An Alternative to Capitalism

Discussion in 'Business & Economics' started by TruthSeeker, Jul 22, 2006.

  1. swivel Sci-Fi Author Valued Senior Member

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    Humans have never existed without concepts of "owing" and "being owed". Whether it is sharing the spoils of a kill with someone that provided the last time, or trading other favors. How do we know this? Because almost all mammals have these mechanisms built-in. We see it in the behavior of wild dogs, lions, and most vividly, in other primates.

    You are wishing for the return of a fantasyland that never existed, and never could. People, like all other animals, put themselves first in almost all situations. You aren't going to find a culture that ignores the natural tendencies of all living organisms. Anywhere or anytime.
     
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  3. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    How about Buddhists?
     
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  5. TimeTraveler Immortalist Registered Senior Member

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    Poverty is due to inefficiency and the irrational human nature. If humans were rational and efficient we would have full employement. The only reason we do not have full employement is because we don't want to be efficient, for whatever reasons. Now I understand some countries have politicial problems and civil wars, but the majority of countries are stable. It's just inefficiency. We don't even have full employement in the USA, thats inefficiency also.
     
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  7. lixluke Refined Reinvention Valued Senior Member

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    This is the flawed approach.

    1. Define what a society is and what an institution is.
    2. Define what it means to highly functioning.
    3. Define an approach to attain a highly functioning society.


    The institution serves 2 functions. Both of which are symbiotic.
    1. To protect and support the individual.
    2. To protect and support the environment.

    In order to support the individual, the environment must be supported.
    In order to support the environment, the individual must be supported.

    Social progress is the capacity in which the institution is capable of fulfilling its purpose. The individual should have full access to support and equal protection of their rights and health. The better and more efficient this is, the higher the standard of progress is.
    Laws should prevent human abuse and environmental abuse.


    FIRST WORLD
    NATROPOLIS
    First World is a civilization of high level progress and high standard of living. A standard of living the world has never seen before. Such standard of living is currently only available to the super rich. It is not an excessive lavish standard. It features the provisions of high education, health care, protection of rights, physical and mental wellness, all at high standards. The individual is completely surrounded by high health and abundance throughout all sections of the mondess.

    There are 2 very distinct and separate types of environment.
    Nature: Protected natural territory.
    Mondess: Any area that is not all natural wildreness environment.
    You are either in nature or in mondess.

    Current capitalist and other social/economic/political systems rely on vast amounts of vehicles and roads for transportation. The amount of human and natural resources required to support and regulate such a system is incomprehensible. Land, material, and human labor needed to build roads. Lannd/Materials/Human Labor needed to build the cars. L/M/H needed to regulate the transportation system. L/M/H needed to handle the waste products and garbage created as a result of this system. Separation of the community because of increasingly separated communes. Not to mention automotive related deaths are the #4 killer of adults 25-44 years old. #1 killer of all ages under that.


    The Natropolis is a densely packed city capable of supporting hundreds of thousands of people in a very high standard environment with an internal transportation system. Similar to an Archology. There can be many of these locations all around the world. Each location can be connected by a single highway and railway.

    Each location can play a specific function in relation to all other locations. In addition, there are smaller outposts for mining and agriculture.

    Natropolis for Technology Development
    Natropolis for Acedemics
    Natropolis for Healthcare and Elderly.
    Natropolis for Administration and Justice.

    Natropolis for Manufacturing (1 for each product type).
    (Apparel, Furniture, Pharmaceuticals, Technical Equipment, Industrial Vehicles.)

    Farming Outpost
    Agriculture Outpost
    Space Station
    Extraterrestrial Settlements


    As such, the entire land of the Earth can be vast amounts of nature with small pockets of highly technological human settlements.
     
    Last edited: Sep 22, 2006
  8. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    You're saying it's possible to have full employment?
     
  9. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    15,162
    cool skill,

    I'm not sure about the implications of highly dense human populations. How would you deal with the waste, for instance? How would you create enough space for eveyone in a very densely populated area? How would you get enough food for eveyone?

    I don't see how that is possible....
     
  10. lixluke Refined Reinvention Valued Senior Member

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    9,072
    It is very possible.
    Waste management is not difficult with the use of advanced recycling technology.
    Furthermore, what little waste is left can be transported to a specialized landfill. But will eventually be broken down in to recyclable materials.

    Density is an extremely relative term. I do not know about what you think, but I have lots of diagrams. Density simply means take a current city and take out all the large roads and highways. Implement a central transport that can be accessed within 5 minutes of any point on the map. Such a stransport should be able to get the indiviual from one point of the Natropolis to another within 30min max.
    Density does not mean stuffy overcowded or under crowded.
    What I mean is a swarce city. Swarce meaning rich in population, but not in the least bit over crowded. I'll try to post some images and descriptions later.
     
  11. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, post some images....

    How about the mental state of those people? Do you think it's health to live in a densely populated place? How would there be enough space for everyone?

    What is an earthquake happens? What if there is a fire?
     
  12. lixluke Refined Reinvention Valued Senior Member

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    9,072
    Yes there is more than enough space for everyone. It is extremely healthy for human psychosocial development. It prevents isolation, and stengthens the community as well. This is not only important for the individual, but an extremely effective defensive strategy against oppression. The less isolated a society is, the stronger the community, and the more difficult it is to oppress. Easily oppressed societies breed isolation to prevent people from getting together to uprise.

