Submitted by Sphaerocypraea t3_xtiajf in philosophy
apriorian t1_iqq4j1u wrote
Yet Utopia is simpler to erect than a conventional society. Truth is always simpler. But it cannot be built on the carcass of this system. They key to to prevent freeloading. The conceptions of utopia relied on limited resources in unlimited abundance that made freeloading moot. Obviously a workable utopia needs to be more sophisticated. But the key to that is to remove all duty and the ability of anyone to impose duty on their fellows. It honestly is not that complicated.
ShalmaneserIII t1_iqq6g3e wrote
For that to happen, everyone must be able to provide for themselves without the assistance of others- otherwise, you have some sort of duty to provide goods and services and ability to require them from others.
This goes to hell the moment someone wants to do more than subsistence farming, or when anyone breaks a leg.
apriorian t1_iqq7mv3 wrote
Am I to suppose from your comment you do not know how to organize a community without you or someone like you being dominent, it seems to be what you are suggesting. Which means that because of intellectual limitations you justify your rule of others. Have you considered that you inability to understand how to administrate a flat organization does not prevent another from knowing how? All I see is you trying to justify inequality and so I must assume you obtain some benefit from being able to impose obligations onto other people. Am I right?
ShalmaneserIII t1_iqq83vb wrote
No, I mean if Bob breaks a leg, is anyone else under an obligation to help him? And if someone is making pottery rather than food, if people decide they don't like the pottery does the potter just starve or do people have to give them food?
apriorian t1_iqq8ite wrote
You are assuming conditions that would not exist. One cannot just take capitalism and democracy and remove duty. Of course one would run into problems. You might be honest and admit that people are in need all the time in the West and cannot get medical help. I was in Florida for a year and the news reported 6 people in ambulences that died as they drove from hospital to hospital without any of them permitting them in as their quota of charity cases was already filled. So, please, lets at least begin from a place of honesty.
Let me make a prediction, this is where you accuse me of being a communist. Am I right?
ShalmaneserIII t1_iqq8qjx wrote
Okay, so do you have a duty to provide food to hungry people and care to injured people in your ideal society? Must you provide housing, education, etc?
apriorian t1_iqqavt2 wrote
The simple answer is absolutely not. I owe a duty to no one. But I reject your assumption an ideal society has beggars. But this is the problem isn't it? There are a huge number of people who embrace the idea of begging, who conspire to find ways of scamming society and getting things free? Do you disagree?
n1a1s1 t1_iqqd96h wrote
bruh yes people want to get ahead and will do it by any means necessary
a utopia or perfect society is certainly not easy to create
apriorian t1_iqqfa5g wrote
OK, but which is easier, to create a car with no plan or design using faulty parts or by engineering the entire process?
Truth is always simpler than a lie.
Lets use a simple illustration. Lets assume democracy is the best possible system and money is an asset are two lies assumed to be true. Now if they are lies one predicts democracy will give us governments that are tantamount to evil and if money is not an asset we will get an economy that generates inequality, poverty and other ills.
You are free to claim these statements are true but then it behooves you to explain why they produce results that surely would be expected if they were lies.
n1a1s1 t1_iqqfsq5 wrote
idk what the fuck ur on about
society exists as it does and to change it to a perfect place is practically impossible
if you're claiming it to be so easy why are you here posting rather than doing it
apriorian t1_iqqgyc3 wrote
I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you can figure out the answer to this question yourself.
biedl t1_iqqgrpj wrote
Money is not a lie assumed to be true, neither is democracy. There is no absolute or objective truth about money. It's a human concept. It's a category error to call it a lie to begin with.
