BF2S Forums Presidential Election 2016

Amusing, but your reading of Marx is as though that's the final verdict on economics and power. I don't know if you've noticed but I've had several short discussions on here about postmodern philosophy, much of which builds on and advances (or rejects) Marxian ideas. There's probably another newer school going even further by now. What's clear (also in the practical examples of 'communism' in reality) is that regardless of the system you will end up with an elite social group/class where there is a concentration of power, authority & usually wealth. Any system ought to try and control this somewhat and make that group more accessible to the general public.

I do think property rights and for-profit economics are here to stay. No, I don't see it in the same vein as feudalism or the economics of colonialism. Simultaneously I'll admit I'm no psychic and have as little foresight to offer about economics in the 25th century as a medieval peasant if he were to imagine the ordering principles of society in the 20th. But for the foreseeable future, I see no reason to assume things will change anywhere near as fundamentally as you seem to believe.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-08-25 15:33:18)

Larssen wrote:

I do think property rights and for-profit economics are here to stay. No, I don't see it in the same vein as feudalism or the economics of colonialism. Simultaneously I'll admit I'm no psychic and have as little foresight to offer about economics in the 25th century as a medieval peasant if he were to imagine the ordering principles of society in the 20th. But for the foreseeable future, I see no reason to assume things will change anywhere near as fundamentally as you seem to believe.

As a short aside, it's sometimes interesting to imagine what will happen to metals (precious/otherwise) when deep space mining could make them ubiquitous. What will value be placed in at that point, or will supply be carefully controlled to make sure that does not happen.

https://psyche.asu.edu

News sites had fun suggesting that this could/will make the world's economy collapse. Of course there are road blocks between now and the "full value" of the object.

i think interest in space mining will become more and more viable as new space technologies become available. obviously the current transport/logistics tech is very expensive and cumbersome. i guess they're imagining space elevators/ladders or something in 2150 AD.

i don't think anyone is under the illusion that communism means the abolition of work. if you read shahter's posts, he is still holding onto an extremely quaint (from an economics point-of-view) labour theory of value that isn't really even in touch with modern economies. that theory of value is even pre-marx: it's ricardo. figuring out how much people should be paid and how much something should cost based on 'social effort' or 'socially useful labour' is very very quaint when the world economy now is powered by algorithmic trading and tech giants; or when people work in corporate/services environments in which their labour is incredibly specialized and abstracted ('alienated') from any direct measure of value. the entire conception of wages and remuneration based on labour effort belongs to the era of pre-taylorite factories and huge primary/secondary manufacturing sectors, artisanal/skilled steel forge workers and so on and so forth.

a debate that has been developing in recent years (well, since the start of the 20th century, really) is automation and the relaxation of work. that's far from communism wanting to abolish labour: it's the left wanting to do away with menial, degrading, underpaid work, 'make work', which exists purely to prop up the capitalist engine. the promise of technology shortening the working day, the working week, and many crushingly repetitive and dull tasks generally has been there since bertrand russell adumbrated the argument in 1910 or something. and that doesn't just go for 'official' jobs, either, but other forms of labour in which it's already taken for granted that technology and automation should reduce human effort: domestic labour, for instance. i don't see anyone making snide remarks about marxism on the back of the 1950s revolution in 'white goods' and the consequent effects it had on housewives and household staff. people rather forgot all that protestant work ethic stuff about 'the virtue of work' when it meant they didn't have to spend 4 hours a day doing laundry and dishes.

in the world of work, though, capitalism seems to invent ever more perverse roles out of the spare time and efficiency gains. people are working more hours, less efficiently, in 2020 than they were before the advent of digital desktop computing and instant communication. what's going on there? the communistic line of thinking has it that these gains should give workers more free time, precisely to do 'unproductive' things (from the capitalist mindset) that don't earn money and so won't equal more consumption on the great market wheel: you know, like reading, developing hobbies, forming social bonds and community work, spending time with their children rather than at the factory or coalface, etc. you know, the sort of leisure time activities and cultivation that the ruling-class already take as their birthright.

Last edited by uziq (2020-08-26 03:15:25)

nobody thinks that at all. communism does not want to abolish work or purpose/vocation in people's life. it is not a shirker's ideology. the idea is that wasteful, inefficient, and demeaning labour can be automated, done by machines or better tech, or generally improved. i don't see anything really wrong with that idea, to be honest: you'd feel differently if your father was an indian truck driver forced to drive for 18 hours a day on perilous roads, just to keep food on the table. if a better future is possible through technology, let's not keep people in inhumane jobs because of some reactionary call that 'work is good for you'.

honestly, i think people who pillory the idea of communism think that it means some threat to their already comfortable and worry-free bourgeois lifestyle.

i think you really seriously need to read some history books. time and time again your historical knowledge is revealed to be execrable. a '1910 existence', 'all the leisure they want'? do you have any idea what working conditions (to say nothing of education and leisure) were like for 75% of the population before the first world war? have you never read a dickens novel, or something? you don't even need a concrete grasp on history.

if you swapped out the time you evidently spent on tabloids collecting baseball card tropes about 'lazy youth wanting to play video-games and have everything for nothing blah blah blah' for reading a bit of history, you might be in for a chance of making some sense and not sounding like a  splayed and neutered house-cat who is covetous of the cream saucer. nobody is suggesting that they want to abandon work: they want the opportunity of meaningful work, fulfilling work, not being an underpaid cog in a vast machine somewhere that is ran for the benefit of the machine's owner (so the theory goes). the slogan of socialism is 'labour is the hope of the world', not 'leisure is the hope of the world', dilbert.

