Dare I say Caring is Sharing - Page 2

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mshenay 

When I say "Money makes the world go round" I speak in terms of motivation. Money is what motivates most people,

Then why remove a primary motivation from the creators of the music, film, or games that you enjoy? 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mshenay 

When I say "Money makes the world go round" I speak in terms of motivation. Money is what motivates most people

I think that also is not true at all. Money is not a motivator for innovation or progress, it is a motivator for corruption and greed. People needing monetary incentive is not a part of nature, it is a situation created by us and the type of system we live in. If you put a man in the middle of a forest, would he just laze around and not hunt for food because nobody was paying him? Or again, if all the money in the world suddenly vanished, would people just sit around and not do anything, sitting idle until they all died? Why do firefighters lay down their lives to help other people? As far as I know, they only get modest pay. The only reason a person would need compensation for their work is if they were working a job they didn't actually want to be doing in the first place. If you were a fast food cashier or standing in front of a conveyor belt in some factory everyday, of course you want to be compensated in some way. Not to mention, people are forced to "get a job" and exhaust themselves everyday making someone else rich in order to survive (*cough* slavery).

But all of those boring, repetitive, and dirty jobs that no one wants to do could be eliminated with computers, automation, and design. If in addition to that people all had access to food, shelter, entertainment, and everything they need to survive and live, without a price tag or any sort of debt or servitude, they would be free to pursue their true interests and passions. That is real incentive. Did Einstein think of general relativity for the sole purpose of profit? Or Nikola Tesla do what he did just to make a buck? I am a musician, and I can tell you that money is the last thing on my mind in terms of motivation when I go over to the studio everyday to work on it. (If anything it causes me to lose money.) I don't think people who are trying to cure cancer, design safer vehicles and cities, build self-sustaining hydroponic farms in areas of scarcity, or doing anything to help humanity and that is actually worth something are motivated by money or profit. As we mentioned earlier, there's no money in solving the world's problems.

Even Head-fi itself is an example. People don't get paid to spend time giving advice and educating others on internet forums.

So what exactly is being proposed instead of money?  A return to a barter economy?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mshenay 

 

I'm with you there, our society has perpetuated a desire for money. So I speak referring to that society which is at the moment the majority.  Money motivates the majority, and the majority is primarily people who lack passion, and the majority generally ignores the minority of passionate people who are working for their benefit.  Hence is why I use the word "most."

 

Either way you look at it, our society would benefit greatly an enviorment in which we could all be free to pursue our passions and interests.

 

And again, I'm over joyed that to have had this discussion here without any one trolling or pitching a fit! But still we are the minority, and I quiet like it that way :3

Yup. Well, thankfully this isn't /pol/ or something, haha.

I can only hope that I get to see the beginnings of such a world in my lifetime. I do think that in a world with much more widespread and relevant education and with people not having to worry about putting food on the table or tax forms or all sorts of useless stuff, there would be more innovative and productive people. Probably not 100%, but definitely more.

Quote:

Originally Posted by maverickronin 

So what exactly is being proposed instead of money?  A return to a barter economy?

Not a return to anything, but a progression into the future. The idea is that through the use of our most advanced technologies and more sustainable and efficient design, we could create an abundance of access to goods, resources, and services, without the need for any sort of currency, trade, barter, debt, or servitude. To make a simplified example, if there are 10 people on an island and only one banana tree, they will have to come up with some sort of set of rules for how to distribute the limited bananas (the monetary system might be one such concept). Or, they will end up fighting and possibly killing each other over the banana tree. If you put those same 10 people on an island with 1000 banana trees and there was more than enough to go around, there would be no need for such concepts as ownership, property, debt, etc, and human behaviors such as greed and violence would also have much less, if any, reason to exist.

