I've been wondering lately as to how applicable the machine metaphor really is to the current manifestation of civilization. There are certainly a lot of machinations, but how is it like a machine? What kind of machine is it? I think it stands to the gift that the person making the metaphor has for poetry to say that the current manifestation of civilization is like a machine.

The economy is sort of like a computer, though. It's like this insentient thing that people ascribe godlike consciousness to which merely processes data. At the level of absurdity, this can be considered to be quite literally the case when you consider the stock market.

Then again, it's also not like a computer. The stock market is comprised of social interactions that do occur in the real world.

The machine metaphor is meant to highlight the drudgerous conditions of the working class. It'd be totally different if we were talking about the economy. I see the machine of the economy as being more computational and the machine of labor as being more mechanical.

Edit: The economy is like an extraordinarily expensive synthesizer that no one knows how to play or program.

people cease to be people, instead functioning as cogs in a machine whose purpose it is to produce the necessities of life so that people can afterwards be and do the things that what I would argue is what makes us people, viz. the act of socializing, Art, philosophy, and exchange of ideas, beauty, truth, humor, love, and community and belonging to reality. — Noah Te Stroete

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors found the necessities that allowed them to "be people". They left behind some stone tools, the very occasional piece of art, and bones -- their own and bones what they ate. They had time, presumably, for art, philosophy, ideas, beauty, truth, humor, love, sex, community, and all that--including "belonging to reality".

Did they live in a Garden of Eden until they were expelled by agricultural statists who made everyone work in the fields from dawn to dusk? Or did they live in a great emptiness of few people, no great ideas, certainly not truth, and maybe not much humor either?

I don't know. Nobody else does either.

Once we settled down and reaped the grain we had sown, built our mud hut villages and later stone cities, it was a long time before there was a great flowering of what we would call art, philosophy, beauty, truth, and all that. It took about 10,000 years.

There is a very real question of whether "Society" which enables individuals to be artists, philosophers, thinkers, creators, ingenuous inventors, and so forth can exist without a lot of excess labor. Again, I don't know.

It seems to me that it just does require an awful lot of work to keep society going so that great things can happen. It takes a certain amount of hard-work necessities, and then beyond that, it takes a hefty hard work surplus.

In with the theme of the thread before @unenlightened

There is a very real question of whether "Society" which enables individuals to be artists, philosophers, thinkers, creators, ingenuous inventors, and so forth can exist without a lot of excess labor. Again, I don't know.

In the present day and age, artists can struggle to make a decent living. In the past, the emperors and the elites in the society gave patronage to them. Labour is not bad in of itself as long as we work for ourselves, otherwise it is a form of chattel slavery. The term artists has been restricted to music,art and acting for some reason but it is supposed to be a broad term. There was a famous mathematician by the name of Erdos, who travelled around the world and was as close as we can get to an ascetic mathematician. I would consider him to be an artist of first order but it hurts my mind whenever people ask this question ; what's the use of this " insert mathematical terms " when l leave school ?
The society does not like those who learn for sake of learning. It has to be applied somewhere. The idea of a universal salary is naive and l doubt if it will stop people from participating in a rat race. Materialism is a spiritual sickness and progress always happens in ideals and ideas not in building skyscrapers and countless industrial units.

There is a very real question of whether "Society" which enables individuals to be artists, philosophers, thinkers, creators, ingenuous inventors, and so forth can exist without a lot of excess labor. Again, I don't know.

In the present day and age, artists can struggle to make a decent living. In the past, the emperors and the elites in the society gave patronage to them. Labour is not bad in of itself as long as we work for ourselves, otherwise it is a form of chattel slavery. The term artists has been restricted to music,art and acting for some reason but it is supposed to be a broad term. There was a famous mathematician by the name of Erdos, who travelled around the world and was as close as we can get to an ascetic mathematician. I would consider him to be an artist of first order but it hurts my mind whenever people ask this question ; what's the use of this " insert mathematical terms " when l leave school ?
The society does not like those who learn for sake of learning. It has to be applied somewhere. The idea of a universal salary is naive and l doubt if it will stop people from participating in a rat race. Materialism is a spiritual sickness and progress always happens in ideals and ideas not in building skyscrapers and countless industrial units.

There is a very real question of whether "Society" which enables individuals to be artists, philosophers, thinkers, creators, ingenuous inventors, and so forth can exist without a lot of excess labor. Again, I don't know.

