I don't mean to ignore the first part of your response - it's just we're mostly in agreement.

But is that a result of experiencing the US system which leans too far in that direction? Or a reflection of how neoliberalism as a philosophy has tried to take the whole globalised financial system in that direction? — apokrisis

I don't think my ambivalence towards competition comes from either of these. For the record, I'm fine with local sports leagues and chess tournaments... sure emotions can fly but all in all these are relatively low stakes competitions.

Competition pervades society though - and this isn't just about American capitalism. Soviet school children still sought to achieve the highest marks and go to the best universities. Native Americans in pre-agrarian societies still sought to become chief and attain a healthy social status (often through war.) Whether it's social status or business/wealth or romance competition is pervasive in human affairs and the losers suffer real, serious consequences. Life is often a high stakes competition.

The losers don't necessarily deserve it, either. There's an element of randomness to it. I understand the systemic benefits and the fact that competition can make men stronger and more skillful in areas, but I can't ignore the costs either. I think there's an element of tragedy to it that cooperation doesn't quite have.

Whether it's social status or business/wealth or romance competition is pervasive in human affairs and the losers suffer real, serious consequences. Life is often a high stakes competition. — BitconnectCarlos

Yes, there is always pain and pleasure. But the cooperative end of the spectrum is also experienced in these terms.

Who enjoys feeling constrained and having to play by the rules? Who loves paying their taxes - until they need a hospital? Who in their right mind would want to be in the army - until it is in defence of their home town?

So living has real consequences - pleasant and unpleasant. But competition and cooperation deliver both in their own ways.

Balance would be then whatever could be a happy medium that achieves the most overall good - however we then decide to measure that.

The losers don't necessarily deserve it, either. There's an element of randomness to it ... I think there's an element of tragedy to it that cooperation doesn't quite have. — BitconnectCarlos

But how much is this a modern cultural mythology - the image of the striving hero battling against fickle fate? You don't have to go far to see counter-stories where the tragedy is to be cast out of the collective bosom.

So we can play this both ways - a sign that this dynamic truly exists as a mirror reflection of its own self.

libertarian socialism — Pfhorrest

Only a socialist talks about force and claims it isn't force. It's a matriarchal condition, like, "Do what I say, but tell me you like it."

I think we were thinking about cooperation in different senses. Neither of us is wrong here - the word can be used in a few different ways. Usually when I think about cooperation it's, for instance, a group of people working towards a common end, mutually beneficial, through their own free volition. It's not about following rules that you never explicitly agreed to or being forced to do something. We see this all the time in a free market where people's interests and skills can line up in ways that benefit both parties.

I understand where you're coming from though. People will often say "I expect your cooperation" when they really mean "Please do as I say." There can even be a real threat behind it if you don't yield. In this sense of the word, it can certainly be stifling and I agree with you 100%. I like to distinguish between cooperation and coercion.

But how much is this a modern cultural mythology - the image of the striving hero battling against fickle fate? You don't have to go far to see counter-stories where the tragedy is to be cast out of the collective bosom.

Just to clarify, for "tragedy" I meant it more in the literary sense. I don't consider this modern - you have Shakespearian tragedies and there's a long literary tradition of good, well meaning characters who get brought down through something unfortunate.

I think if I were to accept this notion - that the best always prevails - I'd probably find myself believing in some sort of version of Social Darwinism like the one you mentioned earlier in Victorian England.

$15 minimum wage and increasing taxation for some multi-millionaires and billionaires is exactly what Orwell was talking about, absolutely.

It’s more along the lines of De Tocqueville’s “soft despotism”. You can look to the state to demand of others what you yourself refuse to do, but in so doing you grow state power at the expense of your own.

It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/DETOC/ch4_06.htm

So I think a name change would be appropriate. — NOS4A2

Nosferatu : What would you call this new kind of economics --- The Golden Rule? :joke:

We should note that “Capitalism” was initially a snarl word used by socialists to disparage a sort of bogeyman. So I think a name change would be appropriate. — NOS4A2

If the idea you’re talking about is just non-coercive
trade, that already has a name: a free market. Which isn’t the same thing as capitalism. If you’re not in favor of wealth concentrating in the hands of fewer and fewer people, then you’re against capitalism (even if you’re still in favor of a free market), and shouldn’t mind that word being snarled at that bad thing you’re against.

With those concepts separate then maybe you can brainstorm some ideas on how to keep wealth from concentrating like that without sacrificing the free market. And libertarian socialists around the world
will join you in that.

