Technology, the Political Ideology

[Cognisant]

The Polcompballs Wiki is full of political ideologies, many of them highly entertaining, but outside of fringe activist movements, neo-hippy communes and the big three (capitalism, communism, fascism) you're not going to see much of these in reality for the simple fact that they're not conducive to a mainstream following. In order for a political ideology to be palatable to the mainstream populace it must provide a path to the five 'P's:

• Population: Is this ideology conducive to making more people?
• Productivity: Is this ideology conducive to producing products and profit?
• Power: Is this ideology conducive to obtaining geopolitical influence and military force projection?
• Promiscuity: Will this ideology get you laid? This was an alliteration joke at first but it's actually true.
• Prosperity: Is this ideology conducive to people having pleasant lives? Sure if everyone's working 14 hours a day in a planned economy that maximizes efficiency that would be optimal for productivity, population growth, geopolitical power and (mandated) promiscuity, but people aren't robots.

Side note: This implies that the most attractive kind of person (from an ideological if not physical perspective) is a rich Marxist in a Hugo Boss uniform, so basically a Bond villain.

Now I contend that the most significant factor in obtaining the five 'P's is technology, you thought I was going to use another word starting with 'P' didn't you? Don't be so presumptuous
(I tried)

Obviously if you want a larger population you need to be able to feed, clothe and house them, this means increasing agricultural and industrial output per capita, or obtaining more land and there's no frontiers to expand into these days except space, the sea, arid wastelands and the polar regions, which would all require fantastic advances in technology to be feasible.

Increasing productivity depends upon the development of technology and technological infrastructure, that should go without saying these days, we're already losing prosperity in the pursuit of perpetual economic growth to support our fundamentally flawed fractional reserve fiat currency economy.

In terms of power logistics wins wars and long range smart munitions wins battles, either way technology is the deciding factor.

Promiscuity... this was a late addition to my theory. Well if you live in a country with better medical technology you're going to be healthier for longer, you have access to more cosmetics and clothing (this applies to men too) and if you're not getting laid at least you've got access to porn.

Finally technology also facilitates prosperity, I think the dividing line between the Western and non-Western world isn't race or creed but rather technological development and the implications that has for the lifestyle of the general populace. In Western nations most people are either in the service sector or office workers whereas in non-Western nations the majority of people are employed in either agriculture or factory work. Consequently as a citizen of a Western nation I have a lot of free time and a lot of technology to play with in that free time, hence why I'm here now writing this on my computer.

------------------------------------

Now the point of all this is an examination of Capitalism as a political ideology, I think I've just established why Democratic Capitalism as we know it has been more successful than other ideologies, because its more conducive to technological development, because in the absence of a totalitarian planned economy or a fiercely xenophobic and paranoid totalitarian regime, there's a lot more opportunity for innovation.

So having established that innovation leads to technological development, which is the most significant factor in increasing population, productivity, power, promiscuity and prosperity, why don't we create a political ideology focused primarily on promoting innovation?

That means looking at everything about our society, our economic system, our legal system, or moral conventions, our lifestyles, through the lens of: how can this be optimized for innovation? All in all it probably won't be all that different to democratic capitalism, although I still think there will be enough differences to justify the labeling of it as its own distinct political ideology. For example we should assess people's wealth (specifically the need to tax and redistribute it) on the basis of whether or not that wealth is being effectively utilized to promote innovation. In such a system someone like Elon Musk would pay relatively little tax (not unlike our current system) but he has a space program, a robotics program, EV program, satellite telecommunications program, brain-computer-interface program, so I think it's safe to say he's an effective driver of innovation.

Mark Zuckerberg however would probably get taxed a lot unless he can prove that his Metaverse VR stuff is actually innovative and not as hopelessly derivative as it appears, which I think would be a very healthy influence on the market, if companies knew they could get tax breaks for genuine innovation they'd invest more in the development of those genuine innovations rather than trying to muscle in on someone else's innovations with the only innovation of their own being methods of monetizing it.

 

[Black Rose]

To be a proficient tech innovator you got to have an education. 115 is average for a bachelors but then those people are just technicians. Ph.D. people (125) still work in groups for the best performance. 1/20 but at google and Microsoft innovation is taken further 130 average employee. Deep mind A.I. has 300 Ph.D. people. and that is not even the top. Nasa mostly has 160 people doing the real research. Lockey Martin Skunkworks the aerospace company needs top engineers. engineering is 120 - 1/10 master's degree.

Because of the education system, all top intelligent people have been separated from the bottom and this creates a class distinction. Labor the proletariate the intelligentsia and the boigigiouse rich people. These classes along with the military, gov, and priesthood dominate in their own areas. This has always been, these are universal classes. What keeps the economy going is the consumer market where the technicians can manufacture goods by making products that take skills, not high intelligence, to make. Think Barbie designs and other toys.

85% of the public never go to college/university. 50% don't finish the standards for high school graduation. The masses are labor. meant for consumerism. Edward Bernays said they are what the elite use for with propaganda, to be good consumers. So we need products for them and make them want things. To inform them of things they don't need. Without their money and manufactured consent, the elite could not pay for technological development.

As long as jobs are available people do not rebel. Happy consumers. playing with toys.

The politics of technology is that tech manipulates things in favor of some group or individual. People buy things for entertainment or usefulness. Practicality or fun. A system is in place via money that transfers goods and services. Technology achieves goals. Politically people may be opposed to others goals so use their own technology as stop-gap. Gov has goals so pays for people to work on them.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Communism is not doable, simply because people don't care or know what it is.
Once you get passed that hurdle we can make other assumptions.
Current free for all capitalism is governed by quite sophisticated machinery that runs on several principals.
It simply works, because it works is one. What does not generate money does not work. It has its own +/- direction.

So there is nothing to understand. Communism works the same, but +/- direction is based rather more deeper level. Not just psychologically, but materially.
Communism can work in lower level like farms, but organized feudalism has more power.

