[stadiaKab]

This has got absolutely NOTHING to do with religions, even though that's not what you truly meant.

I didn't make any single points, I just have an observation, I think somehow we are dumbing down everyone and doing it on purpose. This is not a conspiracy theory, but it just seems to me if it was almost mechanical, systematic.

I think we're missing a lot, because we could have lots more contributors. I think lots of potential future contributors are being depressed by how they see the world working when they're young, they might fail to think that this is how the world is and there's nothing you can do about it. They'll tell you that you have a bad attitude just because you happen to know the subject better than the person in authority, for example a teacher. Institutional power and the flow has a tendency to place everyone in the same line, as if it was a question of human rights. As if someone being a genius or very close to genius or at least very highly intelligent is a bad thing, because it makes other kids, future consumers, feel bad about themselves or less valued.

Often symptoms of trouble making might be interpreted wrong, the true nature of it not revealed, frustration because most of the people that person has ever encountered has been as interesting as a dead corpse. Maybe that person never had any difficulties what so ever to ace the institution's tests or perhaps the subject was just easy. But it shouldn't be too easy, because that makes a person superior in that field, and we can't have that. So let's bang his head to the wall. Let's not cater to that mind at all. So that mind will be either lost in troubel making or whatever, or we might hope that mind will take a course of learning on its own, since no stimulus is provided, in fact it is forbidden.

So when these are the policies of institutions that are supposed to bring up contributors, and of course by a popular "my kid isn't stupid!" vote supported heavily, we will eat ourselves and we should deserve it as well.

[ttiokjbnhjjillp]

expert gardener, WOW, that's ABOVE expert monkey. I'm sure you're surprised by what people know.

[bobibnoxx]

I think it has been said many times, that humanity will evolve into two distinct groups - a group of smart and talented people, ideally also pretty and healthy (being smart makes them rich and being rich allows them to better choose partners).

And a second huge group of idiot mofos, that'll remain on the ape / street hoodlum level.

[RagonaCon]

Originally posted by Sirotnikov
I think it has been said many times, that humanity will evolve into two distinct groups - a group of smart and talented people, ideally also pretty and healthy (being smart makes them rich and being rich allows them to better choose partners).

And a second huge group of idiot mofos, that'll remain on the ape / street hoodlum level. So you see a group of a worthy rich, succesfull elite with everything and a vast pool of scum?

Never heard of a struggling artist, or a rich criminal?

[milfovoxapl]

I mean we could DESIGN a society which is much better for the individual, and much better for humanity and much better for the planet. That we aren't doing that... it's negligent, but how much of it is deliberate suppression of better ideas and deliberate propagation of a system which is known to be inferior, versus just a system coasting along as it always has, barely directed, not really serving any purpose, the people who understand it exploiting it for personal gain but not necessarily seeing the big picture. that's exactly the problem with communist theory.

sure, we could try to organize and design a better, more efficient society.

However, chances are, that any such effort will be plagued by opportunists trying to abuse the world effort for their personal gain.

There are inherent conflicts in trying to designing a better world for everyone.

first, there eventually will always be conflicting choises. A better world has to be cleaner and more efficient. On the other hand no one wants to do tough and dirty work. Also, if you build giant robots to do the tough work, you'd be left with masses of people who are jobless, because they only know how to do plain work.

second, since "everyone" can not be in charge, you have to choose leadership to navigate humanity. That leadership will always have a risk of becoming corrupt and self-serving. As such, it will also try to cling to power, to continue abusing the system. So you're back to democracy and changing the leadership every few years which is inefficient, unproductive to long term goals, and very populist.

third, we don't really know what the optimum grand-design is. We have lots of theories, each incomplete and has holes. Many of them conflicting. Whose ideas should we work in light of? What do we do if we discover it was wrong?

The free market of ideas, and the free rights of people to be dumb (or smart) is probably the best way.

Yes, the current system allows many people to take advantage of the way the world works. But, the absence of an "over-sight committee" also prevents the possibility that such an opportunist aggressor will ever assume ultimate power, because there is no position of ultimate power.

[zithromaxlinks]

Originally posted by Blake
Pekka is right.
I'm not sure how much of it is on purpose - I mean deliberately with ill intent, versus just a society which has evolved "naturally" into a state which is severely suboptimal for harnessing the potential of human minds. I mean we could DESIGN a society which is much better for the individual, and much better for humanity and much better for the planet. That we aren't doing that... it's negligent, but how much of it is deliberate suppression of better ideas and deliberate propagation of a system which is known to be inferior, versus just a system coasting along as it always has, barely directed, not really serving any purpose, the people who understand it exploiting it for personal gain but not necessarily seeing the big picture. Yeah. You put it better than I did, but this is what I partially mean, this is one of the ways the dumbing down would manifest itself and a form in which we can recognize it.

