A Perfect World

[RichieBees]

the govt already ahs free energy machines form ALIEN spacecraft google "end times 2012

[LimpyLoo]

Cute ideas, but naive. Already in the start comparing people with ants, as how they work kinda better because none of them work for their own good or to be better than others. Well, what motivated people to advance technologically and sociologically? Sometimes it was sheer enthusiasm, but most of the time I'd say it's compensating for some personal complexes and getting you ass wealthier than your neighbor.

 

etttttt

 

wrong.

 

 

Like Einstein was in it for the cabbage.

[Npoess]

The almost perfect world to me, socially and politically: the 90's (not fashion wise )

 

No recession

Financially stable decade

End of the cold war and the Berlin wall fall (technically the 80's... whatever)

Almost fear-free decade (unless you lived in Yugoslavia or the Middle-east)

The internet wasn't a addictive substance quite yet.

 

 

Maybe I'm just being a nostalgic twat...

[BobDobalina]

Interesting and relevant series on the BBC that I happened upon (and will probably watch tonight):

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-radio-and-tv-20398513

[skotosa]

Our future energy is probably going to be Thorium Reactors.

 

Once our funds are allocated into that it will likely solve our energy problems.

 

http://en.wikipedia....thorium_reactor

 

Solar Roads sounds cool but would require major infrastructural changes.

 

Also there will always be someone who enjoys having that extra edge over someone else (that power). I think that is embedded into us and will always exist but probably can be reduced.

[luke viia]

Interesting and relevant series on the BBC that I happened upon (and will probably watch tonight):

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk...and-tv-20398513

 

this looks interesting for sure, thanks!

[Dale]

I think that is embedded into us and will always exist but probably can be reduced.

Unscientific assumption.

[jlobkob]

there will be no energy problems in about 50 years, when nuclear fusion reactors like tokamaks are ready for the market:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak

there can be no better way to get energy than nuclear fusion. it would be against nature's laws.

this is also why regenerative energy systems is a huge waste of money, we just should use nuclear fission until nuclear fusion is ready.

 

a perfect world would be a world in which all the money is used for science, as science is the progress of humanity.

[skotosa]

there will be no energy problems in about 50 years, when nuclear fusion reactors like tokamaks are ready for the market:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak

there can be no better way to get energy than nuclear fusion. it would be against nature's laws.

this is also why regenerative energy systems is a huge waste of money, we just should use nuclear fission until nuclear fusion is ready.

 

a perfect world would be a world in which all the money is used for science, as science is the progress of humanity.

 

Liquid Fluoride Thorium reactors seem more feasible.

[vamos scorcho]

Hmmm. I'm currently interested in the philosophy of Bruno Latour and like minded folks in terms of working to come to agreements.

 

I'm not even close to an expert on that stuff, but I do think that relativism and philosophy are going to be key elements of any real positive shift. I might be wrong.

[gaarg]

Cute ideas, but naive. Already in the start comparing people with ants, as how they work kinda better because none of them work for their own good or to be better than others. Well, what motivated people to advance technologically and sociologically? Sometimes it was sheer enthusiasm, but most of the time I'd say it's compensating for some personal complexes and getting you ass wealthier than your neighbor.

 

etttttt

 

wrong.

 

 

Like Einstein was in it for the cabbage.

 

He was one of the enthusiasts.

[Guest Al Hounos]

so, in this magical world, everyone is nice and does everything purely for the love of doing it?

ok, i assume for starters you wouldn't want to give up the internet, right? so let's start there. who is going to maintain the physical infrastructure of the net? the servers, the millions of miles of cables. are there simply internet enthusiasts that are willing to put up the money (sorry, the time and resources) to maintain and upgrade this infrastructure? who mines the gold, copper, silicon, and all the other materials needed for computers and computer infrastructure? mining enthusiasts? who will stamp the PCBs? monotonous assembly line work enthusiasts?

who is going to protect our internet from power-or-profit-seeking hijackers, thieves, or despots?

i could go on and on, but the point is painfully obvious. WATMM political discussions are hilariously half-baked.

[cichlisuite]

WATMM political discussions are hilariously half-baked.

Or horribly Machiavelian.

It's really not that hard to properly motivate people. Ofcourse there's work that needs to be done, and maybe not anyone wants to do it (mining, garbage collectors, etc), but why don't we pay people the money they deserve? Why being a dick on top of billions-worth of fortune (that wasn't even legitimately earned?) Why are some people worth more than others? Why some people assume themselves to be worthy of a paycheck that is 100000x higher than that of the man who actually does the most physically demanding part of the work (and possibly the most hazardous too?) These are the questions that need to be addressed in the first place.

 

I know that a general-issue capitalist would now say: "we keep their wages low so that we can properly motivate high education and prosperity in the world." I think that is bullshit. The only real reason the wages are low is because of the profits and nothing else. These profits are rarely invested back into the money circulation like your capitalist's text book would suggest.

[goDel]

It's always easy to shoot on something like capitalism without actually addressing capitalism itself. I mean, what the F is capitalism anyways?

