On human nature-the end of capitalism-communism

[Saras]

Well if in a communist society you and I slack off and do nothing useful to others while our existance and some fun/games is provided, something should be done to us, no?

[Kramerman]

Originally posted by Saras
Well if in a communist society you and I slack off and do nothing useful to others while our existance and some fun/games is provided, something should be done to us, no?

blah! i read "hijack" as "carjack" for some reasoon, heh... I know exactly what you are saying now.

Well, I suppose those commy bastards would punish us, but there would be so many of us that if the punishment was harsh, we'd rebel and from a capitalist state (or anarchy if we're too lazy to put the effort into a functional society). If the punishment was medium, they would be overwhlemed (overfull prisons, displinarians booked for months and doing lousy jobs cause they have no incintive, etc), and if the punishment was light, we would continue to slack off our asses

[Saras]

Isn't that what happened to Soviet Union?

[Kramerman]

Are you actually from Lithuania? Wasnt that appart of the Soviet Union? Perhaps you would know better than anyone here what its like to live in a communist state...

[Saras]

Yep. Vilnius, Lithuania. Adn I know very well the inside of that system. In brief, it sucked

[Kramerman]

Originally posted by Saras
Yep. Vilnius, Lithuania. Adn I know very well the inside of that system. In brief, it sucked

case and point!

good night my fellow capitalists, and evil communists

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by Kramerman
But those few who get that wealthy are far in the minority. And for someone to get like that, they probably had to make some pretty awesome contributions to the society before leaving it for the easy life.

No. Even at lower income levels this comes into play. Hell, the people who get paid the least work the hardest and the longest.

Originally posted by Kramerman
Here is what i do know. I am lazy as hell. slack every moment i get. However, i am also greedy as hell. I want money, and as a consequence i am going to college and working pretty hard as a means to that end. If i lived in a communist state, I, and every single person I know for that matter, would slack our butts off and mooch every bit we could. I probably wouldnt bother with college, which doesnt help the society and sure as hell doesnt help me better myself.

You already slack off

[Kramerman]

No. Even at lower income levels this comes into play. Hell, the people who get paid the least work the hardest and the longest.

hmm... there are definately cases where that is true, but unfortunately for the point you are trying to make, there is at least an equal number of cases where that is false. You could say the same thing about very wealthy people. Supposedly Oprah Winfry, the wealthiest independent woman in the world, works full days, as do most corporate CEOs. The reason why they work so hard is so they can maintian thier wealth and position. Any functioning corporation isnt gonna let a bump on a pickle for a CEO run the show (or effectively not run it at all)...

Basically my point is you cant say definatively how much and how well people will work purely based on their income. One thing you can say for sure, however, is that people will work harder, even if just marginally, if it means they could be bettering themselves or their family's (depending on their personal values, the bettering the family thing may not be important).

You already slack off

no no , you misunderstand. I merely TRY to slack off as much as possible, because i am so lazy.

Unfortunately for me, if i want to be at all successful in the system in which i live I DO have to work very hard. My good GPA is a decent way to measure how hard I have had to work to get where I am today, and yet to determine if it can bring me where I want to go. Point being, I only work as hard as I do in order to make some good money in the future, and I still try to slack as much as I think I can and still get by.

If i lived under communism, the amount i would get paid would be the same as anyone else, so i would have no incentive to work as hard as I have. I would have slacked off all along as a consequence. I would not have attained anywhere near the education that I have or the physical shape that I have (extracurricular sports helped me get into college, and continue to maintan my scholarship, else i couldnt afford my school). In short, id be worth a fraction as much to myself, and to my society.

boo communism tho in the short run it would be in my interest (i could slcak off all i wanted and still have food on my table! woo hoo!), in the long run when the bridges i drove over collapsed from shoddy work, only if my car could drive over them without breaking down, if my hive housing cubical didnt collapse on me before I awoke... the quality of life would be much poorer in the long run due to the terrible ineffeciencies caused by no incentive to do a good job at what you do.