Quote:

Originally Posted by manveru 

Not a return to anything, but a progression into the future. The idea is that through the use of our most advanced technologies and more sustainable and efficient design, we could create an abundance of access to goods, resources, and services, without the need for any sort of currency, trade, barter, debt, or servitude. To make a simplified example, if there are 10 people on an island and only one banana tree, they will have to come up with some sort of set of rules for how to distribute the limited bananas (the monetary system might be one such concept). Or, they will end up fighting and possibly killing each other over the banana tree. If you put those same 10 people on an island with 1000 banana trees and there was more than enough to go around, there would be no need for such concepts as ownership, property, debt, etc, and human behaviors such as greed and violence would also have much less, if any, reason to exist.

I'll be onboard with your wide-eyed naive utopia just as soon as we have have access to infinite energy reactors that we can use to synthesize matter from because that's pretty much the only way what you're describing could ever happen because without that there will always be a shortage of some material good..

"Our most advanced technologies" are pitifully inadequate to create that kind of world.  Even Star Trek's technology isn't good enough.  There are endless criticisms of the show's offhand and poorly thought out remarks remarks about "advancing beyond money" along with pretty much any other sci-fi story with a similar idea but not much in the way of explanation as to how it actually works.

Right now we certainly have the resources to provide for basic needs of everyone on the planet if you could wave a magic wand and make politics go away but after people's basic needs are taken care of they're going to want luxuries.  That's what this entire forum is about after all.  How are those going to be distributed?  How are you going to deal with human nature?  Who is a "have" and who is a "have-not" is all relative.

In many ways the average working class person in America has more luxuries than a king of only a few centuries ago.  If you ignore all the power to do things that we'd consider immoral to do today, like decree the death of your enemies, the working class person lives far better.  How much of his treasure would a king of the dark ages trade for electric lights, air conditioning, penicillin, the internet, or out of season fruit form the other hemisphere at your local supermarket?  We could raise the entire 3rd world's standard of living to that of a lower class American and despite such an amazing and monumental humanitarian accomplishment some people would still complain because other people are better off.

You can't fight human nature, at least not as a whole and not on the scale of a single human life.  You, and most other people with similar ideas, are only worried about the differences in standards of living and not its absolute level.  I don't think anything can fix that sort of striving for more within us without changing us into something that's no longer human.  Even if we had infinite energy and could create any physical object we wanted for free society would just reorganize around some other indicator of status that not everyone could have, like a worldwide karma point system, and some of those on the bottom will still feel bitter and disenfranchised.

The closest thing to a completely egalitarian society humans ever had were extremely primitive nomadic hunter/gatherers where everyone had to work together just in order to survive and there was less worrying about status.  Staying in that state requires a very low population density to prevent the growth of culture and knowledge to prevent the formation of things like tribes and *shock* *horror* agriculture.  I think we might be able to get there if we kill off 99.999% of people alive today.  We can't ruin the environment with A bombs of even all the bullets that would require so we'll have to go all Rwanda with machetes to get the job done properly.  After that we'll need to set up some self perpetuating Terminator-style robots to patrol the Earth and keep the population in check.  This is much more plausible and practical than a source of infinite energy that won't even fix the problem anyway.  Sure life will suck, but at least we'll all be equal!

I'm not talking about a perfect "utopian" world. That doesn't exist. I'm just talking about improving our current world to the best of our abilities and current knowledge. I think the technologies that currently exist or are in development are much crazier than you are imagining. In regards to energy, we don't need an infinite amount, just enough. Technology already exists to be able to create more than enough. Solar, wind, wave, tidal, geothermal, etc. All renewable and/or sustainable. There's a combustion-less device that fits in the palm of your hand that could power the average US home, or we could make buildings with photovoltaic walls and windows, or any number of things. So I don't think energy is a concern.