The other problem is that for some odd reason capitalist people are somewhat scared of Communism.

Ideology aside, ideology we have today is multilayered.

We can talk about freedom. But freedom is not a valid component of capitalism nor capital markets. It was somewhat married to capital markets and some notions of freedom still exist.

But looking at tech world you know what I mean.

If you wipe electricity you wipe most of the financial machinery that keeps cash flowing from - to +. The real battery of capital world that keeps it going.

Freedom in some sense can be a free component of entirely everything, but it has to be built with that intent.

Some people mistakenly believe that freedom is part of capitalism.
Freedom is independent variable. Its dependent on peoples will to exercise freedom.

Freedom thus is something that can close down or open up or have different
workings in different nations.

We have things like freedom of expression.
But how much of that can be given or should be heard and taken seriously is qualitative not quantitative magic.
Unfortunately many people look at freedom as ideal form as if it either is or is not.
Freedom has a certain quality to it. You can thus have variety of freedoms.
No freedom is equal. Its qualitatively something people have to understand beyond meer on and off logic computers use.

 

[Black Rose]

in communism, there is no surplus money and no products of consumerism i.e. barbies. all tech progress is state driven.

It is the federation in star trek.

 

[ZenRaiden]

no products of consumerism i.e. barbies.

Why?

in communism, there is no surplus money

Might be and might not be, depends how currency works.

all tech progress is state driven.

The state does not exist.
Or put differently state = people.

 

[Black Rose]

no products of consumerism i.e. barbies.

Why?

consumerism = capitalism
products are made to make money
no profit means communism makes fewer useless products i.e. no marketing

in communism, there is no surplus money

Might be and might not be, depends how currency works.

surplus is what the capitalists steal from the people. so no surplus exists in communism because it all goes to the people, not the capitalists.

all tech progress is state driven.

The state does not exist.
Or put differently state = people.

Without a government war is inevitable. because the capitalists will destroy you if you have no way to organize. and if no government exists that is libertarianism, not communism. a state is always needed, but a pure democracy instead of anarcho-capitalism.

 

[ZenRaiden]

surplus is what the capitalists steal from the people. so no surplus exists in communism because it all goes to the people, not the capitalists.

... it all goes to the people. So what do people do with it? Precisely what they would do with it now. Surplus is inevitable.
I am not saying this alone is better than consumerism. I am just saying there are many ways to deal with what we have. Blind consumerism driven by monetary gain is just one branch of evolution.

Without a government war is inevitable. because the capitalists will destroy you if you have no way to organize. and if no government exists that is libertarianism, not communism. a state is always needed, but a pure democracy instead of anarcho-capitalism.

Labels are stupid. Communism socialism is not always technically good term.
Terms get politicized and used less comprehensively rather than in science of it.

But if communism is not driven by freedom then its useless to have communism.
Why free people of slavery?

Because that is what communist were always working towards always.
Maybe not as directly as possible and with mental gymnastics during revolution and post second world war.

Organizing people is hard that is true.

Especially towards abstract nebulous cause like communism.

Chomskey however pointed out that lack of freedom today in US is partly result of poor education.
Communist often promoted education.

In war I think ideology is very serious thing though.
Stalin fought on grounds of ideology.
Trotsky and Lenin fought on ideology.
US fought vietnam on grounds of ideology. And lost.
Vietnam stood its ground on ideology.
Pure ideology is behemoth that cannot be moved.
Cuba won on grounds of ideology.
The key point you need to get enough people on board to have it weight down on Earth.
This happened to current China. You have to go there explain to them that they are easy to defeat.
We cannot measure communism by few communism that were basically partisan frail off shoots that got crushed in beginning of rebellion as equal measure towards capitalism armies that have a history of waring.

 

[Black Rose]

powerful a.i. is on the horizon, that is my political technology ideology.

 

[Cognisant]

To be a proficient tech innovator you got to have an education.

Yes! Hit the nail right on the head.
When I say "technology" what comes to mind is high technology, y'know spacecraft, robotics, super-computers, etc. But actually technology is everything humanity has created in order to facilitate the five 'P's, for example language, writing and mathematics are all forms of technology. So by educating someone you're equipping them with that technology and I think this is what it means to be "Westernized" (which is a horribly archaic term for a global cultural divide) because you need to be equipped with those technologies before you can participate in Western society.

Take someone out of the Amazon (the jungle not the company) and they're non-Western but once educated they become Westernized, their ancestry and cultural heritage becomes irrelevant, all who are willing are welcome at the altar of capitalism.
I love saying that to piss off commieboos

Accordingly the notion of a "Western nation" is a bit outdated, you have nations that are predominantly Western and ones that are not but the cultural divide doesn't stop at the border. In the Philippines most people are farmers or laborers but there are cities, there are offices, there's a service sector, many people are Western educated so there's like these enclaves of Western civilization within a predominantly non-Western nation. Likewise within predominately Western nations there is a class of people who are not well educated and consequently they develop a counter-culture, they redefine success because they cannot succeed in Western society.

So education is of paramount importance and even if someone isn't doing high-tech research that doesn't mean they're not innovating.

What keeps the economy going is the consumer market where the technicians can manufacture goods by making products that take skills, not high intelligence, to make. Think Barbie designs and other toys.

Developing new products is innovation, even if that new product is a toy or a book or a new pie recipe it's all creating something that didn't exist before and by incentivizing innovation you create a culture in which people are compelled to be opportunistic, to be constantly on the lookout for new problems to solve. Barbie exists but what about black Barbie, what about fat Barbie, what about Barbie with spider legs and snakes for hair? Of course the product still needs to sell, getting a tax break it's much good if you're not actually make a profit to be taxed in the first place.

 

[Black Rose]

products are nice but it takes real geniuses to further science.

 

[Cognisant]

I'm working on a 3D printer that creates designs out of royal icing on sugar cookies, it won't make a huge difference but it will make a difference. By automating this task I can slightly improve the affordability of decorative baked goods in coffee shops across my region, making the lives of the people there ever so slightly better.

