are constraints you might have to live with, but if you find a - legal - way to do that people cannot stop you. In a "forced labor" economy OTOH there might be a commissioner who decides that your talents are needed elsewhere and simply shuts this endeavor down. That is much more akin to slavery.

Our world is so filled with an abundance of provision that none should be required to have to pay for the right to live and live in some degree of comfort. The only argument against this is the belief that preservation of the right to personal property is more important than ensuring the right of all human beings to thrive regardless of their behavior.

The only argument against this is the assumption that the number of humans will continue to increase. If that can truly be avoided in the future, this would certainly be possible, even - or perhaps especially - in a capitalist society.

 

[Noriad2]

Eh your descriptions of "communism" are shockingly naive.

A communist is somebody who wants to legalize theft. First everything valuable has to be transferred to a nebulous "collective" then from that "collective" to himself. A communist rants and raves at length about justice, injustices and the badness of others, but that is to hide and/or justify his own desire to steal.

It would be very easy to start a communist system in the Western world. Just start a foundation, call it "The Collective" and everybody can join, add his own possessions to this foundation, and stuff gets redistributed to all members according to their "needs". The fact that this doesn't happen is because it defeats the purpose of communism, which is theft.

What the communists did a century ago in the Ukrain is label Kulaks (small independent farmers who became moderately prosperous by hard work) "privileged". The communists then recruited the worst scumbags they could find among the poor, and said that if they joined up, they could murder people who belong to this "privileged class" and steal their stuff. And you didn't have to be rich to be considered part of this "privileged class", just being related by family to a kulak was enough to land you in a concentration camp and be executed. Millions died as a result.

The German National socialists executed people just because they were Jewish. The Red Khmer executed people just because they wore glasses. I'm not joking.

Communists and National Socialists differed in opinion on which groups should be exterminated and robbed of all possessions, but they are both branches of socialism - the ideology of legalized theft.

Have you heard the term "white privilege" lately? It is disturbing that the classic communist strategy of labeling a group of people as "privileged" (traditionally marking that group for theft and extermination) is making a major comeback in the West - combined with the race-based group identification idea of the nazi's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization

Jordan Peterson - The Idea of Privilege and Oppression in Communist Regimes

 

[Thunderbrd]

You are not going to overcome the limit of Turing computable with a new number base. For reference: https://www.techopedia.com/why-not-ternary-computers/2/32427

I think we can be a bit more optimistic than that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice's_theorem states that Turing machines can not decide any property other than trivial ones (either a property that is always false or a property that is always true). Semantics seems to be a big problem for algorithms.

As I understand it, this is highly debate-able and we cannot say we really know whether this is true or not. We live in a reality where it seems limits are surpassable simply because they exist and arrogance to think anything cannot manifest invites that thing to manifest. We're in a universe that appears to favor the ability to make breakthroughs wherever a limit appears uncrossable.

I strongly doubt there's much AI's won't be doing. The mind is just a functioning AI itself unless there's some kind of much more complex system than neurons at work (which there may be but then that's just another level of understanding intelligence and insights into that system can eventually be replicated by AI as well.) We might want to limit this development but the draw to discover what the limits of intellect replication can be will probably prove too strong.

If the naturalists were right, our point of existence would be - nothing. While I don't believe that, it's a bit hard to find a compelling argument here.

That's probably a true statement. Except add to it that we create our own purpose by what we feel and attach value to.

Only if you are removing pretty much any part of the definition of slavery.

I suppose I have a loose concept of what makes slavery defineable as slavery. You list a lot of good differentiations from that definition but generally speaking, being made to work is still being made to work. When the system you are in enforces you to commit to effort on behalf of the benefit of another, that, to me, is slavery. Debt and poverty demands this in our system. Thus our nation doesn't have a real motive to solve for poverty - it's exactly where all of those running the show want us to be in, almost universally, so that the pool of those able to serve them grows and the desperation to serve as faithfully as possible grows as well. Poverty and fear of it, and greed, is what motivates our economy to crank around. It's absolutely miserable. Not much better than slavery. In some ways worse because you have to beg for the ability to have the opportunity to serve and debase yourself or you starve out. If you aren't talented enough to be a valuable employee, you are released from service. If you have your own thoughts and opinions, you are released from service. If you don't walk an absolute tight rope and jump through hoops in today's world, you're not good enough to live. At least slaves are valued as a resource by those who own them and are thus nurtured by wise owners. Mind, I'm not REALLY saying it's worse than slavery... just saying that the poverty black hole one can fall into can make slavery a better alternative and we seem to be making that possibility a very real reality once again by pushing so many to so great a level of poverty and desperation that they end up in a private prison which ... is slavery.

