“No, stop farming, infant mortality rates are supposed to be over 50%!”
They’re going to be 100% every few years due to flooding destroying the crops!
Yes, let’s have exponensial groth instead.
The farming is okay. Just make sure to discourage anyone from feeling they have some sort of divine ownership over the land. Examples:
Little Johnny says “This is my land!” Knock that little bugger over and say “it’s mine now.”
If John says “God has given me this land to carry out his will!” turn that fucker into fertilizer so that he may be of use to society.
So if you spend months preparing a harvest, you’d be cool with someone turning up in the night and taking the crops after you’ve done all the hard work? After all the land wouldn’t being to you.
They took more than was fair, so it wouldn’t be fair.
Group ownership of a resource isn’t in conflict with controlling the resource, or having laws and practices to determine how it’s used.
Kinda like how we all own Yellowstone park, but no one is free to bottle and carry off all the water from old faithful.
So do you think it’s fair for a group of people to raid a farm and pick what they haven’t contributed to growing as long as they take just enough to feed themselves, piggybacking off the work of the farmer? Why should the farmer agree to this?
Edit: rewrote the question to satisfy people who think asking questions about is somehow combative.
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The capitalism is strong with this one…
Do you have anything to contribute? I’m trying to have an actual discussion about policy.
I think the profit incentive is important in maximising yield, do you have anything to add to this as to why I may be wrong? Or are you just going to signal me as an other so that others just switch off and get defensive.
I think it’s kind of ironic that some claim to want the world to see things from their point of view but then immediately attack those who question their views or try to understand. This just suggests to me you’re more about signalling to your in group than growth in ideas and discussion.
What’s to discuss? We live in a society that you’re describing and it’s awful for most people. You defeated yourself.
There is a lot to discuss. I’m discussing about why I think communal style living/economics don’t scale well. You think it does, there are reasons we both have our opinions and maybe we could actually learn from each other rather than you viewing me as someone to be defeated.
“raid” implies non-consent, so no, that’s not fair.
It’s also not fair for a farmer to find some prime farmland, build a fence around it and say no one else can touch it, and then keep everything it produces to himself, and then call everyone who wasn’t able to claim good land but still wants to eat a thief.
Why does he get rights to the land just because he said it’s his? That leads to feudalism.
“Civilization” is about finding balance to what’s fair.
It’s unfair for people to want something for nothing.
That extends to people wanting food, and also to the farmer claiming land.
Some arrangement where the farmer gets to keep his crops, but can’t exclude people from also working the land, with some sort of communal oversight to make sure the land is being worked well seems fair.deleted by creator
You have an ideological disagreement with private ownership is how im interpretting your stance unless im misunderstanding. However. The idea of these communal structures society wide has died long ago because it simply can’t work inside the framework of how human beings are biologically wired. We are tribal primates, feudal hierarchical structures continue to be proven as inevitable despite all of our best efforts. Even with communism some of the earliest writings out of Russia one of the immediate concerns brought about by Russian revolutionaries was the concern that the class hierarchy in communism begins with the inception of the revolutionary class (those who are organizing and leading the revolution) and without fail thats what happened in every communist state. The revolutionaries took over and the first thing to happen is establishment of class hierarchy just like what happens in capitalist society. Collective agriculture in Russia and in China and in central america and in north korea lead to millions starved to death.
capitalism is a fucked up system. Rife with exploitation and amorality. But its also the system that has lifted the most people globally out of abject poverty than anything else in human history. It has raised life expectancies higher than ever before seen. It has lowered infant mortality by ridiculous levels. The number of people dying in war is lower than ever.
You have a government that in its constitution says right in the headline is “to provide for the general welfare” of its citizens. If you want to talk about more fair levels of distribution of essential resources then you utilize your government to negotiate buying food from the farmer and instituting a distribution mechanism for the people. Same reason why in my opinion I believe medicare needs to beable to negotiate with drug companies over prices. There needs to be a middle ground.
Yes, you have misinterpreted my position. I’m not opposed to private property. I love having stuff. Stuff is some of my favorite things to have, truth be told.
I’m opposed to hoarding, and I’m opposed to exploitation.
If the farmer wants to farm the land and sell the food, I’m all for that. If the land owner wants to have the farmer farm the land, then take all the money from the farmer selling it, keep most of it and pay the farmer just enough to get by, I think that instead the farmer should get that money.
When your contribution to the process is “I have stuff, so you should give me more”, then I question why you’re needed for the system to function.
I agree the word raid was the wrong word to use there
They don’t just find land and build a fence around it though in the modern era, that’s extremely reductionist. They pay for the privilege to work the land. Society as a whole agree the land is his because of this.
