That may or may not be the case what is clear is that this remains to be seen and further more when I speak of reputational payouts that were critical for survival in simple social systems they needn’t be marshaled by cognitive processes that are necessarily conscious to the organism deploying them as psychological tools meant to obtain economic advantage in primitive social systems. The problem here is biological self-deception “If... deceit is fundamental to animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray — by the subtle signs of self-knowledge — the deception being practiced.” Robert TriversThis is what i didn’t make clear. Teh notion that the moral outrage on teh left needn’t be a strategic deception that is consciously available to teh leftist deploying it but that it is instigated via emotion and self-deception to instigate behaviors that facilitate the accumulation of social capital in simple tribal systems."
That is basically it, the core of the theory is based on such altruistic matters such as the idea of workers' emancipation and the expropriation of the bourgeois. You need to realize that when we do speak of such a case, it is not because we speak of the poor while having nothing at all to do with them. That is on the contrary, we only speak of them because they represent the core of the struggles being made and not some external "political capital" that we simply solely use to lull the populace in our favor. I see no sort or tinge of "self-deception" to be honest, just as you view us as altruistic we view you as egotistical. That moral outrage is the basis of the Left, as I had said, otherwise I wouldn't be a Leftist myself but would have stuck with other Rightist ideologies. If we are to instigate such an altruistic mentality in order to better human relations with each other and thus cooperation, then that is certainly a change for the better. No matter if certain calculations or ideas say otherwise.
Money is memory and is immutable to society.
Systems without money are possible only in the sense that memory can facilitate an evaluative function. Money and memory are essentially the same thing ( i believe). In small social systems money is equivlent with reputational gains, or social currency or concepts like honor, respect etc. As you scale the social order in complexity and size human memory limitations begin disrupt the ability to assign value to agents within society who are engaging in cooperation( i can't knowing reward or punish a person in china for the good or bad products he's provided because i'm not aware of their existence as i am aware of the tribal hunter i see daily in a simple tribal commune). Money presents an image of past dealings which game theory illustrates is the foundation of cooperation with one of the more stable strategies the "tit for tat" strategy.
If you can cull back society to a simple pre-industrial tribal relations money simply becomes internalized within our own heads. Also this puts into perspective that the components necessary for the proto-economy like honor or respect might have a limited horizon of usability in a global exchange system where billions are cooperating and we might want to rethink their usage in extended social orders. Social currencies may still be rather effective in limited and non-complex interactions where we have proximity and continuous dealings with individuals.
If we really consider money and it's neurological/psychological analogues it seems we have never really been without it, it has just changed in substance.
We aren't speaking of Anarcho-Primmies here, nor of the destruction of society and its technological advancements, of course not, that would be insane poppycock spread by the Primmies. It may have changed rather than being non-existent if we are to speak of it as a social sanction system where honor and respect would be a somewhat similar concept as that of money. You still seemingly do not understand how a communist/Anarcho-Communist society would function. The incentives, rather than gaining money or honor, would basically be the personal idea or want of not returning to a past system which left him to his fate as a wage-slave, tied to the bonds of the workplace for an unfair pay. The idea of cooperation instead of competition, as I had said needs to be instilled into the minds of the people if we are to speak of a society based on cooperation. People living in communes, which would be many and federalized, would see to it as an objective, goal, or incentive to allow themselves to work for the betterment of others and as well as themselves. They would realize the bad aspects of Capitalism, which knowing that not everyone is able to reach "the top" and would instead prefer to manage their own workplace, be their own bosses, as well as take the whole fruits of their labor as their own without having them taken by others. As for money and its abolishment, keeping money would prevent a high number of people from fulfilling even the most basic of needs leaving them as they currently are: poor beggars and slaving workers. Retaining money from the current system, the workers would then be obliged and forced to work under awful conditions in order to maximize profits or even stay out of work and unemployed due to lack of vacancies, lack of employing facilities, and the deterrent of bad pay. This mentality would keep them from thinking of money or wage-slavery as better systems to adopt or return to.
No I don’t subscribe to any conspiracy theories and I think leftist and egalitarian sentiment and methodology is operational in how the values they hold, I just believe it’s a primitive form of market fundamentalism based on social currency. When dealing with complex capital markets and intangible assets that aren’t based on social status they are psychocologically uncomfortable. I don’t share this discomfort.
There are many reasons for people in a Leftist society to refuse returning to other systems, as explained briefly above. I do not think that after reaching "paradise" and a better enchancement of everyone's lives that they would desire to go back to wage-slavery and the torments of everyday Capitalist life and the uncertainty of the morrow. A person who never had a house or a television before would not desire to go back to a system that certainly does not offer him anything despite his hard work.
No one is forcing you to submit to any social "stress-test"
Then what is the purpose of this ? why communicate this notion
I am simpy explaining and defending "why" we are speaking of the workers and the poor, not trying to change your beliefs, since you obviously will not and neither will I.
The fact is that i want a more mutually cooperative society but not for the sake of others but to take advantage of knowledge dispersal and decentralized information. That we try to shame each other to force a descend back into a primitive echange methodology and somehow graft these tribal dynamics over a over an extensive global system is just not productive.
Actually with the ability to access free education, without having the basis for social and economical pressure, and having the ability to move onto higher education without having to pay a hefty sum, and being offered a proper and well-managed workplace for intellectual (researchers, doctors, scientists), people will then be able to share and participate as well as develop scientific research freely. Whether it will be a move backwards is really a personal opinion depending on the person himself if he is egotistical or altruistic and depending on the conditions and role of the person in the current system. A toiling badly paid worker is sure to desire a new system to treat him better and suit his desires, while a chairman or CEO of some firm would fiercely resists such a notion of change and the redistribution of wealth.
that is one reason why you are so: self-loving and egotistical.
So what? How am i supposed to react to these words, if you expected shame or anger it's not there. That you say call me these things seems to be a matter of fact no different then there is a keyboard beneath my fingers now and thus totally immaterial.
Or Are you saying you want me to direct compassion outward ? Would that not decrease my utility and potentially enhance yours, especially if we are dealing with small social scales? What makes you any different then somebody trading corn futures then if you can somehow coopt my reasoning to make me act more altruistic then its’ possible that you can become the beneficiary of such actions especially in tribal systems. If moral outrage is instigating this horizontal social assault then we can see how robust a system proto-markets really are and why socialist notions are so hard to stamp out of existence, because they were so profitable in primitive social orders.
Unless i missed a deeper meaning with teh attempt to use invective ( if that was the intent) i see no point in calling me egotistical , self-loving, and stating facts about reality that we agree with.
I was pointing out the differences between us, highlighting them to be exact. By stating that you are egotistical and I am altruistic, we can then see basically where we disagree, on what points, and the reason for our advocacy for each of our own ideologies we uphold. Yes that is a factual claim no different then "there is a keyboard beneath my fingers now", but do not forget that you had claimed that I am altruistic and attacked me for being so. For you to direct compassion outwards, that would require that you experience work first-hand, if you have not. To decrease your utility and potential is really not in my interest, for I am not considered a competitor of yours neither in the global nor local market. Seriously, if you change your reasonings or not is not really the point of my claims or my intention nor will you, should you ever change, become a vital part of a communist society nor will I. I am merely defending the communist ideology rather than trying to convert you.
Being that you are on a completely opposite pole than us, that is a main point where our ideologies differ. You certainly do not think that we speak of workers' emancipation and providing well-being and the basic needs to people just for an economical theory or for self-interest?
Considering the costs incurred for making statements I see no direct sacrifice on the part of the advocate.
It is not merely talk without action. Oh yes there are certain direct sacrifices when I speak of communism and such things, mainly it is the external social resistance by people who are still affected by the Red Scare, flunking the opportunity to work/manage my father's company in favor of manual labor (for certain reasons), negative consequence for speaking out and stating differing opinions on matters, and having to spend time reading and at meetings with the LCP.
Certainly no one is either claiming that personal survival is balanced on whether you aid others or not, for you clearly cannot look beyond your nose and that will not seemingly change. Food not bombs, never heard of it? I myself take part in such organizations, but whether I can prove it or do so is besides the point and it will change next to nothing.
In an evolutionary sense aiding others was critical to survival, especially in chimp societies. Those that do not share their food are beaten and attacked until they do(they are free-riding off the division of labor and many eyes surveillance that the social system offers), or they may be that free ride are ostracized.
Yes, that is true.
You don’t’ feel better for doing it ? I mean think about it ? when people engage in charity or help others do they feel good after they do so or feel terrible ? I have personally witnessed inumerable events where an indivdual is castigated for selfish behavior and that castigation is charged with passionate emotion to the same extent that it would be if you were personally attacking somebody with threat of phsyical violence.
It really depends on the condition, sacrifices made, and the person himself. Christians tend to donate a small amount of money (most of the time) to charity and the church, this makes them feel all cozy and good inside because 1) They claim that this will get them a ticket to heaven and thusly repaid, 2) A few dollars is a small price to pay for a spot in eternal plenty (heaven), 3) The can then continue living their lives normally after donating. we communists, on the other hand, are not all working class people. We tend to come from middle-class families with parents owning a thriving business, a hopeful future, a better life than many others, etc. What we are doing is sacrificing these possibilities and futures for a certain cause that seeks to benefit society and people as a whole instead of personally benefiting me, and me only. As I had said, I could just take over my father's company and be living in paradise, but no. I'd prefer not speaking of this much further for it is quite apparent why: I'm sounding like some Raghib Aleme (multimillionaire celebrity gone monk).
This is all I really have time to respond to but I wanted to get to the issue of signaling behavior specifically because it’s been of interest to me as of late with regards to its implications on political behavior and ideology. I appreciate the vigorous response and wish I could return the favor and respond to everything in the spirit of debate, though debate tends to polarize individuals even further I understand. Anyway I would recommend checking out Von Mises’s calculation argument, there must be a few youtubes of this by now, I would also consider looking at Arrow’s impossibility theorem or Condorcet’s paradox(a mathematical paradox that illustrates you cannot obtain majoritarian preference in a contest of more then 3 selections), the paradox of voting. Also you meantioned something about pollution an negative externalities. I would recomend Garrett Hardin's Tragedy fo the commons for that. I will try to return to this again thsi weekend by i have exams comming up and have spent alot of time on this already :sad.gif:
As of right now I still think egalitarianism/progressivism/ and leftism in general are artifacts of proto-market signaling behavior meant to stabilize cooperation through aid based transactions which preceded the necessity of capital markets or property regimes.
