quote:Originally posted by Artemisia Tridentata: I believe that Humans do act in their own percieved best self-interest. However, self does not always mean individual. It can mean family, or group or people or nation or something else. If we see the whole as more important than the one, then "altruism" is truely best self-interest.
Fair enough. My sense of self definitely includes more than just me.
But it has to be by choice. Not by some "planners" making that choice for me.
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Blayne's Opponent: God knows what is best, so we follow God.
PROBLEM: God hasn't taken an active hand in running a country for some time. (The Christian version of God--not since he annointed David)
SOLUTION: Work toward God's kingdom.
Blayne: The people as a group know what's best. Let them lead.
PROBLEM: The people can not lead. They are the ones who are lead.
SOLUTION: Build a state where the people learn not to be lead, but to lead.
Since organized religion is designed to lead everyone to God, the two choices are basically mutually exclusive.
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quote:Build a state where the people learn not to be lead, but to lead.
Come on all you people: stop being a dense, soft metal which used to be used in plumbing and start being leaders!
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Yes StarLisa. No opportunity to choose is my definition of Hell. However, I may choose to submit to a discipline, for instance formal military service, if I percieve that service to be in my (read my group) self interest.
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I agree with the people saying that the original poster's assertion that "people are inherently altruistic" can just as easily be dismissed as his Christian friend's assertion that "we are all born sinner and evil (or whatever it was)". Altruism is a concept that has been greatly studied in modern biology, and for the most part, a concensus has been reached that there really ins't true altruism in nature (to the extent that altruism means you do something beneficial to someone else at your own expense and expect nothing back at all). The only kinds of altruism seen in nature are 1) Kin selection, where individuals will lower their fitness (we are talking in evolutionary terms here) for the increased fitness of a close relative (anyone remember the famous quote: "I'd give my life for two brothers or eight first cousins"), or 2) Reciprocal altruism, where an individual will lower their fitness for another individual's benefit provided that they know in the future the same sacrifice will be granted to them (this happens in vampire bats for example). In terms of "human altruism", the latter is what is actually happening most of the time people seem to be altruistic.
But even if you don't agree with that, consider our own existence as evidence that we aren't altruistic. In a purely altruistic society, selfish individuals have loads to gain. Consider this cartoon http://members.arstechnica.com/x/c2walter/FarSideLemmings.jpg the one individual who cheats stands to gain the most from the selfless society. The same studies have been done in humans, and those who are selfish always prevail in an altruistic environment.
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quote:Originally posted by Artemisia Tridentata: Yes StarLisa. No opportunity to choose is my definition of Hell. However, I may choose to submit to a discipline, for instance formal military service, if I percieve that service to be in my (read my group) self interest.
I agree completely. I hope you don't think I'm one of those people who thinks it's wrong to act as part of a group. I'm not. But you choosing to submit to a discipline is not the same as being forced to.
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I think it's strange that you think that capitalism is going to collapse because of its contradictions. I'm not saying that there aren't contradictions, I'm saying that a lot of things have contradictions, infelicities, or weaknesses in integrity, and they survive just fine. For example, the US is founded upon everyone's creator given right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, but we also have an enormous penal system whose task it is to infringe upon that those rights. The nation still stands, contradictions and all. There is an old saying about marxists, that they predicted eight revolutions for every one that happens.
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Just to quib many revolutions DID occur whether or not they succeeded is due to circumstance. Republican spain got owned due to A) Stalin's pulling out of the conflict to appease Hitler and B) the fact that the Colonial Army which was considered the best trained forces in Spain were able to arriv ein Spain with Germany's help in the first and largest airlift Operation undertaken until possible the Berlin Airlift.
There are also some countries that were initially successful IE: Hungary but the zeal to spread to Romania and other countries became its downfall. As hungary lacked the ability to trade space for time and the resources to carry out sustained military operations.
I could go on.
Aside from that my underlying hypothesis in this is that my most fundamental proof is that we as a society exists, if human beings were truly selffish then we should've never have evolved past tribalism. But instead humanity formed connections with one an other and as Col. Graff said in Ender's Game these connections is what allowed humans to be able to sacrifice themselves for the greater good to form cities, nations, empires.
Now while we're on the topic of planned economies my polish friend wishes to take over the world and put inplace a planned economy under the theory that if the government owns all the banks and everything then there's infinit money.
