What comes after capitalism?

[Cat_Whisperer]

@Dick_Dastardly

It wasn’t just a subprime bubble, it was a general real estate/commercial real estate bubble, and it grew because of low rates but mainly because lending standards/securities ratings standards/various other forms of regulation were scrapped.

And the argument goes that they were scrapped because inflation was so low, savings interest rates were very low, so easy credit became the norm and investors were looking for better rates than 1% on treasury bonds.

Want to prevent a housing bubble? Mandate 20% down only mortgages, scrap Option ARM, no document mortgages, subprime etc.

Agreed. Canada didn’t go very far down the subprime path, our mortgages are all insured if under 20% down, and we didn’t all lose our houses.

The bubble was fed by a huge wave of capital, a lot of it coming from Asia, some from the Arabian Gulf. If we’d had high oil prices in the 1990s/early 2000s then that huge wave of capital would have been less Asian/more Arabian, but it’d still have been exactly the same amount looking to be invested.

Interesting - which came first, the high oil prices, or the glut of investment capital? The author argues that the investment capital came first, because low oil prices kept inflation low and caused investors to start scrounging around for somewhere with higher interest rates to park their money.

[Dissonance]

@FinnAgain

Then the machines gain sentience, rebel, and use us as human batteries which, combined with a forum of fusion, provide all the energy they could ever want.

Preach it! The laws of thermodynamics be damned!

[BrainGlutton]

@njtt

Those who talk about a “post-scarcity” economy (at least if they mean it as something distinct from capitalism; and whether or not is brought about by benevolent AIs), are essentially taking about what Marx meant by communism.

. . . Interesting. Can you back that up?

IMO, the fundamental conceptual flaw in Marxism is that it claims to be “scientific,” but isn’t, and in fact is derived from completely unscientific Hegelian idealism. That does not automatically make Marx’ conclusions wrong, but it does automatically make them suspect.

A secondary flaw is that although Marx’ academic training was in pure philosophy, he completely ignores the philosophical question of ethics. He nowhere makes an actual moral argument for the superior justice of socialism or communism or capitalism, or the right of the proletariat to revolt or expropriate. He seems to have regarded all that as so self-evident as not to merit discussion. As Bertrand Russell pointed out in his History of Western Philosophy, in the 19th-Century intellectual zeitgeist, history was progress and progress equated to justice. To Marx, Communism was demonstrably the Next Stage, therefore a superior stage in all respects including ethical.

[E-Sabbath]

I’ll more or less agree with njtt. There’s relatively little difference between a perfect communism and a post-scarcity society. Dig Linux. It’s a post-scarcity product: the more you need, the more you can take, without removing anyone else’s ability to take some. The hierarchy that has grown up around the official branch is pretty much self-imposed, and merit-based, but if you want to ignore it, you can, and go do your own thing. You can do anything you want with the stuff you make for it. It’s pretty close to a communistic sort of thing.

[An_Arky]

Probably a Mad Max-type de-evolution. Once all the furniture’s been burnt in the fireplace and every last drop of profit has been exploited, the ones with any money left will spend the rest of their existence on defending themselves against the starving masses they previously exploited. Then, after the big die-off, it’ll all start over again. It’ll be groovy for most while it’s on its way up, but will again be nasty on the way back down.

[BrainGlutton]

@An_Arky

Probably a Mad Max-type de-evolution. Once all the furniture’s been burnt in the fireplace and every last drop of profit has been exploited, the ones with any money left . . .

What use is money in your scenario? There’s nothing left to buy.

[BrainGlutton]

@BrainGlutton

. . . Interesting. Can you back that up?

IMO, the fundamental conceptual flaw in Marxism is that it claims to be “scientific,” but isn’t, and in fact is derived from completely unscientific Hegelian idealism. That does not automatically make Marx’ conclusions wrong, but it does automatically make them suspect.