Noted, I will look into those when I have the time. What happens in debates generally stays in debates, that is common when I engage in arguments/debates with friends and fellow comrades.
How is it not true? Under socialism the state owns and controls everything. There is no personal property.
I don't know what part of socialism states there is no "personal" property, and how it relates to stalin at all. I'm also slightly thrown off by the fact that in the US at stalins time there was also no refrigerators. The popular fridge we see today was not common until the late 60's.
They had ice boxes back then, which are effectively the same thing, but more akin to a freezer.
How is it not true? Under socialism the state owns and controls everything. There is no personal property.
I don't know what part of socialism states there is no "personal" property, and how it relates to stalin at all. I'm also slightly thrown off by the fact that in the US at stalins time there was also no refrigerators. The popular fridge we see today was not common until the late 60's.
Also, you're wrong:
In the 1950s television show The Honeymooners, the Kramdens' apartment featured an ice box to emphasize their financially strapped working class living conditions. (By the 1950s most families used an electric refrigerator.)
No offense (well, maybe a little...) but we've been doing that quite a lot for you...
I think it's about time you read up on things and get a bit of knowledge, rather than just posting clearly ignorant statements.
And the next time you mention Stalin... He was a Authoritarian Dictator. He was not a Socialist, nor a Communist. That was just his facade... Get it right...
If socialism works and the government can afford it, it is the best option for the people. Nothing more to say about this, as almost everything has been said already. Except for something about bananas, they are tasty.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"A man paints with his brains and not with his hands."
Michelangelo
Mod edit: Shairn used lock!
It's super effective!
Pointless thread has fainted!
That is basically it, the core of the theory is based on such altruistic matters such as the idea of workers' emancipation and the expropriation of the bourgeois. You need to realize that when we do speak of such a case, it is not because we speak of the poor while having nothing at all to do with them. That is on the contrary, we only speak of them because they represent the core of the struggles being made and not some external "political capital" that we simply solely use to lull the populace in our favor. I see no sort or tinge of "self-deception" to be honest, just as you view us as altruistic we view you as egotistical. That moral outrage is the basis of the Left, as I had said, otherwise I wouldn't be a Leftist myself but would have stuck with other Rightist ideologies. If we are to instigate such an altruistic mentality in order to better human relations with each other and thus cooperation, then that is certainly a change for the better. No matter if certain calculations or ideas say otherwise.
What I’m saying is that focus on the poor and moral outrage directed at those that have abundance is potentially an innate driver that cannot be trusted at these scales by outside observers. The structure of proto-markets necessitates the sort of behavior you and altruists alike are employing to sustain itself. The problem, however, is at large scales memory limitations do not allow for an accurate accounting of who is producing value and who is not so when you support one wealth stratum over the other your assuming or signaling, with some other intent(social currency extraction), one deserves to have less wealth while another deserves to have more wealth irrespective of how much input they will actually provide society. This is true in some cases(and I’ll get into limited liability and regulatory interference) but it cannot be universalized. Universalizing this assumption permits the generation of moral hazard because some people are granted wealth they do not earn but this is not important for the advocate because the costs of those transfers are born by other parties of society while the advocate obtains psychological benefits, and proximal social currency( which are not necessarily warranted ) or in primitive tribal systems they would receive reputational gains ( which are not readily redeemable in modern economic systems do to memory limitations).
In this sense your more right then left paradoxically because you fundamentally support a form of extreme conservatism in the sense you desire a retrogression back into tribal economic exchange, if we are to associate right with conservatism as in keeping things the same.
An altruistic order should not be instantiated at large scales specifically because of memory limitations with regards to the inability of individuals to determine who is producing value and who is not.
We aren't speaking of Anarcho-Primmies here, nor of the destruction of society and its technological advancements, of course not, that would be insane poppycock spread by the Primmies. It may have changed rather than being non-existent if we are to speak of it as a social sanction system where honor and respect would be a somewhat similar concept as that of money. You still seemingly do not understand how a communist/Anarcho-Communist society would function. The incentives, rather than gaining money or honor, would basically be the personal idea or want of not returning to a past system which left him to his fate as a wage-slave, tied to the bonds of the workplace for an unfair pay. The idea of cooperation instead of competition, as I had said needs to be instilled into the minds of the people if we are to speak of a society based on cooperation. People living in communes, which would be many and federalized, would see to it as an objective, goal, or incentive to allow themselves to work for the betterment of others and as well as themselves. They would realize the bad aspects of Capitalism, which knowing that not everyone is able to reach "the top" and would instead prefer to manage their own workplace, be their own bosses, as well as take the whole fruits of their labor as their own without having them taken by others. As for money and its abolishment, keeping money would prevent a high number of people from fulfilling even the most basic of needs leaving them as they currently are: poor beggars and slaving workers. Retaining money from the current system, the workers would then be obliged and forced to work under awful conditions in order to maximize profits or even stay out of work and unemployed due to lack of vacancies, lack of employing facilities, and the deterrent of bad pay. This mentality would keep them from thinking of money or wage-slavery as better systems to adopt or return to.
I didn’t assume you were talking about anarcho-primitivism. I’m talking about conigitive limitations. The paper money is memory makes note of this that these two things are interchangeable. Interestingly enough if you read Trivers 71 “evolution of Reciprocal Altruism” you see that one of the two necessities for a form of selfish biological altruism to emerge is memory, the other being high population viscosity. Individuals must be able to keep some record of what other individuals do to reward them or punish then proportion to the gains or losses they confer to the social system. Memory is the effective technology employed here when the human brain’s cognitive horizon no longer overlaps with the scale of society and some sort of prosthetic must stand in to stabilize cooperation beyond the boundaries of cognitive limits. If we want to operate without money (as we recognize it as a physical substance, or electronic data stored on computers), we have to rely on our own individual minds to make these judgments. Who is hurting who is helping, should I engage in some sort of cooperation with this person or should I not. Without a means to answer this question altruism is not a stable evolutionary strategy and isolationism is the only viable alternative and it seems neither of us want that. I want a system where benefits of society are proportional to contributions. Not a society where aid is arbitrarily granted because I simply think it’s sound logic not to trust other individuals, especially if I cannot observe them constantly. When we are dealing with scales of hundreds of millions of people this is asking me to process to much information. The human mind can only remember so many faces and the dunbar unit ensures that after about 200 individuals we stop recognizing other individuals as humans and begin to recognize them as objects.
The difference here between us is i belive the concept of money is just an analogue to reputation, honor and other primitive concepts that work well in small scales or with really popular individuals that have special status to a particular social order(in this reputational currencies are non-egalitarian because of cognitive limits, only so many popular people can redeem them; stratification is not as binary as Marx deduced and Weber is more usefull here with regards to adding status class and political class). Money i believe has always been with us, it has only changed in form(but i'm repeating myself now).
Note on corporations or as they are also called “PUBLICALLY traded companies” If you look at the incentive structure of a corporation it is fundamentally socialist in the sense of limited liability. What I mean by that is Shareholders can own a portion of the company however the holders are not “liable” for the companies failures. That is holders estates are insulated from further losses beyond the aliquot of equity they have in that particular company held as common or preferred stock. IN this regards a corporation (or publically traded company) can damage the environment or use derivatives of date rape drugs in toys and the owners/holders are not subject to liability despite the legally defined tittles they hold in the company.
This is not unlike the welfare state where the agent in question obtains benefits from a social arrangement but if that arrangement does damage to society the costs are not distributed to them but to unwilling third parties. To elaborate the owner/shareholder does not regulate his property or the beneficiary does not obtain socially valuable skills and instead consumes leisure in the case of the welfare recipient. That is the essence of socialism, the ability to transfer costs to unwilling parties. I don’t want to eat other peoples costs whether they be poor or rich.
I was pointing out the differences between us, highlighting them to be exact. By stating that you are egotistical and I am altruistic, we can then see basically where we disagree, on what points, and the reason for our advocacy for each of our own ideologies we uphold. Yes that is a factual claim no different then "there is a keyboard beneath my fingers now", but do not forget that you had claimed that I am altruistic and attacked me for being so. For you to direct compassion outwards, that would require that you experience work first-hand, if you have not. To decrease your utility and potential is really not in my interest, for I am not considered a competitor of yours neither in the global nor local market. Seriously, if you change your reasonings or not is not really the point of my claims or my intention nor will you, should you ever change, become a vital part of a communist society nor will I. I am merely defending the communist ideology rather than trying to convert you.
No I didn’t claim you were altruistic because I don’t believe altruism in a pure sense is possible. Altruism could not evolve as it would enhance the fitness of a recipient while reducing the fitness of the altruist. Even if you had an entire pollution of pure altruists through some miracle a single mutation that results in a selfish individual would cause the gene frequency to change at the expense of altruistic genes. Organims would need to develop psychological defenses against selfish recipients and would invariably become selfish for doing so as it enhances their survival. However if an organism could become secretly altruistic, or present the outward perception(advertise) he/she is altruistic while being fundamentally selfish they would have the ability to fool a defensive selfish altruist into providing them aid. This in turn would, as I stated before, supply the pressure for the selfish altruist to develop a means to detect other selfish altruists acts of deception. Selection in turn would operate on the selfish altruist who attempts to obtain benefits while not remunerating to conceal his/her intent from his/herself to further insure success at deception. If one was to be able to feel empathy to their fellow man and express it vigorously but not act on it when they can conceal the incongruity of their statements with their actions then it is possible they can alter the opinion of other individuals in a positive direction toward the self deceiving selfish altruist.
