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[–] -1 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

most of the negatives we associate with every negative adjective to label a person is just a construct, my dude. if you grew up in a reality without investment bankers and malibu beach houses and harvard college you wouldn't think of that. someone with a heavy ego would just aspire to lead their tribe and probably be way nicer in doing it, and if they weren't, they'd get dealt with.

i'd imagine 3/4 of all of human suffering and insanity would be lessened without the albatross of money and class.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 hours ago

    Alright, i guess I'll take a few steps back here with you to try and understand where you're coming from.

    Greed, love, fear, etc, are emotions innate to every human and animals even. You can call them whatever you want, the underlying emotion or feeling still remains. Are you trying to say that we only know what fear is because we've constructed a way to describe it? That without language or "constructs" we wouldn't have fear? Like we wouldn't be afraid of things? Or just that we'd call it something else? Fear existed before investment banking. Anger exists without beach houses.

    "Someone with a heavy ego would just aspire to lead their tribe and probably be way nicer in doing it."

    I'd be curious to see how you came to that conclusion. Because it seems to me that ego maniacs would murder, cheat, steal, sabotage, lie, you get the idea. They want to rape your wife and daughters and kill you and your sons. Look at the vikings, the colonization of the world. Do you think these horrible things would not exist if we didn't have money? Do you think they did not exist before we invented money and investment banks and beach houses?

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  • [–] 0 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 child)

    A gun is just a construct, and so is death when you shoot someone in the head with it.

    (Btw I'm not arguing for capitalism here. Just providing a critique.)

    Incentives shape behaviour and for the most part determine outcomes, and I think what a lot of MLs assume is everyone is as intelligent and measured as they are, when they're statistically a minority. MLs assume society will function exactly the way they imagine it should because they project their own intelligence and motivations onto everyone, and primarily talk about communism with other MLs who are predominantly on the smart half of the bell curve. It's a well known thing in psychology called the "curse of knowledge" and cognitive egocentrism. A person with a deep body of knowledge (an expert) projects their own expertise onto others, and smart people do the same thing with intelligence.

    The majority of humans alive are barely more intelligent than apes, except they do a good job of acting like they're way way more intelligent... You need guard rails and checks against a highly motivated, charismatic idiot with no empathy from using the entire structure you've built for their own gain. What incentive do they have not to? Especially if they can say all the right words and slogans to appear like they're just like you, only to gain power and abuse it where nobody can remove them.

    The unfortunate part is communist power structures and committees get captured by bad actors the same way capitalists capture regulatory bodies and law makers. It's humans capturing human made institutions and I don't think it really matters the ideology behind what they say is happening. What's important is their actions.

    We're also unfortunately still hardwired to be tribal. We think in terms of family, tribe (friends), community (acquaintances), town/city, province, nation .etc where as each circle grows it gets more nebulous and detached from our identity and who we are. Everyone's a communist for their family, some for their friends and communities. However most people reach a point where they go "yeah, fuck those guys." Where the majority of people reach the cognitive limit of what they care about. So your example of a tribe leader works really well as maybe a mayor or something at most, but falls apart when that good tribe leader is competing with bad actors who want the central committee spot far far more, and are willing to do viscious shit to keep the good guy out of that spot. At the same time the good tribe leader has good intentions, but feels like they have a stronger direct impact at a lower level while being shut out of higher office.

    It's like how democracies eventually end up selecting for candidates who get elected, not candidates who will do a good job. Those are vastly different skill sets.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 hours ago (1 child)

    So you don't advocate for capitalism and neither for communism what are you advocating for?

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  • [–] 1 point 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 child)

    That there isn't a good solution that's permanent. I guess I have the Buddhist view of things, that all things end. It seems like having some way of organizing ourselves that survives cyclical growth and collapse is best. We expect our society to live in a perpetual spring/summer of growth and warmth, when historically societies had long wave form seasons of growth, stasis, and death that repeats endlessly.

    The closest thing I know of historically is a theocracy since there's a hard limitation on the scope of government ("it is forbidden to do X! It is written in our fancy holy texts"!) and society is self regulating and self policing. It's why they can last thousands of years despite being so rigid and stiflng (that's actually the primary feature for their long term stability not a bug)

    And in case it isn't obvious I'm not advocating for a theocracy either lol... It's just the longest lived example that keeps being repeated worldwide.

    I guess I'm arguing for a realistic view that incorporates the reality of humanity. Capitalism seems great and like it works well during its growth stage but eventually eats itself and fucks everyone except like a group of 300 global capitalists. Communism seemed to follow a similar lifecycle of "looks great at first... Oh shit." As things get captured and corrupt.

    One thing we all fall victim to is the view that "if not A, then B as an alternative" when the answer might be "there is no long term answer" which is uncomfortable to sit with and goes against the grain of our worldview that with enough human enginuity (and especially fossil fuels burned!) we can move literal mountains and do whatever we think of.

    I think the answer is literally the Buddhist third way. Constant growth and evolution. If you put everything into strict written laws now the goal is finding loopholes. If nothing is written down you don't have rules and anything goes. Both extremes lead to bullshit behaviour through different pathways. It's kind of what democracy is supposed to provide as an ideal. The constant tension between the establishment and the left who try to incorporate disenfranchised groups and to bend the establishment into new shapes is it doesn't ossify. Except even that gets captured by capital.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 hours ago (1 child)

    I agree that communism will not solve everything and is not perfect but I would argue that capitalism play more into human bad traits like greed and communism and socislism try to surpress it . I don't believe we need to fully implement communism stateless and moneyless society but i think we need to get the closest to that ideal

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  • [–] 1 point 6 hours ago

    Yes I think we can both agree there! I think the third way in Buddhism would also want a balance between the two and not an extreme. My personal ideal would be something like ⅔ communism/socialism and ⅓ capitalism.

    My own view is things that are natural monopolies (telecom, rail, power, natural gas, pipelines, water/sewer, food distribution ala sysco, grocery stores) should be crown corporations. It aligns incentives well with long term network health and growth to meet demand. Any profit generated is returned to the public and the crown corp has an incentive to maintain its assets instead of letting them rot by starving them of funds to return more money to shareholders. Anything that naturally ends up as a duolopoly really would be a monopoly if anti-trust laws didn't exist. The second company purely exists to protect the primary monopoly from anti-trust action...

    It's why a tank of gas and a 45" TV cost roughly the same right now. Anything we can't do without is overpriced and maximally profited from because we literally can't be without it. Luxury goods can be default capitalism + regulations. It's why non-essentials are all racing to the bottom on cost for consumer goods.

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