Doesn't the service industry preclude communist revolt?

[Lonestar]

Originally posted by GePap


Change what nature?

There is a reason I always bring up the Star Trek example- imagine people actually had something like a replicator: then in essence human beings would have no hand in the making of anything, and thus have no reason to do anything to harm the commons, yet they certainly would not be "under the control of machines", at least not more significantly than today, and realize that if today we had no mahcines our society would collapse into anarchy.

So the point is that we may reach a point at which all needs will be met, and so will mopst wants, and the economic system will be such that work (toil, labor) will not be necessary-if people which to compete for recognition and fame, they will be able to stick to art and sport as opposed to economic activities like farming or manufacturing.

But the replicator isn't magical, they change molecules around from base elements.

[Agathon]

To clarify, I accused utopian communists of raping the environment as much as capitalists. Primarily of two reasons. ( By the by were you following the thread you would have realized it was following posts describing utopian marxism as the stateless variety )
1) In order to achieve the productivity required it was to be completed via capitalism (the folks who beleive this. Their words not mine) Only when capitalism reached that zenith was utopian communism a reality. Hence environemnetal damage at rate x, pre conversion to communsim hence envrionemtnal damage at rate x after conversion to stateless society. It would likely stand to reason that since capitalism was the engine to drive towards that level of producivity it would be increasing it enviro damage to sustain those levels of production.

But that seems to me a meaningless dispute. The problems capitalism has are nothing to do with the use of environmental resources per se, but the fact that individual incentives cause outcomes which are collectively self-defeating. Who's to say how much damage to the environment would be required to secure the optimal level of human welfare?

Communists like me are not people who believe that the environment is sacred (frankly, I'm not quite sure what that actually means). Human welfare is what matters. It just so happens that people like the natural environment and like the idea of things like national parks. But that is irrelevant to the point I am making, which is that free markets have no means other than voluntary restraint (which is pretty useless right now) for resisting the temptation to foul the environmental commons. The commons doesn't belong to anyone and there is no way of preventing people from polluting and damaging it from self interest. It's not that companies or individuals are evil, it is just that a properly free market is not set up to deal with this sort of problem. Some market theorists believe that everything should be property (even the atmosphere) but that is impractical.

The issue isn't over whether one system damages the environment more than the other, but over whether one system is better than the other at promoting efficient use of the environment. A system which allows freebie polluting is not an efficient system because it externalizes the costs of polluting to third parties.

2) As there is no outside influence (i.e. state) to force environ responsibility there is no reason to think that once the transition is made the situation would improve. (And no I don't buy the sudden shift in peoples nature or robotic mind control.)

If you don't buy it, then you will not be someone that supports the idea of a stateless utopia. But that does not mean that statist solutions won't work. I'm surprised you don't believe in shifts of fundamental belief (or nature, or whatever you want to call it), because that's exactly what happened in the case of capitalism. Capitalism goes against our ingrained altruism (a disposition that was crucial to our survival as a species). Many people are still uncomfortable with the idea that being selfish is a good thing and can yield collective benefits (the invisible hand). A lot of naive leftism is based on this mistrust. There's no reason to think that this won't happen again. People got used to capitalism because there seemed to be no viable alternative. People will have to get used to things like international environmental institutions with real power, because again, there is no real alternative.

As for AI. That seems to me to be akin to the person who said that people would never construct flying machines. In principle, there doesn't seem to be any barrier to constructing artificial intelligences. I was shocked when Kasparov was beaten by Deep Blue. How long before artificial intelligences are cheaper and more capable than people at doing most jobs? What happens to the labour market then?

Without turning to cliched examples of the dull and lazy unsinspired drones of communism past, your post assumes too much. Since we both agree no true version of communism or capitalsim exist why suggest the one over the other as being more efficeint wrt use of resources and pollution creation. Neither side will accept the other examples other than to say they are examples of mixed economies.

And truth be told, unless shown you'll pardon me if I don't believe it.

Simple really. Some people in our society would like to push harder in either direction. There are plenty of people who want to destroy the EPA or any form of state regulation of the economy (mostly because they stand to make money by externalizing their costs on the rest of us). Other people would like to have the state run everything. At present neither is really feasible, but the upcoming environmental reckoning due to reckless pollution (it's pretty scary - water is one of the biggest problems) and the lack of international enforcement mechanisms and regulation mean that those in favour of increased regulation are probably right.