In the present day and age, artists can struggle to make a decent living. In the past, the emperors and the elites in the society gave patronage to them. Labour is not bad in of itself as long as we work for ourselves, otherwise it is a form of chattel slavery. The term artists has been restricted to music,art and acting for some reason but it is supposed to be a broad term. There was a famous mathematician by the name of Erdos, who travelled around the world and was as close as we can get to an ascetic mathematician. I would consider him to be an artist of first order but it hurts my mind whenever people ask this question ; what's the use of this " insert mathematical terms " when l leave school ?
The society does not like those who learn for sake of learning. It has to be applied somewhere. The idea of a universal salary is naive and l doubt if it will stop people from participating in a rat race. Materialism is a spiritual sickness and progress always happens in ideals and ideas not in building skyscrapers and countless industrial units.

No, it's not. It necessarily includes people so it can't be a machine.

The idea of a universal salary is naive and l doubt if it will stop people from participating in a rat race. — Wittgenstein

One of the reasons it won't stop people from running the rat race is that the "universal wage" is, in one version, intended to provide a survival income base for people whose jobs have been eliminated by computers or automation. It's nothing like a 'living wage'. Another version of the universal wage is that it would be available to everybody -- universal. It would allow more self-development (education) and allow for more risk-taking. It is pitched as a good sized supplement. The universal wage isn't intended to finance a nation of philosophers and artists.

Such a goal is not only naive, it's absurd. Most people don't want to spend their days studying philosophy or very much else. It isn't that most people are stupid, or troglodytes, or beer-swilling slobs (even if some are). A lot of people are not adept at productively filling vast stretches of time. They like structure; they live and work well with in a structured environment. Or, they might spend their days listening to National Public Radio, or laying on the couch, smoking, and watching TV. And so on.

The rat race yields rewards--like money, social contact, a sense of belonging, having a role.

I'm not sure that "production" can be de-ratted. It's a treadmill, and once on...

Materialism is a spiritual sickness and progress always happens in ideals and ideas not in building skyscrapers and countless industrial units. — Wittgenstein

Ideals and ideas are a fine thing, but The Philosophy Forum, Wikipedia, your favorite publishing house and preferred media outlet, and so on wouldn't exist if it weren't for all that plethora of industrial units (computers, cables, routers, server farms, high speed printing presses, broadcast equipment, electricity, telephones, and so on.

It takes a fair amount of devotion to material stuff, unless one is going to live in a box under a bridge, and even then, you need the box, the bridge, a blanket or two...

One of the reasons it won't stop people from running the rat race is that the "universal wage" is, in one version, intended to provide a survival income base for people whose jobs have been eliminated by computers or automation. It's nothing like a 'living wage'. Another version of the universal wage is that it would be available to everybody -- universal. It would allow more self-development (education) and allow for more risk-taking. It is pitched as a good sized supplement. The universal wage isn't intended to finance a nation of philosophers and artists.

When robots are developed to the extend that they can
perform common labour and have set of skills that can replace low skill labourers, that will not be enough to rule labourers out. The cost and the efficiency of robots at a large scale is still a big question and l don't think we will ever find ourselves in such a situation. Let alone turing computer as consiousnnes is not even understood in human beings and it is impossible to vision a computer executing it. Professional philosophers and artists are not a special breed of people but they won't be affected if full automation becomes the rule of the day. Their fields are secure and a universal income will supplement them. The idea of a survival income isn't accurate. In a lot of capitalist societies, consumerism has driven up what a survival income means and we can surprisingly survive on very little income if the economy helps us to, so universal income in a capitalist society will fail easily. There has to be a transformation at an economic level too.

Such a goal is not only naive, it's absurd. Most people don't want to spend their days studying philosophy or very much else. It isn't that most people are stupid, or troglodytes, or beer-swilling slobs (even if some are). A lot of people are not adept at productively filling vast stretches of time. They like structure; they live and work well with in a structured environment. Or, they might spend their days listening to National Public Radio, or laying on the couch, smoking, and watching TV. And so on.

I would agree on this statement but it maybe due to the anti-intellectualism present in present age. It is easy to understand why as people can seek entertainment in activities that require less physical or mental labour, hence they will rather watch a movie than read a novel. Watch a documentary over reading some philosophical article and so on. Certain activities can reduce the attention span of a person and the brain functions like a muscle. I don't think doing maths or studying philosophy ,enjoying art is superior to average day activities and what matters is that people should have a freedom to be idle and the glorification of work has been over the edge due industrial revolution. Being on time is another moronic concept which l despise so much, it reminds me of a line from some unknown poet, as he writes and ridicules the society

you have watches and clocks and we have time

The rat race yields rewards--like money, social contact, a sense of belonging, having a role.