Your illustration is based upon aphorism and deepity.
apriorian t1_iqqh1yd wrote
Is that the answer you are going with or would you like to ask the audience if they have a better answer?
biedl t1_iqqh57f wrote
Ye, I see, you are not open to consider different viewpoints.
apriorian t1_iqqhbe6 wrote
I might be. I claim 4 is the answer to 2+2 if you can prove you have a different viewpoint and it is more credible we can move over to the tautological and analytical claims of my theory.
bTw you did not offer a different viewpoint you merely evaded the question .
biedl t1_iqqhioq wrote
I can only repeat what I already said, in hope of you at least trying to understand it.
You are committing yourself to a category error.
Saying that money is a lie and saying that 2+2=5 is a lie are two completely different claims. Only one of them can be evaluated as false.
apriorian t1_iqqisxw wrote
Irrelevant, but you seem intelligent enough to know that already. I did not even preclude the possibility the statement was not a lie, as you also well know but that is what you are evading. I have played these games a 1000 and more times before. I do not care you will not answer questions, atheists never do. Everything they do is based on making sure they are not accountable for anything they say or do.
You can keep playing your games all i am saying i am fully aware of what you are doing, i just do not care.
biedl t1_iqqj3wk wrote
If your method fails a 1000 times, it's likely to be on you, instead of 1000 separate individuals.
It's not irrelevant, for your claim of money and democracy being a lie is mute, as soon as you understand that there is no intrinsic truth to either claim to begin with.
Try me. Ask questions.
ShalmaneserIII t1_iqqedzz wrote
So how do you prevent beggars?
apriorian t1_iqqfix4 wrote
The crucial thing is to understand how deep the problem is, it literally began in Eden, you can reject the divinity if you wish but the story perfectly encapsulates the problem. No man created the natural world and no man has a right to own any part of it, not publicly and not privately. So long as we permit this we have freeloading, that is the root of it. But as said, no one wants to admit how deep and pervasive the problem is.
ShalmaneserIII t1_iqqfwev wrote
Okay, but do you have to own food to eat it? Or what of the food you gather or grow?
And it seems you're suggesting hunting and gathering?
biedl t1_iqqh284 wrote
Rights are human concepts. There are no intrinsic rights to humans. If a society agrees upon rights, man has rights.
CegeRoles t1_iqqtehq wrote
So…what? You’re saying I don’t even have a right to own the house I live in?
apriorian t1_iqqva0b wrote
Technically yes but personal ownership is not the issue. The issue is owning a forest or waterfall or mine and robbing it of all its value. But even owning a factory and making money off the labor of workers is only justified because the employer was given the right to own the factory in the first place. But where does this right come from, who has the right to give anyone this right? Do you think a person has a right to claim a continent for his own or his monarch? Do you think a people have a right to say they own it, they can but the only way they can prove this is through killing anyone who challanges their right, as in war. But if they can do this why cannot a criminal do the same thing? Its precisely the same kind of behaviour.
CegeRoles t1_iqqzh2m wrote
The right is given to us via the social contract. We have all agreed upon on certain rules and conditions in exchange for the benefits of civilization.
apriorian t1_iqr2f13 wrote
You must have gotton me drunk. How could you have tricked me like this? Its not fair.
CegeRoles t1_iqr2p84 wrote
What isn’t fair?
apriorian t1_iqr3fz9 wrote
You guys getting me drunk and having me sign a social compact when i was not fully conscious of what i was doing.
How about if I told you that you all agreed to send me $100.00 next week, how would you feel about that. And do not tell me you do not remember. I said you did and so that is that, case closed.
CegeRoles t1_iqrm5nc wrote
Where exactly did you get the idea that the social contract was meant to be fair?
apriorian t1_iqrvwr9 wrote
I never said that.
CegeRoles t1_iqrx4qo wrote
Then why are you complaining about it?
apriorian t1_iqssepg wrote
I cannot explain what is in your mind or why, sorry.
I certainly was not commenting on an invisible, thing that does not exist.
CegeRoles t1_iqsv69y wrote
Could have fooled me. Your entire history is nothing but comments about an invisible thing that doesn't exist.
apriorian t1_iquusdx wrote
Could have fooled me. Your entire history is nothing but comments about an invisible thing that doesn't exist FOR ATHEISTS.