It's not much but it adds up and for me that slight improvement equates to profits that make my life substantially better. If seven billion people made only one such tiny innovation in their entire lives that still adds up to a lot of innovation.

We don't all need to be Tesla or Einstein, if only 0.001% of people were geniuses like that then there would be tens of thousands of them in the world.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

Trying to force your bullet points to look nice and start with a "P" is a stretch

Let me ask you a very simple question. In whose interest it is to have geopolitical influence, produce goods, bring profit to companies or make more people?

Certainly not in the interest of ordinary people, they(we) would only care about having a prosperous life and getting laid.

A once certain thing like having kids has now become a subject of personal preference in the developed countries. There is no reason why people would have to conform to any of your P's, especially if they are individualist or their culture is nuanced enough.

Enlightened panarchism ftw. Just need to uplift the billions to start thinking instead of following someone else's plan for their life.

 

[Cognisant]

The Ukraine was invaded due to a lack of geopolitical influence, if had they been allowed into NATO prior then Russia wouldn't have dared invade, and now that Russia has invaded the Ukrainians are benefiting from the geopolitical influence of Russia's enemies. If you mistakenly believe geopolitical influence is not important, that it doesn't affect you, well that's because you have the privilege of living in the UK, one of the world's most geopolitically significant nations.

As for productivity I'm going to take a wild guess here and say that you've never worked on a farm or labored in a factory, oh sure maybe you've visited a farm and helped feed the chickens or something but was it your actual occupation? No you live in a Western nation so the hardest "work" you've ever done was either in fast food or retail, assuming you aren't so privileged that you went straight from tertiary education into an office job.

Finally as for the freedom to have children, that's your choice, and even if you choose not to do so you cannot seriously argue that you'd be better off not having that freedom of choice, either because you're not allowed or cannot afford to have a child.

Certainly not in the interest of ordinary people, they(we) would only care about having a prosperous life and getting laid.

Yeah y'know if I had perpetual life extension I wouldn't need to give a damn about having a career or saving for retirement, I could be a perpetual backpacker traveling the world doing odd jobs and bartending, I would have that privilege. These ordinary people you speak of, who live for naught but themselves and their own their hedonistic desires, they don't sound like ordinary people to me. They sound like the privileged few (relative to the vast majority of the world's population) and possibly deluded about the consequences of their actions.

The future's coming, its unavoidable and you can either be prepared for it or you won't be and based on your current trajectory what do you think your future's going to be? Where will you be financially, is the lifestyle you now enjoy still going to be viable, who will be your friends, what family will you have?

Enlightened panarchism ftw. Just need to uplift the billions to start thinking instead of following someone else's plan for their life.

Are you shit-posting or are you actually that naive?

 

[scorpiomover]

Side note: This implies that the most attractive kind of person (from an ideological if not physical perspective) is a rich Marxist in a Hugo Boss uniform, so basically a Bond villain.

In terms of power logistics wins wars and long range smart munitions wins battles, either way technology is the deciding factor.

Promiscuity... this was a late addition to my theory. Well if you live in a country with better medical technology you're going to be healthier for longer, you have access to more cosmetics and clothing (this applies to men too) and if you're not getting laid at least you've got access to porn.

Finally technology also facilitates prosperity, I think the dividing line between the Western and non-Western world isn't race or creed but rather technological development and the implications that has for the lifestyle of the general populace. In Western nations most people are either in the service sector or office workers whereas in non-Western nations the majority of people are employed in either agriculture or factory work. Consequently as a citizen of a Western nation I have a lot of free time and a lot of technology to play with in that free time, hence why I'm here now writing this on my computer.

So having established that innovation leads to technological development, which is the most significant factor in increasing population, productivity, power, promiscuity and prosperity, why don't we create a political ideology focused primarily on promoting innovation?

That means looking at everything about our society, our economic system, our legal system, or moral conventions, our lifestyles, through the lens of: how can this be optimized for innovation? All in all it probably won't be all that different to democratic capitalism,

You've basically described the way the world already is, and has been that way since before you were born.

although I still think there will be enough differences to justify the labeling of it as its own distinct political ideology. For example we should assess people's wealth (specifically the need to tax and redistribute it) on the basis of whether or not that wealth is being effectively utilized to promote innovation.

Side note: This implies that the most attractive kind of person (from an ideological if not physical perspective) is a rich Marxist in a Hugo Boss uniform, so basically a Bond villain.

In most of the Bond films, the Bond villain comes up with an incredible innovation, from the super-powered laser satellites, to underwater cities, to adapting plants to make new organisms that would remove all the dysfunctional humans. Their goal is usually to establish a utopia on Earth, ruled of course by the smartest human on Earth, which is usually the Bond villain.

So if you value innovators, then you value Bond villains.

I'm working on a 3D printer that creates designs out of royal icing on sugar cookies, it won't make a huge difference but it will make a difference. By automating this task I can slightly improve the affordability of decorative baked goods in coffee shops across my region, making the lives of the people there ever so slightly better.

It's not much but it adds up and for me that slight improvement equates to profits that make my life substantially better. If seven billion people made only one such tiny innovation in their entire lives that still adds up to a lot of innovation.

That's basically what most people who aren't Einsteins are already doing, looking to take the existing customers in the market by offering something that seems to be an improvement on whatever already exists in the market.

So quite simply, if you wish this to happen, you have nothing to do but enjoy it, because your vision of the future has already arrived.

 

[Cognisant]

No we could still go further, most nation's education systems are still geared towards creating factory workers. I think it should be more like an MMO, the individual student is encouraged to cooperate with their peers but they're also free to take the curriculum at their own pace. Some students may require more time, some may need to be allowed to advance quickly so they don't get bored, and those that advance quickly are encourage to tutor their slower peers.

