[rhodrid]

CASSINI’S GRAND FINALE

https://vimeo.com/210782375

"Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defense each year, and instead spend it feeding, clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace."

[oh_sigh]

What happens if you spend all your self-defense money on 'feeding, clothing, and educating the poor', and then a despotic nation which was spending 25% of it's GDP on military rolls over you?

[rhodrid]

The Cassini mission reminded me of the line "we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace." and I thought I'd post the whole verse as it is as poignant today as it as ever has been.

What we can accomplish together in peace is breathtaking.

[riffraff]

I'm pretty sure the "we" in the sentence is "humanity" not "my country". It is obviously a utopian message.

[oh_sigh]

Okay....so humanity stops building weapons, and then a small group of people decide to build some weapons in secret, and can easily enslave humanity.

That doesn't sound like a great system.

[ak39]

The poor, uneducated and subjugated people of this "despotic nation" are the first folks we ought to feed, educate and look after.

Despots are created and thrive on the backs of hungry and hopeless citizens.

[oh_sigh]

Okay, so we feed and educate some other nations people, so that nation can now afford to put 45% of it's GDP into weapons and military. I don't think that will accomplish what we want it to accomplish.

[matwood]

I agree with you, but do you think if we send a bunch of food to one of these despotic nations the people there would actually get fed? If you really want to feed and educate the world, you also have to police the world.

I'm not saying the US currently does either (feeds or polices the world), but just pointing out that spending the military budget on food will not change much.

[colordrops]

The quote is about an ideal utopic society, and it would be humans as a whole, including that despotic nation, spending all the self-defense money.

[MrZongle2]

I think you're supposed to hand them a Pepsi.

[gambiting]

The problem seems to be that giving money does not solve problems all the time, and will not make everyone friendly towards you. US and EU have given billions if not trillions to Turkey, and it's still descending into dictatorship. It's regressing from a progressive society into a conservative one, probably more interested in religious laws than exploring space.

[tzakrajs]

Considering they are ready to invade Syria and/or Kurdistan at the drop of a hat, I can see why their priorities are a bit askew.

[Radim]

Hmm, why does this remind me of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"?

The dangerously seductive, utopian naivety of such statements rubs me the wrong way.

I wish all the kumbaya nature's-way-is-stupid-here's-my-brilliant-social-engineering-idea-instead people would collectively go and... try their social experiments elsewhere.

[colordrops]

The idea that the status quo is "nature's way" is utterly wrong. Whatever we do as humans is "nature's way", as we are not separate from nature. Many different social structures have worked now and in the past. There is an enormous body of debate that our current system is terribly and perhaps fatally flawed (e.g. unable to act on climate change), so writing off people who want change as hippies that should go away is actually really rude.

[Radim]

Any example of a radically different social structure that has worked for humans in the past?

Btw I agree 100% that change is necessary and "natural". Vacuous hippie statements are not "it" though -- rational discourse and careful simulation is. This cannot be another "Oh, I had an idea in the bathtub, how about we try this ideology on the entire world's population?".

Given the room for disaster, and history's record of emotionally-loaded ideologies not backed by facts leading to such disaster quite reliably, that rhetoric is utterly unconvincing (as well as scary).

[colordrops]

I don't think you are really understanding the context of the original quote. I would hope that most people with a reasonable thought process would recognize that building social structure is a very complex and difficult problem, but the path from here to "there", wherever "there" is requires "there" to be defined. I think the quote is talking about the ends, not the means. You seem to be talking about the means. The goal is building as peaceful, productive, happy, innovative, exploratory, fulfilled society as possible. Perhaps capitalism is our best mechanism at the moment, but as we evolve, we will hopefully get closer to that goal of not needing to spend money on war and being able to feed everyone, whether through better capitalism, or something else.

[Radim]

I see you're attempting to shift the goal posts :)

Instead of veiled insults, just re-read the original utopian quote. It's nothing like what you're describing. In fact, it's exactly the opposite -- a direct call to action.

[castle-bravo]

That's a nice bit rhetorical judo. Disarming and ensuring that the bottom level of Maslow's hierarchy is met -> communism! The originator of that quote was anything but a communist.

I think you ought to think a little harder about what defense and military spending really is: welfare for engineers and those desperate or foolish enough to test their inventions. It's "from each ... to each ..." but under a different system of values.

[MR4D]

So, there are a couple possible originators of that quote... 1 - Marx, who, obviously, was a Communist, in which case your statement is wrong 2 - Joseph Smith, who founded a classless commune. I think that invalidates your comment as well.

Is there someone else who you are thinking of as an originator who was "anything but a communist" as you put it? I'm more than willing to listen if there is.

[TheOtherHobbes]

They've been tried elsewhere, and they usually work out pretty well.

Countries that try them may not be utopias, but they do have consistently high citizen satisfaction scores.

Perhaps a little more realism and a little less moralising would be helpful.

To add: these science programs are good examples of collective action. Can anyone seriously imagine Facebook or Google paying for a project like Cassini?

[shrimp_emoji]

>They've been tried elsewhere, and they usually work out pretty well.

To which one are you referring, China or North Korea?

[mason240]

Or maybe he's talking about the USSR, Cuba, or Venezuela. All bastions of progress and high standards of living.

[ue_]

I am a Communist, and I will say that a slogan is neither something to build your country upon, nor something to criticise a country on. No country has thus far managed to progress past capitalism, certainly not the ones you litsted nor the ones GP listed. Marx was referring to how life ought to be under Socialism, rather than an implementation of this principle under a capitalist system, which he believed was impossible.

[mason240]

To be fair, communist as described will never be able to exist - the furthest it will get is the USSR stage.

[throw_away]

It's a Bill Hicks quote: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/494647-the-world-is-like-a-r...

[ue_]

> nature's-way-is-stupid-here's-my-brilliant-social-engineering-idea-instead

So then instead of trying to change the world for the better, we ought to just submit to a naturalistic fallacy and live our lives in ignorance of the ways society could be better organised? It seems like you're criticising Communism based on this quote, which is in fact supposed to show how life ought to be under Socialism, rather than how we ought to implement it with capitalism.

What gives you the ideat that capitalism is "nature's way"? This couldn't be further than the truth.