We are not trade goods

You sure about that? We might not be 'tradeable' on a market, but we are certainly a collective crop of measurable value that nations consider a measure of their power and capability.

the compulsion to work does not come from a person (a person might benefit from it but that is not at all the same thing),

True. But a compulsion to work is a compulsion to work and when you are compelled to and you cannot because you are found undesireable for any local job needs, you can quickly wish you were a slave instead.

we can give notice (might be unwise but there is no punishment for it)

Oh there's a punishment for it when you scrape for wages as it is and cannot afford to take a day off without your basic needs completely falling apart. This living paycheck to paycheck seems to be something many people who do well in this system cannot understand... it's like living on the edge of a cliff in a never ending earthquake.

I've pulled myself away from that cliff but I know all too well how many people are limited to only being able to maintain their position at that edge because the community they live in doesn't offer any greater potential or their own innate insufficiencies limit them to this life.

there is compensation (perhaps never enough but that's still "infinitely" more than with real slavery)

Getting a roof over your head is pretty much a basic tenant for being a slave in most nations that allow it. There's certainly no way that minimum wage can often provide even that for yourself and in many communities that's all there is so you are then expected to be able to shack with someone else and split the burden of that shelter and other needs or just figure out a way to live in a tent and still work.

for employers there is actual incentive to save labor

Exactly, thus what makes our system a nightmare. The employer sees all his employees as an inconvenience to be shed if possible and to filter through as quickly as he can to find the best quality desperation he can harness.

In a "forced labor" economy OTOH there might be a commissioner who decides that your talents are needed elsewhere and simply shuts this endeavor down. That is much more akin to slavery.

True... I'll give you that. At least our system does give freedom to follow their calling, even if it is non-profitable, if they can thrive enough on the side while doing so.

The only argument against this is the assumption that the number of humans will continue to increase. If that can truly be avoided in the future, this would certainly be possible, even - or perhaps especially - in a capitalist society.

Interesting... I thought the capitalist society demanded infinite population growth so as to create infinite market growth potential?

Eh your descriptions of "communism" are shockingly naive.

Interesting perspective. There are a lot of regimes that have taken power in the name of communism as if it was some kind of nation-club, which in many cases it is. I don't believe that SOME measure of wealth redistribution is bad. If it was, our system is already in mass violation. If we didn't do it, we'd really be hanging a lot of people out to die of starvation while others go about their lives succeeding away because they got a better deal in life or just took it more seriously. We'd not have a police force or a military, perhaps not a fire department, no safety regulations that make sure that 10 year olds don't get in cars and drive over people on the sidewalk... total anarchy, which would be awesome if people were that evolved to allow it because we were all that responsible. Again, we need both sides of the poles of private vs public services. In light of this, due to many of the points you make about the stigma that previous efforts to install 'communism' by name and activity have been so horrific, it's not a wise word to use to describe any ideals imo. Toffer alluded to that point in what he said about different people taking certain words to mean different things. Socialism should definitely NOT be considered a desire to steal but rather a desire to require the government to wisely irrigate a PORTION of the resources of the nation (more from those who can afford it than those who cannot) to be directed to where needs exist that are not profitable to provide the best services to.

But I find your statements valuable to understanding how there is so much hatred out there for these concepts simply on the basis of a dramatic assumption of 'criminal' intent. I find that on the extremes of 'capitalists' you'll find far more willingness and desire to steal - from those at the bottom, leveraging needs to demand the full extent of what the poor possess in trade for the right to have basic necessities met. Like health, water, air etc... If the poor generally show they have disposable income, many wealthy feel they aren't squeezing hard enough - there's more there to take!

 

[Noriad2]

But I find your statements valuable to understanding how there is so much hatred out there for these concepts simply on the basis of a dramatic assumption of 'criminal' intent.

Communists killed 100+ million people in the 20th century, and you still think that assuming criminal intent is 'dramatic'? How many millions of people must be explicitly murdered in the name of an ideology before you are willing to assume that there might be something wrong with that ideology?

 

[Thunderbrd]

Communists killed 100+ million people in the 20th century, and you still think that assuming criminal intent is 'dramatic'? How many millions of people must be explicitly murdered in the name of an ideology before you are willing to assume that there might be something wrong with that ideology? Did you watch Jordan Peterson's explanation?

You don't think our body count is nearly as high in the name of capitalism? How many have been hit by drone strikes in the last decade? How many countries are we actively bombing today? Idealism for the sake of the few is the problem and it doesn't matter if it's a communist regime using communism as their excuse or our nation killing in the name of democracy and freedom or nearly an entire continent of people being wiped out by General Custer in a genodical campaign in the name of God (because we were manifesting divine destiny). So in a lot of ways I agree with you, but we cannot fall prey to villainizing the masks of good intent that criminals all over the world wear. Communism is just another one of these.