My concern is self deception or more specifically an individual (politician/social advocate) presenting concepts like charity or outrage at inequality as a weapon to obtain reputational gains for himself or positions of power for himself. Their motivations may be true but ideally “talk is cheap” and because of the structure of society it’s difficult for outward observs to verify not just the parity between action and statements but actual magnitudes of “how altruistic” vs other altruists. Inability to constantly assay this magnitude variable grants the selfish altruist the ability to capitalize on one or two obviously demonstrable acts of charity and then fail to perform at future dates once the’ve demonstrated at one temporal moment that charity has occurred. Because of this I don’t think we can accept claims of this nature because they have the potential of being motivated fundamentally by selfishness and are no different than the very behaviors they criticize in market orders. For me its’ not sufficient to capture one moment in time and use that to judge future performance. I would require second by second re-evaluations of the movement of the putative altruist to see how well he is performing, are you beginning to see the parity when what I demand and money and how we use it to evaluate things, i need to see the books, from last year and the year before , and the year before?
I don’t feel the need to qualify myself to people with regards to how much charity work I do or how horrible it is the people are miserable and poor because that very behavior is a form of free riding in the sense that I can obtain reputational benefits for essentially just communicating notions.
Any person who can be convinced you are altruistic is potentially subject to be more charitable to an altruist and so false signaling altruism is an effective economic strategy that can be profitable, though not to the same extent as currency or futures trading but that is not relevant because the behavioral foundations were necessary to ensure stable social systems in the past so we should assume they are deeply integrated into our biology and difficult to override.
If not integrated biologically they may be integrated culturally as individuals who can coopt and inculcate others to become altruistic, while maintaining their selfishness could accrue benefits from this sort of reprogramming. It’s not absurd to believe this is directed from parent to child for the benefit of parent. You can begin to see that I’m trying to defend myself from a psychological weapon that can be employed against myself for the benefit of the individual using it.
It would be in my favor, as a selfish person, to live in a society of nothing but altruists though as I could obtain aid without the need to remunerate proportionally.
That you claim to be altruistic is not verifiable to me but based on evolutionary biology I don’t’ believe, in a fundamental sense, you are altruistic; I do believe that you believe yourself to be however. If we were to be alone with 50 other people in some jungle or prairie environment and we were forced to cooperate to survive none of this would matter because I would see you daily and I would make sure you did not obtain asymmetric advantage to me when we engaged in some form of exchange. Your sentiments would be forced to match your actions or I might detect you slacking off or sleeping when you should be watching for predators, This would cost you tremendously in reputation especially wheni call you selfish or uncooperative I could devalue you greatly in the group and you would have to recompense re-balancing accounts. Nor would I have any need for money (in the form we recognize it) and property would likely totally unnecessary. Why do I need to worry about you damaging or abusing what I value(a spear or a clay jar used to carry water) when I can simply point out that your acts hurt all other members and if that is indeed the verdict of the group you will be sanctioned for it and would be more careful with how are you treating common property.
As our society becomes more and more complex this monitoring or horizontal enforcement structure becomes harder and harder to do. It’s very difficult for me to detect when you are not pulling your weight and people can adjust their output just enough to be harder to detect. Those that do this will obviously not admit this but modern society is the society of the altruistic false signaler because they can get away with this and convince others that they are still altruistic. This is why relying on assurances of one’s altruism are dangerous and I would be more alert to somebody who is very adamant that they are an altruist and paradoxically be more trusting of somebody that doesn’t present himself as an altruist to me. To reiterate I do not value people based how altruistic of an image they present themselves to me. The exception however is if we begin to engage in continuous dealings. However considering we can cooperate with millions of people a day I cannot hold this number of people in my head to not only
1) Determine if there is fidelity in altruism claims
2) Assign a magnitude or vector quantity to their altruism.
Therefore altruism is of limited utility in stabilizing or facilitating cooperation with other individuals except in the case of iterative (repeated) games.
It is not merely talk without action. Oh yes there are certain direct sacrifices when I speak of communism and such things, mainly it is the external social resistance by people who are still affected by the Red Scare, flunking the opportunity to work/manage my father's company in favor of manual labor (for certain reasons), negative consequence for speaking out and stating differing opinions on matters, and having to spend time reading and at meetings with the LCP.
I’m not talking about supporting unpopular ideas. There are sacrifices with regards to all human action. I’m talking about sacrificing what is valued most. Are you abandoning something your value highly for something you value less? Does an ideology have value?
I’m talking about signaling altruism for proximal social reasons. For example a person who advertises that he does a lot to help the poor is more likely to obtain respect then a person who advertises that he does a lot to help bill gates. Conversely a person who advertises that he does a lot to help the poor is not necessarily likely to become ostracized or lose respect by society then another person who advertises that he does a lot to help bill gates.
It really depends on the condition, sacrifices made, and the person himself. Christians tend to donate a small amount of money (most of the time) to charity and the church, this makes them feel all cozy and good inside because 1) They claim that this will get them a ticket to heaven and thusly repaid, 2) A few dollars is a small price to pay for a spot in eternal plenty (heaven), 3) The can then continue living their lives normally after donating. we communists, on the other hand, are not all working class people. We tend to come from middle-class families with parents owning a thriving business, a hopeful future, a better life than many others, etc. What we are doing is sacrificing these possibilities and futures for a certain cause that seeks to benefit society and people as a whole instead of personally benefiting me, and me only. As I had said, I could just take over my father's company and be living in paradise, but no. I'd prefer not speaking of this much further for it is quite apparent why: I'm sounding like some Raghib Aleme (multimillionaire celebrity gone monk).
If you truly believe that your abandonment of familial estate control will inevitably yield greater gains than those have the potential to spill-over to you and in this sense obtaining control of it is an opportunity cost. Facilitating the development of a communist system is superior to taking control of your estate.
This gets much more difficult for an outside observer like myself to quantify when trying to peer into your head and discern what type of things you would have to sacrifice to operate this estate. Exposing yourself to your predecessors debt, pursuing and educational track that denies you immediate pleasures, or abandoning your ideology(which you clearly value as demonstrated by your effort here).
If your suggesting that I should take your word that you are doing purely altruistic thing there’s a problem here, since I have no means of confirming your intent and what you experience I cannot know if your engaging in conscious signaling. To make it even more difficult if your operating based on self-deception, empathy or love for the wretched it makes it even more difficult. Having the ability to watch you constantly and being in proximity to you is the only reliable way, I believe, to ensure you’re not engaging in preference falsification with intent to generate reputatational gain. Obviously this is not practical, and the more people I have to monitor the harder this gets. A onetime statement of intent is not statistically significant to predict how you will behave in a real world environment. Not to mention my constant presence and threat of defection from you(if you depended on my survival, which begins to deteriorate when you fail to remunerate and are gaining asymmetric advantage in the relationship) would in turn operate to enforce convergence toward pro-social behavior or cooperation.
So the notion is
1 I cannot watch you constantly and make continuous re-evaluations of yoru behavior to see if it matches your advertised intent. This puts me at disadvantage with regards to this exchange about your estate and beneficence.
2 you are not compelled to ensure the behavior falls into a parity with your statements because you have ample insulation from my constant monitoring, putting you in a morally hazardous position.
This is my concern with altruism and why I reject is as a cooperative methodology that is scalable. I have to judge you, an any other person advocating for those less fortunate, based on the very limited information I have while you are signaling. The situation is asymmetrical with regards to information as my costs to confirm the veracity of claims are extraordinarily high requiring me to alter my life to obtain the information which is just not practical.
This is the basic problem of asymmetric information and why altruistic claims can be viewed as a form of potential free-riding in modern society regardless of the if the catalyst for the claim is conscious or instigated by biological self-deception via some pro-social emotion.
But do you feel better when you help somebody out who is in suffers some misfortune? However I know that some need is valid and other forms of need are manufactured. I believe people are capable of deception, and further more subject to self deception. I myself have taken advantage of charity from not only unfamiliar institutions but from family. That I admit this would be insane if we were in a tribal economic order. If I depended on you and 50 other people to survive (in a tribal sense) I could never admit this to you because my credit worthiness could be damaged via this admission like an institution that defaulted on debt or declared bankruptcy twice, or probably more realistically admission of this fact “could possibly” damage my reputation while concealment would have no effect. Concealment is the optimal strategy and biological self-deception facilitates this lie.
If we are to instigate such an altruistic mentality in order to better human relations with each other and thus cooperation, then that is certainly a change for the better.
To touch on this final point, this is the very thing I wish to avoid, an altruistic mentality. I do not believe it will better human relations but leave individuals vulnerable to various forms of deception, information asymmetries and exploitation. Without a reasonable accounting system(money) altruism does not scale unless we tear society back down into very simple social orders relying on memory.
You seem to be comparing the economical aspect of Socialism with Capitalism. We both know which is superior, that needs not be highlighted. What you seem to not understand is that Socialism is meant to be a temporary transitional phase, not a "permanent" built-to-last system such as that of Capitalism. "The Proletarian State is conceived of as a temporary political structure destined to destroy the classes." Socialism seeks to abolish the bourgeois and proletarian classes in favor of organizing, through immense effort, a semi-communistic worker-based society that will after time lead to the withering away of the state in favor of a communist society. That evolution can only be achieved on condition that the workers are class-conscious, organized enough to hold society on their own, and the socialist/collective/communist sector would be supported and funded by the state while the Capitalist sector would be restricted and more heavily taxed to discourage entrepreneurs from investing/participating in this sector.
Okay now to return to my original point on comparative institutions. Lets assume for the sake of argument the final stages of communism are stable and all that needs to be done is to move from the current institutional model, which is a hybrid, to communism. You still must begin to seize more and more private property, I presume you will use the state to do this via a Chomsky-esque recipe.
The fundamental problem for all leftists from those modern liberals to progressives, to democratic socialist and to communists are very real incentive problems inherent in democratic decision making.
1) Voters have a low incentive to be informed because the cost of being informed does not carry the same weight as the value of a single vote to cause a perceivable change with regards to its probability of deciding the outcome. This is called the “rational ignorance” problem in democracy (Converse, 1964; Berelson 1954;Somin 98; Pincione and Teson 06).
Which seems to indicate to me that a constitution or some form of social contract to restrict the power of elites or the monopoly on violence is rather pointless when the primary beneficiaries of such a social contract are unwilling to understand the underlying framework meant to defend themselves from it.
Other research shows that most of the public has little understanding of the basic differences between liberalism and conservatism (RePass 2008; Somin 2010, ch. 2). Which suggests to me the public must invariably yield the control of their political power to intermediary parties like media or politicians and that democracy is itself paradoxically a tool of control.