You give me a picture of your personality and i will share one of my God.
CegeRoles t1_iqr3wd5 wrote
So? No one will stop you from leaving. Go buy a boat and live in the ocean.
biedl t1_iqqcx0g wrote
You say something about starting with honesty, while having no problem to poison the well repeatedly.
Sphaerocypraea OP t1_iqq8idh wrote
I think I understand what you’re suggesting, but I think your comment about duty needs to be qualified: What I think is bad is non-voluntary duty, not duty in-itself. Duties/obligations can provide many benefits and are necessary for any system of law to function, but they must be accepted and entered into by a voluntary choice. Like the idea of a social contract. For example, the choice to have children incurs a duty to care for them until they reach adulthood; whereas, being born isn’t a voluntary choice of the child, so the child doesn’t have any duty or obligation towards their parents unless they choose to accept one.
apriorian t1_iqq9dtb wrote
That is certainly a valid point, however I do not think designer or customized duties rise to the level of what a real duty is. I am not suggesting we do not say a man owes a duty to his family but this duty enforced by others is a far different thing than this care freely and lovingly exercised.
But the minute we start imposing duties on others, what have we but slavery. We can quibble about the degree and extent but the duty of one is always matched by the right of someone else. The stronger the duty and the broader it is the more like a slave one becomes.
My question is, why must the man have this duty, he can have a desire to care for his family by ought there to exist levers of power that forces this duty on them and why does society feel the need. I am not saying we do not have to pay our costs but I am against the language. I am against a way of thinking that ends up justifying a group of experts and elites dictating to a large group of subjects what their obligations are. I start from a position of equality and the existence of duty precludes equality.
wrongsage t1_iqqd59l wrote
Simply because life at its very core is a conversion of energy. That energy needs to be supplied. Since we are talking about a society, one would assume people belonging to such society would help with the resource management and distribution, even to those, who can not directly partake themselves.
How do you run a society without duties and privileges? And what is the goal of such community?
apriorian t1_iqqg32c wrote
The purpose of man is to create value. There is only one way to do this, through specialization. Equiton is a model community without duties. It is represented by an accounting system using equity in the form of preferred shares contracted to prefers, as a type of currency. Adding value to assets creates equity which represents a credit to the persons account.
Since Equiton is a creation of its citizens it is owned by its citizens who work to add value to the city though specialized activity. Because all persons benefit from the work of adding value there is no benefit to anyone being idle or prevented from working, which means there is no poverty and everyone is well able to pay for the things they need.
(And I am well aware that a two paragraph summary does not exhaust every issue and question regarding a new model of society).
biedl t1_iqqmdur wrote
Why is the purpose of man to create value? How do you know the purpose of man? How do you know there is purpose to begin with?
wrongsage t1_iqrq9jy wrote
You need to provide a lot more details than that to make any sense. Because what you wrote does not conclude any of your points you made at the end.
There will be people, who can't produce value, who don't want to, who want to destroy the value instead of creating it. There may be competing societies who run on different systems. Just by having stake in the society (essentially socialism) you do not solve any of those problems.
From the very basics, you need education for any long-term community, and that in and of itself does not do well without duties.
apriorian t1_iqrvqxt wrote
Am I to understand from this you did not read the essay or you do not know how an experiment is conducted?
Sphaerocypraea OP t1_iqqbfkg wrote
I also don’t like the word “duty”. It is associated in my mind with cold and repressive Stoic, religious, patriarchal and manipulative power dynamics. Could some kind of voluntary and chosen ‘obligations’ be admitted, rather than ‘duties’?
apriorian t1_iqqi9a7 wrote
IMO what is often referred to as the market is the only other option. We either force people to align with our agenda, or we permit each person to work and spend. It may seem overly simplistic but there is no other option.