I'm sure if you were to read communist theory, you'd see that it has, at its core, the best intent for mankind at its heart (and isn't really THAT bad a concept in itself.) As a theory, not a political movement, I feel that it is a concept that any healthy society already practices socialism (which is NOT synonymous with Communism) to a limited extent... and if we identify where that practice should be used and where it shouldn't, we will find the healthiest overall system. The same applies for capitalist systems. It has its merits too... and even in need based systems can be useful to offer some competitive benefits AS LONG as there is a baseline social system in place to offer a proper quality definition of a suitable minimum of care.

IMO, none should speak down of a political system, ideal or religion until at least giving a deep research into what it is those people believe.

I'll watch the video when I get the opportunity to use speakers.

 

[armenia4ever]

I'd agree with Noriad2 as to his points on the lethality of communism over the last hundred years. Even at it's core when trace you the revolutionary mentality trace it's roots back to the Revolutions of 1848, there's and indication of how the redistribution is supposed to work and a group held up as the target of wrath.

(The redistribution happens by force and violence.) Communist theory at it's core from it's own founding father has the notion of violence bred into it - that are further continued by Marx and Engles in their future signature work, the Communist Manifesto. (Hegel builds on it as well.)

What point to consider though is that all the planks of the Communist manifesto have already been adopted in the US, Canada, UK, and pretty much every country in the West. I suppose we do have varying hybrids. In the US, you could point to a hybrid of it that is influenced by a kind of plutocracy.

The roots of communism and it's intents are dire. The road to hell is paved with good intentions as you say. It's why fascism and communism are so close in theory and both it's adherents thought they had the best of intentions...

Quick tid bit of history I came across here. Marx had entered Paris in February of 1848 and on March 4th he gave this speech to one of the revolutionary cells there: “I am a revolutionist. I want to march in the shadow of the great Robespierre. Let blood drip from my hands. Let blood flow through the streets and victory shall be ours. Here is what virtuous citizens would say to you if he, our great lord and master, Robespierre were still alive today. When an overcrowded vessel is caught at sea in a violent storm, a part of the crew is thrown overboard to save the rest, and so we must kill those citizens who stand against us in order that righteousness may prevail. So let us kill. Let us exterminate the bourgeois in order to save society from catastrophe. We will save them, or we will kill them and save them. It is their choice.”

That last part gives you an idea of where the foundational theory for the gulags came from ranging all the way to Pol Pot.

Marx follows up further: “It is obvious that in the bloody fighting that lies ahead as in the fighting in the past, the workers will be victorious chiefly through their own courage, determination , and self sacrifice. Far from opposing the so called excesses, those examples of popular vengeance against hated individuals or public buildings which has acquired hateful memories, we must not only condone these examples, but lend them a guiding hand. Let the mob be the mob."

I suppose the the key in any revolution is to stir up the mob and control them. The book that is taken from is called "Fire In The Minds Of Men" which was written by the Chief Librarian of Congress.

Now as to mob control - it does kind of give me some in-game ideas as to revolutions both in civics and when civs suffer revolutions. Rogues, assassins, etc are often how you wreck havoc in a cities, but what if you did it through some sort of great leader? Think of what Ghandi did in India, Mandela in South Africa, Pinnochet in Chile, etc. A kind of rise to power that ends up ending the entire country.

Well to get back on topic I guess, consider something about inflation: Can you inflate the new crypto currencies? In future tech areas in this mod, I would hypothesize that inflation becomes less and less of a problem. Thoughts?

 

[Thunderbrd]

I suppose the the key in any revolution is to stir up the mob and control them.

Yep. Not like we had a peaceful split from British rule over here. It's sad, though, that so many revolutions that make so many promises of how ideal things would be if only the revolution succeeds, end up failing to deliver half as good a system as promised.

 

[Toffer90]

Eh your descriptions of "communism" are shockingly naive.

A communist is somebody who wants to legalize theft. First everything valuable has to be transferred to a nebulous "collective" then from that "collective" to himself. A communist rants and raves at length about justice, injustices and the badness of others, but that is to hide and/or justify his own desire to steal.

That's your definition of communism, I consider myself a communist but definitely not your kind of communist. It may be naive of me to define communism as simply a matter of how much of the economy that the state owns and nothing else, that state structure (e.g. democracy or not) is not a part of my definition, that socialism or social Darwinism are not part of my definition, that my definition of it does not include ethics one way or another. You seem to have a rather paranoid and complex definition of what communism is.