Last edited by uziq (2020-08-26 03:58:51)

he's forgetting the simple fact that the amount of extractable resources on the planet is dwindling, and is only ever going down without being replenished, and becomes increasingly expensive as we have to go to further and greater lengths to grab the remainder. things won't stay cheap or at current prices on earth when serious scarcity starts to kick in.

absolutely, but on a long enough timeline we are going to run out of new frontiers and untapped spots on planet earth. i am not exactly some acolyte for space settlement or mining but we are projecting economic/resource realities like several 100 years in the future, here. always going to be an inexact science.

i mean, sure, but people were saying in the age of the dynamo and the steam engine that we couldn't possibly have any more need of technology after this, and that civilization had reached its apex, etc. the idea that we will reach 'saturation' with tech (especially under capitalism, which requires, above all, ever new markets and more innovation, more expansion) is pretty suspect. there are literally essays from the 1880s and the era of the grand scientific public exhibitions and so on proclaiming the zenith of technological advancement etc etc. haha.

uziq wrote:

nobody thinks that at all. communism does not want to abolish work or purpose/vocation in people's life. it is not a shirker's ideology. the idea is that wasteful, inefficient, and demeaning labour can be automated, done by machines or better tech, or generally improved. i don't see anything really wrong with that idea, to be honest: you'd feel differently if your father was an indian truck driver forced to drive for 18 hours a day on perilous roads, just to keep food on the table. if a better future is possible through technology, let's not keep people in inhumane jobs because of some reactionary call that 'work is good for you'.

I know what communism is, however when the average person thinks about socialism all they think about is the benefits they'll get.

i think you really seriously need to read some history books. time and time again your historical knowledge is revealed to be execrable. a '1910 existence', 'all the leisure they want'? do you have any idea what working conditions (to say nothing of education and leisure) were like for 75% of the population before the first world war? have you never read a dickens novel, or something? you don't even need a concrete grasp on history.

What I meant was 1910 level of consumption without the work.
In 1910 the average person barely scraped by working more than full time if they were lucky.
Today the average person in developed countries can get by fairly comfortably on the dole if they choose to, they're not going to starve or be homeless.

if you swapped out the time you evidently spent on tabloids collecting baseball card tropes about 'lazy youth wanting to play video-games and have everything for nothing blah blah blah' for reading a bit of history, you might be in for a chance of making some sense and not sounding like a  splayed and neutered house-cat who is covetous of the cream saucer. nobody is suggesting that they want to abandon work: they want the opportunity of meaningful work, fulfilling work, not being an underpaid cog in a vast machine somewhere that is ran for the benefit of the machine's owner (so the theory goes). the slogan of socialism is 'labour is the hope of the world', not 'leisure is the hope of the world', dilbert.

I can't remember the last time I heard a 'socialist' talking about how much work they were going to do for the benefit of others.
Honestly all I really hear is how much they're going to take from whom and who they're going to give it to.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-08-26 06:28:04)

uziq wrote:

it doesn't want to reject work but to get people off the treadmill of working 60-hour weeks to buy shit they don't need which only ends up in landfill/the oceans.

But thats not what people want, they want all the stuff but without working.

as to your second point, that's again pretty suss to me. most grassroots socialist organizations here are extremely community-based. arguably the biggest weakness of the left in its 21st century guise thus far has been a (structurally flawed) focus on localism, grassroots activism, small-scale communitarianism, etc. there are any number of very well-meaning socialists in the UK who are excellent local citizens but ultimately without any ability to change national policy.

Most people don't want it, they want a nice life and to make progress, not be threshing corn to make lunch, thats why there's no progress at the national level.

What you're talking about is scifi. It's going to take another 150 to 200 years at the least.

as an aside, i cannot believe how unhinged this is.



trump the 'bodyguard of western civilization'. biden and kamala 'socialist left-wing trying to undo america'.

and the revisionism about covid-19, hahahahaha. oh my god, it would be hilarious if it weren't for the fact 200,000 americans have died. trump trying to portray himself as a man deceived and misled, and not someone who, er, downplayed it and said it would 'disappear' for two months. INCREDIBLE.

It's difficult to even find the words.

To repost old news, Rawstory posted a bit where I guess the RNC didn't even bother editing their 2016 platform. As a result, they're saying that in 2020, the current president (not Obama this time) has overstepped his constitutional authority. I don't know who oversaw that, but I like to imagine it was a subtle dig. And not just another rusted cog in the Republican homunculous that saw not only so many dead Americans, but an economic disaster that pretending there was no problem was supposed to help "avoid" in the first time.

Republicans copy and paste 2016 GOP platform saying the president ‘has exceeded his constitutional authority’
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/08/republ … authority/

uziq wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pBphsCu4SU

It pains me knowing that there are Americans who bought into that garbo.

e: I don't really want to talk about it with the Republicans in my life, but I'm still going to get roped into conversations I'd rather avoid. If I counter enough, they just fall back on the knowing smirk claiming that X person they support is an admirably slick customer (latest, DeJoy at the hearing). I literally feel like I cannot be bothered at this point.

"Aren't they brilliant? They're so good at their jobs. And if they aren't good at their jobs, then they're still darned clever to keep pulling it off, you have to admit(TM) (you have to realize/you must be aware/don't you see)!"

An actual toad could have been one of the guests and it would have still been lauded for "owning the libs," I'm sure.

Also the Loch Ness Monster lives in a lake. It's kind of in the name, but whatever.