Likewise the whole patent system needs to be reworked, currently it's designed to be "fair" but fairness is subjective, rather the goal should be to encourage innovation and assess patents on a case-by-case basis by that criteria. This prevents bullshit like a car manufacturing company buying up technology only to sit on it and do nothing because implementing the new technology would require reworking their production line, so they only acquired the patent to ensure nobody else could implement it.

MSU's shockwave engine was revolutionary, and then it just quietly disappeared.

 

[Black Rose]

I'm not against product development. I am just thinking of advanced tech. If I had the money I believe I could create a decent AGI that would run on a modest GPU. It would take no more than 1 trillion OPs. and scale beyond 100 trillion as most advanced GPUs are now. But I am poor and stupid. So not going to happen. I just know I have an idea. This idea is not tied to my intelligence. It is my invention. I thought of it for a long time. Refined it. Got i just right. Now the implementation phase. Which I suck at. I don't have the education but I am a creative person. What I have is novel, never been done before. I came up with deep reinforcement learning in 2007 all by myself. But I don't know how to program. I tried ten years to learn but my brain does not work this way. I am not a robot I am not interested in coding as a profession I am interested in A.I. theory only. I don't know math and could not describe my ideas in such a way. But I can draw abstract diagrams. I just need someone smarter than me I can explain it to in person. They could use math to make it so.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

Are you shit-posting or are you actually that naive?

Shit posting. I wouldn't commit serious thinking into anything politics related because It's futile, the world is and for the next 1000's of years will be run by greedy thieves and retards, plus it's not my expertise.

You sound like a boomer: People need to reproduce, contribute to the economy and be responsible. That's only beneficial to the owners of this "economic system".

Most people are born in low-income families and based on that become economic slaves who won't be able to decide much of their future or what happens in their life and they're conveniently there to run the lower ends of the productive system you speak of. Any child born to a poor family only makes it poorer and perpetuates the circle of having no control over their reproduction or future.

Like okay gramps you check off all your P's and catch your Z's while I'll quietly make enough money to be able to say fuck off to anyone and quit the exploitation system through passive income. I'm in the system to quit the system, that's the only reason I value money, because it gives me the 'fuck off' superpower and lets me raise infinitely tall legal, financial and physical barbed-wire fences around my property.

And yeah, I would only really have a hard stance on enshrining personal independence, inviolability and property as absolute, irremovable rights. Besides that I'm a quitter.

 

[Cognisant]

You sound like a boomer: People need to reproduce, contribute to the economy and be responsible. That's only beneficial to the owners of this "economic system".

And you sound like a triggered incel, in the OP regarding the five 'P's I wasn't making a statement about what people ought to be doing but rather what people in general, the mainstream populace, cares about. If we're having a discussion about what people ought to be doing with their lives its because you got butt-hurt about the perceived implication that you ought to care about having kids some day.

So I've prompted you to do some introspection about it because if it's something that triggers you so badly then that begs the question, why? But I'm not going to argue with you about this it's your cognitive dissonance, you figure it out.

Most people are born in low-income families and based on that become economic slaves who won't be able to decide much of their future or what happens in their life and they're conveniently there to run the lower ends of the productive system you speak of. Any child born to a poor family only makes it poorer and perpetuates the circle of having no control over their reproduction or future.

Again it's a matter of freedom, you might not want to reproduce but does that mean you'll be happy living is a society where only the citizens that have served in the armed forces are allowed to reproduce? Or maybe nobody has kids rather the government collects sperm/ova and grows children in artificial wombs, to you that might sound great, let the government deal with the hassle if they want kids so much.

In any case an ideology like anti-humanism is never going to see serious mainstream support, sure there will be those few misanthropes who support it but without an appealing platform (the five 'P's being the appeals) it's just not going to succeed.

 

[scorpiomover]

No we could still go further,

How do you know that would be a good idea, or if it would make things worse? Have you carried out any Te practical tests of your theory? What were your experiments and what were their results?

most nation's education systems are still geared towards creating factory workers.

The heyday of the factory workers was in the 19th Century. Nearly all factory manufacturing moved to the Far East in the 20th Century. We're now in the 21st Century.

I think it should be more like an MMO, the individual student is encouraged to cooperate with their peers but they're also free to take the curriculum at their own pace. Some students may require more time, some may need to be allowed to advance quickly so they don't get bored, and those that advance quickly are encourage to tutor their slower peers.

How do you know that would be a good idea? Have you tested this? What were your experiments and what were their results?

Likewise the whole patent system needs to be reworked, currently it's designed to be "fair" but fairness is subjective, rather the goal should be to encourage innovation and assess patents on a case-by-case basis by that criteria. This prevents bullshit like a car manufacturing company buying up technology only to sit on it and do nothing because implementing the new technology would require reworking their production line, so they only acquired the patent to ensure nobody else could implement it.

How do you know that would be a good idea? Have you tested this? What were your experiments and what were their results?

MSU's shockwave engine was revolutionary, and then it just quietly disappeared.

Maybe. But I didn't hear of it before. I don't know why it was shelved. But I read that it got a grant 2009, was selected for commercial development in 2013, and it was patented in 2018.

So it looks like it was taking more time to make than you figured.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

@Cognisant
I'm not triggered, but you seem to be . Read two part critique if you're not a boomer

Part 1:
Let's look at your OP. The only possible large-scale economic systems are fascism, communism and capitalism. You're just listing the only 3 systems that have existed on a larger scale. Are you trying to reaffirm your beliefs here?

In terms of communism vs capitalism. I don't get why we're considering fascism here? In what way is it unique compared to capitalism/communism? IMO It just lies on the spectrum of less private ownership and less democracy. It's not unique, but a mix of give or take 75% communism 25% capitalism.

Theoretical Capitalism is 100% private ownership and 0% autocracy. Communism is 0% private ownership and 100% autocracy. Fascism is 50% private ownership and 100% autocracy.