What the communists did a century ago in the Ukrain is label Kulaks (small independent farmers who became moderately prosperous by hard work) "privileged". The communists then recruited the worst scumbags they could find among the poor, and said that if they joined up, they could murder people who belong to this "privileged class" and steal their stuff. And you didn't have to be rich to be considered part of this "privileged class", just being related by family to a kulak was enough to land you in a concentration camp and be executed. Millions died as a result.

I don't know much about that topic. Sounds like authoritarian scumbags, racists and bandits/cutthroats to me, doesn't matter what economical theories they may have proclaimed to favor, it doesn't necessarily have to be the cause of their actions even though it may have been an effective tool for their propaganda. They could probably also be categorized as many worse things than as just communists.

Communists and National Socialists differed in opinion on which groups should be exterminated and robbed of all possessions, but they are both branches of socialism - the ideology of legalized theft.

I'm sure most people from socialist countries like England, France, Germany, Scandinavian countries, etc. does not consider their taxes as theft.

One could say that it is an integral part of communism to reduce the possibility for one individual to become filthy rich, and in that sense say that communists want to rob and exterminate the filthy rich in society.
National Socialism is all about only distributing wealth if it results in strengthening the nation (so not just out of the goodness of their hearts), it then becomes real subjective what may and may not strengthen the nation, the nazis (capitalists leaning) opinion was along the lines that genes, or rather race, were important in deciding if you qualified as someone the state should spend money on helping when in need. They were all about cold hard numbers as well, e.g. people with disabilities and certain illnesses did not deserve help as they would most likely cost more than they could repay (had already paid) in service to the nation.

I could just as well argue that unregulated capitalism is a legalization of theft. How the law can facilitate companies to get the most money out of their customers while giving as little as possible in return.
But let's leave the discussion on that, I rather watch that movie you posted than write more in this post atm.

 

[Thunderbrd]

You seem to have a rather paranoid and complex definition of what communism is.

One that is very much like most American Republicans possess on the subject.

I'm sure most people from socialist countries like England, France, Germany, Scandinavian countries, etc. does not consider their taxes as theft.

Again, another precept of the Right wing of American politics - taxation is generally perceived as only a hardly necessary evil - if you're rich anyhow. If you're middle class or poor you aren't driving the economy with your money so let's take as much as we can get away with. How do we get away with taking more by convincing people we're taking less? Play a shell game with where you take it out of the pocket and actually take more while saying you're taking less (and you are - from the federal income tax. Slightly.)

To be fair, some extreme right wing guys really believe the government pretty much shouldn't ever tax anyone at all - just enough to function as a government but provide no services beyond military, law enforcement(minimal regulation) and legislation.

I could just as well argue that unregulated capitalism is a legalization of theft. How the law can facilitate companies to get the most money out of their customers while giving as little as possible in return.

Exactly. Clear the path for the pirates who already have everything to take even more.


Please let me pause to say I know that we can all find some of our positions offensive but it is actually really cool to be a part of a community like this where we may disagree but we still come together over our mutual focus and friendship despite these disagreements. Far too many people never hear the opinions of the 'other side' of the aisle because just doing so is an explosive experience for them.

Even just sharing helps us to achieve personal depth in our outlooks. These kinds of personal influences do have a positive ripple throughout the world we live in beyond ourselves. Conversations like these are intrinsically valuable to have. Please don't think I 'dislike' anything about anyone who disagrees with me. Y'all have reasons for what you think and digging them up to hold them to the public eye of our community takes bravery and integrity, particularly when we can do this without devolving into an angry shouting match. Y'all are a great group to be a part of. Thank you for that.

 

[Faustmouse]

The longer you keep distracting TB with this discussion, the longer you will have for the next version

 

[Raledon]

The world we are entering thanks to our automation capabilities is making this a completely unnecessary concern. The solution is to stop worrying about what others want to do or not do, knowing we don't NEED them to do anything at all. You can always try to inspire others to do things you see need done. The right to survive should never be the way we 'force' people to work. I mean, we've arrived, as a species. We no longer have to do much of anything to have our needs met.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. Man should not need to 'toil' to survive. Our world is so filled with an abundance of provision that none should be required to have to pay for the right to live and live in some degree of comfort. The only argument against this is the belief that preservation of the right to personal property is more important than ensuring the right of all human beings to thrive regardless of their behavior.

If we don't need everyone to work for their survival, then that just means that the constraints on resources is lax enough. But do take into account this sentence:

When the system you are in enforces you to commit to effort on behalf of the benefit of another, that, to me, is slavery.

