<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12pt"><DIV>You wrote, "Capitalism requires people to do something they possibly may not wish to do, or even have the ability to do." There is no realistic social system that can escape that people having to "do something they possibly may not wish to do, or even have the ability to do." That's a constraint from reality and people proposing reforms or radical changes can ignore it, but this will not make it go away.</DIV>
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<DIV>Also, the problem of ownership is really about control: who gets to control what. No workable social system can leave this issue alone as long as we live in a world of scarcity. (And there is no post-scarcity world. There are merely better or worse ways of dealing with scarcity or different ways in which scarcity evinces itself. One can pretend scarcity won't exist, that the problem with go away, but, thus far, this is merely wishful thinking.)</DIV>
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<DIV>The slogan "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" -- which, IIRC, Robert Nozick countered with the libertarian slogan "From each as he[sic] chooses, to each as he[sic] is chosen." -- does not overtly state ownership, but it's implied that someone will be deciding those abilities and those needs. (Needs, of all things, are subjective. So, this entails, in any real social system, some person or group, imposing their subjective preferences regarding what are considered needs on everyone else. And the same goes for abilities. The social order attempting to implement "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" will have to decide just what the abilities of each of society's members are. This will entail central planning of some sort. Yes, would be social engineers can pretend this is all easy and there are transparently objective means of figuring this all out, but history and sound economic
theory underscore the problems here and should give pause.)</DIV>
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<DIV>Also, I don't believe no one is free until everyone's minimum needs are met. Nor do I believe everyone must wait to be free until that happens. This doesn't mean I'm against charity or think no one should ever care about helping out a person who's poor, starving, or otherwise deprived. But it does mean that someone else's poverty or lack of something or other cannot be used as claim on everyone else's freedom. In other words, one can't validly and honesty argue that because X is destitute, Y must be coerced -- any more than one can argue because Y is coerced, X must be made destitute.</DIV>
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<DIV>Regarding, too, the subject kicking off this thread -- Castro's recent admissions during an interview -- I find it strange that a dictator is really being taken seriously. The guy is merely admitting his social system doesn't work now. He's not admitting it never worked ever. Nor is he even owning up to the wrongs he's committed -- which are not of the armchair type of debating the merits of social sytems, but of the real world type of hurting and killing people. I may be overly cyncial, but a man who wants to stay in power or have his clique stay in power and who likely realizes that time is running out, that his allies are either feeble or abandoning him, is unlikely to be having a genuine change of heart. Instead, it seems like he sees it's not working out and his regime, brittle as all dictatorships are, might collapse the moment his subject realize how utterly weak it is. (And this is the same for all regimes everywhere: they rule
only as long as the ruled go along with it. Once that support or acquiescence diminishes below a certain level.)</DIV>
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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Tahoma><FONT size=3 face=Arial>Regards,</FONT></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Tahoma><FONT size=3 face=Arial>Dan</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">From:</SPAN></B> Tim Halterman <timhalterman@gmail.com><BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">To:</SPAN></B> ExI chat list <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org><BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Sent:</SPAN></B> Fri, September 10, 2010 3:24:07 PM<BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Subject:</SPAN></B> Re: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute...<BR></FONT><BR>2010/9/9 samantha <SPAN dir=ltr><<A href="mailto:sjatkins@mac.com" rel=nofollow target=_blank ymailto="mailto:sjatkins@mac.com">sjatkins@mac.com</A>></SPAN><BR></DIV>
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<DIV class=im>On 9/9/10 6:55 AM, Tim Halterman wrote:
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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial><SPAN>Really, what do you make of this?</SPAN></FONT></DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV><BR>No current system is perfect and everlasting, communism, capitalism or otherwise. </DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>Why? What makes them fail? Are some better than others? In what ways. </DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
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<DIV>The fact that governance is requried. As long as there is a human in authority there will likely be envy and certainly inequality. This is imperfect. And sure I find some better than others.</DIV>
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<DIV>I don't think any system which requires people to do something they don't wish or relies on exploiting another being as a permanent solution. </DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>Laissez faire capitalism requires neither. </DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
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<DIV>I'd say produce or starve is a flaw. Capitalism requires people to do something they possibly may not wish to do, or even have the ability to do. </DIV>
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<DIV>These systems are simply biding their time until technology advances to a point that a true communism is possible.</DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>BARF. Communism is utterly broken by design. <BR>
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<DIV> Communism in that sense being a society where individuals are free to do as they wish and do not require the exploitation of others to do so. I think Marx felt this way, although specific quotes elude me (It's been a number of years since I read his work).<BR><BR></DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>That is not communism. In communism the collective owns everything and the individual owns nothing. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is a common slogan of communism at its most idealistic. That is utterly unworkable. When everyone owns everything and nothing no one has the right to do with anything at all what she wishes. </DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
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<DIV>The ideal communism I speak to does not contain the word "own" nor does it take anything from each. And yes I've read Atlas Shrugged. </DIV>
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<DIV>I always looked at the Soviet Union as simply picking a model close to a hopeful end-state. Had technology progressed at a faster rate I'm not sure the collapse would have been inevitable, they could have simply evolved. I see the most technologically advanced societies the closest to achieving true communism.</DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>A state that killed tens of millions on its own citizens on purpose is held up as an ideal and just before its time? This is utterly abhorrent. <BR><BR>- samantha</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
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<DIV>I'm not going to defend the Soviet Union, that wasn't really my point. I will say however that unless you live on another planet we're all pieces on the same game board. Until a day comes when not one person goes hungry the same day a resource is spent on the defense or offense of one nation against another I'm not going to participate in finger-pointing. We all pay taxes, we all own a piece of a gun.</DIV>
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<DIV>-Tim</DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></div><br>
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