Can anyone phrase in better words then I can that this simply isn't possible and/or sustainable? The Soviet Union tried likewise and stifled creativity and free thought eventually losing its ability to maintain a technological lead, no economy even on a global scale can hold onto a purely planned economy indefinately.
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Point out that the government does, in fact, own all the printing presses and can, if it chooses, create an infinite supply of money. It was tried in Germany in 1923. What it cannot do is create an infinite supply of goods and services. Ye gods, Blayne, just how stupid are your friends, anyway?
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Blayne Bradley
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Don't ask I wonder that myself sometimes. At least D. (for sake of privacy) is smart, almost as good a strategist as me, just more of an ass. He's obsessed with Ayh Historical scenarios sometimes in our games.
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quote:Communism can work in a system with full moral accountability and shared moral values. Which means it won't work.
Pretty much.
quote:But communism is bad. I mean inherently bad. And there are elements of human nature that should not (cannot, really) be changed.
And human beings aren't inherently altruistic, Blayne. No living creature is.
quote: Aside from that my underlying hypothesis in this is that my most fundamental proof is that we as a society exists, if human beings were truly selffish then we should've never have evolved past tribalism.
Yeesh. No, humans are not entirely selfish. They are also not entirely altruistic. A society completely altruistic also would not have made it out of the tribal world. In fact, I'd argue that if you truly believe in Evolution, Communism makes completely no sense.
In the past (distant and not so distant) humans born with more skill, prowess, etc. tended to rise in power amongst a tribe, and therefore, they were given more opportunities to procreate. That's how we managed to get past tribalism; the weak were completely weeded out of the gene pool. I know that sounds completely terrible, but be honest. Joe, the very nice kid born sickly in 1341 probably didn't have nearly as much chance of landing a woman and popping out kids and Tim, the neighborhood tough kid who'd grow up to be a knight.
Thus, the genes of one were passed on. Going farther back, the weak were simply killed off.
In a noble world, everyone would always look past weaknesses, etc. but the problem inherent in communism is that it requires that to be upheld regardless of the nature of the people involved.
In other words, if I had a nation full of clones, I could probably pull communism off, because everyone would have identical needs as well as identical skills. Of course, they'd all die off in a generation or two, but that's another story.
But, since we have such a varied population base, we have a varied skill set. And thus, we as humans have to assign value. Whether we like it or not. A farmer grows corn. He's great at it. But we as a society don't value the corn nearly as much as we value the guy who figured out how to build a combine. So, how many combines do you trade for corn?
Sure, they can both "give them away freely" and share, but the inbuilt desires of a human being say that you're going to have a bunch of people contend that they have more inherent value.
So, let's strip all the dollars and money out of it. There is no money to extend, everything is free.
What is the end result? Well, the end result is a different kind of marketplace; those who cannot put in goods are immediately viewed as a lower caste and therefore they have little change of procreating outside of their caste, and within a few generations, the ideal of communism degrades into a set of "elites" etc.
And, whether we want to believe it or not, there are actually people who like POWER. Hell, I'll admit, I like power, just a enough for me to control this and that And thus, a power comes about that proclaims "hey! This isn't right, everyone should be equal, and I will control the situation to make sure everyone is equal"
And you end up with consolidated power.
That's why communism never happens as it is invisioned on paper. Within a few months/a year or two after the idea surfaces, you quickly end up with an administrative body to "oversee" it and power is consolidated, and you have very little actual communism.
Human beings, through our genetic selection which praises those who desire to recreate and find self-worth tend to deny the end altrustic goals of communism.
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quote:Now while we're on the topic of planned economies my polish friend wishes to take over the world and put inplace a planned economy under the theory that if the government owns all the banks and everything then there's infinit money.
Argh. This is such a terrible thought stream. Could there be infinite money? Sure, you could print money forever. But that doesn't mean value is attached.
When the world bank "forgives" loans, that's virtually the same as "printing money".
Here's what happens when you just print money with no universal plan globally: you encourage corrupt nations to harvest it and centralize power.
Also the ability to just print money to "help people" ends up screwing them in the long term.
Many countries in africa plead for repeated debt forgiveness, which just encourages more money to go to those in power; so we artificially keep a bad system going. It also discourages any development of industry; so people keep goods in their raw state, etc. keeping them poor longer.
Yeah, I'm not so sure of a globally balanced economy works until everyone is on the same playing field, because up until then, it just goes to keep large swaths down by lowering their desire to change.
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