I think there are dozens of economic organization strategies that we haven't tried or thought of yet and believing in the systems that have existed is close minded. What is there to talk about and why don't we discuss something new? If I want to read a wikipedia about the existing systems and ways that they work then I'd go there.
----
Part 1.5:
All economic systems were introduced by force. See Industrial / Communist / Fascist revolutions. This means that potential, new and more efficient systems can't be adopted at all. We're stuck with what random stable system history throws at us after a disastrous civilization collapsing event.

Part 2:
What's more productive is asking the question "What makes an economic system effective?". A safe assumption would be to say that people will naturally stick to an effective system if they're forced to adopt one (through industrial/communist/other revolution). And they will drift towards competing, more effective systems if they are exposed to them when they live in less effective ones (basically systems in neighboring countries).

Imagine you're playing a strategy game and looking to optimize all the variables to meet your goal. What's your goal? Could be to get the most units or buildings out or to get the highest average population happiness or complete megaprojects like colonizing other planets or building energy collectors on the moon.

A non-exhaustive list of variables:
1. Population count - eats resources, but also multiplies the productive output
2. Avg. pop happiness - costs resources, multiplies output
3. Tech level - multiplies output
4. Internal stability - multiplies output
5. External trade - adds resources, sells excess output
6. External stability - costs less resources when it's high
7. Planetary unity - costs less resources if there are fewer competing nations
8. Disaster readiness - Prevents sudden game over from war, pandemics and other disasters

Assuming the goal is population happiness then we get improvements by reducing population, it costs less resources to satisfy less people. No increases to productive output needed. As a bonus with less resource scarcity the production costs for goods or owning land go down.

A great example of this is Nordic countries and Australia. Huge territory available to a small number of people. Lots of natural resources to trade for population happiness, plus each person holds more resources that they produce or prosper from. Turns out Nordics + Australia are also in the top 10 most prosperous and happiest countries irl.

So no, higher population does not mean a better economic system. It always means lower avg. happiness and higher total productive output, but lower output per capita. Total productive output is good for the top 1% who own and profit from this production, not as good for the remaining 99%.

I'd make the argument that population happiness is limited by the land area and natural resources available. After a certain saturation of the land the population will have limited happiness. Cities are efficient for production, but also limit happiness.

Far far future scenario:
All work done by machines and AI. Humans are few, live in self-governing townships of optimal size (optimal for maxing happiness). Towns are scattered across large territories and people rarely have kids, possibly not at all. Some new humans are made synthetically and brought up by machines to maintain the human population from dying out.
Result: Maximized happiness. At this point happiness is bottlenecked by stuff like health, system's stability, disaster prevention, artificially created sense of purpose etc.

 

[Cognisant]

Let's look at your OP. The only possible large-scale economic systems are fascism, communism and capitalism. You're just listing the only 3 systems that have existed on a larger scale. Are you trying to reaffirm your beliefs here?

In terms of communism vs capitalism. I don't get why we're considering fascism here? In what way is it unique compared to capitalism/communism? IMO It just lies on the spectrum of less private ownership and less democracy. It's not unique, but a mix of give or take 75% communism 25% capitalism.

I mentioned them as examples of political ideologies that were actually put into practice at some point, as opposed to the many ideologies that will never be put into practice because they'll never obtain mainstream support.

As for whatever you're on about in the second part I just don't care.

Theoretical Capitalism is 100% private ownership and 0% autocracy. Communism is 0% private ownership and 100% autocracy. Fascism is 50% private ownership and 100% autocracy.

Whatever.

I think there are dozens of economic organization strategies that we haven't tried or thought of yet and believing in the systems that have existed is close minded. What is there to talk about and why don't we discuss something new? If I want to read a wikipedia about the existing systems and ways that they work then I'd go there.

I am likewise not interested in having that discussion, nor was I, rather I was talking about political ideologies of which the economic system is but one part of how that ideology is put into practice.

Part 1.5:
All economic systems were introduced by force. See Industrial / Communist / Fascist revolutions. This means that potential, new and more efficient systems can't be adopted at all. We're stuck with what random stable system history throws at us after a disastrous civilization collapsing event.

The industrial revolution wasn't introduced by force, well I guess that depends how pedantic you want to be about the semantics of "force" as the innovation of textile manufacturing certainly "forced" people out of the textiles cottage industry, but that's because they couldn't compete with the productivity of an automatic loom, not because the industrialists forced them to stop trading at gunpoint.

Part 2:
What's more productive is asking the question "What makes an economic system effective?". A safe assumption would be to say that people will naturally stick to an effective system if they're forced to adopt one (through industrial/communist/other revolution). And they will drift towards competing, more effective systems if they are exposed to them when they live in less effective ones (basically systems in neighboring countries).

Imagine you're playing a strategy game and looking to optimize all the variables to meet your goal. What's your goal? Could be to get the most units or buildings out or to get the highest average population happiness or complete megaprojects like colonizing other planets or building energy collectors on the moon.

Now I think we're on the same page.

A non-exhaustive list of variables:
1. Population count - eats resources, but also multiplies the productive output
2. Avg. pop happiness - costs resources, multiplies output
3. Tech level - multiplies output
4. Internal stability - multiplies output
5. External trade - adds resources, sells excess output
6. External stability - costs less resources when it's high
7. Planetary unity - costs less resources if there are fewer competing nations
8. Disaster readiness - Prevents sudden game over from war, pandemics and other disasters

Yeah, I was coming at this more from the angle of if I were trying to get people to support my political ideology, like say I'm Karl Marx and I'm trying to sell people on the idea of Marxism (not that I am, that's just an example), then what factors or perhaps implications of that ideology are going to draw people in or drive them away? That being said you've added a few good suggestions here, I would certainly be more likely to support a political ideology that promotes internal/external stability, global trade and disaster readiness. That last one that's a particular bugbear of mine with the current system.

Assuming the goal is population happiness then we get improvements by reducing population, it costs less resources to satisfy less people. No increases to productive output needed. As a bonus with less resource scarcity the production costs for goods or owning land go down.