Why should the collective commit effort for the people above? In a normal system that'd be a sort of a trade of efforts, but not in the case of people lazing off.

Thus our nation doesn't have a real motive to solve for poverty - it's exactly where all of those running the show want us to be in, almost universally, so that the pool of those able to serve them grows and the desperation to serve as faithfully as possible grows as well

In this sense, automatization should help solve both problems. Assuming the AI doesn't gain any of humanity's self awareness issues, you have an effective non-caring slave (the AI) that works for everyone. In such a world, the rich doesn't have a reason to keep the poor down, as they aren't a danger to them. They'd most likely prefer to make the poor possess a higher education and pursue culture, entertainment and inventions and the like, since that's (at this point) the only way for them (the rich) to get a better "value" in life.

We're past this point already actually. They can and do program. They just cannot currently DESIGN any program they aren't programmed to design, aka, they cannot be truly creative. Though even that is probably in limited ways being made possible.

The new trinary base language chips are perhaps looking to become a solution to some of those but even if AI systems always need us, they will still only ever need us in a very limited capacity once they have been established to do what they do.

They might be able to design a solution, or a new piece of art. The issue I described is that certain issues cannot be found from the system itself, so any improvement in computational capabilities (ie trinary base language chips) will not affect it at all.
The beauty in proofs is that under certain constraints, with the assumption there was no mistake making the proof, you know what can and can't be done. An AI, as complex as it be and with as long as it may take, will never be able to answer the question: "Do I have a bug/virus in my (the AI's) code?".
We may invent a machine that can answer such a question, but it will not be a turing machine, but a new invention.

Exactly, thus what makes our system a nightmare. The employer sees all his employees as an inconvenience to be shed if possible and to filter through as quickly as he can to find the best quality desperation he can harness.

Take this from another perspective: we want as many businesses as possible, as each one offers a unique addition to society. Assuming the aim is to make society as good as possible for everyone, we want to spend minimal resources (manpower) to get the most benefit.
Another thing is that you make the employer sound like the source of all evil. While it may be true, In many cases the employer is under just as much pressure as the hirelings. If he manages the business badly, it will fail, and everyone will be without a job.

A communist is somebody who wants to legalize theft. First everything valuable has to be transferred to a nebulous "collective" then from that "collective" to himself. A communist rants and raves at length about justice, injustices and the badness of others, but that is to hide and/or justify his own desire to steal.

You are mixing communism (ideology) and implementation in the west/USSR.
Groups of communists has built the Kibbutzim in Israel, a community (village in size) following the USSR's publicized manifest. In a sense, it worked relatively well. It never did get as bad as in the large countries, proving that it just may possibly work.
It did, however, fall pretty fast (nowadays, the large majority of the Kibbutzim has turned into "communal village" instead of "communist village"). The intrinsic problem was the set of economic aims (we all get the same pay, but this job gets me a car for work, so it's better) means people weren't doing as much as they could for the community. In addition, people who were different may have a hard time, since they are "everyone" but not the same.
In essence, the first generation (everyone believe in communism) could get it to work pretty well. As the second generation belief started to falter, cracks appeared. When the third generation came about, too little belief in the system was left for a communist society (Kibbutz) to be kept afloat.

 

[tmv]

being made to work is still being made to work

What kind of people don't have to work themselves in a slaveholder society again?

a collective crop of measurable value that nations consider a measure of their power and capability

It's not the capitalist nations that prevent you from leaving them. The Berlin Wall was not built by the capitalist part of my country (Yes, I know that - strictly speaking - Berlin was controlled by the Four Powers, but come on, East Berlin was the capital of the GDR).

when you are compelled to and you cannot because you are found undesireable for any local job needs, you can quickly wish you were a slave instead

We have freedom of labor. The "downside" to this is that there is no guarantee, and people should be mindful when they look for an education. The education system in many countries may be poor in that regard, but it's mostly the public schools that fail here - something that any libertarian can wholeheartedly agree with.

the community they live in doesn't offer any greater potential

I certainly think we need fast and safe transportation methods, and if they can be made affordable, so much the better. Often there are other communities where certain skills are missing, and just this "potential equalization" could probably remove quite a bit of poverty.

you are then expected to be able to shack with someone else

As a legal slave (in those countries that allow it) you certainly don't get a house of your own.

The employer sees all his employees as an inconvenience to be shed if possible

Perhaps, but this is again statism speaking. I think the point is not to completely prevent unemployment, but to make regaining employment (or perhaps self-employment) possible.

I thought the capitalist society demanded infinite population growth so as to create infinite market growth potential

No, if anything it demands infinite economy growth. It doesn't mind many rich people at all - certain gadgets are obviously only bought by the rich.

