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Workable Socialism


Martell Spy

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When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes Jace's liberties which impel them to the separation.

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2 hours ago, DMC said:

I haven't been following this thread much, but what?  Property is not a new idea.  Unless your scale is, like, the existence of earth.  Property, and even private property, as a concept has been around for a very very long time.  That's why Locke was so into it.

Are you certain? The idea of owning land at all almost certainly wouldn't have occurred to anyone prior to agriculture. And even until recently the vast majority of land wasn't privately owned, if you could truly even call some of that private ownership. Similarly these nomadic per-agricultural people may have "owned" things, but if modern hunter gatherer's are anything to go by that's only in the sense that they're the ones using it at that moment. Even with all that though, the definition of property shifted pretty significantly with the introduction of capitalism. Which means the modern view on property is only a few hundred years old.

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3 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

Are you certain? The idea of owning land at all almost certainly wouldn't have occurred to anyone prior to agriculture.

I don't know when we're defining "prior to agriculture," but Plato talked extensively about private property, and both the Greeks and Romans definitely integrated the concept.  Here:

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Plato (Republic, 462b-c) argued that collective ownership was necessary to promote common pursuit of the common interest, and to avoid the social divisiveness that would occur ‘when some grieve exceedingly and others rejoice at the same happenings.’ Aristotle responded by arguing that private ownership promotes virtues like prudence and responsibility: ‘[W]hen everyone has a distinct interest, men will not complain of one another, and they will make more progress, because every one will be attending to his own business’ (Aristotle, Politics, 1263a). 

Even if you go further back, Hammurabi's Code definitely alludes to the concept of property in many of its laws.  I'm not sure how further back you can go.

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30 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Jace Rights are Human Rights!

:commie:

:kiss: unfortunately for us both there's nothing humane about my disposition. Now take this rifle and shoot at the fascists while I saw off your leg to see if it affects your aim!

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1 hour ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

1) :kiss: unfortunately for us both there's nothing humane about my disposition.

 

2) Now take this rifle and shoot at the fascists while I saw off your leg to see if it affects your aim!

1) Jace Rights are Sentient Rights!

:commie:

 

2) An M1917 Enfield, how did you know? You've made me the happiest girl at the ball!

But if you're gonna saw off a leg, please saw off the left leg. I need my right leg.

For reasons.

 

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24 minutes ago, DMC said:

I don't know when we're defining "prior to agriculture," but Plato talked extensively about private property, and both the Greeks and Romans definitely integrated the concept.  Here:

Even if you go further back, Hammurabi's Code definitely alludes to the concept of property in many of its laws.  I'm not sure how further back you can go.

I'm not sure how seriously I'm supposed to take this. Yes the Greeks, Romans, and Babylonians, who came into existence thousands of years of the discovery of agriculture, had the concept of private property. That doesn't really respond to my point.

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5 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

Yes the Greeks, Romans, and Babylonians, who came into existence thousands of years of the discovery of agriculture, had the concept of private property.

So we're saying "new" as in, like, basic human civilization then?  K.  That seems pretty pointless to me considering the concept has been around thousands of years, but whatever.

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I gotta say I'm a bit lost too. I mean, property is new as far as evolution would be concerned but... I don't think humans are capable of evolving past abstract concepts borne of basic survival mechanisms...

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6 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I’ve never heard of the “heap” paradox?

Take a grain of sand. Add another. Repeat.

Again and again and again... for hours. 

At some point you will have a heap of sand. 

How do you define that point? How many grains will it take? Could you agree on this with others?

I feel you're playing the same trick on us with the morality of profit-making. You agree that it becomes immoral at some point but you challenge us to define that point and even propose solutions. 

Such questions cannot really be answered.

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20 minutes ago, DMC said:

So we're saying "new" as in, like, basic human civilization then?  K.  That seems pretty pointless to me considering the concept has been around thousands of years, but whatever. 

No, I said new as in a few hundred years. I was priming my point by discussing some human history and how the view of property has changed. That's why I ended with "Even with all that though, the definition of property shifted pretty significantly with the introduction of capitalism. Which means the modern view on property is only a few hundred years old."

Like, what do you think Plato or Aristotle would say if you told him a person owned an entire mountain? Or more land than an individual city state of his time did? Modern views on property would boggle the fucking minds of the ancient Greeks. Saying the concept of property has been around for thousands of years when the concept has shifted so much is grossly oversimplifying things. Technically the idea of automatons are as old as the Greeks as well. But I don't think it would be unreasonable for someone to state that robots are a new idea. Because our robots and their automatons are very different things despite some conceptional similarity.

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2 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

I was priming my point by discussing some human history and how the view of property has changed. That's why I ended with "Even with all that though, the definition of property shifted pretty significantly with the introduction of capitalism. Which means the modern view on property is only a few hundred years old."

I apologize.  Honestly, I was just responding to Ty's statement and then you replied.  I had not read that.

3 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

Like, what do you think Plato or Aristotle would say if you told him a person owned an entire mountain? Or more land than an individual city state of his time did?

I think they would have developed the same opinions they already expressed in their writings.  The idea that "modern views" of property would bedevil Ancient Greeks or Romans is a gross fallacy IMHO.  And I especially thinking comparing the idea of property, which is self-evident outside the state of nature (which, of course, is itself a philosophical construct), to the concept of robots is quite absurd.