Example of mixed economy, yes.

Example of the state part doing a better job.

If you say that the state cannot effect efficiency promoting pollution controls and environmental policy then you are simply contradicted by the facts - it can if people know what they are doing, and has done so to great effect. These are not capitalist policies, they are counter to what the market would do if left to itself.

In our current global situation the more likely examples tho' are of regulation and outsourcing, thus simply enacting a huge shell game of pollution. Only when the regulations offer incentives in forms do we see teh effects you ascribe to. Incentives being defined as means to improve efficeiny via yield improvments, less energy use, etc. Or when offered a means to incorporate pollution credit trading so that large polluters have incentives to reduce pollution levels further than required quota with reducing quota levels as legitamitely required (but thats a free market aspect to a state control that I'm sure you oppose )

I don't oppose emission trading if properly done. You are correct to describe it as a shell game. But you don't have to restrict it to incentives, punitive measures work just as well (is suppose in bizspeak they are "negative incentives"). The idea of international environmental control is to destroy the shell game. The current system provides an incentive to pollute (do you know that Chinese pollution reaches San Fransisco, polluting the air there?).

But regulation of this kind is not an appeal to the market. Perhaps you don't think that way, but plenty of people do. Again they are usually people who stand to make money from externalizing their costs on the rest of us.

If you say that people will always be so selfish that a stateless solution is impossible, then while that may be true, you need an argument for it.

I have my doubts yes, based upon my opinion of society.
My real reason tho' is that no organized entity will enact change or provide any oversight/regulation and given this state, individuals will allow status quo at best descent into chaos more likely.

The status quo is not good enough. We are already overdrawing on the earth's natural capital. For example, non-replenishable aquifers are being pumped dry and replenishable aquifers are being overpumped. The result is a bubble economy with respect to food. Moreover, most Westerners already live an unsustainable lifestyle. If we continue to draw more than our fair share of the earth's resources and pollute as we do, the result will be a disaster for us and for the rest of the world's population. Big changes will have to be made voluntarily (and incrementally) or we will have it forced on us.

The fact remains that our only hope for preventing inefficient use of environmental resources is not the free market. The most successful (but not perfect) solution (so far) is state regulation. All that is really saying is that when a "commons" is involved collective decision making is the only thing that will work.

I don't argue this. I do think state regulation has more effective means to effect these changes but on the surface I agree.

And if you agree that we aren't doing nearly enough and that the only possibility for dealing with states and societies that pollute is regulation, then you must support the surrender of authority to a transnational power. After all, it's no good having domestic pollution controls if states simply externalize their pollution elsewhere (and there is no incentive for them to stop unless we all agree that something must be done).

The fact is that your question was ill formed. It has nothing to do with any real dispute between communists of any stripe and capitalists. The difference lies elsewhere.

The fact is you were spoiling for a fight regarding polluting capitalism and took the bait and ran half cocked.

No. I still don't think you really appreciate the problem, but if believing that makes you feel better, be my guest.

As for my taking shots at capitalism - that is entirely justifiable since there is no form of workable free market which will solve these sorts of problems. On the other hand some form of collective solutions may work, some not. But that is a separate argument. You haven't given an argument against all of them because you didn't understand the issue properly to start with.

And since there is no real world example of capitalism this means not much.

It's not an all or nothing affair. There are plenty of examples of people who want to destroy regulatory regimes in favour of the market (as I said, most of them stand to make money from polluting). That is, they want to make our economy more capitalistic. That means that more problems will be created. On the other hand, if we expand the regulatory regime, then more problems will be solved and people won't have an incentive to pollute.

[Velociryx]

A few points.