How do you parse how much belongs to the farmer and how much belongs to the community? I would argue we already have an arrangement like that. Who oversees this and what do they get out of if?
Most importantly where is the incentive to maximise yield if people are just growing personal crops? What if you want to eat but don’t want to work the land?
You’re moving your goalposts at this point. The original point was literally about people claiming land in a primitive extraction system.
In the modern era people also don’t just walk up and demand bushels of barely from farmers, so ignoring the entirety of a comment to reply with how changing the context makes it irrelevant is just a bad faith discussion tactic.Yes, a modern economic system is hard to develop inside of a single comment. I hope we can at least agree that feudalism is bad, despite it respecting the Lord’s property rights, and also that no one is okay with letting the Saxon horde take all our grain.
And, to jump straight to your questions about the modern day: I would propose a system where the vast majority of the engines of production would be worker owned, allowing them to select their own management as primary shareholders.
By merit of existing in society people would be entitled to food, shelter, medicine, a means to better themselves, and the basic dignites of modern life (clothing, the ability to have children, the ability to do more than sit in the floor and stare at the wall).
Beyond what’s needed to provide these basics, the excess value produced would be given to those that produced it in the form of “currency”, which can be exchanged for “goods” and “services”.I’m aware that’s not how the modern world works,but evidently there are many in this thread who thinks that’s how it should work. I don’t think I’m engaging in bad faith whatsoever, I’m trying to actively address your points.
Why should workers own the means of production? What is incentivising them to even create the means of production without profit motive?
If workers own the means of production, what would stop them from deciding they’d rather sell said means to a capitalist for a profit?
Does every worker have an equal ownership? Does someone who has been working there for 10 years have the same rights as someone who is new? How do you decide this and who is overseeing this? What mechanisms exist to stop the primary shareholders from just assuming control and deciding to pay wages to people instead?
Sounds like you’re purposely twisting the person you’re responding to’s words to make them sound bad. It just ends up making you sound combative and doesnt further your arguement
Not really, I’m just trying to understand their position. It’s not combative to ask pertinent questions.
Its not pertinent questions if you invent a scenario that the person you have questioned have not said they support. Do you think its fair to blame someone for something they did if a person put a loaded gun to their head and told them to do it? (See? My question has NOTHING to do with anything you’ve stated previously)
I invented a hypothetical scenario for a thought experiment yes. I don’t think it’s implausible as a scenario in a communal situation. If there is no private farmland property there is nothing to stop people just straight up taking things and abusing the goodwill of the farmer.
Sounds like you aren’t intelligent enough to understand this. This is why fascists attack schools first, they need people like you.
Instead of an ad hominem attack you could try and explain it better.
stealing food so you can survive is always justified
Could’ve been hunting mega fauna with my homies but here I am with depression and anxiety
One theory is that hunting and gathering stopped because the human population exceeded what could be supported by mega fauna, and early peoples had no choice but to settle down and defend what resources they could gather.
It likely started with semi permanent settlements, simple fortifications that could be returned to year over year, and when it became too difficult to leave again, or when they found themselves unable to return to a location they were expecting to, they settled down permanently.
But you really can’t go out and hunt when you can’t leave. So they started to depend on agriculture, and what livestock they’d been able to keep with them.
Right. And then there’s the fact that agriculture is a trap in that once you adopt it you can never go back and anyone nearby who doesn’t adopt it as well will eventually be outcompeted and disappear as a people, or they will be driven into ever more remote and inhospitable environments. None of this requires anything like foresight or intention either.
plain old evolution
Just don’t assign corporate ownership of the fields and it’s all good baby.
Just don’t overadjust and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolkhoz
Personal ownership is just as bad. That leads to OG feudalism.
If i care for area for years, build, plant etc, someone else can come take it?
No, but you should not be allowed to accumulate more than what you can consume when your community is starving
What should happen is that the people who haven’t sowed the crops could do some work in order to earn access to the crops. Then we could create some kind of system whereby people get rewarded for the work they provide with an abstract token. We could call this money and people could exchange it for goods and services.
Or those that are able to farm can do that and provide the food for those that can cook and provide that for those that can build who can provide that for those who can sew etc etc and all that can be shared with those who can’t do anything because at the end of the day a person’s worth should not be determined by what they can provide.
How do we ensure the correct amount of people are doing the correct amount of work? The good thing about markets is that when demand is high and supply is low it suddenly becomes lucrative to do that thing and it attracts people to doing said thing. It becomes self correcting. If you leave people to just do what they most want to do everybody will choose to do what they consider fun rather than what is needed.
What’s wrong with doing what’s fun? Necessity is an interesting motivator. The problem is when capitalists commoditize necessity.