In terms of raw materials, yes, if there literally is not enough of something on the planet or if the population literally exceeds the carrying capacity of the earth, things break down and we're screwed either way. (Assuming we are never able to create a viable form of space travel or method of harvesting materials from other planets or moons.) I think the tendency is for people to have an exaggerated idea of just how much materials we need to accomplish this though, because the way we produce things nowadays is extremely wasteful and inefficient. Most products today are either through negligence or intention designed to be obsolete the moment they are released or to break down after a certain period of time. Why? To exploit you and get you to keep buying new ones. About a century ago somebody invented a light bulb that could last over 100 years. The light bulbs that were sold to the public were intentionally designed to have a lifespan of 1000 hours. Imagine how much materials and energy we've wasted over the years making those inferior lightbulbs. The same goes for many other industries. In any case, at the very least we definitely can produce everyone's basic needs.

Edit: Besides, the idea I'm proposing is all about taking our planet's finite resources into account and using them accordingly in the most efficient and sustainable ways possible, to the benefit of the entire world. If you want to criticize somebody for assuming infinite energy or resources, criticize the monetary system and the free market, which are all about infinite growth, unnecessary waste, and ever increasing "profit" without out regards to our physical reality.

However, the idea I'm proposing isn't just about providing basic needs, but "luxuries" as well. It's important to note that "luxuries" are an illusion that only exist because you're comparing them to other cheaply made and inferior products that exist today. For example, why waste materials and effort making tons and tons of crappy cheap headphones, instead of using all that manufacturing power to only make flagship headphones? There would be no such thing as "luxuries" because every product everywhere would be TOTL and the best most efficient and sustainable design we can come up with at that time. If possible, they would also be designed to have removable and upgradeable parts. It's also true that our standard of living is much higher than people's from a long time ago...but so what? I think that's just a cop out. Do you honestly believe that you are living at the end of history, that things will never get better than this? I'll bet people living in the Roman Empire thought the same thing. What makes you think that people hundreds of years from now won't be saying "those pitiful 21st century humans and their antiquated technologies, they had it so hard."

As for human nature, as far as my thinking has taken me so far and with my current level of information, I will say that human nature does not exist (in terms of saying things like people are "naturally greedy and always will be"). If you think it exists, please define it for me so we can perhaps talk about it. What is it? DNA? Some sort of incorporeal soul?

1.  WTF do you think is going to happen if we start extracting all that energy from the natural weather cycle with large amounts of wind, solar, and tidal, generation and redistribute it over the surface of the Earth?  How much geothermal heat is safe to let out?  Will it effect the Earth's magnetic field or plate tectonics?  I don't know either but if we go hog wild into a new source of energy without fully understanding it will have consequences just like fossil fuels do

2.  Until we invent high temperature super conductors how do you propose we transfer this energy from where it can be generated to major population centers?  You can build a normal nuke/coal/gas turbine/whatever power plant pretty much wherever it's convenient.  Places good for "renewable" energy generation tend to be to far away from population centers to put all the potential extractable energy to use.

3.  I wasn't aware that ZPMs existed in reality...

4.  Those light bulbs that last forever have miserably low brightness and efficiency.  No one would buy them so no one makes them.  You're right that a lot of things are made cheaply these days but its not some grand conspiracy.  The whole planned obsolescence thing didn't seem to work out too well for Detroit, did it?  Many things are often made wastefully and cheaply just because its cheaper to make things that way given how fast standards change and upgrades come out.  That's not all of it though and I agree that it's not ideal but you're forgetting Hanlon's Razor.

5.  In the sense you're using the word, luxuries are mostly defined by scarcity.  Short of synthesizing matter (Which requires an immense amount of energy.  At Hiroshima only one gram of U-235 was converted into energy.) with infinite and free energy some elements will always be rarer than other and there will be material scarcity of something.  That something will become a luxury because not everyone can have it.  It will have to be distributed somehow.  Who will decide who gets one if there is no money and therefore no market?