    There are no outside threats to the natropolis that technology cannot handle.
    Natural disasters
    Accidents
    Military invasion

    I'm not an expert on any of these, but I know technology and its capabilities. Furthermore, although there might not be such thing as "foolproof", there is definitely such thing as human intellectual capacity that can forsee any possible disaster, and create measures to ensure the safest disaster free cleanest possible portection for inhabitants.
     
  13. Clockwood You Forgot Poland Registered Senior Member

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    4,467
    Stick two rats in a cage that is too small and don't give them a way to get away from the other rat. Within very little time, the two rats will try to kill each other. A similar thing is likely to happen on a much larger scale in one of your cities. Some could argue it is already happening in some of our larger cities.

    In a small population center, you can know every inhabitant intimately. You know their names, their faces, who they are related to and what they are doing with their lives. Even if you hate one of them, you will do nothing to harm them. Every last human around you enriches your life somehow. Kill a butcher and you will have no meat, kill the bartender and you will have no beer.

    In a big city, people are just a faceless mass. You seemingly lose nothing when a man you do not know is struck down. To you, he was just more competition and a potential threat. One more man to cut you off on the way to work, one more man to mug you on the street, one more man to take your job from you by working an hour longer and a dollar cheaper. A big city does nothing but dehumanize you. It makes monsters out of men.
     
  14. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    I totally agree...

    Well, almost totally. Big cities have lots of things to do and can be fun...

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  15. Clockwood You Forgot Poland Registered Senior Member

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    Indeed. But fun is scattered into a dozen little remote islands in a sea of annoyance, fear, toil, confusion, and anger.
     
  16. Chatha big brown was screwed up Registered Senior Member

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    MT I have been reading some of your post of late and they are really short sighted. For instance, what do you think causes greed, selfishness, and heartlessness in the first place? Interesting thread all the same.
    The best way to picture capitalism is a circle inside a square, no matter how you place the circle its always going to leave unoccupied gaps in the square; these gaps are poverty and oppression. Capitalism was not designed to cater every citizen or state and cannot possibly do so, even if it did inflation and insatiable greed will set the vicious cycle running again. So I guess we have to decide whether we truly want a utopian or an asymmetric society. Communism and all other ideas are unengaging and boring, capitalism offers something special...a game. Capitalism is a Game, and as in all games there can only be winners or losers, everything else is straight bullshit. It’s not a game many of us would volunteer to play but its one that as soon as someone starts to play everybody else has no choice but to play to survive(cold war). But there is hope, according to George Soros, an adept international man of business; you can play the game cooperatively or competitively. The US used to be a cooperative player until of recent, not that this is necessarily a bad thing. The truth is that the entire world can't cooperate together because there has to be someone they are cooperating against. When you keep building arms every year you are bound to use them sooner or later. The world is divided between the good players and the bad players- Darwism. Even if we invented a good socioecomomic systme better than capitalism ist only a matter of time before really good players of the system dominate the board, such is the curse of the learning and "figuring shit out" mind of human condition. Another option is to do away with leadership, whch is a one-way and non-stop ticket to disaster.
     
    Last edited: Sep 26, 2006
  17. Jeff 152 Registered Senior Member

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    364
    Chatha, congratulations, you seem to be one of the few people here who knows what you are talking about. I really liked your response. I love capitalism because I love games. I love games becasue I love winning, and becasue I love winning, I will try my best to win. That is waht Capitalism is all about, everyone is trying to win, and competition makes everyone better.

    I like to compare it to world class athletes. A bunch of world class runners have a big race coming up, each works hard to imoprove themselves and give them the best chance of winning., so each gets better. In the end, all of them benefit, they improve each other throguh competition. The only losers and poor people are the ones who dont care if they win or lose so they dont train and become fat and lazy. Then they complain that everyone else is in such good shape while they have been left out.
     
  18. lixluke Refined Reinvention Valued Senior Member

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    It is a game.
    Not everybody loves games.
    Not everybody should have to love games.
    Crappytalism is a game of destruction. It is not a game of production.
    It is a primitive death trap game that is not in favor of intellectual resource management. The study of resource management = Economics. This game is not about resource management. It is based on a misunderstanding of resource management. It is based on a misunderstanding of what resources are. The whole foundation of what we know as economics is not only wrong and misleading, but it causes a displaced sort of delusional paradim of resources, what they are, and how to manage them effectively for sake of the planet and the exponentially expanding human population.
     
  19. Jeff 152 Registered Senior Member

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    364
    It's funny how winners seem to like games and the losers don't. I am a winner, thus, i like games. If you are not a winner, you are perfectly capable of becoming one.
     
  20. Nickelodeon Banned Banned

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    Does everyone in your games start from a level playing field?
     
  21. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    Certainly not.

    And why not have a win-win situation?
     
  22. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    15,162
    As a side note, I also love games, and I enjoy capitalism to some extent because it is a challenging game. However, we are not dealing with an abstract game here, we are dealing with people. It's human life that we are dealing with, and we should take it more seriously then that.
     
    Last edited: Oct 1, 2006
  23. lixluke Refined Reinvention Valued Senior Member

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    9,072
    Winners or losers. Not everybody likes games. Your assertion that only winners like games is totally blatantly false and ignorant.
    Real winners enjoy fair games with a fair set of rules. Not turning real life situation into a game for the purpose of hurting others.
    You really ar a total loser.
     

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