A great example of this is Nordic countries and Australia. Huge territory available to a small number of people. Lots of natural resources to trade for population happiness, plus each person holds more resources that they produce or prosper from. Turns out Nordics + Australia are also in the top 10 most prosperous and happiest countries irl.

You're not wrong but something that affects me as an Australian is the lack of infrastructure, y'know a smartphone doesn't come from one factory, the battery is made in one factory, the motherboard in another, the screen in another, components like cameras, microphones, speakers, etc, there's a whole supply/manufacturing chain. Basically technology isn't something that just exists in isolation, you need the technological infrastructure to support it and the problem for me as someone who likes to invent things is that I need to order parts from all over the world because we just don't have that infrastructure here.

This is why before China went to hell Shenzhen was a hub of innovation, and why California is still a hub of innovation, it really helps with the whole Agile fail-fast methodology when you can get parts/services same day or next day, whereas I'm currently waiting on a project critical component that if I'm lucky I might get sometime next week.

Relating this back to your point about population, without a very high degree of automation the availability of tech infrastructure is dependent mainly upon the availability of people. As bad as my situation is at least I'm in a city where there's some parts/services available, if I was in the outback everything would take so much longer. Likewise if I lived in North Korea and I wanted to invent things well I'd just be shit out of luck, hence why things like internal/external stability and global trade matter to me. The political tensions between Australia and China has made ordering some things difficult but at least the ports are still open, but if a war starts I'm going to lose access (within a reasonable cost/time-frame) to a lot of things.

So no, higher population does not mean a better economic system. It always means lower avg. happiness and higher total productive output, but lower output per capita. Total productive output is good for the top 1% who own and profit from this production, not as good for the remaining 99%.

I'd make the argument that population happiness is limited by the land area and natural resources available. After a certain saturation of the land the population will have limited happiness. Cities are efficient for production, but also limit happiness.

True, the problem is it's hard to convince the majority of people that we need to cull the population, specifically the elderly people, in part because they're one of the largest demographics.

 

[Cognisant]

Far far future scenario:
All work done by machines and AI. Humans are few, live in self-governing townships of optimal size (optimal for maxing happiness). Towns are scattered across large territories and people rarely have kids, possibly not at all. Some new humans are made synthetically and brought up by machines to maintain the human population from dying out.
Result: Maximized happiness. At this point happiness is bottlenecked by stuff like health, system's stability, disaster prevention, artificially created sense of purpose etc.

Yeah pretty much, sufficiently advanced technology is superficially indistinguishable from magic so we basically become Tolkien elves, everybody's pretty, everybody's healthy, we all live ridiculously long lives of leisure and artistic pursuits.

The thing is we need that technology and to get there as soon as possible we need as much technological infrastructure as possible to facilitate rapid innovation.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Obviously if you want a larger population you need to be able to feed, clothe and house them, this means increasing agricultural and industrial output per capita, or obtaining more land and there's no frontiers to expand into these days except space, the sea, arid wastelands and the polar regions, which would all require fantastic advances in technology to be feasible.

Often wonder if there is no where to expand.

If you look at Russia its one of those nations that has more land than necessary.
They are few of nations that don't have this problem.
Makes you wonder why China is so massively over populated while Russia is not.
Land is not probably the only reason why populations rise or go down.

Density of population. You can pack lots of pokemon in a small ball.
Humans just don't eat up all that space up if they don't want to.
Europe ate it all up, with millions of people, but there is room for nature.
People just don't live like other mammals. Mammals develop an equilibrium with it surrounding environment. We humans do not.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Western nations there is a class of people who are not well educated and consequently they develop a counter-culture, they redefine success because they cannot succeed in Western society.

So is the term western a good term or not. US has a whole history of counter cultures.
Only place on Earth they know what that even means.
Here were I live people just call it diversity which is welcome feature of democratic society.

The Ukraine was invaded due to a lack of geopolitical influence, if had they been allowed into NATO prior then Russia wouldn't have dared invade, and now that Russia has invaded the Ukrainians are benefiting from the geopolitical influence of Russia's enemies. If you mistakenly believe geopolitical influence is not important, that it doesn't affect you, well that's because you have the privilege of living in the UK, one of the world's most geopolitically significant nations.

No - Ukraine was invade because geopolitics are very strong.
Maidan was geopolitical influence and Ukraine not being part of NATO was geopolitical influence.
Current war is geopolitical game. Ukraine is not the winner in this game.
Ukraine is the guy playing checkers while the opponents are playing chess.
Geopolitical goals don't concern normal people you and me.
Because we get nothing from it and have no say in it.
Geopolitics don't necessarily even concern nations, but large companies that have enough money to buy out the whole US senate 5 times over and still have left over to give them lunch money so they don't starve while doing what they are told.
Deep state my ass.
Its pretty layed out and ouvert machine this geopolitical game.
That is because its not possible to hide it, but its possible to reduce peoples attention span on CNN to 5 second intervals, which leads to having very narrow and senile view of reality.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

Yeah, parts of my shitpost didn't make much sense, but whatever it was a rant anyway.

like say I'm Karl Marx and I'm trying to sell people on the idea of Marxism (not that I am, that's just an example), then what factors or perhaps implications of that ideology are going to draw people in or drive them away?

Okay, how does that work? The mob doesn't buy rational arguments, they buy empty promises. The power holders might like your rational arguments, but they don't like your attempt to grab power.

So what do the politicians do nowadays? They listen to what people identify with and they agree with the crowd. Nothing they do is in any way related to ideology, even if they do use words or ideas, it's just marketing speech to get the post. After they get the post they avoid radical changes just to keep said post.

It's virtually impossible to change a system by presenting an idea to it. The best one could do is gradually changing the landscape by introducing a scientific truth or invention that slowly gets adopted by the majority, but this only works if power is distributed to allow small agents to adopt new things. In Soviet Russia that newly-rejected transformative genius just gets sent to 20 years of hard labor if not killed and there is no alternative power source to use the new idea.