6.  I have great hope for the future of technology and humanity.  Assuming the civilization isn't destroyed by a holy war or something society and technology will continue to progress and improve the lives of more and more people.  I think your pie-in-the-sky utopia ignores the reality of economics and psychology to such an extent that trying to implement it is at best a waste of time and resources and a worst a disastrous setback to real progress.

7.  Human nature is difficult to define.  It's may be best described by statistical tendencies towards certain actions in certain situations.  The soul is an unnecessary hypothesis.  There is no evidence for it, plenty against it, and it is not required to explain any observations.  Human nature is in our DNA but its not as simple as there being a "charity gene" or a "greed gene".  Some people are very selfless.  Some people are very selfish.  Most are a little of both at different times.

To make progress we must decide what actions are best given how people usually behave.  Enforced classlessness is impossible by definition because whoever does the enforcing is a different class.  Even if we could eliminate the need to compete for material resources it will not fix all of our problems though it would certainly be a much nicer world to live in.  Even then I'm not sure you could get rid of the idea of money.  I agree with much of your basic concept and the general direction you're aiming in but you're aiming entirely too high.  The technology required not only doesn't exist but is actually impossible according to current knowledge.  That doesn't mean its actually impossible but you've got a long way to go before you should advocate a policy that requires it.

There are a lot more concrete things we can and should be doing right now.  Increased funding for basic science research will create the theories that tomorrow's technology will be based on.  A Manhattan Project for fusion generators will give of large amounts of energy with a low environmental impact in the future and we should tide ourselves over with "renewable" energy where practical and next generation nuclear plants in less favorable locations.  We're probably going to need cheap desalinization to irrigate all the farmland necessary to grow food for the rapidly increasing 3rd world population or poorer nations could experience massive famines when underground aquifers that water many of the worlds breadbaskets begin to run dry.  After that we need to reign in birth rates worldwide so that advances in technology can keep the Earth's carrying capacity ahead of its population growth.

The sad thing is that none of this would actually be too hard to do if someone actually had the authority to order it but will instead require fighting tooth and nail through the politics of multiple nations in order to achieve.  While real issues threaten the human race the some of the candidates for leadership of the most powerful nation the world has ever seen decry birth control, a tool essential to the continuation of civilization, as immoral and our greatest foreign policy crises are with people who think the creator of the universe has explicitly sanctioned our deaths.  The battle is in convincing people what we should do, not in actually doing it.

There is a lot more to worry about than the existence of money and a lot better ways to go about fixing the world's problems and making it a better place.  Maybe we'll get there eventually but given our current state of of technology what you're advocating is more outlandish than the idea of reorganizing our economy around the idea of faster than light space travel or teleportation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by maverickronin 

1.  WTF do you think is going to happen if we start extracting all that energy from the natural weather cycle with large amounts of wind, solar, and tidal, generation and redistribute it over the surface of the Earth?  How much geothermal heat is safe to let out?  Will it effect the Earth's magnetic field or plate tectonics?  I don't know either but if we go hog wild into a new source of energy without fully understanding it will have consequences just like fossil fuels do

I agree with the rest of your points mostly, but this one. It doesn't make much sense. Traditional renewable energy sources (wind, tidal, solar) do not remove energy from the "natural weather cycle". You aren't so much extracting energy as you are harnessing it, putting it to work. The wind is going to blow regardless, putting a turbine in it's path isn't going to stop that. Unless you slap down enough turbines to effect the rotation of the earth, or create massive pressure imbalances, you aren't going to "ruin" the wind. As for geothermal heat, they don't "let out" heat per se. It's a transfer of heat, using various mediums depending on which method you choose. Regardless, heat is pretty much continuously generated in the crust by the decay of radioactive elements spread throughout it. Cooling the crust with geothermal power would be akin to attempting to cool an ocean with a ice cubes. The earth's magnetic field is likely created by a fluid layer of iron outside of the core. So again, digging some holes in the crust for geothermal power is extremely unlikely to have any effect. Same thing with plate tectonics. The forces involved are unimaginably vast compared to what we humans can create right now. Renewable energy creation wise, there's not much of a chance of negatively effecting either system.   