This situation cannot be resolved with education because the point is that it is “rational” to be uniformed about these things. And when we lament those that watch their entertainment programming rather than spend a few hours a night watching c-span it is really those that are entertaining themselves that are rational while those that call for the America idol viewers to expend large amounts of time internalizing political information irrational.
2) There is the problem of rational irrationality in the sense that since my vote has no value(probability wise) there is very low incentive to re-examine my own biases and so it’s not costly to be irrational about how I process political information. If voters carry incorrect ideas the costs of those implemented false ideas doing damage to the voter are lessoned or socialized to other unwilling parties creating a sort of tragedy of the commons problem. Its’ as if I went to purchase a substandard product in the market that breaks but the costs to repair it would be distributed to other individuals outside the transaction reducing the costs I experience for making a bad purchasing decision.
3) Informed voters are a valuable public good. As with all public goods there is a collective action problem wherein beneficiaries of the public good do not need to pay to supply the good. That is they do not need to devote large amounts of free time or sacrifice time with friends and family or obtaining socially valuable skills to make better political decisions. What is the solution ? for the state to enforce educational standards? What’s to stop the state from institution standards that are not in the interest of society but in the interest of corporate or union lobbies, or foreign governments?
4) Proximal reputational payouts. A person may vote for no other significant reason other than to obtain respect from individuals in their own social circle. What I mean is that voting grants no utility to the voter with regards to its ability to yield desirable political outcomes but it does grant utility to the individual with friends/ family or close associates. I’ve personally been on both ends of this phenomenon.
If you plan is to move from what exists now to some utopian state you have to solve real structural problems inherent in democracy(pure or representative) unless your plan is to use market forces to reach this putative state which I doubt. What is left is a dictatorship which I don’t see how that can possibly work, you cannot jump immediately to a state of communism to solve the problem because you have to move to that stage first.
In addition it can be argued that employing democracy causes markets to fail in the sense that market institutions require certain things to function like a legal framework to protect property claims, defense, and also regulatory institutions. As we lean more heavily on democratic decisions to decide the form of these services we have induced more ignorance in the selection of representatives who then select or appoint their own individuals to head these institutions based on their own biases. The more of the market you cannibalize paradoxically removes more and more control from people because of the further they are displaced from interfacing with their institutions. They are now given one unit of political capital that has such a infinitesimally small probability of altering a voting outcome that it is too costly to inform oneself of the intricacies of their aggregated options in the voting competition.
Now if you start assimilating private industry into the leviathan your increasing the cognitive demands even more on voters. Not only must they understand and be able to deliberate over government policies but they must begin to look into the minutia of individual quasi-corporate recently seized market institutions.
Also the low amount of awareness voters have allows private businesses greater power. A rigid, static regulatory monopoly gives firms with pre-existing market capture exceptional power to maintain an edge while newer entrants have exceeding high entry costs. Firms that engage in rent-seeking activity obtain market power by capturing regulators or legistlation to insulate themselves from the threat of competition. One study indicates that the ROI on lobbying is in the vicinity of 22,000% http://papers.ssrn.comsol3/papers.cfm?a ... id=1375082.
I don’t think there is any place in the private market where you can get returns like that. Political markets are much more perverse and unfair then private markets ever could be and they offer tremendous profit at the expense of everybody. Surely it’s socialism, not capitalism that is the tool of the profiteer. Investment capital is better spent in political all-pay auctions(rent-seeking) then in trying to beat the market, the gains are just so large.
In case you think corruption or political capitalism is a attenuated problem id'e point you to rather small innocuous example of retail florists.
I do not wish to continue the debate of altruism, I am not very informed on that subject as others, I do apologize for this. If you desire a debate on this matter, or any matter really, you could always post on revleft in the Opposing Ideologies forum. Nevertheless, I will attempt to answer some of what you had mentioned:
In this sense your more right then left paradoxically because you fundamentally support a form of extreme conservatism in the sense you desire a retrogression back into tribal economic exchange, if we are to associate right with conservatism as in keeping things the same.
An altruistic order should not be instantiated at large scales specifically because of memory limitations with regards to the inability of individuals to determine who is producing value and who is not.
A move towards communism would be a move forward. Conservatism would mean that I would desire keeping things as they are and not try to perform a system overhaul that will change, many, many aspects of society ranging from LGBT rights to legalizing personal arms and legalizing certain (arguable) drugs.
Memory limitations is based on centralism on the scale of a Big Brother-esque concept. You will never know enough people nor will you be aware of who lives in another commune, that is why "memory limitations" are resolved by the direct actions and judgements of the people in contact with the individual as briefly explained below. Communism seeks to divide society into a federalist basis with many communes and divisions of society to facilitate interactions, decision-making, autonomy, and order. What happens in one commune is of no concern in another unless it directly affects or harms the other commune.
I didn’t assume you were talking about anarcho-primitivism. I’m talking about conigitive limitations. The paper money is memory makes note of this that these two things are interchangeable. Interestingly enough if you read Trivers 71 “evolution of Reciprocal Altruism” you see that one of the two necessities for a form of selfish biological altruism to emerge is memory, the other being high population viscosity. Individuals must be able to keep some record of what other individuals do to reward them or punish then proportion to the gains or losses they confer to the social system.
Explained below. The individuals, as I have said before, that will keep some record of "what other individuals do to reward them or punish them proportional to the gains or losses they confer to the social system" are their direct contacts i.e. friends, relatives, co-workers, neighbors. By being directly in contact with them, they would be able to judge justly whether they are slacking and refusing to work.
I want a system where benefits of society are proportional to contributions. Not a society where aid is arbitrarily granted because I simply think it’s sound logic not to trust other individuals, especially if I cannot observe them constantly. When we are dealing with scales of hundreds of millions of people this is asking me to process to much information. The human mind can only remember so many faces and the dunbar unit ensures that after about 200 individuals we stop recognizing other individuals as humans and begin to recognize them as objects.
Again, we are not dealing with hundreds of millions of people, we are dealing with the individuals directly IN the commune you live in or any other external communes that require a set of resources (trading, not judgemental relationship, but nevertheless). Of the 200 people, you would simply find a handful that become dear to you or your best friends, the rest would be simply others such as co-workers and neighbors. There is no problem I see there, other people would know those that you do not and would act accordingly. Even saying that the "others" that don't mean a lot to you are actually your co-workers, you would nevertheless know a few things or more of them as well as able to see how they perform in the workplace. Workers see him as how he performs in the workplace, bartenders see him how he acts in a bar, and family members see how he acts in his house. You should not and are not capable of memorizing every instance of that person's life, instead it is up to the people in direct contact with him to do so and that can be done through positive or negative sanctions performed by these external elements.
As our society becomes more and more complex this monitoring or horizontal enforcement structure becomes harder and harder to do. It’s very difficult for me to detect when you are not pulling your weight and people can adjust their output just enough to be harder to detect. Those that do this will obviously not admit this but modern society is the society of the altruistic false signaler because they can get away with this and convince others that they are still altruistic. This is why relying on assurances of one’s altruism are dangerous and I would be more alert to somebody who is very adamant that they are an altruist and paradoxically be more trusting of somebody that doesn’t present himself as an altruist to me. To reiterate I do not value people based how altruistic of an image they present themselves to me. The exception however is if we begin to engage in continuous dealings. However considering we can cooperate with millions of people a day I cannot hold this number of people in my head to not only
No, it is not a problem if one person cannot detect whether strangers in a different place are being cooperative and "pulling their weight". It would be the co-workers in the workplace and the neighbors in the commune that are in direct daily contact with that individual and thus, they would be the ones to compare his efforts and compare them and not a stranger that does not know him nor even able to cope with what that individual is doing/facing/capable of. It won't be a centralized "all-seeing-eye", it will be the direct people in contact with him that will judge his actions accordingly. If you see your friend or fellow worker slacking off, refusing to work, or "not pulling his weight" then you would speak to him of this. Should he not want to change, a general assembly in that workplace would be called and the issue resolved through discussion or voting should he be very stubborn and refusing to work.
1) Voters have a low incentive to be informed because the cost of being informed does not carry the same weight as the value of a single vote to cause a perceivable change with regards to its probability of deciding the outcome. This is called the “rational ignorance” problem in democracy (Converse, 1964; Berelson 1954;Somin 98; Pincione and Teson 06)
Which seems to indicate to me that a constitution or some form of social contract to restrict the power of elites or the monopoly on violence is rather pointless when the primary beneficiaries of such a social contract are unwilling to understand the underlying framework meant to defend themselves from it.
Other research shows that most of the public has little understanding of the basic differences between liberalism and conservatism (RePass 2008; Somin 2010, ch. 2). Which suggests to me the public must invariably yield the control of their political power to intermediary parties like media or politicians and that democracy is itself paradoxically a tool of control.
This situation cannot be resolved with education because the point is that it is “rational” to be uniformed about these things. And when we lament those that watch their entertainment programming rather than spend a few hours a night watching c-span it is really those that are entertaining themselves that are rational while those that call for the America idol viewers to expend large amounts of time internalizing political information irrational.
A single vote in the current "democratic" system does not matter for a politician, since as we all know, there are a number of people who reject politics, are apathetic of politics, or do not trust the running candidates. If a future vote in a communist society that would directly affect the people and the community as a whole, then it would be an incentive in and of itself to decide what happens to them, be the decision concerning adding an air conditioner or chopping a forest down. Currently, people do not engage in elections since they realize that it is merely a con and nothing more. That president X would be the same as president Y. They would see no point in voting, especially with the knowledge that the decisions that will be made will not be up to their will. An actual democratic voting process whereby the people themselves are involved in taking decisions that affect them all would prove to be much better, given that the proper advertising of such an occasion has been given that is, which leads us back to your initial claim. The community members, (there would be thousands of communes) would inform each other through the media, by word, and even by road-side billboards or workplace notification. A person would feel interested to vote and decide on changes to be made, since as I had said, it would be in his interest to do so.