A secondary flaw is that although Marx’ academic training was in pure philosophy, he completely ignores the philosophical question of ethics. He nowhere makes an actual moral argument for the superior justice of socialism or communism or capitalism, or the right of the proletariat to revolt or expropriate. He seems to have regarded all that as so self-evident as not to merit discussion. As Bertrand Russell pointed out in his History of Western Philosophy, in the 19th-Century intellectual zeitgeist, history was progress and progress equated to justice. To Marx, Communism was demonstrably the Next Stage, therefore a superior stage in all respects including ethical.

Found it – A History of Western Philosophy:

Marx fitted his philosophy of history into a mould suggested by Hegelian dialectic, but in fact there was only one triad that concerned him: feudalism, represented by the landowner; capitalism, represented by the industrial employer; and Socialism, represented by the wage-earner. Hegel thought of nations as the vehicles of dialectic movement; Marx substituted classes. He disclaimed always all ethical or humanitarian reasons for preferring Socialism or taking the side of the wage-earner; he maintained, not that this side was ethically better, but that it was the side taken by the dialectic in its wholly deterministic movement. He might have said that he did not advocate Socialism, but only prophesied it. This, however, would not have been wholly true. He undoubtedly believed every dialectical movement to be, in some impersonal sense, a progress, and he certainly held that Socialism, once established, would minister to human happiness more than either feudalism or capitalism have done. These beliefs, though they must have controlled his life, remained largely in the background so far as his writings are concerned. Occasionally, however, he abandons calm prophecy for exhortation to rebellion, and the emotional basis of his ostensibly scientific prognostications is implicit in all he wrote.

Considered purely as a philosopher, Marx has grave shortcomings. He is too practical, too much wrapped up in the problems of his time. His purview is confined to this planet, and, within this planet, to Man. Since Copernicus, it has been evident that Man has not the cosmic importance which he formerly arrogated to himself. No man who has failed to assimilate this fact has the right to call his philosophy scientific.

There goes with his limitation to terrestrial affairs a willingness to believe in progress as a universal law. This readiness characterized the nineteenth century, and existed in Marx as much as in his contemporaries. It is only because of the belief in the inevitability of progress that Marx thought it possible to dispense with ethical considerations. If Socialism was coming, it must be an improvement. He would have readily admitted that it would not seem to be an improvement to landowners or capitalists, but that only showed that they were out of harmony with the dialectic movement of the time. Marx professed himself an atheist, but retained a cosmic optimism which only theism could justify.

Broadly speaking, all the elements in Marx’s philosophy which are derived from Hegel are unscientific, in the sense that there is no reason whatever to suppose them true.

Perhaps the philosophic dress that Marx gave to his Socialism had really not much to do with the basis of his opinions. It is easy to restate the most important part of what he had to say without any reference to the dialectic. He was impressed by the appalling cruelty of the industrial system as it existed in England a hundred years ago, which he came to know thoroughly through Engels and the reports of Royal Commissions. He saw that the system was likely to develop from free competition towards monopoly, and that its injustice must produce a movement of revolt in the proletariat. He held that, in a thoroughly industrialized community, the only alternative to private capitalism is State ownership of land and capital. None of these positions are matters for philosophy, and I shall therefore not consider their truth or falsehood. The point is that, if true, they suffice to establish what is practically important in his system. The Hegelian trappings might therefore be dropped with advantage.

[An_Arky]

@BrainGlutton

What use is money in your scenario? There’s nothing left to buy.

You’re right; I reckon it would be whatever remained after the money was gone: secure shelter, stockpiled food, fuel and transport.

[gonzomax]

@BrainGlutton

I’d be willing to entertain the possibility that Marx was merely premature in expecting Revolution in his lifetime, and the events he predicted are simply things that have not come to pass yet – except that, in the decades since Marx’ death, so many things have changed about technology and industrial processes as to render his whole set of premises suspect.

