ERE VS communism

Intended for constructive conversations. Exhibits of polarizing tribalism will be deleted.
BRUTE
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Re: ERE VS communism

Post by BRUTE »

niemand wrote:
Sat Dec 01, 2018 5:41 am
I think we all agree that Marx’s vision of communism has never been put into practice, and that most attempts kind of achieved the opposite of the original idea in the end.
no. it's not a coincidence that following Marx' vision of communism always ends up in genocide and starvation. it has been predicted when he first wrote about it, it has been observed live, and there are now documentaries and history books about it.

as an analogy, what if brute's vision was the following:
all humans murder and kill each other relentlessly -> all humans are happy

the vision sure sounds nice, but there's no way to get to the vision from the strategies and methods recommended. how often does niemand want to try reaching brute's vision?

Riggerjack
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Re: ERE VS communism

Post by Riggerjack »

Marxian Communism has never been tried, because there never was such a thing. Marx listed all the Evil's in the world, and tied them to capitalism. His Solution was to stop doing Capitalism, and let the World Spirit sort it all out.

Cute. Let me know when the world spirit runs for office.

Marx spent his life moving around, and changing his name, because he was dodging creditors. If that's one's idea of financial wisdom, well, it's likely to be a simple plan to achieve.

Though, give the old fraud his due, he never seemed short of young ladies to share his utopian fantasies with.

Personally, I am fine with Communism. It just doesn't scale beyond very small, tight knit groups. As a personal philosophy, it's fine. As a governing system, well the results are already in.

niemand
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Re: ERE VS communism

Post by niemand »

BRUTE wrote:
Sat Dec 01, 2018 4:11 pm
no...
Seems like brute is confusing the Communist State with the concept of the Communist Society.
BRUTE wrote:
Sat Dec 01, 2018 4:11 pm
there's no way to get to the vision from the strategies and methods recommended.
Agreed. The Communist State does not lead to the Society. The Society has never existed as Riggerjack elaborated.

Also for the record, niemand doesn’t propose mass murder to reach Marx’s or brute’s vision of happiness :shock:

Sid
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Re: ERE VS communism

Post by Sid »

When communism has been attempted to be implemented in the past it has failed. Perhaps those failure points can be resolved and it would work. Even though capitalism has worked out relatively well, in practice it has flaws too in my opinion, maybe those can be fixed too.

Sid will entertain BRUTE's vision.

daylen
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Re: ERE VS communism

Post by daylen »

Sid wrote:
Sun Dec 02, 2018 2:29 am
When communism has been attempted to be implemented in the past it has failed. Perhaps those failure points can be resolved and it would work.
Centralized control of production is computationally infeasible for large populations.

tonyedgecombe
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Re: ERE VS communism

Post by tonyedgecombe »

daylen wrote:
Sun Dec 02, 2018 3:07 am
Centralized control of production is computationally infeasible for large populations.
Actually we have got rather good at large scale computation, perhaps we just need to hand the decisions over to our robot overlords :lol:

Riggerjack
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Re: ERE VS communism

Post by Riggerjack »

Or maybe we should stop seeking overlords.

Sure, the flock as a whole is protected by the Shepherd. But individual sheep interacting with shepherds get sheared, slaughtered, and/or schtupped. This doesn't seem to be a healthy relationship.

7Wannabe5
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Re: ERE VS communism

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

One of the main take-aways from Harari's "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" is that we already are handing control over to the robots. For instance, all marketing on the internet has to be written to appeal to the "taste" of the Google search algorithms as well as any intended human audience. Also, I am currently engaged in a very frustrating* email correspondence with Amazon, and I suspect that what is going on is some AI is looking for key words coming in from my end. So, I finally just typed "Are you a robot?" and, as of yet, have received no reply.

*And, no, I do not babble on or use too many analogies when engaged in business dealings. My communications were very direct and polite, until I suspected non-human.

Solvent
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Re: ERE VS communism

Post by Solvent »

niemand wrote:
Sat Dec 01, 2018 5:41 am
I think we all agree that Marx’s vision of communism has never been put into practice
Yes, but this is a silly thing to say because there is no realistic set of global circumstances that would be a precursor to communism as Marx described.

daylen
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Re: ERE VS communism

Post by daylen »

tonyedgecombe wrote:
Sun Dec 02, 2018 5:29 am
.. robot overlords :lol:
That is more like a zoo.

Jason

Re: ERE VS communism

Post by Jason »

Marx was applying a Hegelian view of history - thesis/antithesis/synthesis to economics. It's dialectic reasoning governed by an undefinable, but acknowledged metaphysic i.e. we know something out there exists (noumena), we just don't have the ability to access it (phenomenon). It accounts for a heteronomous control, but depersonalizes it and leaves it outside human ability to access this. This was the doing of Kant who ironically was trying to protect Christianity by philosophizing such a construct.

That being said, if you don't believe that reality is grounded in such a manner, then it provides an explanation why Marxism/Communism will inevitably fail, not because Marx himself was a POS or the people implementing the system were POS'S. Failure of a thought system cannot be based on ad hominem issues because then every thought system fails because people use it for different means than it was intended. But, if you believe the metaphysical/philosophical underpinnings of it is not true, than it explains why it has and will inevitably fail.

IMHO, Marx was wrong from the get go, and was/is doomed to fail based on erroneous (really absent) views of human nature and his understanding of the world, metaphysically speaking. It also explained why there are deep divisions between Marxists on these very important issues.

daylen
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Re: ERE VS communism

Post by daylen »

@Jason I agree, but I wonder if it is easier to teach people about why these axioms are flawed or that centralized control is not sustainable since every node in the network is subject to entropy and information asymmetry.

daylen
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Re: ERE VS communism

Post by daylen »

Eventually things get into a muddle and without an ecology of minds/ideas/solutions they tend to stay that way.

Sid
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Re: ERE VS communism

Post by Sid »

I was wrong

BRUTE
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Re: ERE VS communism

Post by BRUTE »

tonyedgecombe wrote:
Sun Dec 02, 2018 5:29 am
Actually we have got rather good at large scale computation, perhaps we just need to hand the decisions over to our robot overlords :lol:
good that Mises showed in the 1920s that it's not because of the effort involved in computation, but that this computation is impossible in principle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_ ... on_problem

BRUTE
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Re: ERE VS communism

Post by BRUTE »

niemand wrote:
Sat Dec 01, 2018 10:36 pm
Seems like brute is confusing the Communist State with the concept of the Communist Society.
seems like niemand is imagining there's a difference.

niemand
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Re: ERE VS communism

Post by niemand »

Yawn, seems like brute and niemand disagree. Anybody interested can click on the two links above and decide for themselves if a=b.

tonyedgecombe
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Re: ERE VS communism

Post by tonyedgecombe »

BRUTE wrote:
Sun Dec 02, 2018 6:12 pm
good that Mises showed in the 1920s that it's not because of the effort involved in computation, but that this computation is impossible in principle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_ ... on_problem
He was correct in 1920, maybe not in 2020.

7Wannabe5
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Re: ERE VS communism

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Well, I would suggest that Mises was correct based on the observation that I highly doubt any centralized planning commission would have the forethought to produce Size 4x Adult Sponge-Bob Fleece Christmas Theme Footy Pajamas.

tonyedgecombe
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Re: ERE VS communism

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Mises argument wasn't that you couldn't have the forethought to produce those pyjamas, rather that you couldn't value them correctly. I'm saying that perhaps we have the computational ability to do that now.

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