If we didn't do it, we'd really be hanging a lot of people out to die of starvation while others go about their lives succeeding away because they got a better deal in life or just took it more seriously.

Until a few hundred years ago there was no welfare state at all. The taxes usually paid for the king's court and for the armed forces, and pretty much nothing else. People lived far below our current standards, but starvation was still rare - and mostly happened due to bad weather conditions destroying the crops. Back then the answer was charity. And we don't need to assume whether it worked, it worked rather well. In terms of C2C, the welfare civic was a mixture between charity and church (and at least the lower church ranks were much closer to the christian ideal than the higher ranks may have been).

Not like we had a peaceful split from British rule over here.

I already said something about that. How do you think the American Revolution would have fared if the loyalists had been hanged instead of forced to emigrate to Canada?

socialism (which is NOT synonymous with Communism)

Strictly speaking, socialism is actually worse (but "works" a little better): Communism is about a society without classes, socialism is the rule of the "proletariat".

 

[Faustmouse]

I haven't read everything, but from what I've got about "lazy people not working" or "people being made"... Y'all missing the point that Automation is advancing rapidly and AI is outsmarting us in more and more tasks. Sure, there might be new kind of jobs that humans can do better than AI (augmented humans, that is) in the future, but personally I doubt that you can reach 80%+ of all people being employed in the future. (To argue against myself: If you'd told people in 1820 that in 200 years, there will be almost no jobs left in agriculture (which was one of the main employers back than), but people becoming Webdesigners or Dataanalyst, they'd be like... "dude what?") But this is different. AI is conquering the lasts bastions in which humans excel, and in the end we probably only have creativity left (and even that is questionable as AI can compose music that most people can't tell apart from Bach and in ~2050 AI is said to write best selling books better than humans. Even if it takes 80 years and not 30, the point remains). Our current employment system will fail then, and we need to realize that.
When (if) only creativity remains, artists, musicians, writers etc will be a huge sector. And how many second class musicans or "artist" you know that you'd consider "useless" or "lazy"? Are old people "useless" because they don't have a job anymore? What about stay-at-home wifes? Are cashiers in super markets useless (because you could easily do it yourself...)? What about taxidrivers if we could have automated cars?

All hail to a superior super AI dictatorship that acts in the best interest of ALL people and nature

 

[Raledon]

I haven't read everything, but from what I've got about "lazy people not working" or "people being made"... Y'all missing the point that Automation is advancing rapidly and AI is outsmarting us in more and more tasks. Sure, there might be new kind of jobs that humans can do better than AI (augmented humans, that is) in the future, but personally I doubt that you can reach 80%+ of all people being employed in the future. (To argue against myself: If you'd told people in 1820 that in 200 years, there will be almost no jobs left in agriculture (which was one of the main employers back than), but people becoming Webdesigners or Dataanalyst, they'd be like... "dude what?") But this is different. AI is conquering the lasts bastions in which humans excel, and in the end we probably only have creativity left (and even that is questionable as AI can compose music that most people can't tell apart from Bach and in ~2050 AI is said to write best selling books better than humans. Even if it takes 80 years and not 30, the point remains). Our current employment system will fail then, and we need to realize that.
When (if) only creativity remains, artists, musicians, writers etc will be a huge sector. And how many second class musicans or "artist" you know that you'd consider "useless" or "lazy"? Are old people "useless" because they don't have a job anymore? What about stay-at-home wifes? Are cashiers in super markets useless (because you could easily do it yourself...)? What about taxidrivers if we could have automated cars?

All hail to a superior super AI dictatorship that acts in the best interest of ALL people and nature

I've heard that McDonalds made an experiment to create one of their shops fully automated. While it seems it was successful, they didn't go along with it.
In regards to the actual issue- Assume the world of 100 years from now is that the AI grows the food, process and bring to the table, as well as repair any malfunction, and do the same for other aspects of life. In such a world, you could quite easily implement the system of "everyone gets a basic living expenses" and whoever wants more, works for more. While a second rate artist may find it hard to find a market for his work, he is still guaranteed the basic living expenses.
Currently, someone needs to do this and that so that food is brought to the table, so for the most cases this system can be applied.

 

[Raledon]

I strongly recommend you to listen to this video.

I've just checked the part of "american's irish slavery" he was talking about in the video, and it appears to be nothing more than a myth (mostly wikipedia). This casts the rest of the video in bad light, too.

 

[Faustmouse]

Completely agree with you there Raledon!