I was not quoting Marx. These observations are mine and others including perhaps Hunter Thompson. The problems of capitalism are coming to the fore. Get bigger or die, is a terrible mantra. Capitalism at it’s best would have a lot of competition. Capitalism as practiced in the US is antithetical to that. We have mergers and acquisitions galore. Nobody ever stops them. We have 4 companies dominating banking. we have a few dominating oil. we have a few dominating health care. There are a few dominating the news , newspapers and radio. Their incredible political influence has destroyed any watch dog agencies. There is nothing in place to stop them. Brooksley Born was stomped when she warned congress of the banking problems before they happened. Elizabeth Warren gets very little press. She is doing everything she can to warn people of what is happening. But that is how it goes.

[foolsguinea]

“What will be the next stage?”?
:rolleyes: Social democracy was the next stage. Where have you been?

[Der_Trihs]

@foolsguinea

“What will be the next stage?”?
:rolleyes: Social democracy was the next stage. Where have you been?

Ahem.

@BrainGlutton

I am asking, what is the next material (not political) basis on which production and consumption of goods and services in human society will be organized?

Underlining mine.

[The_Tao_s_Revenge]

@BrainGlutton

BTW, to put this all in perspective – really long perspective – see the Kardashev Scale:

Of course, maybe we’ll never even get to Type I civilization, and why should we, if we can somehow manage to achieve universal abundance and leisure without using all of Earth’s available energy?

I think this is it right here.

Hunter gather = what ever the hell energy you can find or catch that hopefully won’t poison you. This energy source can be very unpredictable. It rises and falls as game species recover or dwindle.

Agricultural = synthesizing biological energy from solar energy then converting it to work. This energy is harder to come by but more predictable. Irrigation really improves things.

Industrial = this is the first energy source where items are mostly produced using more then sweat of the brow and hands. Big coal fire plants, hydrological, and other energy sources are tapped.

What comes next will be based on the next energy source. Could an ancient hunter gatherer predicted farming and irrigation? Could a farmer of ancient Rome foresee the industrial age?

[BrainGlutton]

@The_Tao_s_Revenge

What comes next will be based on the next energy source. Could an ancient hunter gatherer predicted farming and irrigation? Could a farmer of ancient Rome foresee the industrial age?

Of course, it’s entirely, physically possible that there is no next energy source – that we’ve already tapped every source technically practicable. If the survival of industrial civilization depended on the invention of a perpetual-motion machine, industrial civilization would collapse, no matter how much money were funnelled to how many brilliant minds to do R&D on the project. Collecting solar energy from satellites might be a practical energy source – or it might not be; there’s a lot about that we don’t know yet.

[smiling_bandit]

@msmith537

smiling bandit - I would agree with most of what you said. Technology has allowed much greater opportunity for small businesses that focus on specialization. An entrepreneur can think of an idea and have it manufactured in China or wherever whereas a few decades ago it would have been prohibitively expensive.

OK, I can’t specifically argue with this. However, I must take exceotiuon to the rest. I want you to understand that, regardless of our diferences, [Dread Pirate Roberts]I have nothing but thenhighest respect for you[/DPR]. SO when I savage you unmercifully, it’s because you’ve posted inaccurate madness in text form. It is as if the Necronomicon was given a thorough editing by Cthulhu and then sent onto economics professors, who posted this and then were locked in cages where their mad rantings could do less damage.

The problem is that most people aren’t entrepreneurs or innovators or high performers looking to lead companies, governments and other organizations. They are, for lack of a less derisive term, entitled drones with moderate or medicore talent and inginuity. That is to say, they are content to do what they are told and collect the paycheck they will use to buy the stuff they need. We call these people the “middle class”. It isn’t that they aren’t hard working. They are just the sort of people who need to be told what to do.

The middle class are made of people who “need to be told what to do”? No, no, no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no. No. No no no.

The historical middle class were primarily solo operators who had literal bourgeous professions, like doctors and lawyers and some well-off merchants or skilled craftsmen. They had disposable income and usually lived in towns.

This changed as economies altered. The new capital-investing class tended to rise up above them materially, but on the whole they kept their high status and participated in the industrial revolution. As time went by, the middle-class expanded downward both culturally and materially, to the point where even unskilled workers can somtimes accumulate considerable wealth. New financial instruments brought investing to the average man, who now had levels of education previously undreamt of by al but the wealthy.