Quote:

Originally Posted by dirkpitt45 

I agree with the rest of your points mostly, but this one. It doesn't make much sense. Traditional renewable energy sources (wind, tidal, solar) do not remove energy from the "natural weather cycle". You aren't so much extracting energy as you are harnessing it, putting it to work. The wind is going to blow regardless, putting a turbine in it's path isn't going to stop that. Unless you slap down enough turbines to effect the rotation of the earth, or create massive pressure imbalances, you aren't going to "ruin" the wind. As for geothermal heat, they don't "let out" heat per se. It's a transfer of heat, using various mediums depending on which method you choose. Regardless, heat is pretty much continuously generated in the crust by the decay of radioactive elements spread throughout it. Cooling the crust with geothermal power would be akin to attempting to cool an ocean with a ice cubes. The earth's magnetic field is likely created by a fluid layer of iron outside of the core. So again, digging some holes in the crust for geothermal power is extremely unlikely to have any effect. Same thing with plate tectonics. The forces involved are unimaginably vast compared to what we humans can create right now. Renewable energy creation wise, there's not much of a chance of negatively effecting either system.   

You're right that sun is still going to shine, the wind is still going to blow, and what not.  While the energy obviously isn't destroyed or anything it is being moved somewhere else which could have an unexpected effect.  Geothermal does "let out" heat by increasing the rate of transfer through the crust.  Heat is still being generated internally by radioactive decay and although there is a massive amount of it we don't really know if a small change in the average temperature which will eventually propagate all the way down to the core will have any ill effects.

The quantities used vs the total available to harvest may seem kind of small now but even with a static population energy use per capita will continue to rise.  These questions are worth considering before we heavily invest in one type or another.  I think that solar, wind, and tidal generation probably won't pose any problems on any practical scale (i.e. not paving over deserts with solar cells) but some amount of study or modeling to be on the safe side would be a good idea before declaring a massive roll out of such plants to be a panacea.

I think that using geothermal on a massive scale is potentially the most dangerous though.  It seems unlimited on a human scale the way fossil fuels used to and with the right technology you can take out as much as you want from anywhere in the world while fossil fuels have to be found, dug up, and sold.  They get more expensive with greater demand and scarcer supply influencing people to find alternatives long before they completely run out due to the fact that the demand for a particular fuel will be very inelastic in the short term (since most buyers really need to have it right now no matter what and can't quickly or easily switch to another fuel) causing small disruptions to supply or small increases in demand to cause large price increases but the demand is more elastic in the long term as eventually upfront costs of switching fuels is offset by the high cost.  Geothermal on the other hand could end up as a tragedy of the commons.  Eventually all you'll need is a patch of land and a drill rig and you can take as much as you want and I don't think its too "out there" to say that some disruption to the natural convection of heat through the core and mantle will occur before the temperature differential between the surface and as deep as we can drill is too small to make a decent heat engine.  This is admittedly pretty darn far in the future but what if after hundreds of years of using mantle taps to provide the majority of our energy very inexpensively we discover that we need to stop or severely cut back or risk not just our civilization, as with fossil fuels, but potentially the entire planet?  What if we don't notice until it's too late.

At least with fusion we can calculate how many of whatever isotopes that we need are out there and attainable.  That will give us some kind of time line on when we need a new source of isotopes or a new source of energy.  Plus as their ratio decreases they'll get harder to extract and become more expensive motivating the search for a new source of isotopes or a new form of power generation.

Once again I don't really think that any of these scenarios are especially likely but the certainly need to be considered before we base the future of our civilization on some particular energy source.  Admittedly it's been years since I read up on this topic but the last time I did there wasn't much research on the long term consequences or viability of many alternative/renewable energy ideas.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mshenay 

@Maverick, I feel you there. Over population is a series issue and one that lacks a real solution. Granted people have the right to have as many children as they want but... all things in moderation. An that principle of all things in moderation applies to everything, and is realistically applied to so little today.