Dont get me wrong, there are those very spirited and driven people who would work very hard, but most are like me and wouldnt. Thus you get countries like the Soviet Union, which had greater man power and equal technolgical base as the US (for the most part - stole a lot of it mind you), yet produced so much less and more crappy stuff.

Kman

[Saras]

--Dont get me wrong, there are those very spirited and driven people who would work very hard, but most are like me and wouldnt. Thus you get countries like the Soviet Union, which had greater man power and equal technolgical base as the US (for the most part - stole a lot of it mind you), yet produced so much less and more crappy stuff."

Amen brother Kramerman!

[Velociryx]

Another nod to Kman!

-=Vel=-

[Kramerman]

Vel, you're a moderator now (or were you always one? )? Do you have a banning rod?
hehe

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by Kramerman
hmm... there are definately cases where that is true, but unfortunately for the point you are trying to make, there is at least an equal number of cases where that is false. You could say the same thing about very wealthy people. Supposedly Oprah Winfry, the wealthiest independent woman in the world, works full days, as do most corporate CEOs. The reason why they work so hard is so they can maintian thier wealth and position. Any functioning corporation isnt gonna let a bump on a pickle for a CEO run the show (or effectively not run it at all)...

I think most people won't work their whole life without living it. People want to enjoy life and if they have the opportunity to do so they will. There are workaholics, but they are the minorities.

Originally posted by Kramerman
no no , you misunderstand. I merely TRY to slack off as much as possible, because i am so lazy.

Unfortunately for me, if i want to be at all successful in the system in which i live I DO have to work very hard. My good GPA is a decent way to measure how hard I have had to work to get where I am today, and yet to determine if it can bring me where I want to go. Point being, I only work as hard as I do in order to make some good money in the future, and I still try to slack as much as I think I can and still get by.

If i lived under communism, the amount i would get paid would be the same as anyone else, so i would have no incentive to work as hard as I have. I would have slacked off all along as a consequence. I would not have attained anywhere near the education that I have or the physical shape that I have (extracurricular sports helped me get into college, and continue to maintan my scholarship, else i couldnt afford my school). In short, id be worth a fraction as much to myself, and to my society.

boo communism tho in the short run it would be in my interest (i could slcak off all i wanted and still have food on my table! woo hoo!), in the long run when the bridges i drove over collapsed from shoddy work, only if my car could drive over them without breaking down, if my hive housing cubical didnt collapse on me before I awoke... the quality of life would be much poorer in the long run due to the terrible ineffeciencies caused by no incentive to do a good job at what you do.

Dont get me wrong, there are those very spirited and driven people who would work very hard, but most are like me and wouldnt. Thus you get countries like the Soviet Union, which had greater man power and equal technolgical base as the US (for the most part - stole a lot of it mind you), yet produced so much less and more crappy stuff.

Kman

I was just kidding. Most people are lazy. They make a rational decision to work. Those people fit just as well into a communist system. They should be given a small incentive to work. People just shouldn't be given so much income for not working.

[Velociryx]

Kman....nope...no banning rod for me....but I don't mind that...

Kid - Who gets an income for not working? I'll grantya, there are some kids with wealthy parents and trust funds, but surely you're not saying they're the majority?

-=Vel=-

[GePap]

Originally posted by Meldor
I said nothing of property and wealth. What I said was to pass on the fruits of your labor, to make your childrens start better than the one you had. To better educate them, to give them more tools or skills to get high. No one ever said "I have a High School education, and I want my children to be ignorant. Even slaves wanted their children to be free. Even the poorwest man wanted to give their children more, even if it was the smallest thing. It is a common trait, it has been there from the beginning. The communist system goes against that. One of the first things that Marx wanted was to totally do away with anything you might gain from parents. All children raised by the state. It doesn't matter who the parents were, they are all the same and taught the same. It is a noble thought that we all start life equal. We would get equal educations and equal opportunaties. But it goes in direct conflict with our nature to better us and our immortality through our children.