You're not wrong but something that affects me as an Australian is the lack of infrastructure, y'know a smartphone doesn't come from one factory, the battery is made in one factory, the motherboard in another, the screen in another, components like cameras, microphones, speakers, etc, there's a whole supply/manufacturing chain. Basically technology isn't something that just exists in isolation, you need the technological infrastructure to support it and the problem for me as someone who likes to invent things is that I need to order parts from all over the world because we just don't have that infrastructure here.

Relating this back to your point about population, without a very high degree of automation the availability of tech infrastructure is dependent mainly upon the availability of people. As bad as my situation is at least I'm in a city where there's some parts/services available, if I was in the outback everything would take so much longer.

Sure tech and prefab elements need an industrial base, but this also goes back to the population size and the amount of people who need those suppliers.

We can naively scale the population down 10 times and there will be 10 times less inventors and 10 times less demand on components so your order should take the same time. Of course ignoring economies of scale etc.


My argument to your whole OP thing would be that we can disregard almost all variables except for one; stability and self-stabilizing behavior. Sure capitalism is conducive to competition and innovation which helps, but it is also both the most stable and most self-stabilizing out of the political/economic systems we've had.

Capitalism fails all the time. Businesses go under, politicians get kicked out of office or impeached, new ones get elected, whole countries default on debt. All those failures are regular, damaging and can have a large scope, but they are never complete. That's because the power and value are distributed, unequally, among a large number of agents. A lot of these systems can fail and the system will hurt for a time, but it will let new and old agents fill out the value space left by the failures. In communism the only power center was the party clique, same with fascism. Very few components, all of them critical, can't tolerate any failure.

Tech innovation works better if the underlying system is stable and power is distributed, because then the tech is distributed. Communists could go into space or had all the military tech to mirror US, but all of their advancements were never available to the public at a rate comparable to US. That's again because US was a more long-lived, stable entity and its spread power base all wanted to acquire tech for themselves whereas in communism only the ruling party has the power to get tech so there is no widespread demand for tech.

Nordics, Australia, UK and USA are geographically isolated. Invading them is very difficult and they aren't as pressured to invest into defenses. Easy to control immigration. Isolation also forces them into a mindset with better national unity and self-dependence.

Based on that Capitalism could definitely be made more stable. Again by increasing its power distribution. This escapes the risk of a few corporations or agents with majority wealth crashing markets or making everyone unemployed because of their greedy or dumb decisions. It's worthwhile to prevent any shift where this power becomes even more concentrated.

True, the problem is it's hard to convince the majority of people that we need to cull the population, specifically the elderly people, in part because they're one of the largest demographics.

No need to cull, just less babies and it's gonna sort itself out.

The thing is we need that technology and to get there as soon as possible we need as much technological infrastructure as possible to facilitate rapid innovation.

This kind of is a fallacy because-let's ask ourselves-who are we innovating for? We're not going to see major lifestyle improvements in our lifetimes, so are we to buy the promise of faster progress at the price of worse living conditions?

Now if I knew for a fact that immortality is 20 years away I'd be more convinced, but if immortality was that close then we wouldn't need to argue for bigger population and rapid innovation at scale, because we can't scale in 20 years.

It boils down to the next big thing being either too far to affect us and thus not worth the sacrifice OR the next big thing is here and we also don't need to sacrifice.

This "getting there as fast as possible" matters if you profit personally from it, like Elon Musk or a big corpo, or you are an immortal vampire who's impatiently waiting to see the tech roll out in a 100 rather than 200 years.

Steady does it imo. Why not focus on improving the standard of living and sustainability of our operations? We'd rather be happy now and till we die rather than coinflip being happy in 50 years if we get an extension. Innovation isn't going to matter if we eat all of the resources, have no robustness to prevent disasters or don't have time in our life to enjoy it. As long as we make progress it's inevitable that we'll unlock the same technologies as if we rush it. The future is determined in terms of what's possible and we can't change that.

Maybe it's time to make the argument that we don't owe anything to the future. Frankly, we could stop all public spending on innovation and just exist, cut the taxes way down. Innovation is going to happen anyway, because people think and innovate for free and there's money to be made from it.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

Even if as Musk says, we've got to colonize Mars because the next asteroid, or whatever disaster, is going to take us out.

That's nonsense, this asteroid still gets Earth and only Mars survives. So colonizing Mars did not benefit the earthers at all, so why do it at a sacrifice? We can do it slowly without sacrifice.

 

[Cognisant]

Okay, how does that work? The mob doesn't buy rational arguments, they buy empty promises. The power holders might like your rational arguments, but they don't like your attempt to grab power.

So what do the politicians do nowadays? They listen to what people identify with and they agree with the crowd. Nothing they do is in any way related to ideology, even if they do use words or ideas, it's just marketing speech to get the post. After they get the post they avoid radical changes just to keep said post.

What I'm trying to do is convince you of the importance of innovation, that's all I need to do, because when you understand the importance of innovation you'll be equipped to see history and current world events through a technologically deterministic lens. Thus out of self interest you will become an advocate of innovation and you'll explain this advocacy to others, with varying degrees of success, and those you influence will in turn influence others and in time the idea becomes a widespread consensus.
Innovation is important, we must optimize for innovation.

That's when a politician uses innovation as their political platform, indeed if the consensus is strong enough it doesn't matter which politician wins because supporting innovation will have bipartisan support.

My argument to your whole OP thing would be that we can disregard almost all variables except for one; stability and self-stabilizing behavior.

Stability is generally a good thing but you can have too much stability, humans as a species have been around for millions of years and in much of that time we were hunter-gatherers. For thousands of years after that (possibly tens of thousands, maybe even hundred of thousands) we had agricultural civilizations, it's only been in the last few hundred years that technological development really took off and the rate of development in the last few decades has been explosive.

I admit that is perhaps too much, too fast, but then again the reason for this explosive growth is that on the whole technological development has been incredibly beneficial. Also more technologically developed nations have consistently conquered, ruled over and exploited their less advanced neighbors and this continues to the current day, we live incredibly privileged lives in our stable Western nations.

