[mentalgear]

Democratize ownership it is.

Imagine an early human group of 40 people. If one person hoarded the food of 37 others and employed the remaining two just to guard it, it wasn't long before the ruse was up and there was a revolt and the food reclaimed.

Now, only because of scale and abstraction, basically the same setup is possible (0.1% owns as much as 50% of the population).

Our time is perverted ownership-wise, and it's time to go back to a truly cooperative society.

Cooperation, not hoarding, was the foundation of the beginning of civilisation.

---

My ideal future resembles Star Trek: a world where money is obsolete (at least on Earth), and people pursue exploration, science, and the arts purely out of passion and curiosity.

A society driven by innovation, not profit.

[lumenwrites]

I don't think the world where a mob of people can gang up on a person and take their stuff is as idyllic as you think it is. If the person who has figured out how to earn a lot of food doesn't get to "hoard" it, it'll just get hoarded by a person with the biggest stick.

What's worse (for the society), is that in this world nobody has an incentive to create wealth, because they know it'll just be taken away. When rich people aren't in power, people with political capital and big guns are. I don't think that's better.

If AGI takes over, that changes things, somewhat. If it creates unlimited abundance, then it shouldn't matter who has the most (if everyone has plenty). Yes, it would create power disparity, but the thing is, there'll always be SOMEBODY at the top of the social hierarchy, with most of the money and power - in the AGI scenario, that is someone who is in charge of AGI's actions.

Either it's AGI itself (in which case all bets are off, since it's an alien god we cannot control), or the people who have developed AGI, or the politicians who have nationalized it.

Personally, I'm uncomfortable with anyone having that much power, but if I had to pick the lesser evil - I'd prefer it to be a CEO of an AI company (who, at least, had the competence and skill to create it), instead of the AGI itself (who has no reason to care about us unless we solve alignment), or one of the political world leaders (all of whom seem actively insane and/or evil).

[anigbrowl]

If the person who has figured out how to earn a lot of food doesn't get to "hoard" it, it'll just get hoarded by a person with the biggest stick.

Where are you getting the 'earn' part from, and why isn't it in scare quotes like 'hoard'? It seems like you're just changing the parameters of the argument to support the conclusion you prefer.

[canadaduane]

> What's worse (for the society), is that in this world nobody has an incentive to create wealth, because they know it'll just be taken away.

I know this has been discussed at length in many places, but I just want to point out that it isn't binary. There is some kind of distribution where "sovereign ownership" (full protection, no taxes, no redistribution) would entice the most people to create wealth (and even then, I doubt it would be 100% of the population), all the way to "mob rule" where a minimal number of people would be enticed to create wealth (and I don't think it would be 0%). People do things for multidimensional reasons.

That said, our societies have tried many variations along the spectrum between these two extremes, and I think we have uncovered the importance of protecting wealth and the incentive to create it.

[sjducb]

Most hunter gather societies have big differences in productivity between members. I remember reading one example where one man did all of the hunting for a tribe of about 40 people. He really enjoyed both the hunting and the status of being the best hunter. He shared the meat freely. No one was taking it away.

[lumenwrites]

Nothing about the current system (capitalism) prevents people from sharing freely, that's just charity. I think it's wonderful and admirable when people do that, and I fully support that, as long as it's voluntary.

I'd be happy to live in a version of society where there's enough abundance and good will that people just give to charity, and that is enough to support everyone, and nobody is being forced to do anything they don't want.

I only dislike it when people advocate for involuntary redistribution of wealth, because it has a lot of negative side effects people aren't thinking through. Also, because I think that it's evil and results in the sort of society and culture where it would be a nightmare to live in.

[ido]

Isn't "involuntary redistribution of wealth" literally every country on earth though (aside from a few that have such a lack of rule of law that the state can't tax the population)? Do you consider the entire developed world (and most of the rest) a nightmare to live in?

I live in Germany where we have taxes & don't consider it a nightmare.

[lumenwrites]

I think it's a gradient. When I think about the "nightmare to live in", I think Soviet Union or North Korea. Those are the places who went all-in on redistribution.

Most western countries mostly respect individual freedom and property, taxes being an exception to that, somewhat limited and controlled. I see that as a necessary evil - something we can't fully avoid (at least, I can't figure out how we'd do that), but should try to minimize, to avoid sliding down the spectrum towards more and more evil versions of that.

I think most western countries are nice to live in because they do comparatively good job at respecting people's freedom, property, and the right to keep the stuff they earn.

Advocating for more redistribution is taking steps away from that, in the direction people don't realize they don't want to go in.

[andrekandre]

  > Advocating for more redistribution is taking steps away from that, in the direction people don't realize they don't want to go in.

with shared ownership (e.g a cooperative business) there isn't a forced redistribution in the first place, i think thats the point of the original poster?

[immibis]

Do you consider redistributing everything from the people to the dictator indistinguishable from the reverse?

[dragonwriter]

> Isn't "involuntary redistribution of wealth" literally every country on earth though (aside from a few that have such a lack of rule of law that the state can't tax the population)?

Places with governments that weak also tend to prominently feature involuntary redistribution of wealth. It tends to be more self-service at the hands of the end-recipients and without the kind of ethical theory behind it that is at least the notional framework fo redistribution by functional governments, but it still very much occurs.