The problem with your line of argument si that you continue to give me examples that only apply to civilized and urbane man, a type of existance that is at best only 10,000 years old, but man is at least 100,000 years old. if the notion is human nature, then whatever you say must apply to man in 2000 ad, or 3000 bc, or 50000 bc.
For most of human existance, there was no notion of a better tommorrow, except perhaps by chance of better climate or hunting grounds, certainly not by ne's own hands. Education was not about giving a leg up, it was about survival, teahcing your offsprings what they needed to know to live, period. The idea of a surlu of oods that may last into next year, much less next generation is a new one, one that man has had to adapt into. That man has a very plastic nature is easily seen by how much we have accepted in so short a timeframe as the last 100,000 years.

Yes, laws protect the common good, but we give up the individual rights for that common good. It is because they protect us as individuals (and our family) that we except the limits they place on our behavior. When they no longer do so or we don't feel they do so we discontinue obeying them. Hence the fact that the majority ignore the speed limits, within reason. The same applies to the drug laws. The younger folks don't see the good for them in the drug laws. As they get older, nost tend to start seeing the good in them. Thus we get a conflict in our society over the good gained by them. We have some who ignore them totally and some who feel the users should be locked away for good. If it were simply a question of societal good, we wouldn't have the conflicts.

Laws predate any notion that individual had anything close to rights inherently, as opposed to earning status, status from the whole. Take the notion of Honor for example. Today we think people have Honor inherently. In Homers tie, honor was given to you by society, and could thus also be taken from you. As i said above, one can not argue human nature by giving examples of a very limited time span.

But the island was large enough that some of them could have caught extra fish and then freed up others to invent more advanced tools to farther multiply both the production and the comfort of all involved. Surely you don't think their was no need for better medicine? Or the need for better clothes? Sunscreen? A better boat? The fact is that they didn't. They had no motivation to go beyond what they had, no advancement beyond where they wree and no means to support it. Why? because there was no incentive to do so.

Better medices, suntan lotion? How much wood is on this island? what is the replenishment rate? At some point in any upward development they would have run right smack into resource porbles: they either overfish local fusheries, or they run out of trees for more fule, more and bigger ships, more housing, more tools to feed a growing population. Once they run out of trees, they are screwed and soceity falls. That is what happened in easter Island. Only upward climbs that are sustainable make sense. One that leads only to the eventuall collapse and destruction of everything is nonsensical, and has nothing to do with communal living. They had little incentive to advance very far becuase they could have never supported such a climb for long.

I said nothing about either of them maximizing wealth. I said "It's purpose is the same as that for capitalism, to get the resources and goodsto where they are needed." Any system that can't get the goods and resources to where they are needed fails right off the bat. What capitalism has over communism is the reward that capitalism gives to get things done better (profit). There is no profit motive in communism. There is no drive to better yourself and your family. The system is built to stagnate. Just like the natives of Fiji. It will reach equlibrium and if anything changes to upset it to can not recover. It doesn't have the built in means or excess. We see a lot of those islands were people used to live but were gone, the Easter Islands as one example. The went out of balance and are now history.

Then you ignore the point of capitalism. The profit motive is far lder than capitalism. The profit motive existed in 1400 bc, and no one in thier right mind would think of calling the situation in 1400 bc capitalism. Capitalism goes well beyond just profits or the profit motive, even if one states that this is at the bottom. For capitalism, the profit motive is a tool, useful most of the time, a negative to be controlled some of the other time.

Communism is ot built to stagnate. Even if we take the poor examples of communism that have existed, the ones that have stagnated did so do to shortges of markets (if cuba had access to the uS market, it would not stagnate as it does), either imposed from the outside or politically from the inside. Iran was profit motive ased from 1906 to 1979, and it did not go as far as Russia did under "stagnation" communism from 1917-1979.

[Velociryx]

you continue to give me examples that only apply to civilized and urbane man, a type of existance that is at best only 10,000 years old, but man is at least 100,000 years old.

What do you want, GePap? I don’t see you giving older examples either….perhaps because we have no written accounts? Sheesh.

As to the “Communism was not built to stagnate,” comment, I would agree, but I’d also say no kidding!