In fact, today, the process continues. Aside from the dificulties of the current economy and the fact that the current Congressional and Presidential fields are not very responsive to the needs of small business, there are more and more small; and medium-scale busineses which thrive alongside corporate giants. Moreover, numerous highly-specialized jobs exist at all levels which require and attract skilled employees. Everyone from phone technicians to network administrators and skilled customer service agents (and good ones are rare and valuable).

To say these people “need to be told what to do” is unmitigated hubris. A good many of them possibly could be entrepreneurs themselves, and the numbers suggest a lot of them have tried or would like to. That most of them fail is a sign of a healthy and competitive economy, and there’s no shame in it. I failed (the first time anyway), and I realy do not need anybody teling me what to do. But fi they ned something done and the price is right, I’ll take the job. I do not have an employer regardless of what anyone says. I work for one person: Me.

You seem to have a very old-school view of employment. The peoply my age, we don’t go to work. We just take on contracts and view all jobs as temporary. We’re likely to outlive our “employers” anyway. The middle class is no longer, if it ever was, a clas of wageslaves. We are increasingly connected and able to collect information and make our own decisions.

You don’t need to reach a post-scarcity economy to see these trends towards socialism. You can see it now. There seems to be a growing number of highly educated people graduating into a job market where they are unemployed, underemployed or perpetually anxious about their employment status. Faced with dim prospects for finding meaningful careers, they have grown distrustful and resentful towards the very corporate entities they were looking to employ them. And living in a county that has as much wealth as we do, they will petition the government to use that wealth to help them.

Let me point out two flaws with this:

(1) You assume it is a trend torwards socialism. I see a damn sight more people complaining that the government is in the way and is now part of the problems than I see campaigning for more welfare and fake “jobs” off the government dole. But granting this temporarily for the sake of argument.

(2) You never ask whether this is a good thing, either.

I despise the bailout crap. I may have held my nose over TARP, but I was willing to acept it (though not that it’s starting to look like a certain someone’s administration trying to turn it into their own private bailout-whomever-we-want-with-no-oversight-slush-fund). But Porkulus was a fiscal and economic disaster, even by their own spin. I defeinitely do not thing the government is helping, although I think there are things they could do which would. Right now, the best-case scenario would be if they butted out and restored consumer confidence through some benign neglect.

[The_Tao_s_Revenge]

@BrainGlutton

Of course, it’s entirely, physically possible that there is no next energy source – that we’ve already tapped every source technically practicable. If the survival of industrial civilization depended on the invention of a perpetual-motion machine, industrial civilization would collapse, no matter how much money were funnelled to how many brilliant minds to do R&D on the project. Collecting solar energy from satellites might be a practical energy source – or it might not be; there’s a lot about that we don’t know yet.

Well we can make guesses based on the stars. The stars are very quite. We don’t hear anything from them. No detected EM chatter of other worlds, nothing.

For our own world this could mean several possible things:

Abiogenesis is rare (unlikely, life appeared on earth almost as soon as it could)

The earth is weird (earths moon is kind of strange as far as observed moons go)

Technology developing life is rare (who knows?)

Relevant to this we have:

Technological developing life is self destructive. Maybe there’s a Pandora’s boobtrap waiting to wipe us out. Maybe a nuclear war or disease will. This would mean the next stage is extinction, or back to an earlier stage at least. If we’ve advanced as far as we can this is also our end, when the resources run out. I find this one unlikely, personally. It seems like atleast one society would develop and stabilize long enough for us to detect them.
Another possibility is there’s technology and physics beyond what we know. Consider two societies. They each live opposite each other on a vast uncrossable canyon. One society uses runners to deliver messages. Never sees any runners from anywhere else so concludes they’re alone. The society opposite them discovers Maxwell’s field equations, and build’s radios. Hearing nothing they conclude they’re alone. Our EM tech may be as primitive to someone else as runners are to us.

The point being the Fermi paradox is telling us we probably won’t be using our current technology for long, one way or another.

