|
| quote: | Originally posted by noikeee
Nowadays I value "social wealth" a lot, but I wouldn't pick such a world, because I wouldn't be comfortable with leeching off other people's stuff.
|
Leeching? Who said anything about leeching? If anything, people would be more motivated to becoming a productive member of society for themselves, so that they could help others. If everyone is helping each other and being humble, there are no leeches. Yes, in this society, you'd have junkies, layabouts, and good for nothings abusing this. And I can see why people wouldn't want to even entertain the idea of such a system with the way things are now. But if things were different, those unproductive members of society would be called out and they would be given help elsewhere.
Sounds harsh? Not really.
| quote: |
I'm sorry to rain on your little utopic parade, put this romantic vision you're having simply isn't possible. I don't disagree that we're trained to want to buy stuff, but this highly competitive, consumerist system exists for a reason - it makes the world go forward quicker.
|
Bullshit. It slows down progress in many cases. Ever heard of cease and desist when a greedy corporation wants to sit on a fucking patent that someone much smaller than them developed independently because they don't want the little guy to come up, but at the same time they won't release their useful invention until they're good and ready? Fuck that. That is not progress. Compare that to a world where such greedy corporations wouldn't be given a chance to grow and where all ideas are shared for the good of everyone, not just lining up one's person's pockets... with progress as a side effect.
Competition doesn't exist outside of consumerism? Are you serious? Stop and think about that.
| quote: | | The quality of life of everyone increases, and I'm not talking about the ability to buy superfluous things, like all the shit that pops out on TV adverts. I'm talking about making more food and making all the food reach out to everyone as the population increases. |
This would be more practical under the new system, not less. We would actually have many more people involved in trying to help their fellow man out. We would have more volunteers, more organizers, more leaders, and more communities available (because they wouldn't be tied down with a meaningless job doing meaningless work, this is more important than that) to support the cause. Of course, this means we'd have more power to make the changes that so many have dreamed about.
| quote: | I'm talking about advancing medical science so that we can prolong our life expectancy and fight newly discovered diseases. The capitalistic system is very good at improving these things as a side-effect of everyone being greedy cunts.
|
Once again, in a society where everyone strives towards intellectual pursuits as opposed to today where only a few do, how can you say that progress will be less?
There's a much more effective parallel to greed that can drive people to improve and create new things: the genuine desire to explore. We are a curious species, we inhabit so many corners of this planet, which was essential to our survival. You keep thinking that the desire to change the world, the desire to discover and solve new problems, and the desire to earn recognition from peers is something will immediately disappear forever or be severely weakened if we no longer lived in a capitalist society. That's bullshit.
[quoet]
But the biggest problem with having everyone sharing things to strangers and all, and the main reason why this conversation you're having is ridiculous, is trust. It's impossible to convince everyone to have good intentions to everyone. There will always be psychopaths, burglars, con-men, rapists, aggressive wankers, no matter what kind of society do you intend to have. In a small community, maybe you could keep track of the bad sheep and fully trust everyone else. But in a world where there's 5 billion people, you need to be wary of any stranger as they could be any of these things. Distrust is a very important trait, without which humanity could've never reached the status it has nowadays.
[/quote]
Of course. And that's why (guess what) we are going to keep our distrust of people who we know might harm us. We will even be better at spotting and finding out who these harmful people are by knowing who their friends are and learning about their reputation more easily then is possible today. This doesn't mean it's a creepy stalker culture: your reputation is a matter of public interest, in my mind. Nobody ever suggested ushering in an age of naive, gullible people, in fact, the exact opposite was suggested. If people communicate and socialize with their friends and their friend's friends more, then it's much easier to connect everyone and that's how we will have a strangerless society. Nobody said anything about random people on the street meeting and going to each other's houses.
| quote: |
I've wrote all this and now suddenly realise I'm not really sure what am I criticising - you two just wrote some very vague ideas and no particular way in how they could be applied. |
It's not that it's a vague idea, it's that your imagination and vision of the complete picture is vague. It is a big idea, not a vague one. There is a tremendous difference, but you won't see it as clearly as we do unless you already have the big picture fully realized in your head. You have a different picture in your head than we do, that's why I'm disagreeing with you on so many points. You aren't thinking about the same system I'm thinking.
I've wrote at length about every single issue you stated, and it would be extremely tedious to search every single little text file for a paragraph or two about this stuff.
___________________
"If she's old enough to crawl, she's already in position." -- Pedobear
|
Although I sport a Union Jack in my profile I live in America (I'm British so there is a reason!) and it's funny here there is a tendency to only buy expensive things if there is a way you can show it off to people.