There is false human connection in corporate environment as they thrive on jealousy and competition.
It has led people to being depressed and feeling lost even after acquiring all the money, a status in the community because in the end of the day, it is a fake show. There is no genuineness in it. We need to overcome our desire to gain power, fame and wealth because if we set to acquire it, there is no end to it and we will be disappointed.

Ideals and ideas are a fine thing, but The Philosophy Forum, Wikipedia, your favorite publishing house and preferred media outlet, and so on wouldn't exist if it weren't for all that plethora of industrial units (computers, cables, routers, server farms, high speed printing presses, broadcast equipment, electricity, telephones, and so on.

As long as industrial units support and allow cultivation of ideas and our general well being, they can be an indicator of development but on their own, l wouldn't agree that they indicate development as such structures will tend to collapse on themselves when difficult times come. If North Korea succeeds in becoming self sufficient and turns its economy around like China, we won't seriously regard their industrial development as step towards betterment because they have neglected fundamental human rights and destroyed their culture.
On another point, we can manage to live without the printing press, internet and other facilities. It won't be convenient but people were used to studying philosophy in ancient Greece with very little resources

we can manage to live without the printing press, internet and other facilities — Wittgenstein

Of course we can -- our hunter-gatherers managed to live without all of it, for what, 200,000 years? But without the Gutenberg Revolution maintained, intellectual life as we have known it for the last 580 years will come to a screeching halt. We don't absolutely need all the tech we have used for the last several hundred years, let alone the 20th century tech. Remember, though, that the Grecian and Roman philosophers operated at the top of the social pile, with a lot of human labor needed to maintain the upper levels.

When the Western Roman Empire fell apart, the intellectual traditions of the ancient world were just barely preserved, or they were lost. The Medieval elites of Europe, and the monasteries, held on to a hunk of it, but most of it disappeared. Life was much simpler in the centuries following, closer to the soil for sure. We don't want to repeat that sort of loss.

Look, I agree we are suffocating in material excess, and the heaps of stuff that tower over us are mostly entirely unnecessary and/or run counter to our good health and happiness. Circumstances may yet require us to learn how to get along without all this accumulated dross, but let's not throw out the gold with the trash.

To model the economy as a machine is actually very bad and in the end harmful.

First of all, machine works the same way from when you put in on and shut it down. It follows a very precise and descripted procedure: the "cogs" of a machine are real cogs and fulfill their task until they wore out from use. To model an economy this is simply bad, especially if the limitations of the model isn't understood. Just few things that come to mind:

1. The Machine model oversimplifies a hugely complex system. The basic fact is that we seldom comprehend how complex an economy is and make totally unrealistic and wrong assumptions on how it works. We simply even don't agree on how it works, which would be totally ludicrous if we would have a machine in front of us. We also use definitions and describe economic phenomenon that we aren't at all in agreement what they actually are and how they happen. Just look discussions at this site about on "money" and for example "inflation".


2. The ever changing nature of the economy is lost. The machine model (or metaphor) shows a very static economy, where things don't change. Machines don't do this: a Wankel motor doesn't evolve into a 4-stroke engine if use it long enough.

3. The Machine model makes us think we can tinker with the economy like a machine. The idea that central planners called 'economists' are just as engineers and can fine tune their "machine" to give better performance is an absurd idea, but easily is accepted with the idea of the economy being the 'machine' of the society. Economics used as a tool of central planning has been shown again and again have disastrous results.

I agree completely with your sentiment. Yes, the economic system functions as a machine, in the respect that you have described. That is to say, that humans exchange their time and life, in order to obtain units of exchange, in order to perpetuate their physical body. A really great article on Psychology Today titled "The Bonus Effect," highlights how when humans do things for financial gain, the work is done at a lower quality. Furthermore, because our system requires you to engage in some kind of "gainful employment," you are required to bend your values to what is being required by the system itself. You could argue that the "priorities of the system" are determined by consumerist choices, however, I think that is naive. When you factor in that there are distortions that exist in the system, meaning how human behavior is really confined to what is economically beneficial, you see that consumer choice plays a secondary role.

To summarize, the economic machine functions such that humans are reduced to cogs in its machinations. This is necessarily dehumanizing.

Contrary to what many people have indicated in this thread, humans are not engaging in a good exchange in this system. Trading technological comfort, or the printing press, by exchanging your literal humanity is not to live "the good life," it is to exist in a state of dying a little bit more every day, as your humanity is exchanged to obtain the means of survival, and the very engagement in this system, destroys any intrinsic meaning to life anyways, because everything is commodified, and you are reduced to an apparatus, a number on a screen, and a value in an economic calculation which serves to distort understanding. I could go on and on but I think I have said more than enough.

Please let me know where I have erred in my reasoning.