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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><div><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span class=apple-converted-space><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> </span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>Tara Maya [mailto:tara@taramayastales.com]<span class=apple-converted-space> </span><br><b>Sent:</b><span class=apple-converted-space> </span>Thursday, November 10, 2011 1:48 PM<br><b>To:</b><span class=apple-converted-space> </span>ExI chat list<br><b>Subject:</b><span class=apple-converted-space> </span>Re: [ExI] Capitalism, anti capitalism, emotional arousal</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'>Almost none of my emails get through, so I apologize if I am cramming too many ideas in at once. These are my thoughts inspired by the ongoing discussion.<br><br>1. Happiness vs. Suffering<br>There is no utopia possible, because of human nature. Actually, it's worse than that. Change human nature, and is utopia possible? No. Even if we all upload or evolve, we are not going to have a utopia. Happiness (and suffering) exist to let encourage (or warn) you to pursue actions that will (hopefully) prolong your survival or your relatives' survival, and that is true of all living beings, not just humans. So the goal of eliminating all suffering is a ludicrous one. Not only it isn't possible, it isn't desirable. Life pays one coin, heads happiness, tails suffering. If you eliminate all suffering, you eliminate all happiness; you end life.<br><br>2. Pragmatism vs. Dogmatism<br>Despite my belief that one cannot eliminate ALL suffering, I do believe certain systems/regimes/relationships, etc. are worse than they need to be. The way we can tell things can be better is that we (1) try something new and find it to be better, or (2) see someone else try something new and find it to be better. (Though we must be careful: the cash is always greener on the other side of the economy.) <br><br>The smartest thing Zero State has said so far is that they will try out and test their ideas before advocating them. Some deeper reading of history would also be instructive. One thing I like about the Occupy movement is that they are trying to be the change they advocate. We, as well as they, can all see consensus decision making become tyranny of the few over the many, rape and abuse of property proliferate, taxation taken without representation, and other problems plague the Occupy camps. This would not have surprised anyone who had studied the long history of similar movements, but if the Occupy folks have better solutions to these problems than they have yet demonstrated, this would be the time to dazzle the world.<br><br>3. Evolution vs. Revolution<br>Revolutions are never undertaken by the bottom of society against the top. They are always undertaken by the next-to-the-top of society against the top. They usually only result in a new top. Historically, revolutions don't have a good track record in actually improving the lot of the common joe and jane. Evolution and innovation, slow and steady change that is much less dramatic and not nearly so romantic, has a much better record of improving the lives of everyone. <br><br>Personally, I don't really understand the complaint that nothing at all is working in our present society, so we ought to throw ALL of it out, and start over from scratch. Starting over from scratch is a really bad idea. You couldn't do it even if you wanted to, but if you wanted to, you'd have ...what? A cave, a stick and a rock? Seriously? The past ten thousand generations of humans have toiled to give us, their descendants, the benefit of their wisdom and hard work, and they have managed to pass this on to us in a way that most animals cannot. Most animals do indeed start from scratch every new generation, and far from changing their lives for the better, this perpetual "revolution" only leads them to replicate the exact lifestyle of their predecessors. It is precisely because we do NOT have to start from scratch, because we are not condemned to perpetual revolution, that we can stand on the shoulders of our parents and grandparents and see farther over the horizon. To kick out the support under us would only make us fall, perhaps to an even lower level than what we hope to replace.<br><br>4. Capitalism vs. Anti-captialism<br>I was raised a socialist, so the "anything but capitalism" mindset is like mother's milk to me. But I have weaned. I learned to love capitalism the hard way, by hating it first, and trying my best to destroy it. I learned through trying to put anything-but-capitalism into effect, by trying it out on a small scale, or seeing others try. In each case, anti-capitalism returned my love with nothing but a slap to the face, whereas capitalism returned rewards despite my loathing for it. For instance, while I was active trying to put consensus decision-making into practice, I had two friends who were both involved in anti-poverty programs. One roused the Third-World workers of a certain factory in a certain Third-World state to go on strike against the international corporation that ran the factory. The corporation moved the factory to Vietnam and they all lost their jobs. Of course, you could blame capitalism for that (Vietnam, as we all know, fought a long war for the right to become a capitalist paradise), which we all did, promptly and loudly. But meanwhile, the other friend was working with the Grameen bank to give out micro-loans. The poor people prospered and started their own businesses. The first activist, who had gotten the factory closed, decided to try Grameen loans with her community (those who would still speak to her). She was a little worried, though, and asked the second activist, "But... loans to start new businesses... isn't that capitalism?" (She, like all of us, belonged to the anything-but-capitalism school.) The second activist reassured her, "Oh, no, not at all. Well. A little. But it really works!" <br><br>A lightbulb went off in my head. Not a big one. More like Christmas-light size bulb. It took many more strings of little colored lights from all different sources to convince me that capitalism, like democracy, is a lousy system of economy, but better than all the rest. If you have a system that works better, I'm all for it, but I'd like proof, not promises.<br><br><br>5. Future vs. Present<br>For a hundred years or more we've heard promises that the human race is about to outgrow capitalism, but I suspect it is the other way around. I suspect that there is so much opposition to capitalism because the human race has yet to grow INTO it. In every nation that is touched by capitalism and democracy, and the industrial revolution and demographic revolution that accompanies that dangerous duo, certain individuals (and often certain ethnic groups) prosper first, because they are better able to grasp the opportunities. Naturally, this creates a backlash of anger, indeed, burning hatred, against them. They are denounced as thieves and villains, even if their activities actually raise the standard of living of all those around them. In Nigeria, they have a saying, "The child who brings back the most wood will be accused of collecting it from a taboo forest." The person who earns less than you is pitied; the person who earns more than you is resented.<br><br>It would be wonderful indeed if we could live in a world where we had neither to pity nor resent our neighbors, but what system would this be? The great achievement of capitalism is to coordinate reciprocal altruism on a scale of billions. What system can replace this? Most attempts to replace capitalism have appealed to the sentiments of mutual care that we all know (I hope) from the family, where members love each other unconditionally, and sacrifice even their very lives for one another without hesitation. We may feel this way also for our dear friends, and possibly, members of our cultural/religious community, who share ideas so closely with us that they are like family. But it is very hard to scale up. Even our soldiers, who give their lives for their nation, expect to be paid for the honor. The fact is that we are not ants, or coral reefs, with millions of members so closely genetically related that Darwin's law helps us help each other. <br><br>In the West, we citizens are not only of different families, but of different tribes, different races, different religions, different world-views. And so attempts to found an economy on the altruism specific to the family (evolved through kin selection) always ends in one of two ways: back at capitalism, or down the road to authoritarianism. If you will not pay your neighbor for his labor, he will not give it to you unless you enslave him. So the USSR and Nazi Germany became slave camps; while the Oneida commune and Israeli kibbutzim became corporations.<br><br>How does any of this relate to transhumanism? I fear it is quite at the heart of the future. If transhumans become an entirely separate species, or collection of species, attempts to appeal to family models of economics (kin based altruism) will be even more doomed to fail. The fall-back position of organizing through mass enslavement will be an ongoing temptation. The only humane alternative is capitalism. Money is blind to your race, your religion, your politics or your gender, or even whether you are human at all. (Isn't that what everyone hates about it?) But this is exactly why it is what can guarantee that transhumans and AIs and humans and whatever will be, can still live in peace, as neighbors, in democratic societies of the future, each earning his/her/its own living in his/her/its own way without hurting anyone else by his/her/its industry. But I predict there will be blood shed in the name of "brotherly" love before that is allowed to happen. <br><br><br>Tara Maya<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black'> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></div></body></html>