Dejan05 t1_iqqitt0 wrote
You seem to be under the belief that all people are good and will help eachother, sadly they don't. Most people don't really care about anyone outside of their immediate relationships for one reason or another and some are ready to exploit others for personal gain, a utopia would have already existed if people as a whole were good enough for it to exist
apriorian t1_iqqj7el wrote
I do ehy? Interesting. But then you do not know i am past 70 and i started working on a theory when i was 17. My first intellectual insight i remember is realizing poeple were irrational and if you gave them a chance they would corrupt and destroy everything they were given. My entire life has been spent devising a system than no one, regardless how evil they were, could circumvent and corrupt it, but you are right, an evil person creating a system designed to allow him to freeload off of others will never become a utopia except for him. That much we can agree on.
ThemrocX t1_iqqn4t8 wrote
I'm sorry to disappoint you but most of psychology and sociology have pretty clear answers to the questions you have pondered for so long. First of all you are wrong in assuming that truth is always simpler. The opposite is true: the closer the description is to the reality it describes, the more complex it becomes. This is also the reason for a few of the false assumptions you have: People are neither good nor evil nor are they irrational. Infact people are super predictable. 80 percent of our actions are steered by heuristics exactly because reality is too complex for us to grasp fast enough. This IS a form of rationality, but in complex scenarios it often leads to bad outcomes.
It is also why we are unable to construct a system that is impenetrable to corruption. Because corruption (as in a lack of balance, destabilising the system) is the very thing that keeps societies from dieing. A "perfect" system is a closed system, but a closed system cannot survive. It needs input, but every input introduces instability. There is absolutely no way around this.
apriorian t1_iqqobzx wrote
As to your last point, all you need to do to find a way around this is to change your assumptions.
ThemrocX t1_iqqqa2c wrote
What good is changing your assumptions if the assumptions you are going to adopt are wrong?
apriorian t1_iqqr07o wrote
About as good as starting from the wrong ones in the first place.
And if you go back to my original comment you will note i did not specify for you to change your wrong assumptions into other wrong assumptions, there are an unlimited supply of them but that is no reason to keep choosing them.
But I am sure this is far too complex for you to understand so let me provide an illustration, you assume truth is not simpler than lies when logically it has to be, but you base this assumption on looking at the lies made about the structure or nature of reality and because the more you look the less you see that matches the original assumption about what reality looks like, you think truth is getting more complicated, no. What is happening is that you are covering up one misrepresentations with more complex misrepresentations.
Have you read about Ptolemic picture of the universe and how it made truth look more and more complicated. It was based on a lie.
ThemrocX t1_iqqr6kd wrote
Fair enough (edit: wrote this, before the previous post was desceptively edited), but then let's talk about ehy you think my assumptions are wrong.
apriorian t1_iqqxr9k wrote
Am I to understand you think people edit a book they write to deceive the reader? Can you not conceive of any other possible reason why editing might occur? I actually number my edits so i can keep track of all the versions, this year i edited my webside 107 times, yep just this year. Believe me, I do not edit to deceive. But of course you have your reality and I have mine.
(Warning: this is an edit) .. I may go back to a post three to five times because to do otherwise means the later addition comes before the previous or original comment. So while conspircy theories are fun the truth is usually simpler if more boring.
apriorian t1_iqqrwh5 wrote
You assume you can defeat any system. Why? Because you think you can outsmart any barriers to freeloading. Everyone likes this system because it permits cheating and everyone thinks they are winning more than losing... the house always wins in case you are wondering.
If I said lets cut the pie and pick a slice blindfolded you would agree because you assume you could peek, if i said you cut the pie and will will take turns choosing a slice with you being the last to pick, you would not agree because you could not cheat. Am I right?
Dejan05 t1_iqqjafe wrote
I mean that's an interesting thought, best of luck you succeed in creating such a system
apriorian t1_iqqt4y6 wrote
You think a system is created by one person on a computer, the theory is but the system if you mean a place, requires people.
Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments