<div class="gmail_quote">2010/8/16 samantha <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sjatkins@mac.com">sjatkins@mac.com</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"><div class="im">Drugs grow on trees? Since when is mere need a license to take from
others? Yes, drugs are overpriced. But are you sure you want to live
in a world where whatever you produce by your own effort at non-zero
cost can be demanded whenever anyone anywhere needs it without
compensation? Think about it. </div>
</div></blockquote></div><div><br></div>The point was that an alien civilization might not think it's weird of us. Even if it's not desirable for us to live in such a world (I'm still undecided), it might be for aliens. Imagine that they have evolved to be perfect communists (seems feasible; social insects are part-way there) with a strong sense of compassion. Then, since they live in an advanced society, they will hold the rational belief that no matter what anyone takes from them they'll still have whatever they need. Because they're compassionate, they'd be perfectly willing to give shit away even if it cost them to make it.<br>
<br><div>To answer your original question: </div><div><br></div><div>Imagine that you live in a world where there are enough people and resources to cover everyones' needs, plus basic comforts, as long as everyone between, say, 20 and 60 works a modest amount--say, 10 or 20 hours a week. People can generally work in their chosen profession, especially people with skills. Furthermore, there are enough resources that, if people are willing to work a bit extra, they can earn more, have an even more comfortable lifestyle, etc. Some extra resources are devoted towards incentivizing people to sign up for the least favorable jobs. </div>
<div><br></div><div>This is the idea behind socialism. We really do have the resources to provide for everyones' basic needs with moderate ease. Perhaps it won't be done at maximum efficiency, but most people don't care so long as there aren't millions of people dying yearly from easily preventable causes, plus the millions of people (some potentially geniuses) stuck in crappy situations because they have to work extremely hard just to scrape by.</div>
<div><br></div><div>To counter your idea of people "taking from you": first off, by many peoples' sense of morality it'd be pretty evil to deny medicine out of your cabinet to a dying person (especially a child) if you didn't absolutely need it yourself. Secondly, these aren't cases of people stealing from other peoples' homes; it'd be more like people "stealing" crates of medicine from a big company for a dying village. There is an argument that perhaps you're doing more damage by reducing the company owners' livelihood, but most likely the owners are much more well off than the people doing the stealing. You could then say that the companies, by virtue of their capital show their aptitude at creating wealth more efficiently, so perhaps they could do more good by not getting stolen from, then increasing their capital super-linearly and then giving the medicine out at a later date. But in practice, companies often don't have that great of a growth rate, and they don't end up giving out the medicine (or enough), and certainly they might not be able to achieve and sustain a rate of growth which would allow them to distribute enough medicine later in order to make up for the lost lives early on.</div>
<div><br></div><div>If your only objection to redistribution of wealth is "OH NOEZ STEALING", then you're just greedy, or at least that you and I (as well as much of the giant poor population) hold conflicting values. There are other more legitimate arguments to make, though. One is that it inevitably leads to corruption (possibly, but capitalist systems seem to be the same). </div>
<div><br></div><div>One is that it is inefficient due to a lack/reduction of price signals, which I think I agree with, but as I mentioned above, I'm pretty sure you could build a system that despite inefficiency might be at least efficient enough to cover everyones' basic needs plus some. (Participatory economics or AI-based organization or some other such scheme might do the trick.) </div>
<div><br></div><div>Another is that development would stagnate due to reduced economic incentive to stagnate, but do you really think that all the geeks out there would cease to invent stuff just because they couldn't make as much profit for it? Hell, half the stuff invented out there already comes from people who have no real profit incentive to invent it or not. I agree that there could easily be some slowdown in the sorts of things that are big and tedious but useful, but I'm sure that the stuff would still get though up, and then you could let engineer types build it instead of doing manual labor. Plus, if you organize the thing properly (think technostructure, c.f. Galbraith) you could probably even speed up development by providing long-term research ability in riskier ventures than capitalism would generally be willing to pay for.</div>
<div><br></div><div>As for reduced incentives--make it a mixed system, providing extra-basic needs to everyone, basic comforts to everyone who performed to standards, then provide extra cash or perhaps social incentives (hell, even "points") to people who perform well. Allow for job mobility. Make sure that you can't become manager of a factory by appointment from a Communist party official. That sort of thing. Really, the costs of basics needs for everyone wouldn't be making much of a dent compared to, for instance, military spending, so you could make this thing happen without really changing the system up very much.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Still, I'm on the fence. Perhaps there really isn't a way to do socialism with humans that turns out better than capitalism. I blame my doubt on my middle class white Texan Christian upbringing (the source of the instinct instilled in me, which regularly rears its head contrary to my logic and causes me annoying levels of dissonance, but which proves to me that people really can overcome their gut values and beliefs, in my case by merely having a stronger belief in logic and science).</div>
<div><br>-- <br>Jebadiah Moore<br><a href="http://blog.jebdm.net">http://blog.jebdm.net</a><br>
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