He also defines his predicted date of the singularity (2045)

The person in your first link placed it in the 2060s. Singularity is only the law of Accelerating returns. Like when you efficient technology you then had oil and then electricity and so forth. If you have driven the cost of everything to zero. Then you only need to figure out a way to knit things together using existing techniques you learned getting to that point.
Out of curiosity have you seen https://play.aidungeon.io/ ?

If the idea you’re talking about is just non-coercive
trade, that already has a name: a free market. Which isn’t the same thing as capitalism. If you’re not in favor of wealth concentrating in the hands of fewer and fewer people, then you’re against capitalism (even if you’re still in favor of a free market), and shouldn’t mind that word being snarled at that bad thing you’re against.

With those concepts separate then maybe you can brainstorm some ideas on how to keep wealth from concentrating like that without sacrificing the free market. And libertarian socialists around the world
will join you in that.

I don’t think wealth can necessarily concentrate in the hands of a few because wealth is not a zero sum game. For instance when I make a dollar you do not lose a dollar, my gain is not your loss. So I cannot agree with that assessment of capitalism.

I don’t think wealth can necessarily concentrate in the hands of a few because wealth is not a zero sum game. For instance when I make a dollar you do not lose a dollar, my gain is not your loss. So I cannot agree with that assessment of capitalism. — NOS4A2

I don't necessarily have to lose a dollar for you to gain a dollar, but it is still possible that you can gain a dollar at my expense.

And if everything was truly voluntary and uncoerced, surely people would only go in for trades where each side gains something, so you wouldn't end up with some people getting richer and richer while others get (or stay) poor. The rising tide would float all boats.

If you think that everyone is getting richer together, well then you're just factually wrong, and I'll let others deal with that because it's not worth my time to argue about well-known and easily-googled facts.

I don’t see how any of that is the case. The rising tide is raising all boats, for instance with the decline in global extreme poverty and the rise in life expectancy. One of the richest men of all time, Nathan Rothschild, died of septicaemia even after buying the best healthcare in the world. Nowadays anyone can be cured of it.

No I don’t think everyone is getting wealthy together, just that wealth expands, and it becomes more and more accessible to everyone.

I don't necessarily have to lose a dollar for you to gain a dollar, but it is still possible that you can gain a dollar at my expense. — Pfhorrest

Yet the basic fact is that wealth is created. If you produce something of value, then the World is that product richer as it was earlier. If you sell it and someone buys it, notice that the amount of money stays the same, but that product is more than before.

Just as NOS4A2 above mentions that the richest man in the World couldn't get earlier services like medical treatment that is rather cheap now. If we'd be living in the 19th Century, I'd be already dead. The fact that wealth isn't distributed equally is another issue.

It's funny how some people can't realize that "be glad you aren't living 200 years ago" is an extremely stupid defense of present day conditions.

This seems a linchpin to your theory, and it's false at least in numbers high enough to matter. — Hanover

Not my theory; but I will stand by it. As I said the @Issac,

I'd like to take some time, to thank the manufacturers of the laptops or other devices on which you and I write, Isaac. The designers who cooperated with the various engineers to bring about a plan, paid for by innumerable investments, built from materials dug by miners from deep underground, the folk who transported these across the globe, refining them on the way into usable materials, crafted and fashioned these into components that other folk could write code for, test, improve over the years into the device you see before you. I'd like to thank the families of these millions, for cooperating with them while they took the time to do all this. Thanks too, to the farmers and shop owners who provided them with food, the teachers and academics who educated them, who researched the physics, chemistry, and mathematics involved. Thanks also to those who supported you with food, funds, education, and everything else needed to bring it about that you could point out that people do not agree as to how the world is. All those millions on millions of folk who worked together, agreeing that despite their small differences of opinions the world is so, that you could copy-and-paste some irrelevancies rather than actually think. — Banno

Don't drag me into this. Your misrepresentation of my position is bad enough on its own without implicating it in something even less related.

Humans are imperfect, and humans make up "the system". We are all a part of it and we voluntarily decide to reinforce it every day through our behavior, whether we are aware of this or not (and whether one thinks of themselves so selfrighteously that they consider themselves 'not part of the system': they are). All this finger-pointing hides ignorance and possibly a guilty conscience.