[cheesypeetyz]

Replacing labour with capital is more of a problem for capitalism than communism. In marxist terms the same value is being created by less workers, but the wealth created is the same. There remains the matter of distribution, which the planned economy should be able to manage more easily than the market. Replacing labor with capital is not at all a problem of capitalism or communism. Nor is it a problem at all.

As technology advances, technological solutions are
a) more efficient
b) give better quality products
c) create far more jobs (creating and supporting the technology).

How is value dependant on the amount of workers is beyond me.

Value is a subjective thing, that is dependent on the possible consumers. This has almost no relation to the workers. Wealth is a matter of monetizing the value at a certain point and time.

Distribution of wealth is a silly concept, because there is no objective measure to decide on the distribution.

Obviously you want everyone to be able to provide, and live a normal life. However, as the standards of living keep improving, you'll always have a (logarithmic?) scale, because not everyone are improving in the same rate.

A planned, progressive society would have ladders for the low-skilled to climb, wheras a capitalist society may or may not open up opportunities. Even under capitalism, upward-mobility has proven possible, so the notion of an amorphous blob of proletariate or lumpen proletariate (unemployed), unable to adapt, develop and improve is not only but pessimistic but incorrect. You always have room for lots of jobs for the proletoriate.

However, someone will always be faced with the dirtier work. Someone will always end up on the low-paying job.

Of course you have ladders, but they are only meaningful if you have someone on the bottom. You can't make the entire ploretariat disappear into the high-paying jobs. Because then the high-paying jobs will have much less meaning and value, and they will effectively become the new "minimum" standard.

[Bill-Watson]

However, if you are deciding to make a product, you must consider your costs which will include labour time. If you are making product A, which takes 100 hours, and product B which takes 10 hours, product A has more something in it than product B. In Marxist economics, this something represents value, and while it might not tell us anything about how much someone wants to pay for it, it does tell us something about its intrinsic worth from a production point of view. How much a product cost to make has no relevance what so ever to me.

What if I suddenly find a way to more efficiently make product A. Does it lower its intristic value?

What if product A took 100 hours to make, and product B took 10 hours to make, but they are the same. The factory of product A has lazier workers or a less efficient way of producing things.

According to your suggestion, the creators of product A should be rewarded, because it cost them more (in terms of labour) to make, even though they are inefficient. Why should I promote that? Why should i care at all?

There is no such thing as objective intristic value.

How much would you pay for a stolen picture of your deceased grandparents? Does it have to do with its intristic value, or does it have to do with your own needs and desires?

The cost of making a thing (it terms of capital or labour) is meaningful to the creator only. This obviously has an effect on the things eventual "cost" to the consumer, because a producer sets a price that will generate profit.


To take an artistic example, if a painter throws a can of paint at a canvas most people will know in their hearts that not much work has gone into it, however much the fashionistas say it is worth. Most people will recognise the intrinsic value of a skillfully-created painting that has taken hundreds of hours. How about this:
person A is very talented and skilled.
It takes him a day to create a beautiful copy of the mona lisa.

person B is a lesser artist.
It takes him a year to create a goofy looking copy of the mona lisa.

Do you think anyone will pay more for person B's copy?

[7HlBQS8j]

Originally posted by Sirotnikov

How much a product cost to make has no relevance what so ever to me.

What if I suddenly find a way to more efficiently make product A. Does it lower its intristic value?

What if product A took 100 hours to make, and product B took 10 hours to make, but they are the same. The factory of product A has lazier workers or a less efficient way of producing things.

According to your suggestion, the creators of product A should be rewarded, because it cost them more (in terms of labour) to make, even though they are inefficient. Why should I promote that? Why should i care at all?

There is no such thing as objective intristic value. You may have misunderstood, so I apologise for not making it clearer. These are not the same products, with one being inefficiently produced, they are different products, one of which, say, is a sports car and the other is a shopping cart.

If you own a car company you will need to know both how much it will cost you to make it, and how much you can sell it for. As a consumer you might not care what it cost to make, but as a producer you need to know that.

[Matajic]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
However, if you are deciding to make a product, you must consider your costs which will include labour time. If you are making product A, which takes 100 hours, and product B which takes 10 hours, product A has more something in it than product B. In Marxist economics, this something represents value, and while it might not tell us anything about how much someone wants to pay for it, it does tell us something about its intrinsic worth from a production point of view. Correct me if I am wrong, but Marxist theory has an important caveat with regards to this.

The problem with measuring value of something with hours spent creating it is that someone may be slacking off at his job.

To counter this problem, theory says that only (if I recall the term correctly) "socially necessary labour" is counted. And then the theory is fuzzy about this critical concept. Which renders it basically useless as a tool of economic analysis (unlike marginal utility and other neoclassical concepts).

[ticfarentibia]

Originally posted by Sirotnikov
I think it has been said many times, that humanity will evolve into two distinct groups - a group of smart and talented people, ideally also pretty and healthy (being smart makes them rich and being rich allows them to better choose partners).

And a second huge group of idiot mofos, that'll remain on the ape / street hoodlum level. I'm happy there's no way that will ever happen.