[BrainGlutton]

@The_Tao_s_Revenge

Well we can make guesses based on the stars. The stars are very quite. We don’t hear anything from them. No detected EM chatter of other worlds, nothing.

For our own world this could mean several possible things:

Abiogenesis is rare (unlikely, life appeared on earth almost as soon as it could)

The earth is weird (earths moon is kind of strange as far as observed moons go)

Technology developing life is rare (who knows?)

Relevant to this we have:

Technological developing life is self destructive. Maybe there’s a Pandora’s boobtrap waiting to wipe us out. Maybe a nuclear war or disease will. This would mean the next stage is extinction, or back to an earlier stage at least. If we’ve advanced as far as we can this is also our end, when the resources run out. I find this one unlikely, personally. It seems like atleast one society would develop and stabilize long enough for us to detect them.
Another possibility is there’s technology and physics beyond what we know. Consider two societies. They each live opposite each other on a vast uncrossable canyon. One society uses runners to deliver messages. Never sees any runners from anywhere else so concludes they’re alone. The society opposite them discovers Maxwell’s field equations, and build’s radios. Hearing nothing they conclude they’re alone. Our EM tech may be as primitive to someone else as runners are to us.

The point being the Fermi paradox is telling us we probably won’t be using our current technology for long, one way or another.

Of course, it’s also entirely possible that Earth is simply the first planet in the Galaxy to produce a lifeform capable of radio communication – i.e., we are the Precursors.

[AdmiralCrunch]

@E-Sabbath

Dig Linux. It’s a post-scarcity product: the more you need, the more you can take, without removing anyone else’s ability to take some. The hierarchy that has grown up around the official branch is pretty much self-imposed, and merit-based, but if you want to ignore it, you can, and go do your own thing. You can do anything you want with the stuff you make for it. It’s pretty close to a communistic sort of thing.

I dig Linux, but things like Enterprise support, restricted drivers, video games, and loads of programs are plenty scarce. That’s really one of the difficulties of imagining a post-scarcity society(for me, at least). Thanks to the good folks behind linux(mostly big corporate programmers) an operating system is no longer scarce. But who wants to spend time compiling kernels and updating dependencies when it’ll just work for a day’s labor? One can ignore advances in software and hardware in the same sense that you can ignore modern agriculture by arduously producing your own food, but it’s rarely worth it when you can acquire a better version cheaper and easier by earning money and purchasing someone else’s hard work.

You’ve got Linux on one side, Apple on the other. Wikipedia on one, Facebook on the other. I don’t see capitalism or scarcity going anywhere anytime soon.

[Oveja_Slayer]

I’d expect to see a global economic implosion, and we’ll go back to a resource system - trading goods and services a bit like a barter system. If an organized government entity stays in tact, they’ll try to regulate this. If not, people will make one and we’ll be on the path to buliding up and destroying a civilization again.

Or maybe a more financially stable nation (China?) will come on to the stage and begin to consolidate global power.

Or maybe my instincts and assessment of our situation is overblown and we’ll be fine.

[PrettyVacant]

Having an interesting debate on Mutualism in the UK at the moment, which seems an option away from the unaccountability of multinational corporatism. I guess in the USA that would be classed as communism or some such, but it’s had some good successes and may be about to develop with innovation.

[Mangetout]

@BrainGlutton

Of course, it’s entirely, physically possible that there is no next energy source – that we’ve already tapped every source technically practicable. If the survival of industrial civilization depended on the invention of a perpetual-motion machine, industrial civilization would collapse, no matter how much money were funnelled to how many brilliant minds to do R&D on the project. Collecting solar energy from satellites might be a practical energy source – or it might not be; there’s a lot about that we don’t know yet.

Or it could be that we just don’t develop it in time - even if there is a ‘next energy source’, getting it up and running will be difficult or impossible if industry has already collapsed and the focus of mankind’s efforts has become the business of living hand to mouth.

The fact that we need to develop it in time doesn’t necessarily mean we will.