First, the Reds do not seem to even have a solid consensus about what form the 'glorious revolution' should take, which makes meaningful debat nigh on impossible. We got GePap talking about a stateless utopia where everything is delivered to the masses via replicator technology, and Agster talking about a statist commie world system. Pretty fundamental differences, if you ask me, and quite far apart. (and given that every red I've heard talking seems also to want a fully globalized system, this is an important point. We have but one "globe" and so, this is a decision that needs to be made before the revolution begins, and not 'wing it on the fly')

Further, IF we assume the statist model, then we can fairly say that yep, it HAS been tried. Which means the statist model is based on and around the resounding failures of the past. Great. Sounds like a recipe for surefire success, don't it?

IF we assume space bots and replicators, with a pre-requisite being 0 cost products and fully optimized capitalism, then we must concede that this is little more than a pipe dream with present technology, and in the foreseeable future. Gotta get around the whole "limited resources" problem first....plus the fact that Capitalism will NEVER be at it's "zeinith," which as has been mentioned, is a pre-req for the revolution to occur.

So we basically got two (at a minimum) very different "takes" on what form the revolution, if and when it will occur, should take, which again, makes meaningful debat impossible, since the two visions fronted have so little in common.

Further, while statist control IS more effective in some (macro) arenas, statist economies have an utterly DISMAL track record of delivering finished goods and services (bread lines, anyone?) Capitalist nations already implement statist control at the macro level, however, rendering this argument largely moot (ie - we have pollution and emmission control laws on the books right now, and generally do a better job than the reds at keeping the environment clean....room for improvement? Obviously. But the solution is NOT to toss the baby out with the bathwater, especially in light of previous commie failures as a guide).

-=Vel=-

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Agathon
That particular definition of utilitarianism (preference satisfaction utilitarians would disagree with it, for a start).

Utilitarianism = the Greatest Happiness Principle = maximizing the happiness of everyone.

The core of utilitarianism is its consequentialism, that means that actions and policies are evaluated according to their consequences, whether or not they increase overall benefit or not. Rights based theories are non-consequentialist. You could learn this from any introductory philosophy class.

Well, I haven't taken any philosophy classes, I've only taught myself some stuff.

Why can't somethign be rights-based and consequentialist at the same time (or rather, a mixture of the two)?

You say that rights can be trumped for reasons of utility (or benefit, or call it what you want). That means that you think that respecting rights absolutely can lead to bad consequences and that the bad consequences matter more than the (absolute) rights. By doing this you have given utility conceptual priority over rights and once you do that utilitarian considerations eat up the idea of a right that has any independent justification other than utility (because a right that leads to bad consequences must never be respected).

No, because violation of that right is a bad thing in and of itself, not due to the consequences of the violation. There is some consequentialism, in that sometimes preservation of that right in a specific instance is even worse than the inherent evil of violating that right.

I knew you would try this one.

Presumably your answer is that we must violate some rights in order to make sure that the number of overall rights violations are minimized (I've used this argument myself for tactical purposes against David Floyd numerous times). In this case you are a kind of utilitarian, but one that makes avoiding rights violations the goal rather than welfare or preference satisfaction.

But that immediately raises the question: what makes ten rights violations worse than one? Unless you can say what it is in non-question begging terms, you don't have a theory.

Because rights violations are bad things in themselves. Every moral theory seeks to minimize the occurence of evil.

[Agathon]

Why can't somethign be rights-based and consequentialist at the same time (or rather, a mixture of the two)?

You answered this yourself.

No, because violation of that right is a bad thing in and of itself, not due to the consequences of the violation.

However, the following is false:

here is some consequentialism, in that sometimes preservation of that right in a specific instance is even worse than the inherent evil of violating that right.

It can only be worse with respect to numbers of rights violations, otherwise you open the door for the utilitarian.

Because rights violations are bad things in themselves. Every moral theory seeks to minimize the occurence of evil.

Thanks for a straight answer.

But I find it to be unsatisfactory. Why are they bad in themselves? Is it magic? What features of an act of rights violation make it bad?

[Kuciwalker]

Why is unhappiness bad? Why is anything bad?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Agathon
It can only be worse with respect to numbers of rights violations, otherwise you open the door for the utilitarian.

Nope, because promoting (or defending) the general welfare of society also promotes those rights. The rights are useless if society becomes degenerate.

Moreover, there are minor and major rights violations, and violations that go against or with the spirit of the right. For example, a common currency is a minor violation of freedom of contract that goes along with the spirit of the right.