[sjducb]

It’s not as involuntary as I made it sound. I think if he decided not to share the meat then he would have problems with the rest of the tribe.

[ido]

you also can't eat more than so much meat anyway and it spoils at some point (especially in a society without electricity/refrigeration).

[tucnak]

> in which case all bets are off, since it's an alien god we cannot control

I hate to break it to you, considering how much effort you put into your comment, but this is already the case. Global economics is something we CANNOT control already, so the world you live in, is ALREADY governed by alien God. The self-described "optimists" here are naive at best, and delusional at worst.

[neutronicus]

Abundance is going to be limited by raw materials.

The less need there is for human labor, the less disincentive humans have for killing each other over raw materials.

[ngneer]

There is no sequence of steps that takes us from where we are to the society depicted in Star Trek, or at least none has been outlined so far. If it were to happen, the world would need an abrupt phase change (e.g., First Contact). You may be tempted to call me a pessimist, but I am a realist. To convince a realist, one must show a sequence of steps.

[arbot360]

Star Trek outlined a sequence of steps but you might not like them...

[SketchySeaBeast]

I think you're dead on. Growing up I hoped for a Star Trek future. Now all I see is Alien without all the xenomorphs.

[IanHalbwachs]

This comment may haunt me for the rest of my life.

[SketchySeaBeast]

Well, if we're lucky we might see a xenomorph or two before we go, possibly even while screaming.

[ido]

Or Blade Runner.

[canadaduane]

> or at least none has been outlined so far

I love this, thank you for specifying the condition under which you might be convinced otherwise. I respect your position more for this. (And unfortunately as a Star Trek fanatic myself, agree with it so far as well).

[rthomas6]

In the Culture books it was AI...

[tiberious726]

Step 1) world war 3

Step 2) some drunk invents FTL

Step 3) the Vulcans show up

[phkahler]

>> My ideal future resembles Star Trek: a world where money is obsolete (at least on Earth), and people pursue exploration, science, and the arts purely out of passion and curiosity.

The problem with the Star Trek fantasy is that it's a lie even within the show. There are still people with obligations. There are still treaties and trade. There is still a hierarchy where some people have more important jobs and report to others. The only thing that seems different is that no money changes hands.

If we actually automated everything so no one had to work, there would still be a gradual progression and a time when some people have to work while most don't. I'm not sure how you get through that phase, not to mention what it looks like on the other side.

One thing I think should be considered is not so much how to pay everyone "enough" but how to reduce cost of living so more people can work less, or eventually not at all (somehow without owning everything and amassing control).

[HPsquared]

We already live in a world where only a small number of people ACTUALLY need to work. Most of humanity's expenses are attributable to lifestyle creep. If we could be happy with a 16th century peasant standard of living delivered by a small number of people using modern tech, only a tiny percentage of the available manpower would be required. Lifestyle creep eats all gains in productivity. Work also expands to fill the available time.

[bumby]

I like that ideal, but it only comes about in abundance. Unfortunately, I think humans are programmed to rarely feel a sense of abundance because we innately desire social status. Social status is a relative metric, meaning it only exists in relation to others. This, combined with a greed impulse, renders a constant need for more. In other words, the human state often runs counter to a sense of abundance, and this seems incompatible with that ideal. I think that’s why capitalism, warts and all, has been an engine for progress.

[JanisErdmanis]

The core issue seems that the social status is tightly coupled with currency and it can be optimized in destructive ways. Perhaps we need currency with multiple colours that could be earned in different ways and could be allowed to be spent to its sphere of influence as long as it could be enforced to not be interchanged. That way one could have higher social status in one sphere of influence and lower in another one.

[bumby]

William Storr has written about this and gives three different styles of social “currency”: dominance, virtue, and success.

Capitalism favors success and dominance over virtue, but some social subsets (eg clergy) get status through virtue.

[JanisErdmanis]

I may have a look on William Storr later on. The separation of social currency does however seem rather primitive one.

[bumby]

Primitive in what sense? Lacking nuance, or not reflective of modern society? I do think that the success category is easily mapped to money, which may be why it’s a primary heuristic for measuring success in a modern western society.

[JanisErdmanis]

I aggree that money or the ability to attain it is what modern society considers a success. However, the categories seem to be a reflection of the universal nature of the money that can buy any influence/right.

If we had a hyptothetical coloured currency where one kind could only be spent buying property, other necessities, some luxuries like travels. As long as the currencies could be enforced to not be interchangable the "dominance" becomes realative with respect to influence points one has collected.

[K0balt]

Worse yet, we are moving away from money but towards power being the goal. Automation stands to fundamentally upend the whole cart , destroying capitalism as we understand it today.

Money exists fundamentally to motivate people to perform some action. In the end, it comes down to paying labor. No one pays the earth, the forest, the sun.

Automation stands to make human labor too expensive to compete, since our needs far exceed the energy it takes to operate and manufacture us.

Without human labor, you don’t need money. You just need more anthropoid robots to make more anthropoids and to execute on whatever it is you want to do, own, or construct. You don’t buy a yacht, you build a one-yacht factory to make a yacht.

Capital will become human-sparse, needing only resources and energy and will exist to serve a small group of beneficiaries, if anyone.