 

[Thunderbrd]

The longer you keep distracting TB with this discussion, the longer you will have for the next version

At lunch at work I can't do much to mod and at home I spend a LOT of modding time waiting for the mod and games to load and process through turns, which means conversations like this actually help me to kill the down time and focus more during the time I can.

Why should the collective commit effort for the people above? In a normal system that'd be a sort of a trade of efforts, but not in the case of people lazing off.

This part does make sense. However, when it stops being necessary for all to contribute to the task of providing for the community and in fact the system becomes burdened by everyone trying to contribute, then we need to start looking at new ways to arrange the system. That's where we're at. Truth is, no system is inherently wrong. Capitalism is awesome, if it's the tool we need to negotiate our society to it's healthiest existence, and in much of recent history, that's been the case. But the world is changing due to tech and the alleviation of need is actually becoming a problem that is fouling up the machine we've built and the system has been sustained so long that it is re-invoking dramatic class conflicts that have led to tremendous violence in the past. It'd be nice if we could figure out a solution before that kind of revolutionary bubble pops again.

I watched that movie there and its obvious that the people who were revolting were as upset about the unfair distribution of wealth as we are getting to be here. It is not theft to demand some health go to the whole body of society rather than an elite few. The way they went about it was with all the rage and fury that had built up over the time of that growing malcontent, so you can lame those who acted in rage or you can try to understand where that rage came from and maybe try to foresee that such pressure is building again and that we need an answer to it before it becomes another tragic civil war that devolves into a mass expression of irrational hatred.

In this sense, automatization should help solve both problems. Assuming the AI doesn't gain any of humanity's self awareness issues, you have an effective non-caring slave (the AI) that works for everyone. In such a world, the rich doesn't have a reason to keep the poor down, as they aren't a danger to them. They'd most likely prefer to make the poor possess a higher education and pursue culture, entertainment and inventions and the like, since that's (at this point) the only way for them (the rich) to get a better "value" in life.

It SHOULD solve the problem but in reality it has become a way to worsen the problem by obsoleting the only reason the rich ever tolerated the existence of the poor, that we are useful in some way to them.

An AI, as complex as it be and with as long as it may take, will never be able to answer the question: "Do I have a bug/virus in my (the AI's) code?".

That's like saying we can't wonder if we are sick. You most certainly can replicate this in a program. We do it with fAsserts all the time. That's not much different than how we come to ask that question of ourselves, is when we start realizing something ain't right.

Another thing is that you make the employer sound like the source of all evil. While it may be true, In many cases the employer is under just as much pressure as the hirelings. If he manages the business badly, it will fail, and everyone will be without a job.

I mean more that the employer is motivated to shave costs wherever he can. I know employers aren't evil - some I've known have been really great people and others have been horrendous nightmares but the thing that seems to stand out to me is that the ones that care the least about the humanity of their employees tend to be the most successful. This is a problem in our system. It's why my Dad and Grandfather before him had great healthcare and retirement plans and now I don't know anyone who can say that. Business has been evolving and studying what works and what doesn't and unfortunately, being caring and compassionate is a flaw for the goal of business success.

What kind of people don't have to work themselves in a slaveholder society again?

I'm NOT arguing that slavery is great. I'm comparing our system to slavery to show it's not THAT much better and needs to be dramatically improved.

It's not the capitalist nations that prevent you from leaving them. The Berlin Wall was not built by the capitalist part of my country (Yes, I know that - strictly speaking - Berlin was controlled by the Four Powers, but come on, East Berlin was the capital of the GDR).

And yet we do make it very difficult to enter. So what we don't build walls to keep people in? We certainly seem to hunger for walls that keep people out. What does that tell you about the value of population these days?

We have freedom of labor. The "downside" to this is that there is no guarantee, and people should be mindful when they look for an education. The education system in many countries may be poor in that regard, but it's mostly the public schools that fail here - something that any libertarian can wholeheartedly agree with.

That labor is a requirement to survive and that there is no guarantee of it is exactly the point I'm making that makes our system flawed. The more 'libertarian' you get with the system, the more this will be a factor. As for public schools, they need to succeed. If you shut them down, you open up education levels to being stratified right along the lines of your family income and introduce a natural casting system into classes and really make it nearly impossible to break free from your caste. I'm not saying our public schools couldn't be run BETTER. That much is clear as well.

I certainly think we need fast and safe transportation methods, and if they can be made affordable, so much the better. Often there are other communities where certain skills are missing, and just this "potential equalization" could probably remove quite a bit of poverty.

I'm talking about North Idaho, for example, where there is nothing economically taking place except hard to get minimum wage service jobs. A transportation method isn't likely going to help much there. Cars already provide some measurable benefit like that.

