rowyn

History is full of things that are abominations in modern Western society but which were not only tolerated but seen as outright positive things in prior eras (and which continue to be treated as such in some parts of the world. Eg:

* slavery
* treatment of women as property
* racism
* sexism
* serfdom
* indentured servitude
* colonialism in the name of "civilizing the savages"
* criminalization of miscegenation

Etc.

These are things that people pretty much don't argue in favor of in modern America. Granted, there are enormous debates over how much discrimination remains based on gender or race. But very few people will argue that discrimination on those grounds is good. In other areas (like sexual orientation or discrimination against those who are not cisgendered), the debate is more vehement. The trend line is towards acceptance but we're not there yet.

Sometimes I wonder what's next. In two or three hundred years, what will humanity be looking back on and saying "How could those 21st century Americans commonly accept something so awful, so abominable, as that"? Not something that we're really debating right now, but something that most people don't even think about. Something that's just the background of our lives, just the way things are and always have been.

Some of my candidates:

* Animal rights: maybe in 2310 "pet ownership" will seem as cruel and inhuman as "slave ownership" today.
* Employment: "employee" will be considered a step up from "indentured servant" -- "It's not as bad as slavery, of course, but still wrong".
* Children's rights: all current forms of disciplining children will be regarded as child abuse.

These aren't things that I actually think are horrible, mind you. I'm just trying to imagine what things I could be terribly wrong about, just as I consider many things people in 1710 took for granted as "part of the natural order" to be terribly wrong. And of course, there are fringe groups on these issues already: PETA, Communists, "unparenting" in its more radical forms.

What do you think that you might be wrong about?

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From:

terrycloth.livejournal.com

Um... every single time you do something because you're getting paid and not because it's what you want to do, that's what I'm talking about.

The 'needs withheld' is already mostly on the wrong side of history and gone -- if people were allowed to starve because they had no money, though, that would be an example.

Some people still try to argue for letting people starve, so it isn't quite as dead as slavery, but it's dead.

From:

kelloggs2066.livejournal.com

every single time you do something because you're getting paid and not because it's what you want to do, that's what I'm talking about.

Hmm... You appear to feel resentments that are outside my experience.

When I perform a job I'm being paid for, I may or may not be doing what I want, but I'm doing what I agreed to do. Without that pay, I'd be forced to provide all of my own needs, from making clothes, to performing my own medical care.

Without exchange of property (or money to stand in for it) there would allow for no division of labor. It would take a Star Trek Replicator to undo that.

And Government:
As the Dead Kennedys said,
"Anarchy sounds good to me
'till someone asks who'll fix the sewers?
And will red necks just play king of the neighborhood?"

From:

rowyn

I think Terrycloth has a good point, though. Most people have hobbies that they will do for no pay (or, in fact, pay to do) and jobs that they will do only if someone pays them. Most people would be happier if they didn't have to a job for pay -- that is, if they could do what they wanted to and not worry about money. This isn't about "I HATE MY JOB AAAAHHH IT'S EEEEEEEEEEVIL", it's just a matter of "what would be ideal?" And ideal would be "each person does what they choose to do when they choose to do it.".

What if all of the products of all the things that people do as hobbies could be distributed efficiently and effectively? What if you made a game that people enjoyed playing, which also served the purposes of work? (Like the game made up of interpreting sections of old scanned-in text that could not be OCR'd accurately).

Yes, it requires a level of technological sophistication that we haven't reached, but that doesn't mean we never will. It probably doesn't require Star Trek-style replicators, either. For example, if virtual reality becomes just as realistic as the real world, most people will probably be happy living their entire lives online and not care about the physical world beyond those things necessary to sustain life and connect to the internet. And virtual goods are trivial to produce and dismiss at will, eliminating the need for "ownership".

From:

kelloggs2066.livejournal.com

All that sounds nice in the abstract, but what I'm getting at is that it really starts to fall down when you get to the concrete.

Take me for example:
I work in manufacturing for a living, and cartoon for my hobby.
My wife works as a farmer for a living, and cartoons for her hobby.

Would I or anyone else be working on a factory floor if it didn't pay well? No, not really. Without people manufacturing real goods, nothing real would be manufactured.

Farming: Farming is hard work, you don't get a day off. It's full of stress as you look after large numbers of animals or plants that people need to eat. No one would be in farming on the scale needed to feed 6 billion people if there were no pay.

Why should we stess and strain to feed a calf to adulthood if someone can walk onto my farm, and load it off to feed his family without so much as saying thank you.

Unless you have some sort of exchange of goods for the labor that goes into manufacturing and farming, you're going to have to force people to do both. That means, Kathy and I become slaves.

Your virtual reality matrix existence still requires manufacturing. Someone's got to build the computers that make it run. And that's just manufacturing and food production. Who's going to fix the sewers? Who's going to risk their life as a policeman, fireman or soldier?

