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The means to your end result entails genocide at several levels as those who wish to exert this form of control over others will meet resistance. Is this the point when you kill the patient to cure the disease?
Your last sentence will come soon enough when Common Core brainwashing/reprogramming is the only education humans know.
This may be what really needs to occur , and such a thing will occur eventually , if not by our own hand , then naturally. When the genocides start , this will be like flipping the switch , and the lights will power down at a faster rate than at present. Also , the CC educational directives are things that must be stressed in order for the humans to avoid the aforementioned fate. The directives require use of logic as well as critical thinking skills , which an overwhelming majority of them lack dearly.
You wish. That puts you in with other multi-billionaires. You waste your time doodling around on this forum rather than overseeing your corporation which lets you rub shoulders with other Bilderbergers? If you were of the 3% you would be dangling leaders of countries around like a puppeteer - you don't and never will.
How do I know this? You are on this forum.
You need to go check your numbers. You "only" need to gross around 230k to be at the bottom of the top 3% of wage earners. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hous..._United_States
So how do you know this? You don't. You just post what you think and pretend it's fact. I only posted that because another clueless poster accused me of wanting socialism because I couldn't do well financially without it. It isn't sour grapes. I am not jealous of others and trying to take their money. That was the point of posting that.
I look to Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway as the models of the kind of socialism I am referring to. They are doing fairly well and rank among the happiest countries according to UN surveys.
They are capitalist countries with high taxes and a large welfare state. Socialism is public ownership of the means of production, a system that the Nordic countries do not have (or they would not be wealthy).
There cannot be a utopia, with or without socialism. Utopia means "no place" for a reason.
The reason for "(as described)" is that utopia means different things to different people. For the purposes of this discussion, I am talking about the utopia where technology is utilized to automate as much as possible. It's been a sci-fi ideal for decades if not more. An ear of corn might be planted, nurtured and harvested by machines, processed and served by machines and the cob processed and recycled by machines. The only time a human might touch it would be to eat it. Buildings would be mostly constructed by machines. All public transport (and possibly all non recreational transport, period) would be driverless. Medical diagnostics and most procedures would be automated.
There are jobs for people in this kind of society, but not nearly as many and most would be in the sector of designing, building and maintaining machines. Doctors and scientists would perform research and exploration. I am ignoring AI and assuming we continue to do our own thinking for the most part.
This all sounds wonderful until you map out how we get there from where we (I am in the US and using a US perspective) are now. The money to pay for all this belongs to a small subset of the population and our current model uses profit to incent them to fund ventures. I see no way to make this profitable. We would be eliminating the vast majority of low paying jobs and with no jobs, they could not be paying customers for the automated food outlets and transport facilities. They would have no money for rent.
The simplest solution is socialism. Basic services - food, clothing, education, transportation, rent and health care - would be provided to everyone. The only way to make that work is to place a tremendous tax burden on the wealthy. Oversimplifying a bit, the government would have to buy a lot of the automated equipment from the manufacturer and then turn around and take most of the profit back from them so they could afford it. Where else could they possibly get it? Most is not all BTW; the rich still get richer in a socialist society. They just can't amass the majority of the wealth.
So, the debate...
I don't think there is a way to achieve this kind of utopian society without socialism. I would like to hear someone argue differently.
I think human nature aka greed is what's really making Utopia impossible. Even if it were achieved someone would want to buy it off.
They are not socialist in Star Trek. It looks like socialism only because their technology progressed to the point where there is more than enough of everything for everyone.
How much do you value salt? There is so much salt that we actually value LESS of it in our food - tasty food with less salt is more expensive. It's not free, not socialist - but so cheap that restaurants just let you use it for free.
Imagine what would happen if the things most humans covet so much - housing, electronics, cars, travel - you could have at the press of a button. When that happens everything we currently know about economics goes out the window. Then things you can't easily buy become valuable.