So stability is important, I absolutely agree on that, but innovation is better.

Now if I knew for a fact that immortality is 20 years away I'd be more convinced, but if immortality was that close then we wouldn't need to argue for bigger population and rapid innovation at scale, because we can't scale in 20 years.

Well the obvious solution is you don't make it available to everyone, there's not much benefit to keeping a farmer or factory worker alive for hundreds of years but there's a lot to be gained by keeping top of their field scientists, engineers, and yes entrepreneurs like Elon Musk. If immortality isn't 20 years away that's fine, life extension tech is coming along and even without that I should last another 30-40 years.

Maybe it's time to make the argument that we don't owe anything to the future. Frankly, we could stop all public spending on innovation and just exist, cut the taxes way down. Innovation is going to happen anyway, because people think and innovate for free and there's money to be made from it.

Why do you care about going slow and steady if it benefits a future we won't be around for? Even if we totally focused on stability right now we won't live long enough to see the benefits of that, like you say we don't need to cull the population people can just have less babies and the demographic crisis will sort itself out, eventually, when we're dead.

Even if as Musk says, we've got to colonize Mars because the next asteroid, or whatever disaster, is going to take us out.

That's nonsense, this asteroid still gets Earth and only Mars survives. So colonizing Mars did not benefit the earthers at all, so why do it at a sacrifice? We can do it slowly without sacrifice.

Yeah I don't know why he's interested in colonization, Earth is the only habitable part of this solar system and by the time we terraform anything transhumanism will be such that terraforming is no longer necessary. There is however a wealth of untapped resources out there, magnitudes more than Earth as a whole can provide and to hazard a guess he's playing the long game. Whoever lead the industrialization of space is going to eventually eclipse the powers of Earth and in a thousand years (if humanity is still around) most of us will be living in space habitats, not on Earth.

 

[ZenRaiden]

What I'm trying to do is convince you of the importance of innovation, that's all I need to do, because when you understand the importance of innovation you'll be equipped to see history and current world events through a technologically deterministic lens. Thus out of self interest you will become an advocate of innovation and you'll explain this advocacy to others, with varying degrees of success, and those you influence will in turn influence others and in time the idea becomes a widespread consensus.
Innovation is important, we must optimize for innovation.

I don't know many people who say politics is something that is bad.
Most people even ISFJs know politics is important and are part of politics.

I don't know many people who think innovation is bad.

The emphasis you are trying to make is different from telling people we need innovation. Everyone if asked will say innovation is a must.

I have heard many interesting theories why intellect grows and virtually all nations that embrace it have done better than other.

Fidel Castro and all communist embraced intelligentsia as part of programming people to communism. Without that there would be no communism.
Because most people know politics and voting is important, but most people cannot understand or think about politics. There has to be a order of people who do the actual work and don't just sit around and think and invent.

Question to you do you think wanting to invent is same as inventing?
Do you think there is not enough intellect or there just is not enough interest from intelligent people to invent?
Does higher education actually mean more science and more inventions?

You probably see where I am getting at with these specific loaded questions if you know me a little.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

So stability is important, I absolutely agree on that, but innovation is better.

Both are needed. Stability and safety is a priority though. Why? It prevents loss of progress when part of the planet is affected by a disaster and helps avoid game over.

Say you have an ok life, 6/10, and you have 10 chocolate coins. What are you gonna do with the coins? Eat one to bump your life to 7/10 for a year, invest 8 to get 16 in 5 years and the last one to get 5,000 in 50 years. OR eat no coins now, invest one to get 2 in 5 years and put the remaining 9 to get 45,000 in 50 years? Now extrapolate that for a nation.

It's safe to say that the most tech advanced nations in the next 50 or 500 years are going to be ones that weren't affected by a dramatic event like revolution, war, pandemic, solar flare, high sustained corruption, economic crisis etc. And this is going to be achieved mostly by their internal stability, disaster readiness and isolation from fuckery current tech will multiply their efforts in these areas. The game is won by avoiding mistakes more than by making brilliant plays.

One can argue that faster tech solves game over from meteor or some big threats, but until we can see it within 20 years then it's a maybe gamble that costs us near term. Rushed miracle tech can be unsafe too, or at least less safe compared to steady pace.

Well the obvious solution is you don't make it available to everyone, there's not much benefit to keeping a farmer or factory worker alive for hundreds of years but there's a lot to be gained by keeping top of their field scientists, engineers, and yes entrepreneurs like Elon Musk. If immortality isn't 20 years away that's fine, life extension tech is coming along and even without that I should last another 30-40 years.

That's exactly my point. You're either on the shortlist in the lounge area or you are fucked. So why contribute or rush towards a tech that's meant for the elite club. It's better to work your ass off to get insanely rich and be able to afford immortality if you live to see it.

Basically if you're the rational farmer then your step1: get rich, step2: buy tech. Don't believe the hype for a second don't donate for, vote for futurists or buy the stock of futursitic tech. Vote for, invest and support ideas that let you grind safely, live long and get rich for the eventual breakthrough.
If you're Jeb Rich Mofo Jeezos then step1:do whatever you want. step2: sell it to the farmer fanboys. It doesn't matter if it's gonna pan out or not.

Why do you care about going slow and steady if it benefits a future we won't be around for? Even if we totally focused on stability right now we won't live long enough to see the benefits of that, like you say we don't need to cull the population people can just have less babies and the demographic crisis will sort itself out, eventually, when we're dead.

Fast innovation costs resources and we might not be around to see it, this solves 100 year problems.
Steady pace saves resources that would be spent on rushing that should go into making us happier now or solving 10 year problems.

Whoever lead the industrialization of space is going to eventually eclipse the powers of Earth and in a thousand years (if humanity is still around) most of us will be living in space habitats, not on Earth.

Exactly dude Space is ideal for industry. No gravity, easy transport, no pollution concerns, constant solar energy if not in earth's shadow and a fuckton too big to list of other pros.