"Other research shows that most of the public has little understanding of the basic differences between liberalism and conservatism (RePass 2008; Somin 2010, ch. 2). Which suggests to me the public must invariably yield the control of their political power to intermediary parties like media or politicians and that democracy is itself paradoxically a tool of control. "
Yes, I am very aware of that. But, that research has taken place in the current system of republic parliamentarism and not in a communist or alternative system whereby control is decentralized and the decision to be decided upon would directly affect the public itself. Furthermore that is where class awareness and political education comes in, last thing we need are people who do not know the difference between Liberalism and Conservatism. Voting could also be made compulsory should any problems arise, it could be done with the push of a button even if technology allows it. Lastly, to achieve communism, the people would have already become self-conscious and politically aware, not even owing to the education that would be presented to them.
"This situation cannot be resolved with education because the point is that it is “rational” to be uniformed about these things. And when we lament those that watch their entertainment programming rather than spend a few hours a night watching c-span it is really those that are entertaining themselves that are rational while those that call for the America idol viewers to expend large amounts of time internalizing political information irrational. "
How is that so? Please do explain. If you mean by rational as typical, then yes, but that needs to change one way or another. But if you mean rational as "better" then no. Putting the people into a limbo of ignorance and apathy is not what I would call better, there are already enough Bieber fans to cope with.
2) There is the problem of rational irrationality in the sense that since my vote has no value(probability wise) there is very low incentive to re-examine my own biases and so it’s not costly to be irrational about how I process political information. If voters carry incorrect ideas the costs of those implemented false ideas doing damage to the voter are lessoned or socialized to other unwilling parties creating a sort of tragedy of the commons problem. Its’ as if I went to purchase a substandard product in the market that breaks but the costs to repair it would be distributed to other individuals outside the transaction reducing the costs I experience for making a bad purchasing decision.
As I had said previously, to achieve communism, the people need to be politically aware and have received a respectable education to be able to read and write. Being politically aware is a core essential of Communism. Saying that, the rest of that claim is similar to what you have said previously in (1). Now, since voting will be directed by the commune and would be made effective on that small scale, a vote has a better chance of achieving better "value" than say in the current system of republican parliamentarism. A commune would hold thousands as opposed to hundreds of millions of voters in a nation-wide election. So I say yes, any vote can be effective in the decision process. There would be little fear of voters "carrying incorrect ideas" and vote as so, those that do have these "incorrect" or non-communist ideas would have left the country or died in the revolution fighting the communist uprising or even perished in the transitional state due to repressions against reactionary forces. That and, as I had said, political awareness and education would prove to be a bonus. On a final note on this point, the people that will be involved would be workers who are aware of what is being done and that are actually and actively participating in their own commune, as opposed to a bourgeois slacking all day while his workers produce what he sells. Actively participating in such an instance would result in these workers becoming more socially-aware and thus politically aware, they would desire to better their lives, the lives of their children, and that of the commune. That can be achieved through voting.
3) Informed voters are a valuable public good. As with all public goods there is a collective action problem wherein beneficiaries of the public good do not need to pay to supply the good. That is they do not need to devote large amounts of free time or sacrifice time with friends and family or obtaining socially valuable skills to make better political decisions. What is the solution ? for the state to enforce educational standards? What’s to stop the state from institution standards that are not in the interest of society but in the interest of corporate or union lobbies, or foreign governments?
Simple. The state will not enforce an educational system that serves to support or teach Capitalist or such ideologies. In Socialism, it would be a Socialist state headed by a vanguard, if we are speaking of a proper Communist initiative such as the implementation of the DotP as opposed to an alternative system that seeks to simply "put a human face" on the Capitalist state. It would not be in the interest nor will of the vanguard to instill reactionary teaching in one of its institutions nor will the people accept that a system based on workers' oppression be taught to their children. Last thing they would need after countless years of strife, renovation, and experimentation to return to Capitalism where they would then be forced back to enslavement by the hands of the bourgeois. But let us, for argument's sake, say that the state for some very awkward reason wishes to implement "institution standards that are not in the interest of society but in the interest of corporate or union lobbies, or foreign governments?". The answer to this would be strikes, a coup by the Marxist revolutionaries, dethroning of the corrupt bureaucracy (learned from the USSR), or any resistance in any shape or form that can either cripple the state, forcing it to change its decision or eliminate the state in favor of a more democracy-centric organization.
4) Proximal reputational payouts. A person may vote for no other significant reason other than to obtain respect from individuals in their own social circle. What I mean is that voting grants no utility to the voter with regards to its ability to yield desirable political outcomes but it does grant utility to the individual with friends/ family or close associates. I’ve personally been on both ends of this phenomenon.
Why would a person vote to earn respect from other individuals? I do not see this as a problem really, that person can always say "I will vote for X", go in the booth and vote for Y or even abstain by inserting a blank vote. If person A is to vote for Obama or Bush, he would not be as interested as say, voting to opening a public park or parking lot or even voting to decide on the matter of installing an air conditioner in the workplace or an elevator. These things would: 1) Be on the communal (small) scale, which would then directly affect him and be of interest to him. and 2) Bring actual change rather than empty rhetorics spewed by candidates.
If you plan is to move from what exists now to some utopian state you have to solve real structural problems inherent in democracy(pure or representative) unless your plan is to use market forces to reach this putative state which I doubt. What is left is a dictatorship which I don’t see how that can possibly work, you cannot jump immediately to a state of communism to solve the problem because you have to move to that stage first.
I do not see any structural problems in direct/consensus democracy. No, it is not a "dictatorship" in the sense of the word, the DotP means the reign of one class over another, not one person over everyone, I'll quote a better person on this one:
"The dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. -Lenin, State and Revolution (1917)"
In addition it can be argued that employing democracy causes markets to fail in the sense that market institutions require certain things to function like a legal framework to protect property claims, defense, and also regulatory institutions. As we lean more heavily on democratic decisions to decide the form of these services we have induced more ignorance in the selection of representatives who then select or appoint their own individuals to head these institutions based on their own biases. The more of the market you cannibalize paradoxically removes more and more control from people because of the further they are displaced from interfacing with their institutions. They are now given one unit of political capital that has such a infinitesimally small probability of altering a voting outcome that it is too costly to inform oneself of the intricacies of their aggregated options in the voting competition.
We do not need a legal framework to protect (private) property claims, we oppose such property. It would be personally the least of my concern if private property ceases to exist for one reason or another, and the (DotP) state or the people appropriate this land as theirs. On the contrary, it would be a step forward. It actually really depends on where democracy is instated and in what way. If it to decide on what the workers shall sell and to whom (pre-communist work), then there workers would themselves decide on this matter. If it is the building of streetlights or road bumps, then it will be the people living in the neighborhood that will do so. If it comes to national decisions, then that, that is up to interpretation. Some desire Soviets (worker councils) while others (Stalinists) desire a more centralized decision-making entity rather than a democratic process.
Now if you start assimilating private industry into the leviathan your increasing the cognitive demands even more on voters. Not only must they understand and be able to deliberate over government policies but they must begin to look into the minutia of individual quasi-corporate recently seized market institutions.
That also is debatable and has differing opinions on it. The workplace, be it in whatever system, should have its decisions made by the people who work there themselves and not external elements, unless the workplace is affecting the society negatively (severe pollution). External voters have nothing to do with what happens with these industries that they do not participate in, nor are effected by them during the transitional period, where the state still exists, and as a result would demand that the vanguard or state manage these industries according to what they see best. The vanguard constitutes the professional and active members of society to guide the transition, they would then manage what happens in such cases for it would be too "complex" for the people to handle at the current time, especially we are speaking of a system overhaul.
Also the low amount of awareness voters have allows private businesses greater power. A rigid, static regulatory monopoly gives firms with pre-existing market capture exceptional power to maintain an edge while newer entrants have exceeding high ezntry costs. Firms that engage in rent-seeking activity obtain market power by capturing regulators or legistlation to insulate themselves from the threat of competition. One study indicates that the ROI on lobbying is in the vicinity of 22,000% http://papers.ssrn.comsol3/papers.cfm?a ... id=1375082.
One question. Why are you speaking of private property as not being able to withstand democratic decision-making when I clearly do not support such type of property? The first and foremost predecessor to any Marxist/Leftist revolution to occur is widespread social, political, and class awareness. That needs to be the most crucial point for a communist society to even be spoken of as a coming system in a country.
In case you think corruption or political capitalism is a attenuated problem id'e point you to rather small innocuous example of retail florists.
Yes I am aware of the State Capitalist interferences in the market, influencing monopoly by restricting new entrants through the need of property, taxes, licenses, etc,
That is basically it, the core of the theory is based on such altruistic matters such as the idea of workers' emancipation and the expropriation of the bourgeois. You need to realize that when we do speak of such a case, it is not because we speak of the poor while having nothing at all to do with them. That is on the contrary, we only speak of them because they represent the core of the struggles being made and not some external "political capital" that we simply solely use to lull the populace in our favor. I see no sort or tinge of "self-deception" to be honest, just as you view us as altruistic we view you as egotistical. That moral outrage is the basis of the Left, as I had said, otherwise I wouldn't be a Leftist myself but would have stuck with other Rightist ideologies. If we are to instigate such an altruistic mentality in order to better human relations with each other and thus cooperation, then that is certainly a change for the better. No matter if certain calculations or ideas say otherwise.
We aren't speaking of Anarcho-Primmies here, nor of the destruction of society and its technological advancements, of course not, that would be insane poppycock spread by the Primmies. It may have changed rather than being non-existent if we are to speak of it as a social sanction system where honor and respect would be a somewhat similar concept as that of money. You still seemingly do not understand how a communist/Anarcho-Communist society would function. The incentives, rather than gaining money or honor, would basically be the personal idea or want of not returning to a past system which left him to his fate as a wage-slave, tied to the bonds of the workplace for an unfair pay. The idea of cooperation instead of competition, as I had said needs to be instilled into the minds of the people if we are to speak of a society based on cooperation. People living in communes, which would be many and federalized, would see to it as an objective, goal, or incentive to allow themselves to work for the betterment of others and as well as themselves. They would realize the bad aspects of Capitalism, which knowing that not everyone is able to reach "the top" and would instead prefer to manage their own workplace, be their own bosses, as well as take the whole fruits of their labor as their own without having them taken by others. As for money and its abolishment, keeping money would prevent a high number of people from fulfilling even the most basic of needs leaving them as they currently are: poor beggars and slaving workers. Retaining money from the current system, the workers would then be obliged and forced to work under awful conditions in order to maximize profits or even stay out of work and unemployed due to lack of vacancies, lack of employing facilities, and the deterrent of bad pay. This mentality would keep them from thinking of money or wage-slavery as better systems to adopt or return to.