Of course that wasn’t the designer’s intent, but that’s what happens to communal societies that grow beyond the micro level.

-=Vel=-

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Kman....nope...no banning rod for me....but I don't mind that...

Kid - Who gets an income for not working? I'll grantya, there are some kids with wealthy parents and trust funds, but surely you're not saying they're the majority?

-=Vel=-

Profit, interest, rent. Actually what I was talking about is people who get paid so much that they quit working or work less. Usually these people are highly valuable to society too, more skilled or talented than others.

[Kidicious]

I think a good example of getting paid for not working would be Rock bands. When they first come out they do concerts everywhere, but then as they get rich and famous they do less shows even though they get paid more for doing them. If they spend all their money on drugs and women they will end up doing more shows than they ever did even though they don't get paid **** for doing them.

[yavoon]

Originally posted by Kidicious


Profit, interest, rent. Actually what I was talking about is people who get paid so much that they quit working or work less. Usually these people are highly valuable to society too, more skilled or talented than others.

so u want to pay them less to force them to continue working? wow communism is such a nice endeavour.

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by yavoon
so u want to pay them less to force them to continue working? wow communism is such a nice endeavour.

The result is more for everyone, so it's hard to say how many people would actually get paid less. What matters is that on the whole everyone has more.

[yavoon]

Originally posted by Kidicious

The result is more for everyone, so it's hard to say how many people would actually get paid less. What matters is that on the whole everyone has more.

short sighted. just look at ur rock band. the reason they tour their ass off is they see the perks that come at the end. they realize the payoff. if the payoff didn't exist they wouldn't work towards it. u'd have a bunch of ambitionless entertainers. and u would NOT get more work out of them, u'd get less. u'd also get a lot less value. and as happenstance ne entertainers from capitalist countries would own your commie entertainers

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by yavoon


short sighted. just look at ur rock band. the reason they tour their ass off is they see the perks that come at the end. they realize the payoff. if the payoff didn't exist they wouldn't work towards it. u'd have a bunch of ambitionless entertainers. and u would NOT get more work out of them, u'd get less. u'd also get a lot less value. and as happenstance ne entertainers from capitalist countries would own your commie entertainers

There would be something to that except I'm sure they would have put on the shows regardless of future reward. They would have done it for the current reward anyway.

edit: this isn't what I wanted to say. I wanted to say that they would do it anyway for less money.

[Odin]

Originally posted by GePap
The problem with your line of argument si that you continue to give me examples that only apply to civilized and urbane man, a type of existance that is at best only 10,000 years old, but man is at least 100,000 years old. if the notion is human nature, then whatever you say must apply to man in 2000 ad, or 3000 bc, or 50000 bc.
For most of human existance, there was no notion of a better tommorrow, except perhaps by chance of better climate or hunting grounds, certainly not by ne's own hands. Education was not about giving a leg up, it was about survival, teahcing your offsprings what they needed to know to live, period. The idea of a surlu of oods that may last into next year, much less next generation is a new one, one that man has had to adapt into. That man has a very plastic nature is easily seen by how much we have accepted in so short a timeframe as the last 100,000 years.

Exactlly, our mind was fine tunned in communal hunter-gatherer tribes in East Africa. Why do you think people like to go hunting or go camping? it is the most natural to us. Culture cannot change 2,000,000 years of cultural evolution in 10,000 years. I read an scientific article on human evolution that people who live in communal hunter-gatherer societies (the Bushmen of southern Africa for example) do not suffer as much stress-related health problems then people living in an agricultural or industrial society because they live in a setting that is instinctively natural to our minds.

The main advantage of communal living was sharing of risk, basically if you shared a hare you caught with your fellow tribe, they will do the same for you, that behavior has been ingrained in our brains ever since we started actively hunting 1,800,000 years ago (Homo ergaster and Homo erectus).

[Kidicious]

There's a good argument that hasn't been made yet Odin. Better living

[Kramerman]

Communism is ot built to stagnate. Even if we take the poor examples of communism that have existed, the ones that have stagnated did so do to shortges of markets (if cuba had access to the uS market, it would not stagnate as it does), either imposed from the outside or politically from the inside. Iran was profit motive ased from 1906 to 1979, and it did not go as far as Russia did under "stagnation" communism from 1917-1979.