Being able to afford to move might help some. I suppose someone should be able to find a way to profit on helping people overcome poverty when they have nothing to spend to help themselves?

As a legal slave (in those countries that allow it) you certainly don't get a house of your own.

I dunno... I had my own barracks room when I was in the military and effectively being a soldier is EXACTLY the same as being a slave except that it's not a lifetime appointment.

Perhaps, but this is again statism speaking.

Interesting that you assume this makes it a bad point.

I think the point is not to completely prevent unemployment, but to make regaining employment (or perhaps self-employment) possible.

When you get kicked when you are down, with bills charging added fees for not being paid on time and banks charging significant overdraft fees and let's not talk about the costs of short term lending, the world doesn't give much leeway for being unemployed before it starts to consume your hide due to your misery.

No, if anything it demands infinite economy growth. It doesn't mind many rich people at all - certain gadgets are obviously only bought by the rich.

What's the point of growing the economy when the growth only means a greater percentage of the overall whole is going to those who already had most of it in the first place?

Until a few hundred years ago there was no welfare state at all. The taxes usually paid for the king's court and for the armed forces, and pretty much nothing else. People lived far below our current standards, but starvation was still rare - and mostly happened due to bad weather conditions destroying the crops. Back then the answer was charity. And we don't need to assume whether it worked, it worked rather well. In terms of C2C, the welfare civic was a mixture between charity and church (and at least the lower church ranks were much closer to the christian ideal than the higher ranks may have been).

So you are saying that a religion was necessary to inspire generosity and goodwill enough to allow for the system to freely allow people to have no safety net below them? What good is a government that will allow its people to starve so it can employ a few more soldiers to fight wars to defend its right to manage a group of people?

I already said something about that. How do you think the American Revolution would have fared if the loyalists had been hanged instead of forced to emigrate to Canada?

Not sure what you're trying to point out.

Strictly speaking, socialism is actually worse (but "works" a little better): Communism is about a society without classes, socialism is the rule of the "proletariat".

Communism, as it has manifested in its flawed fashion in the world, has classes, the leaders of the regime and everyone else.
Socialism is nothing more than saying the government should provide services to its people.

I haven't read everything, but from what I've got about "lazy people not working" or "people being made"... Y'all missing the point that Automation is advancing rapidly and AI is outsmarting us in more and more tasks. Sure, there might be new kind of jobs that humans can do better than AI (augmented humans, that is) in the future, but personally I doubt that you can reach 80%+ of all people being employed in the future. (To argue against myself: If you'd told people in 1820 that in 200 years, there will be almost no jobs left in agriculture (which was one of the main employers back than), but people becoming Webdesigners or Dataanalyst, they'd be like... "dude what?") But this is different. AI is conquering the lasts bastions in which humans excel, and in the end we probably only have creativity left (and even that is questionable as AI can compose music that most people can't tell apart from Bach and in ~2050 AI is said to write best selling books better than humans. Even if it takes 80 years and not 30, the point remains). Our current employment system will fail then, and we need to realize that.
When (if) only creativity remains, artists, musicians, writers etc will be a huge sector. And how many second class musicans or "artist" you know that you'd consider "useless" or "lazy"? Are old people "useless" because they don't have a job anymore? What about stay-at-home wifes? Are cashiers in super markets useless (because you could easily do it yourself...)? What about taxidrivers if we could have automated cars?

All hail to a superior super AI dictatorship that acts in the best interest of ALL people and nature

Great points.

I've heard that McDonalds made an experiment to create one of their shops fully automated. While it seems it was successful, they didn't go along with it.
In regards to the actual issue- Assume the world of 100 years from now is that the AI grows the food, process and bring to the table, as well as repair any malfunction, and do the same for other aspects of life. In such a world, you could quite easily implement the system of "everyone gets a basic living expenses" and whoever wants more, works for more. While a second rate artist may find it hard to find a market for his work, he is still guaranteed the basic living expenses.
Currently, someone needs to do this and that so that food is brought to the table, so for the most cases this system can be applied.

The world of 100 years from now is nearly already the world we live in and we are in the process of transition. The problem is that it is a world that is incompatible with our current economic systems but the gradual transition offers no interim solution or in-between answers for people who are failing due to humanity succeeding as a whole and it is playing only into making things even better for those who had it great to begin with and so much harder for those who were already struggling. As this keeps transitioning, are we going to keep pushing to widen the wealth gap or find a way to get it to diminish somehow?

 

[raxo2222]

What about "free (or dirt cheap) needs, work for wants" system?
If AI steals 50% of jobs, then there will be 50% unemployment.

Basically Norway + Japan on steroids.