There was a day when this was the case. You could have a ton of money in Medieval Europe, but if you didn't have a noble title, you were nothing. Sure you could buy some cool stuff but what did that matter if you were not accepted by the society that you wanted to be a part of? Someone with noble title but little gold was more respected than you. That economy was very different than our own. A good example would be Christopher Columbus. Contrary to popular belief, he died a VERY rich man, but humiliated and despondent because he was stripped of his noble titles. He spent a fortune trying to get them back. Money was not that important to him.
Socialism is a critique of capitalism. They are yin and yang, they exist because of each other. I think we will progress beyond both.
Our economic system is a house of cards based on collective belief as it currently stands. Some kind of crisis will eventually reveal that to everyone, it will crash and we'll invent something new. Case in point - there is more than enough food for everyone. MORE than enough! The U.S. throws away more food than small countries could consume! So why are 1 billion people hungry? Because they don't have money. I wonder what happens when people everywhere just say, to fix this problem let's just add zeroes to all the electronic bank accounts in all the world? Why should we fight so hard and struggle so much for digital bits? When we expose money for the fiction it is, then we'll come up with new valuations.
They are capitalist countries with high taxes and a large welfare state. Socialism is public ownership of the means of production, a system that the Nordic countries do not have (or they would not be wealthy).
There cannot be a utopia, with or without socialism. Utopia means "no place" for a reason.
They are social democracies; a blend. I put "as described" in the title and explained my usage but still get people nit picking by using a different definition. Whatever...
They are not socialist in Star Trek. It looks like socialism only because their technology progressed to the point where there is more than enough of everything for everyone.
I am using socialism generically to mean providing goods and services without charging the recipients at the point of delivery (many/most do pay either by tax or labor).
BTW, I am cross posting a paragraph from a comment you made in another thread. I wish I had explained the premise of this thread as well as you did.
Quote:
Originally Posted by redguard57
Capitalism's quest is to produce goods more efficiently. The most inefficient issue in production is that humans are needed to do it. The imperative of capitalism is profit and the ultimate business would produce and sell product without human input - or at least as minimal input as possible. At some point, we are going to create machines that eliminate most jobs. We're already well on that path - the financial markets are largely computer-driven, with computers making most of the decisions, the human input is only to select parameters. Look at our successful companies now - it used to be things like US Steel or Ford Motors that employed millions of people between them. Now the world's richest companies are things like Google and Amazon that employ, what, 200,000 between them? And that in a world with considerably more humans. That will eventually happen to every sector. If you think it can't, you're underestimating capitalism. There will still be jobs but just not enough for 9-11 billion humans. We're already seeing that happen - people are dropping out of the workforce because there simply aren't jobs for them.
You are already living in "Utopia" - or as close as you will ever get to it. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Socialism has never succeeded very long, in any of the places where it's been tried. All it does is die out after leaving millions in poverty and misery. The same will happen in the US...but hopefully, the people will rebel long before we actually get to a socialist state. Too many are restless as it is, already.
There's a big fallacy in plans for utopia based on future advances in technology: the technology will be used for crime, war, and terrorism. If we could somehow get rid of those, and let future technology only be used for peaceful purposes, we will have a utopia beyond our wildest dreams, regardless of politics such as socialism vs capitalism. But the reality is that we will "live in interesting times."
I think "some being more equal" is fine. Just a handful having most of the money is not fine though.
I think something akin to the Nordic model of social democracy (an actual working model, not a theory) might support this. I say "might" because you are right about human nature. Some people question whether the Nordic countries would be as successful if they were more diverse and as much as I hate the idea that they might be right, they might be. The diversity argument is that the Nordic people are pretty homogenous and the people who are working and paying high taxes to support those out of work don't mind because they identify with those in need; they very well might be distant cousins.
The handful having most of the money did not just happen. There are a lot of human dynamics that have created this. Yes, having a homogenous society for so long really does play a huge part in the Nordic model. Also, not being a country born of conquest and imperialism certainly does help.
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You wish. That puts you in with other multi-billionaires. You waste your time doodling around on this forum rather than overseeing your corporation which lets you rub shoulders with other Bilderbergers? If you were of the 3% you would be dangling leaders of countries around like a puppeteer - you don't and never will.