There are many reasons for people in a Leftist society to refuse returning to other systems, as explained briefly above. I do not think that after reaching "paradise" and a better enchancement of everyone's lives that they would desire to go back to wage-slavery and the torments of everyday Capitalist life and the uncertainty of the morrow. A person who never had a house or a television before would not desire to go back to a system that certainly does not offer him anything despite his hard work.
I am simpy explaining and defending "why" we are speaking of the workers and the poor, not trying to change your beliefs, since you obviously will not and neither will I.
Actually with the ability to access free education, without having the basis for social and economical pressure, and having the ability to move onto higher education without having to pay a hefty sum, and being offered a proper and well-managed workplace for intellectual (researchers, doctors, scientists), people will then be able to share and participate as well as develop scientific research freely. Whether it will be a move backwards is really a personal opinion depending on the person himself if he is egotistical or altruistic and depending on the conditions and role of the person in the current system. A toiling badly paid worker is sure to desire a new system to treat him better and suit his desires, while a chairman or CEO of some firm would fiercely resists such a notion of change and the redistribution of wealth.
I was pointing out the differences between us, highlighting them to be exact. By stating that you are egotistical and I am altruistic, we can then see basically where we disagree, on what points, and the reason for our advocacy for each of our own ideologies we uphold. Yes that is a factual claim no different then "there is a keyboard beneath my fingers now", but do not forget that you had claimed that I am altruistic and attacked me for being so. For you to direct compassion outwards, that would require that you experience work first-hand, if you have not. To decrease your utility and potential is really not in my interest, for I am not considered a competitor of yours neither in the global nor local market. Seriously, if you change your reasonings or not is not really the point of my claims or my intention nor will you, should you ever change, become a vital part of a communist society nor will I. I am merely defending the communist ideology rather than trying to convert you.
It is not merely talk without action. Oh yes there are certain direct sacrifices when I speak of communism and such things, mainly it is the external social resistance by people who are still affected by the Red Scare, flunking the opportunity to work/manage my father's company in favor of manual labor (for certain reasons), negative consequence for speaking out and stating differing opinions on matters, and having to spend time reading and at meetings with the LCP.
Yes, that is true.
It really depends on the condition, sacrifices made, and the person himself. Christians tend to donate a small amount of money (most of the time) to charity and the church, this makes them feel all cozy and good inside because 1) They claim that this will get them a ticket to heaven and thusly repaid, 2) A few dollars is a small price to pay for a spot in eternal plenty (heaven), 3) The can then continue living their lives normally after donating. we communists, on the other hand, are not all working class people. We tend to come from middle-class families with parents owning a thriving business, a hopeful future, a better life than many others, etc. What we are doing is sacrificing these possibilities and futures for a certain cause that seeks to benefit society and people as a whole instead of personally benefiting me, and me only. As I had said, I could just take over my father's company and be living in paradise, but no. I'd prefer not speaking of this much further for it is quite apparent why: I'm sounding like some Raghib Aleme (multimillionaire celebrity gone monk).
Noted, I will look into those when I have the time. What happens in debates generally stays in debates, that is common when I engage in arguments/debates with friends and fellow comrades.
I have no refrigerators.
You have no refrigerators.
He has no refrigerators.
Stalin has all the refrigerators.
This is true.
How is it not true? Under socialism the state owns and controls everything. There is no personal property.
They had ice boxes back then, which are effectively the same thing, but more akin to a freezer.
Also, you're wrong:
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icebox#Popular_culture
We had refrigerators since the 1920s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerator#History
Capitalist. Socialist. Mixed. Traditional.
You would think there would be more, unique ones.
...forgive my ignorance.
No offense (well, maybe a little...) but we've been doing that quite a lot for you...
I think it's about time you read up on things and get a bit of knowledge, rather than just posting clearly ignorant statements.
And the next time you mention Stalin... He was a Authoritarian Dictator. He was not a Socialist, nor a Communist. That was just his facade... Get it right...
Michelangelo
Spambots reply to threads now?
You reply to spambots now?
You heard that, green and red.
What I’m saying is that focus on the poor and moral outrage directed at those that have abundance is potentially an innate driver that cannot be trusted at these scales by outside observers. The structure of proto-markets necessitates the sort of behavior you and altruists alike are employing to sustain itself. The problem, however, is at large scales memory limitations do not allow for an accurate accounting of who is producing value and who is not so when you support one wealth stratum over the other your assuming or signaling, with some other intent(social currency extraction), one deserves to have less wealth while another deserves to have more wealth irrespective of how much input they will actually provide society. This is true in some cases(and I’ll get into limited liability and regulatory interference) but it cannot be universalized. Universalizing this assumption permits the generation of moral hazard because some people are granted wealth they do not earn but this is not important for the advocate because the costs of those transfers are born by other parties of society while the advocate obtains psychological benefits, and proximal social currency( which are not necessarily warranted ) or in primitive tribal systems they would receive reputational gains ( which are not readily redeemable in modern economic systems do to memory limitations).
In this sense your more right then left paradoxically because you fundamentally support a form of extreme conservatism in the sense you desire a retrogression back into tribal economic exchange, if we are to associate right with conservatism as in keeping things the same.
An altruistic order should not be instantiated at large scales specifically because of memory limitations with regards to the inability of individuals to determine who is producing value and who is not.
I didn’t assume you were talking about anarcho-primitivism. I’m talking about conigitive limitations. The paper money is memory makes note of this that these two things are interchangeable. Interestingly enough if you read Trivers 71 “evolution of Reciprocal Altruism” you see that one of the two necessities for a form of selfish biological altruism to emerge is memory, the other being high population viscosity. Individuals must be able to keep some record of what other individuals do to reward them or punish then proportion to the gains or losses they confer to the social system. Memory is the effective technology employed here when the human brain’s cognitive horizon no longer overlaps with the scale of society and some sort of prosthetic must stand in to stabilize cooperation beyond the boundaries of cognitive limits. If we want to operate without money (as we recognize it as a physical substance, or electronic data stored on computers), we have to rely on our own individual minds to make these judgments. Who is hurting who is helping, should I engage in some sort of cooperation with this person or should I not. Without a means to answer this question altruism is not a stable evolutionary strategy and isolationism is the only viable alternative and it seems neither of us want that. I want a system where benefits of society are proportional to contributions. Not a society where aid is arbitrarily granted because I simply think it’s sound logic not to trust other individuals, especially if I cannot observe them constantly. When we are dealing with scales of hundreds of millions of people this is asking me to process to much information. The human mind can only remember so many faces and the dunbar unit ensures that after about 200 individuals we stop recognizing other individuals as humans and begin to recognize them as objects.
The difference here between us is i belive the concept of money is just an analogue to reputation, honor and other primitive concepts that work well in small scales or with really popular individuals that have special status to a particular social order(in this reputational currencies are non-egalitarian because of cognitive limits, only so many popular people can redeem them; stratification is not as binary as Marx deduced and Weber is more usefull here with regards to adding status class and political class). Money i believe has always been with us, it has only changed in form(but i'm repeating myself now).
Note on corporations or as they are also called “PUBLICALLY traded companies” If you look at the incentive structure of a corporation it is fundamentally socialist in the sense of limited liability. What I mean by that is Shareholders can own a portion of the company however the holders are not “liable” for the companies failures. That is holders estates are insulated from further losses beyond the aliquot of equity they have in that particular company held as common or preferred stock. IN this regards a corporation (or publically traded company) can damage the environment or use derivatives of date rape drugs in toys and the owners/holders are not subject to liability despite the legally defined tittles they hold in the company.
This is not unlike the welfare state where the agent in question obtains benefits from a social arrangement but if that arrangement does damage to society the costs are not distributed to them but to unwilling third parties. To elaborate the owner/shareholder does not regulate his property or the beneficiary does not obtain socially valuable skills and instead consumes leisure in the case of the welfare recipient. That is the essence of socialism, the ability to transfer costs to unwilling parties. I don’t want to eat other peoples costs whether they be poor or rich.
No I didn’t claim you were altruistic because I don’t believe altruism in a pure sense is possible. Altruism could not evolve as it would enhance the fitness of a recipient while reducing the fitness of the altruist. Even if you had an entire pollution of pure altruists through some miracle a single mutation that results in a selfish individual would cause the gene frequency to change at the expense of altruistic genes. Organims would need to develop psychological defenses against selfish recipients and would invariably become selfish for doing so as it enhances their survival. However if an organism could become secretly altruistic, or present the outward perception(advertise) he/she is altruistic while being fundamentally selfish they would have the ability to fool a defensive selfish altruist into providing them aid. This in turn would, as I stated before, supply the pressure for the selfish altruist to develop a means to detect other selfish altruists acts of deception. Selection in turn would operate on the selfish altruist who attempts to obtain benefits while not remunerating to conceal his/her intent from his/herself to further insure success at deception. If one was to be able to feel empathy to their fellow man and express it vigorously but not act on it when they can conceal the incongruity of their statements with their actions then it is possible they can alter the opinion of other individuals in a positive direction toward the self deceiving selfish altruist.
My concern is self deception or more specifically an individual (politician/social advocate) presenting concepts like charity or outrage at inequality as a weapon to obtain reputational gains for himself or positions of power for himself. Their motivations may be true but ideally “talk is cheap” and because of the structure of society it’s difficult for outward observs to verify not just the parity between action and statements but actual magnitudes of “how altruistic” vs other altruists. Inability to constantly assay this magnitude variable grants the selfish altruist the ability to capitalize on one or two obviously demonstrable acts of charity and then fail to perform at future dates once the’ve demonstrated at one temporal moment that charity has occurred. Because of this I don’t think we can accept claims of this nature because they have the potential of being motivated fundamentally by selfishness and are no different than the very behaviors they criticize in market orders. For me its’ not sufficient to capture one moment in time and use that to judge future performance. I would require second by second re-evaluations of the movement of the putative altruist to see how well he is performing, are you beginning to see the parity when what I demand and money and how we use it to evaluate things, i need to see the books, from last year and the year before , and the year before?