If you can’t provide anything at all please tell me what the value of their life is? They better provide some dam good conversations. Cuz if the people are starving? I’m not wasting food on people that can’t contribute anything.
Sounds about right. You vote Republican, right?
You poor soul. You’ve been indoctrinated so hard by capitalism that you can’t value a human life if that life can’t give you something.
I hope you don’t have pets.
You can still have money and markets. The fundamental problem is the ownership of land and businesses.
Yeah so what? The problem is the disproportionate accumulation of resources, goods or money. Which leads to accumulation of more of them, which lead to accumulation of power. There must be a limit on personal concentration of these. Anything above a level that is considered personal should belong to the community. Then there will be no incentive to make people capable of exploiting other people.
There would also be no incentive for anyone to produce anything beyond what they personally need, which would definitely lead to widespread food shortages. The more food that is produced at once the more efficient the labour is per crop, which is exactly why farms boomed in size after the industrial revolution and advent of farming machinery.
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They incentive would be the prosperity of the community as long as people stop seeing each other competitive. Personal gain over dead bodies is only cancer.
But you can throw people out of your community? Then some communities will be a lot better off than others
Yes, but as long as the “better” community doesn’t interfere and doesn’t try to take advantage of the less good communities I don’t see a problem. And of course doesn’t steal them their area and resources. Or does’t try to expand in ways that they accumulate more goods and resources than they need and can consume
Hmm, who decides when they have too much area, and stops them from not following rules?
Is this a genuine question wanting to find an answer? Only their consciousness can really prevent them or a “law enforcement” that we should first find a way to be uncorrupted. Is this realistic nowadays? Of course not, but we were talking hypothetically I think
I wasn’t advocating personal ownership either. But how does that lead to OG feudalism?
Wealth inequality trends to increase over time. Without some system that actively redistributes wealth, eventually a few people own everything of value, and ordinary people are obligated to do whatever the lords want in order to gain access to the material resources they need to survive. That’s feudalism.
You mean like how it is right now?
Can you name me one single time in human history that this wasn’t just the condition of the human race? Every time humans try to institute a wealth redistribution mechanism it becomes corrupted in less than 70 years and it just becomes feudalism again where the people are impoverished and starving and the only people living well are state officials lol
Small scale hunting and gathering societies are universally egalitarian because it’s impossible for any one person to accumulate significant wealth or to control resources. The way members of such societies gain influence therefore is through virtue and personal merit. This is the social system that we evolved to live in over hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s why we still haven’t figured out an equally amenable replacement in the mere ten thousand years since we adopted agriculture.
That said, for better or worse, agriculture is a trap, and once we adopted it, there was never any going back, so we have no choice but to keep trying with what we have.
Every pre-agricultural society? I’m not saying they didn’t have their own problems, but feudalism wasn’t one of them.
Were I not lazy, I’d be willing to bet if I sift through their comments that I’d find something about landlords being bad.
They don’t like feudalism? ohhh noooooo.
Well, utilizing a little thing called “context clues” you can see that I’m very clearly not talking about the person I’m responding to. I’m talking about the person claiming private ownership would be better.
My point, is the hypocrisy. But I get it, over half of America reads below a 6th grade level. Ya’ll need help getting there.
What hypocrisy have you unearthed?
“Were I not lazy”
I get it, you don’t read.
Well, you called it with me. I was denied an education so I could work and support my family.
Horrah. Good on you. Very observant.
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I find it so funny that these plastic and credit score are a problem since like 50 years but somehow farming and civilization would be responsible for it. Like capitalism is the only outcome for civilization. It’s scary how people are conditioned with this.
Some people believe technological advancement only has one single path. Innovation can only occur as a fixed formula where defined conditions must be met. For example, industrialization can only occur if coal and oil exists.
It’s a very arrogant stance which assumes we know everything about the nature of the universe and what is, is all there could ever be.
They knew. Agriculture is what created the whole concept of “work”.
I would argue the opposite; that semi-agricultural societies --pre-columbian California is a good example-- had no way of knowing where an increasing reliance on predictable harvests would eventually take them.
bro credit scores aren’t even real
They’re as real as property is.
True but last time the banks stopped caring about them we had the global financial crisis
No! You’re looking at this the wrong way. Bisophenol A is the most affordable gender affirmation therapy in existance.
Username doesn’t check out.
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Do you think it is possible for our current level of scientific knowledge to exist in a hunter gather society?
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noone is stopping you from living in an African savannah hunting gazelles
Bruh, there are quite a few things stopping people from doing that, what are you dumb or something?
what? you can’t take a trip to Tanzania and just disappear?
They arrest people for poaching. If they don’t just shoot them.