Im not totally up to date on Cuba's situation, but cant they trade with most european countries, africa, and asia? Surely they can trade with China, one of the largest markets in the world. Im sry, but i dont buy that if the US opened itself to Cuba, they would be much better off. A little, thats for sure, but nothing significant. Shoot, until Clinton the US never traded much with china, yet we were doing pretty well without that huge market.

As for Iran, i dunno much about it from that time period, but im sure capitalism had little to do with it being a shithole. If I were to take a guess, i would say it was a **** hole for the same reasons many capitalistic nations today are **** holes (take a look at a lot of south america) - a ton of corruption............... ****! i gotta go, emergency... finish later

[Kidicious]

Cuba does do better than most Central American countries. Maybe all of them. They certainly would do better if they were allowed trade.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Kramerman


Im not totally up to date on Cuba's situation, but cant they trade with most european countries, africa, and asia? Surely they can trade with China, one of the largest markets in the world. Im sry, but i dont buy that if the US opened itself to Cuba, they would be much better off. A little, thats for sure, but nothing significant. Shoot, until Clinton the US never traded much with china, yet we were doing pretty well without that huge market.

The question is not whom you can trade with, but with whom you can trade profitably. What can Cuba sell to Africa and Asia? Sugar, and the US is one huge closed sugar market right next door so the cost of exporting swould be very cheap. Same with cigars. And the ban on S tourism does lower the overall potential. Imagine all those kids that go to Cancun going to Havana for spring break. The US is a natural market for Cuba, not Angola.

As for Iran, i dunno much about it from that time period, but im sure capitalism had little to do with it being a shithole. If I were to take a guess, i would say it was a **** hole for the same reasons many capitalistic nations today are **** holes (take a look at a lot of south america) - a ton of corruption............... ****! i gotta go, emergency... finish later

They were not ca[pitalist: this is the problem. You seem to call any system in which people can make porfits capitalist. That is not so. You can get rich in a feudal system, you can get rich in a mercantalist system. Both have the porfit motive, nether are capitalism. To equate capitalism just with the "profit motive" as some people do is wrong. Capitalism is a lot more than that, it is a large system.

What do you want, GePap? I don’t see you giving older examples either….perhaps because we have no written accounts? Sheesh.

There are plenty of human communities that stiull live pre-urbane and civilized existances in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. You can use them as example of pre-urbane man. You also have recorded history. As I said, many of the assumptions people make today were not assumptions of man back in 1000bc, so it seems obvious then that such assumptions are NOT normal.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Why do you think people like to go hunting or go camping?

Ugh... not many that I know of! Camping sucks

I read an scientific article on human evolution that people who live in communal hunter-gatherer societies (the Bushmen of southern Africa for example) do not suffer as much stress-related health problems then people living in an agricultural or industrial society because they live in a setting that is instinctively natural to our minds.

They do say ignorance is bliss . With more information and innovation, there is more responsibility and much more to think about. Naturally that'll lead to problems. It has nothing to do which society is considered more 'natural'. I bet modern communism would have similar stress levels, simply because of everything we have now that the hunter-gatherers didn't (ie, they didn't have to try to keep power generators running 24/7, etc ).

[Odin]

Irman, all I am showing is that communal living comes naturally to us, the article was SCIENTIFIC, not political. If you don't like camping youi have a problem.

[GePap]

I hate camping.

[Imran Siddiqui]

all I am showing is that communal living comes naturally to us, the article was SCIENTIFIC, not political.

But you haven't. All you've proven is a scientific article says that primitive hunter-gathers are more stress-free. Yes, but they are also less technologically adept. I don't care if you have a commune state, but in with this technology, there is going to be stress among those that have to keep the lights, cable, and internet, as well as water, etc., running 24/7.

It didn't prove that all communal societies are less stressful, only hunter-gatherer ones.