I don’t feel the need to qualify myself to people with regards to how much charity work I do or how horrible it is the people are miserable and poor because that very behavior is a form of free riding in the sense that I can obtain reputational benefits for essentially just communicating notions.
Any person who can be convinced you are altruistic is potentially subject to be more charitable to an altruist and so false signaling altruism is an effective economic strategy that can be profitable, though not to the same extent as currency or futures trading but that is not relevant because the behavioral foundations were necessary to ensure stable social systems in the past so we should assume they are deeply integrated into our biology and difficult to override.
If not integrated biologically they may be integrated culturally as individuals who can coopt and inculcate others to become altruistic, while maintaining their selfishness could accrue benefits from this sort of reprogramming. It’s not absurd to believe this is directed from parent to child for the benefit of parent. You can begin to see that I’m trying to defend myself from a psychological weapon that can be employed against myself for the benefit of the individual using it.
It would be in my favor, as a selfish person, to live in a society of nothing but altruists though as I could obtain aid without the need to remunerate proportionally.
That you claim to be altruistic is not verifiable to me but based on evolutionary biology I don’t’ believe, in a fundamental sense, you are altruistic; I do believe that you believe yourself to be however. If we were to be alone with 50 other people in some jungle or prairie environment and we were forced to cooperate to survive none of this would matter because I would see you daily and I would make sure you did not obtain asymmetric advantage to me when we engaged in some form of exchange. Your sentiments would be forced to match your actions or I might detect you slacking off or sleeping when you should be watching for predators, This would cost you tremendously in reputation especially wheni call you selfish or uncooperative I could devalue you greatly in the group and you would have to recompense re-balancing accounts. Nor would I have any need for money (in the form we recognize it) and property would likely totally unnecessary. Why do I need to worry about you damaging or abusing what I value(a spear or a clay jar used to carry water) when I can simply point out that your acts hurt all other members and if that is indeed the verdict of the group you will be sanctioned for it and would be more careful with how are you treating common property.
As our society becomes more and more complex this monitoring or horizontal enforcement structure becomes harder and harder to do. It’s very difficult for me to detect when you are not pulling your weight and people can adjust their output just enough to be harder to detect. Those that do this will obviously not admit this but modern society is the society of the altruistic false signaler because they can get away with this and convince others that they are still altruistic. This is why relying on assurances of one’s altruism are dangerous and I would be more alert to somebody who is very adamant that they are an altruist and paradoxically be more trusting of somebody that doesn’t present himself as an altruist to me. To reiterate I do not value people based how altruistic of an image they present themselves to me. The exception however is if we begin to engage in continuous dealings. However considering we can cooperate with millions of people a day I cannot hold this number of people in my head to not only
1) Determine if there is fidelity in altruism claims
2) Assign a magnitude or vector quantity to their altruism.
Therefore altruism is of limited utility in stabilizing or facilitating cooperation with other individuals except in the case of iterative (repeated) games.
I’m not talking about supporting unpopular ideas. There are sacrifices with regards to all human action. I’m talking about sacrificing what is valued most. Are you abandoning something your value highly for something you value less? Does an ideology have value?
I’m talking about signaling altruism for proximal social reasons. For example a person who advertises that he does a lot to help the poor is more likely to obtain respect then a person who advertises that he does a lot to help bill gates. Conversely a person who advertises that he does a lot to help the poor is not necessarily likely to become ostracized or lose respect by society then another person who advertises that he does a lot to help bill gates.
If you truly believe that your abandonment of familial estate control will inevitably yield greater gains than those have the potential to spill-over to you and in this sense obtaining control of it is an opportunity cost. Facilitating the development of a communist system is superior to taking control of your estate.
This gets much more difficult for an outside observer like myself to quantify when trying to peer into your head and discern what type of things you would have to sacrifice to operate this estate. Exposing yourself to your predecessors debt, pursuing and educational track that denies you immediate pleasures, or abandoning your ideology(which you clearly value as demonstrated by your effort here).
If your suggesting that I should take your word that you are doing purely altruistic thing there’s a problem here, since I have no means of confirming your intent and what you experience I cannot know if your engaging in conscious signaling. To make it even more difficult if your operating based on self-deception, empathy or love for the wretched it makes it even more difficult. Having the ability to watch you constantly and being in proximity to you is the only reliable way, I believe, to ensure you’re not engaging in preference falsification with intent to generate reputatational gain. Obviously this is not practical, and the more people I have to monitor the harder this gets. A onetime statement of intent is not statistically significant to predict how you will behave in a real world environment. Not to mention my constant presence and threat of defection from you(if you depended on my survival, which begins to deteriorate when you fail to remunerate and are gaining asymmetric advantage in the relationship) would in turn operate to enforce convergence toward pro-social behavior or cooperation.
So the notion is
1 I cannot watch you constantly and make continuous re-evaluations of yoru behavior to see if it matches your advertised intent. This puts me at disadvantage with regards to this exchange about your estate and beneficence.
2 you are not compelled to ensure the behavior falls into a parity with your statements because you have ample insulation from my constant monitoring, putting you in a morally hazardous position.
This is my concern with altruism and why I reject is as a cooperative methodology that is scalable. I have to judge you, an any other person advocating for those less fortunate, based on the very limited information I have while you are signaling. The situation is asymmetrical with regards to information as my costs to confirm the veracity of claims are extraordinarily high requiring me to alter my life to obtain the information which is just not practical.
This is the basic problem of asymmetric information and why altruistic claims can be viewed as a form of potential free-riding in modern society regardless of the if the catalyst for the claim is conscious or instigated by biological self-deception via some pro-social emotion.
But do you feel better when you help somebody out who is in suffers some misfortune? However I know that some need is valid and other forms of need are manufactured. I believe people are capable of deception, and further more subject to self deception. I myself have taken advantage of charity from not only unfamiliar institutions but from family. That I admit this would be insane if we were in a tribal economic order. If I depended on you and 50 other people to survive (in a tribal sense) I could never admit this to you because my credit worthiness could be damaged via this admission like an institution that defaulted on debt or declared bankruptcy twice, or probably more realistically admission of this fact “could possibly” damage my reputation while concealment would have no effect. Concealment is the optimal strategy and biological self-deception facilitates this lie.
To touch on this final point, this is the very thing I wish to avoid, an altruistic mentality. I do not believe it will better human relations but leave individuals vulnerable to various forms of deception, information asymmetries and exploitation. Without a reasonable accounting system(money) altruism does not scale unless we tear society back down into very simple social orders relying on memory.
Okay now to return to my original point on comparative institutions. Lets assume for the sake of argument the final stages of communism are stable and all that needs to be done is to move from the current institutional model, which is a hybrid, to communism. You still must begin to seize more and more private property, I presume you will use the state to do this via a Chomsky-esque recipe.
The fundamental problem for all leftists from those modern liberals to progressives, to democratic socialist and to communists are very real incentive problems inherent in democratic decision making.
1) Voters have a low incentive to be informed because the cost of being informed does not carry the same weight as the value of a single vote to cause a perceivable change with regards to its probability of deciding the outcome. This is called the “rational ignorance” problem in democracy (Converse, 1964; Berelson 1954;Somin 98; Pincione and Teson 06).
Which seems to indicate to me that a constitution or some form of social contract to restrict the power of elites or the monopoly on violence is rather pointless when the primary beneficiaries of such a social contract are unwilling to understand the underlying framework meant to defend themselves from it.
Other research shows that most of the public has little understanding of the basic differences between liberalism and conservatism (RePass 2008; Somin 2010, ch. 2). Which suggests to me the public must invariably yield the control of their political power to intermediary parties like media or politicians and that democracy is itself paradoxically a tool of control.
This situation cannot be resolved with education because the point is that it is “rational” to be uniformed about these things. And when we lament those that watch their entertainment programming rather than spend a few hours a night watching c-span it is really those that are entertaining themselves that are rational while those that call for the America idol viewers to expend large amounts of time internalizing political information irrational.
2) There is the problem of rational irrationality in the sense that since my vote has no value(probability wise) there is very low incentive to re-examine my own biases and so it’s not costly to be irrational about how I process political information. If voters carry incorrect ideas the costs of those implemented false ideas doing damage to the voter are lessoned or socialized to other unwilling parties creating a sort of tragedy of the commons problem. Its’ as if I went to purchase a substandard product in the market that breaks but the costs to repair it would be distributed to other individuals outside the transaction reducing the costs I experience for making a bad purchasing decision.
3) Informed voters are a valuable public good. As with all public goods there is a collective action problem wherein beneficiaries of the public good do not need to pay to supply the good. That is they do not need to devote large amounts of free time or sacrifice time with friends and family or obtaining socially valuable skills to make better political decisions. What is the solution ? for the state to enforce educational standards? What’s to stop the state from institution standards that are not in the interest of society but in the interest of corporate or union lobbies, or foreign governments?
4) Proximal reputational payouts. A person may vote for no other significant reason other than to obtain respect from individuals in their own social circle. What I mean is that voting grants no utility to the voter with regards to its ability to yield desirable political outcomes but it does grant utility to the individual with friends/ family or close associates. I’ve personally been on both ends of this phenomenon.
If you plan is to move from what exists now to some utopian state you have to solve real structural problems inherent in democracy(pure or representative) unless your plan is to use market forces to reach this putative state which I doubt. What is left is a dictatorship which I don’t see how that can possibly work, you cannot jump immediately to a state of communism to solve the problem because you have to move to that stage first.
In addition it can be argued that employing democracy causes markets to fail in the sense that market institutions require certain things to function like a legal framework to protect property claims, defense, and also regulatory institutions. As we lean more heavily on democratic decisions to decide the form of these services we have induced more ignorance in the selection of representatives who then select or appoint their own individuals to head these institutions based on their own biases. The more of the market you cannibalize paradoxically removes more and more control from people because of the further they are displaced from interfacing with their institutions. They are now given one unit of political capital that has such a infinitesimally small probability of altering a voting outcome that it is too costly to inform oneself of the intricacies of their aggregated options in the voting competition.
Now if you start assimilating private industry into the leviathan your increasing the cognitive demands even more on voters. Not only must they understand and be able to deliberate over government policies but they must begin to look into the minutia of individual quasi-corporate recently seized market institutions.