You need Star Trek replicators, or something to satisfy the vast food and manufacturing needs of 6 billion people. Without perpetual motion to power it, then the fuel required to run those replicators would be the scarce resource that you're trying to avoid that gives one group of people power over another.

Okay, now let's assume we've got the self repairing, self powering perpetual replicators that can provide everyone's every need forever.

My cartoon. If there's no such thing as property, my cartoon is not mine. Anyone can come along and claim it, take credit for it, use it, twist and turn it to their own desire.

And, if you say, intellectual property is different from physical property, how is it? I work to create a comic, I work to raise a cow. If you can take my cow, you can take my comic.

Anyway you cut it, I see myself ending up as a slave to the 'greater needs of society'.

From:

rowyn

Okay. I have no problems with you believing it would not work. It's all purely hypothetical, and it's not as if we have any way to test it or any resources to draw on which prove it one way or another.

From:

kelloggs2066.livejournal.com

As a thought experiment, it's interesting.

But, as a thought experiment, I don't see a workable solution.

From:

terrycloth.livejournal.com

'I can't think of all the details of how to make this society work' is not the same as 'this will never ever work'. It's one reason not to start a revolution to try to accomplish your goal immediately, sure (another one being, 'forcing people to be free is kind of missing the point').

Saying, 'your society whose only defined property is that people will not be forced to do what they don't want to do will force me to work as a slave in a fish mine because of this ridiculous scenario from some other society which is just like today's society except that I remove one thing' is just silly.

"No one will work in a factory if it didn't pay well. Without people manufacturing goods, nothing would be manufactured." Neither part of these are universal truths. Can you break one or the other and solve that part of the challenge?

"Why would we stress and strain to feed a calf to adulthood if someone can walk onto [the farm I'm using] and load it off to feed his family without saying thank you?" Then don't. You obviously don't like farming -- you'd have to be rewarded for doing it with money or social standing (the 'thank you'). You shouldn't have to be a farmer. Does this mean society has no farms as we know them today? Maybe. Does it mean it has no meat? That sounds like a technological challenge.

From:

kelloggs2066.livejournal.com

I think you've missed my point.

There are some jobs, that are necessary to the maintenance of society.
Those jobs are absolutely vital to the health and wellbeing, of people when the population is in the billions.

Producing food. (Meat or vegitable)
Producing shelter. (Houses, buildings, apartments)
Maintaining infrastructure. (Water, Sewage, repairs to buildings)
Maintaining the peace. (Police, Firemen, Soldiers)

Some of these are dangerous.
All are difficult.

Your system appears to remove a great deal of the incentive to do these difficult and dangerous jobs. Incentives matter. Without incentive, these things will not get done on the scale that they absolutely need to be done to feed clothe and shelter 6 billion people.

Example: The reason we celebrate Thanksgiving, is that the first 2 years of the colony in New England, they went by a Socialist model. Everyone worked the farm. Everyone took an equal share.

So went the theory. But, since everyone took an equal share, no matter how big the harvest, most people simply didn't show up to work the fields. Let someone else do the work, and they'd get the same reward no matter what. From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

The colony was on the brink of starvation for 2 years. People did starve to death.

The third year, individuals were allowed to plow their own ground, and reap their own harvest. That's what stopped the starvation. People went out and produced their own food. That's why we have Thanksgiving. The colonists gave thanks that the famine was over, and they wouldn't starve that winter.

Your system doesn't appear to have a solution for that, as far as I can see.

From:

terrycloth.livejournal.com

From:

kelloggs2066.livejournal.com

Okay, if you think people will work hard enough to maintain society and order, here's an experiment for you:

Cooking and cleaning is a lot easier to do than growing food, making clothes, or fixing a sewer.

Logically, there must be people out there who enjoy cooking and cleaning. Find six people who are willing to cook and clean for you for no charge.

From:

rowyn

Did you miss the part of the original post that asked to project what might happen "in the far future"? I'm not sure how what can or can't be done today with existing technology is relevant.

From:

kelloggs2066.livejournal.com

Problem I see is that we're still talking about finding large numbers of people to do a great deal of things for free.

Barring massive genetic engineering redesign of the human brain, Psychologically, that's just not in the cards.

It was one of the really big stumbling blocks in Star Trek The Next Generation, that had me rolling my eyes.

Oh, well, I get the impression that you guys just don't understand where I'm coming from at all. Additionally, I'm having a really hard time understanding why you think the notion of Property is a big problem.

That's why I followed up on this: Because I don't understand where you're coming from. I guess I've done a bad job explaining my point of view, and I'm mystified at what you're really trying to fix. To me, what you see as a big problem, I see as the motivating factor that keeps civilization from falling apart. Knock out that foundation, and the house comes tumbling down.

Everyone wants to eat the cake, but no one wants to do the dishes, and few even take the time to thank the ones who do the dishes, nevermind the people who put the food on the shelves in the supermarket.