 

Also our conversation [or mine really] has little to do with "money" so much as it does with attitude. "Caring is sharing" and optimally I'd like to see more people focus on the needs of their community more so than their personal needs, to share with others is to care for your self. Nothing is accomplished unless you have the will and desire to improve your self and sufficient wisdom to apply your talents to addressing what ever problems arise not only within your own life but the lives of others, the more we as a society focus on improve our selves  our families and our communities the better things around us will get! When people see positive change, it moves them to positive actions...

Well the proper way to manage this sort of thing is to incentivize the behavior you wish to encourage instead of criminalizing the behavior you wish to discourage.  Fortunately, the process of becoming a modern industrialized country seems to reduce birth rates near replacement levels which makes things a little easier.

Back on your topic...

The idea of trying to criminalize that act of rearranging the polarity of your own magnets to a pattern that someone else gave to you would be highly amusing if it weren't actually happening...

maverick, I actually agree with you on a lot of points. I think we are misunderstanding each other.

1 & 2. I agree. I'm not trying to say we should implement things if we haven't done our research first. dirkpitt45, thanks for the input. I'm not an engineer or something so I don't know tons of specific technical details. My thoughts are only based on my own limited knowledge and what others have told me. If I've said anything that is blatantly and factually incorrect I apologize for overstepping my boundaries. I'm trying to learn more everyday. I do think it is a fact that right now the human race isn't doing everything it possibly could.

4. I'm not trying to say we should use that exact light bulb right now if that's the case. Was that lightbulb really low brightness and efficiency compared to others back then I wonder? If not, my point is we should have used it. If so, I stand corrected. I also wasn't trying to imply some grand master conspiracy theory. I completely agree about Hanlon's Razor. But about things being produced more cheaply and wastefully my point is that "cost" should be irrelevant. It's what's physically possible that is the real limiting factor.

5 & 6. I wasn't trying to deny this, but unless the something in question is something that we all need like food and water, the question isn't "Who get's to have it?" It depends on what it's intended purpose is and what it's needed for. If it were something like there's a limited number of headphones and there's not enough for everyone who wants them, then yes we would still need some kind of rules or system that controls distribution or access. Again I'm not trying to advocate some kind of utopia. I'm not trying to say "Let's implement some big ideas right this second without assessing the real situation and I promise all our problems will go away." I've been purposely creating over-simplified examples and shooting for ideals, but I wasn't trying to claim that those ideals were anything more. I would consider them more as goals. If it turns out that any of them are impossible, then that's that. It just seems to me that we could get a lot closer than we are now.

7. This actually sounds like we're kind of agreeing. If DNA isn't deterministic for behavior and if the statistical tendencies towards certain actions only occur under certain situations, then in what way do we have to "fight human nature"? By changing the situations and the environment, would we not be able to alter the probabilities for different ranges of behavior?

I'm not trying to propose enforced classlessness (which I agree doesn't make any sense), but the elimination of the need for classes in the first place. The words in bold--that's all I want to say. Yes, I am aiming very high, but I think the key word there is "aiming." I'm not saying that such high aims are necessarily immediately practical. Though again, unless I've been misinformed, it seems to me that they are at least partially. Indeed, none of the things I've been talking about are really concrete. Like I said, I'm not a very technically informed person unfortunately and rely on information I get from others.

Yup. I'm not saying that getting rid of money tomorrow morning is what will solve all our problems. I'm merely trying to say that money gets in the way and hinders our ability to pursue the things that will actually solve our problems. Not being able to do something because you don't have room in your budget is different from whether or not it is physically possible. I think it's ridiculous to try and impose ideas on reality, and that's not what I was trying to suggest. I think that ideas should be based on reality.