Also the low amount of awareness voters have allows private businesses greater power. A rigid, static regulatory monopoly gives firms with pre-existing market capture exceptional power to maintain an edge while newer entrants have exceeding high entry costs. Firms that engage in rent-seeking activity obtain market power by capturing regulators or legistlation to insulate themselves from the threat of competition. One study indicates that the ROI on lobbying is in the vicinity of 22,000%
http://papers.ssrn.comsol3/papers.cfm?a ... id=1375082.
I don’t think there is any place in the private market where you can get returns like that. Political markets are much more perverse and unfair then private markets ever could be and they offer tremendous profit at the expense of everybody. Surely it’s socialism, not capitalism that is the tool of the profiteer. Investment capital is better spent in political all-pay auctions(rent-seeking) then in trying to beat the market, the gains are just so large.
In case you think corruption or political capitalism is a attenuated problem id'e point you to rather small innocuous example of retail florists.
http://www.ldaf.louisiana.gov/portal/Po ... ure/RF.pdf
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/201 ... ists_N.htm
Apparently in order to sell arranged flowers you need a license. These types of practices not only increase the costs of entrants they insulate existing market players from competition.
A move towards communism would be a move forward. Conservatism would mean that I would desire keeping things as they are and not try to perform a system overhaul that will change, many, many aspects of society ranging from LGBT rights to legalizing personal arms and legalizing certain (arguable) drugs.
Memory limitations is based on centralism on the scale of a Big Brother-esque concept. You will never know enough people nor will you be aware of who lives in another commune, that is why "memory limitations" are resolved by the direct actions and judgements of the people in contact with the individual as briefly explained below. Communism seeks to divide society into a federalist basis with many communes and divisions of society to facilitate interactions, decision-making, autonomy, and order. What happens in one commune is of no concern in another unless it directly affects or harms the other commune.
Explained below. The individuals, as I have said before, that will keep some record of "what other individuals do to reward them or punish them proportional to the gains or losses they confer to the social system" are their direct contacts i.e. friends, relatives, co-workers, neighbors. By being directly in contact with them, they would be able to judge justly whether they are slacking and refusing to work.
Again, we are not dealing with hundreds of millions of people, we are dealing with the individuals directly IN the commune you live in or any other external communes that require a set of resources (trading, not judgemental relationship, but nevertheless). Of the 200 people, you would simply find a handful that become dear to you or your best friends, the rest would be simply others such as co-workers and neighbors. There is no problem I see there, other people would know those that you do not and would act accordingly. Even saying that the "others" that don't mean a lot to you are actually your co-workers, you would nevertheless know a few things or more of them as well as able to see how they perform in the workplace. Workers see him as how he performs in the workplace, bartenders see him how he acts in a bar, and family members see how he acts in his house. You should not and are not capable of memorizing every instance of that person's life, instead it is up to the people in direct contact with him to do so and that can be done through positive or negative sanctions performed by these external elements.
No, it is not a problem if one person cannot detect whether strangers in a different place are being cooperative and "pulling their weight". It would be the co-workers in the workplace and the neighbors in the commune that are in direct daily contact with that individual and thus, they would be the ones to compare his efforts and compare them and not a stranger that does not know him nor even able to cope with what that individual is doing/facing/capable of. It won't be a centralized "all-seeing-eye", it will be the direct people in contact with him that will judge his actions accordingly. If you see your friend or fellow worker slacking off, refusing to work, or "not pulling his weight" then you would speak to him of this. Should he not want to change, a general assembly in that workplace would be called and the issue resolved through discussion or voting should he be very stubborn and refusing to work.
A single vote in the current "democratic" system does not matter for a politician, since as we all know, there are a number of people who reject politics, are apathetic of politics, or do not trust the running candidates. If a future vote in a communist society that would directly affect the people and the community as a whole, then it would be an incentive in and of itself to decide what happens to them, be the decision concerning adding an air conditioner or chopping a forest down. Currently, people do not engage in elections since they realize that it is merely a con and nothing more. That president X would be the same as president Y. They would see no point in voting, especially with the knowledge that the decisions that will be made will not be up to their will. An actual democratic voting process whereby the people themselves are involved in taking decisions that affect them all would prove to be much better, given that the proper advertising of such an occasion has been given that is, which leads us back to your initial claim. The community members, (there would be thousands of communes) would inform each other through the media, by word, and even by road-side billboards or workplace notification. A person would feel interested to vote and decide on changes to be made, since as I had said, it would be in his interest to do so.
"Other research shows that most of the public has little understanding of the basic differences between liberalism and conservatism (RePass 2008; Somin 2010, ch. 2). Which suggests to me the public must invariably yield the control of their political power to intermediary parties like media or politicians and that democracy is itself paradoxically a tool of control. "
Yes, I am very aware of that. But, that research has taken place in the current system of republic parliamentarism and not in a communist or alternative system whereby control is decentralized and the decision to be decided upon would directly affect the public itself. Furthermore that is where class awareness and political education comes in, last thing we need are people who do not know the difference between Liberalism and Conservatism. Voting could also be made compulsory should any problems arise, it could be done with the push of a button even if technology allows it. Lastly, to achieve communism, the people would have already become self-conscious and politically aware, not even owing to the education that would be presented to them.
"This situation cannot be resolved with education because the point is that it is “rational” to be uniformed about these things. And when we lament those that watch their entertainment programming rather than spend a few hours a night watching c-span it is really those that are entertaining themselves that are rational while those that call for the America idol viewers to expend large amounts of time internalizing political information irrational. "
How is that so? Please do explain. If you mean by rational as typical, then yes, but that needs to change one way or another. But if you mean rational as "better" then no. Putting the people into a limbo of ignorance and apathy is not what I would call better, there are already enough Bieber fans to cope with.
As I had said previously, to achieve communism, the people need to be politically aware and have received a respectable education to be able to read and write. Being politically aware is a core essential of Communism. Saying that, the rest of that claim is similar to what you have said previously in (1). Now, since voting will be directed by the commune and would be made effective on that small scale, a vote has a better chance of achieving better "value" than say in the current system of republican parliamentarism. A commune would hold thousands as opposed to hundreds of millions of voters in a nation-wide election. So I say yes, any vote can be effective in the decision process. There would be little fear of voters "carrying incorrect ideas" and vote as so, those that do have these "incorrect" or non-communist ideas would have left the country or died in the revolution fighting the communist uprising or even perished in the transitional state due to repressions against reactionary forces. That and, as I had said, political awareness and education would prove to be a bonus. On a final note on this point, the people that will be involved would be workers who are aware of what is being done and that are actually and actively participating in their own commune, as opposed to a bourgeois slacking all day while his workers produce what he sells. Actively participating in such an instance would result in these workers becoming more socially-aware and thus politically aware, they would desire to better their lives, the lives of their children, and that of the commune. That can be achieved through voting.
Simple. The state will not enforce an educational system that serves to support or teach Capitalist or such ideologies. In Socialism, it would be a Socialist state headed by a vanguard, if we are speaking of a proper Communist initiative such as the implementation of the DotP as opposed to an alternative system that seeks to simply "put a human face" on the Capitalist state. It would not be in the interest nor will of the vanguard to instill reactionary teaching in one of its institutions nor will the people accept that a system based on workers' oppression be taught to their children. Last thing they would need after countless years of strife, renovation, and experimentation to return to Capitalism where they would then be forced back to enslavement by the hands of the bourgeois. But let us, for argument's sake, say that the state for some very awkward reason wishes to implement "institution standards that are not in the interest of society but in the interest of corporate or union lobbies, or foreign governments?". The answer to this would be strikes, a coup by the Marxist revolutionaries, dethroning of the corrupt bureaucracy (learned from the USSR), or any resistance in any shape or form that can either cripple the state, forcing it to change its decision or eliminate the state in favor of a more democracy-centric organization.
Why would a person vote to earn respect from other individuals? I do not see this as a problem really, that person can always say "I will vote for X", go in the booth and vote for Y or even abstain by inserting a blank vote. If person A is to vote for Obama or Bush, he would not be as interested as say, voting to opening a public park or parking lot or even voting to decide on the matter of installing an air conditioner in the workplace or an elevator. These things would: 1) Be on the communal (small) scale, which would then directly affect him and be of interest to him. and 2) Bring actual change rather than empty rhetorics spewed by candidates.
I do not see any structural problems in direct/consensus democracy. No, it is not a "dictatorship" in the sense of the word, the DotP means the reign of one class over another, not one person over everyone, I'll quote a better person on this one:
"The dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. -Lenin, State and Revolution (1917)"
We do not need a legal framework to protect (private) property claims, we oppose such property. It would be personally the least of my concern if private property ceases to exist for one reason or another, and the (DotP) state or the people appropriate this land as theirs. On the contrary, it would be a step forward. It actually really depends on where democracy is instated and in what way. If it to decide on what the workers shall sell and to whom (pre-communist work), then there workers would themselves decide on this matter. If it is the building of streetlights or road bumps, then it will be the people living in the neighborhood that will do so. If it comes to national decisions, then that, that is up to interpretation. Some desire Soviets (worker councils) while others (Stalinists) desire a more centralized decision-making entity rather than a democratic process.
That also is debatable and has differing opinions on it. The workplace, be it in whatever system, should have its decisions made by the people who work there themselves and not external elements, unless the workplace is affecting the society negatively (severe pollution). External voters have nothing to do with what happens with these industries that they do not participate in, nor are effected by them during the transitional period, where the state still exists, and as a result would demand that the vanguard or state manage these industries according to what they see best. The vanguard constitutes the professional and active members of society to guide the transition, they would then manage what happens in such cases for it would be too "complex" for the people to handle at the current time, especially we are speaking of a system overhaul.
One question. Why are you speaking of private property as not being able to withstand democratic decision-making when I clearly do not support such type of property? The first and foremost predecessor to any Marxist/Leftist revolution to occur is widespread social, political, and class awareness. That needs to be the most crucial point for a communist society to even be spoken of as a coming system in a country.
Yes I am aware of the State Capitalist interferences in the market, influencing monopoly by restricting new entrants through the need of property, taxes, licenses, etc,