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53 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

I'm not sure how seriously I'm supposed to take this. Yes the Greeks, Romans, and Babylonians, who came into existence thousands of years of the discovery of agriculture, had the concept of private property. That doesn't really respond to my point.

How can we say what human societies believed about property before we had history and writing to preserve what those societies believed about property?

You are taking an absence of evidence as evidence of absence.  That doesn’t work.

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24 minutes ago, DMC said:

I think they would have developed the same opinions they already expressed in their writings.  The idea that "modern views" of property would bedevil Ancient Greeks or Romans is a gross fallacy IMHO.  And I especially thinking comparing the idea of property, which is self-evident outside the state of nature (which, of course, is itself a philosophical construct), to the concept of robots is quite absurd.

Did they ever right about the concept of owning air, which is a new thing IMO?

The point I clearly failed to make is the concept of property and land ownership has evolved over time. I don't recall reading many views that said that everyone can own things like land. I always took older lit to imply that it was for the noble class. 

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6 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

How can we say what human societies believed about property before we had history and writing to preserve what those societies believed about property?

You are taking an absence of evidence as evidence of absence.  That doesn’t work.

Well you can look at uncontacted tribes and such from the modern era, groups making the transition from hunter-gatherer to agriculture, and see that the concept of property is very, very different.  An intro sociocultural anthropology class will likely address all this stuff in the first couple weeks.  

Eta:

Even the most basic, whitewashed history of treaties between colonizers and the native tribes of the Americas should make it clear that ideas on property were very different than what your talking about.

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21 minutes ago, DMC said:

I apologize.  Honestly, I was just responding to Ty's statement and then you replied.  I had not read that.

I think they would have developed the same opinions they already expressed in their writings.  The idea that "modern views" of property would bedevil Ancient Greeks or Romans is a gross fallacy IMHO. 

Maybe I just don't understand how the Greeks viewed landownership, but based on my understanding on how land was inherited and how the selling of land was discouraged I can't imagine modern views on land would be taken very well by them. Also scale does matter. If I got sent 300 year in the future and found out that somebody owned a planet, that would freak me out, even with my being familiar with the concept of people owning large amounts of land and a society that encourages the selling of it. And I'd be freaked out even before I got into all the ethical concerns. But then I'm me and Aristotle and Plato are Aristotle and Plato. So maybe they could handle it better.

Quote

And I especially thinking comparing the idea of property, which is self-evident outside the state of nature (which, of course, is itself a philosophical construct), to the concept of robots is quite absurd.

I don't think so, at least not for the purpose I'm using it for. Greek automatons and modern robots are both labour devices. So conceptually they have the same foundation. However Greek automatons are essentially just metal humans. Modern robots are very much not. Similarly, property is just owning shit. However out concept of what can be owned, by whom, and in what sense is very different now compared to the past.

Just now, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

How can we say what human societies believed about property before we had history and writing to preserve what those societies believed about property?

You are taking an absence of evidence as evidence of absence.  That doesn’t work.

Scot, are you completely unaware that hunter gatherer societies still exist?

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47 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Take a grain of sand. Add another. Repeat.

Again and again and again... for hours. 

At some point you will have a heap of sand. 

How do you define that point? How many grains will it take? Could you agree on this with others?

I feel you're playing the same trick on us with the morality of profit-making. You agree that it becomes immoral at some point but you challenge us to define that point and even propose solutions. 

Such questions cannot really be answered.

Interesting way to phrase that.  The problem I see here is that the power of the  State is being employed here.  The vague power to fight “greedy people” who can only be identified based on subjective standards makes me... uncomfortable.

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9 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Well you can look at uncontacted tribes and such from the modern era, groups making the transition from hunter-gatherer to agriculture, and see that the concept of property is very, very different.  An intro sociocultural anthropology class will likely address all this stuff in the first couple weeks.  

Eta:

Even the most basic, whitewashed history of treaties between colonizers and the native tribes of the Americas should make it clear that ideas on property were very different than what your talking about.

Different, but not absent.

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3 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

Maybe I just don't understand how the Greeks viewed landownership, but based on my understanding on how land was inherited and how the selling of land was discouraged I can't imagine modern views on land would be taken very well by them. Also scale does matter. If I got sent 300 year in the future and found out that somebody owned a planet, that would freak me out, even with my being familiar with the concept of people owning large amounts of land and a society that encourages the selling of it. And I'd be freaked out even before I got into all the ethical concerns. But then I'm me and Aristotle and Plato are Aristotle and Plato. So maybe they could handle it better.

I don't think so, at least not for the purpose I'm using it for. Greek automatons and modern robots are both labour devices. So conceptually they have the same foundation. However Greek automatons are essentially just metal humans. Modern robots are very much not. Similarly, property is just owning shit. However out concept of what can be owned, by whom, and in what sense is very different now compared to the past.

Scot, are you completely unaware that hunter gatherer societies still exist?

I’m completely aware that they do exist.  They exist in a world that has had a concept of property for several millennia.  We cannot, on that basis, say with certainty that the hunter gatherer societies that evolved ideas of property would have been identical to hunter gatherer societies that exist today.

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5 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Interesting way to phrase that.  The problem I see here is that the power of the  State is being employed here.  The vague power to fight “greedy people” who can only be identified based on subjective standards makes me... uncomfortable.

It's not subjective though.  You can set limits, like you mentioned before, on the ratio of base-worker to executive pay.  You can have a death tax that actually works. 

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