As long as humans are imperfect, there won't be a perfect system. Attempts at creating one are likely to produce an outcome worse than the original, not in the least because those who strive for change often lack any insight into their own human (and thus flawed) motivations. Be very wary of those who see no issue in forcing people to part with their wealth in search of a 'perfect' system'. It's indicative of the totalitarian mindset, and sadly it is well-represented here. On a philosophy forum, paradoxically(?). I guess that can be attributed to the arrogance of intellect, even though any real intellect seems to be lacking.

It's funny how some people can't realize that "be glad you aren't living 200 years ago" is an extremely stupid defense of present day conditions. — Maw

And so is to believe that 200 years old leftist economics that has been tried for the last 200 years and has utterly failed is an answer to the problems of the present.

Be very wary of those who see no issue in forcing people to part with their wealth in search of a 'perfect' system'. It's indicative of the totalitarian mindset, and sadly it is well-represented here. On a philosophy forum, paradoxically(?). I guess that can be attributed to the arrogance of intellect, even though any real intellect seems to be lacking. — Tzeentch

There's no paradox, Tzeentch. This has been the normal for a long time, it's just pops up from time to time to be observable.

Many philosophers are idealists and believe that the only answer to present problems is a radical depart from the norm, from what we have now, and believe in radical change of the society and it's institutions as the only answer. Hence in a liberal democracy, the other seems interesting. They fall in love with the ideology, be it whatever it is as just what is the cool ideology changes.

I'm sure those folks are appreciative of your thanks, but it's doubtful any of them showed up at work each day to provide you such bounty in exchange for just a warm pat on the back. They probably worked for money, would not have produced it but for their getting paid for it, and would have done it anyway even without yours or anyone else's thank you.

...so that they turned up to get payed, and indeed that they did get paid, somehow for you shows how uncooperative people are...

Neoliberal assumptions that are false:
the market is an efficient equilibrium system
the price of something is always equal to its value
we are all perfectly selfish, perfectly rational and relentlessly self-maximizing. — Banno

Just look at the stock market. :yikes:

Thanks for summarizing the video.

Cheers.

For me, the key is that markets are not efficient equilibrium systems - roughly, that monetarism sits on a false assumption. Economic growth comes from innovation and increased complexity, not the quantity of money.

Economic growth comes from innovation and increased complexity, not the quantity of money. — Banno

Yes, but we have instead a boom and bust economy. Economic cycle is best when it's tightened and then relaxed, tightened then relaxed, not feast or famine, where many would lose their livelihood and commodity in the form of time gained through savings (time is money), and therefore lose faith in the system.

Is boom and bust the issue, or inequity? IF the cycle had not resulted in a huge gain for the parasitic end of the wealth spectrum, would the fact of there being a cycle be an significant?

But the cycle was used - cynically - to pump money in one direction.

Is boom and bust the issue, or inequity? — Banno

Ah. I'm sort of mentally fumbling on this as I'm not sure whether we are confusing cause with effect here.

I believe the issue we want to deal with is that the boom and bust is the result of a faulty economic system -- inequity or not. (Just for good measure, there would still be times when tightening is needed even in the most equitable economy.)
And how do we define equity? Unequal income is not necessarily a sign of inequity.

And how do we define equity? Unequal income is not necessarily a sign of inequity. — Caldwell

Have a flick through this...

I'm not sure whether we are confusing cause with effect here. — Caldwell

Well, I'm puzzled, too. Suppose the the market is not in a state of equilibrium, but has been treated as if it were... would the resulting instability look like a series of booms, followed by busts?

"The World Social Report 2020: Inequality in a rapidly changing world comes as we
confront the harsh realities of a deeply unequal global landscape. In North and South
alike, mass protests have flared up, fueled by a combination of economic woes,
growing inequalities and job insecurity. Income disparities and a lack of opportunities
are creating a vicious cycle of inequality, frustration and discontent across generations."

Okay, these are effects. No contradiction to what we're discussing here.

Suppose the the market is not in a state of equilibrium, but has been treated as if it were... would the resulting instability look like a series of booms, followed by busts? — Banno

What? First, how does one fake this kind of ginormous interconnection of markets and populations?
Second, say we could fake it, then the series of booms -- why then would we allow a series of busts? I'm just saying... if we could fake something this enormous.

What? First, how does one fake this kind of ginormous interconnection of markets and populations?
Second, say we could fake it, then the series of booms -- why then would we allow a series of busts? I'm just saying... if we could fake something this enormous. — Caldwell

What? I wasn't suggesting a conspiracy...