 

Wages are low to keep consumer prices low. If you could buy a product at two places for different prices, odds are you'd go for the option which costs you less (where you could define 'cost' to mean anything you'd like, btw. AND THIS IS NOT UNIMPORTANT).

 

Anyways, dream on.

[luke viia]

so, in this magical world, everyone is nice and does everything purely for the love of doing it?

 

that's my issue with this philosophy too, but maybe there are ways to incentivize (?) people to work without direct wages, i dunno. it's fun to think about anyway. watmm is not full of political scientists, but we like to talk

[cichlisuite]

Wages are low to keep consumer prices low.

Well that kind of ruins the whole consumer idea doesn't it. A consumer with a limited buying power is not exactly a consumer the trader would like to have. Isn't it so?

With everything being more and more expensive, raising taxes, privatizing health care to the point of ridicule, etc, with lowering wages on top, how could you possibly expect any profit and/or prosperity?

it seems to me, that some people here try to advocate some capitalist ideology, instead of seeing the practical form it takes in real life. No wonder we're constantly non-consentual.

[Dale]

It's funny to see people defending capitalism. As a system, it has so many shortcomings. To begin with, it harms itself when people are laid off due to machine automation which means they can no longer participate in the economy as a consumer. It will eventually happen on a large scale, with many people affected. So there's a simple choice here: you either hold back technological progress and keep people employed in boring, repetitive occupations in order to keep the system going, or you embrace technological change and devise a totally new economic system to accommodate these changes without people having to be laid off and go without resources to maintain their needs.

 

Decisions within a capitalist system are usually made on a short term basis anyway - it doesn't look out for itself as far as future consequences are concerned when profit is the main motivator.

[goDel]

Defending capitalism? Please learn to read. I wasn't defending anything. I was merely trying to correct some, imo , ridiculous statements. There's no need to defend anything at this point, if you ask me. Just accept that evolution brought us to where we are now.

 

Keeping consumer prices low doesn't ruin the whole consumer idea. Sorry, but that's an equally ridiculous statement. And I'm not defending capitalism either. Again.

 

First of: producers of products generally don't hire all its customers. A large part of the customers generally don't work for the companies whose products they buy. So keeping wage-costs low, isn't necessarily against consumerism. Of course there could be some hypothetical extreme example where EVERYONE doesn't make any money. This generally doesn't represent the actual world we're living in (western world). Of course there are examples, lets say some third world country. But those countries generally aren't very capitalistic, are they?

 

Second: there are many ways to produce products. With, or without the help of a number of people pulling levers and what not.

 

If I extrapolate your logic, your reasoning would lead to the notion that computers/machines ruin the idea of consumerism. Well, following your worldview, apparently we need to go back to before the industrial revolution. That would be the ideal consumer society. Isn't it funny that those third world countries are very much like us before the industrial revolution?

 

Does capitalism ruin the consumer idea? No, it doesn't. Buying something and owning something is what capitalism is about. If you're against the concepts of buying and owning, well good for you. I'm not delving into that discussion (read: I'm not defending these concepts). But if you want to have a meaningful discussion, at least understand the thing which you're actually against.

 

If you want to actually discuss about facts, watch those Hans Rosling presentations at TED. It's all there.

[goDel]

Edit: also notice the distinction between lower wages and low wage-costs. There's a difference. And fewer people needed to produce certain products doesn't automatically entail more jobless people either.

 

Not defending. Just facts.

[ambermonk]

The almost perfect world to me, socially and politically: the 90's (not fashion wise )

 

No recession

Financially stable decade

End of the cold war and the Berlin wall fall (technically the 80's... whatever)

Almost fear-free decade (unless you lived in Yugoslavia or the Middle-east)

The internet wasn't a addictive substance quite yet.

 

 

Maybe I'm just being a nostalgic twat...

 

That makes me one too. It was also a decade of innovation in the gaming industry as well as music industry. Hell, take IDM for instance - the genre on which WATMM was based in the first place.

 

Speaking of the '90s, this came to mind when I read the thread title:

http://youtu.be/KH5He9TW0mE

[Hoodie]

so, in this magical world, everyone is nice and does everything purely for the love of doing it?

ok, i assume for starters you wouldn't want to give up the internet, right? so let's start there. who is going to maintain the physical infrastructure of the net? the servers, the millions of miles of cables. are there simply internet enthusiasts that are willing to put up the money (sorry, the time and resources) to maintain and upgrade this infrastructure? who mines the gold, copper, silicon, and all the other materials needed for computers and computer infrastructure? mining enthusiasts? who will stamp the PCBs? monotonous assembly line work enthusiasts?

who is going to protect our internet from power-or-profit-seeking hijackers, thieves, or despots?

i could go on and on, but the point is painfully obvious. WATMM political discussions are hilariously half-baked.

 

robots

[cichlisuite]

Edit: also notice the distinction between lower wages and low wage-costs. There's a difference. And fewer people needed to produce certain products doesn't automatically entail more jobless people either.

 

Not defending. Just facts.

In the current real-world situation, fewer people needed are jobless people. There is no regulation or employment strategies that ensure new jobs. Employment agencies (governmental or not) are just that, agencies, that serve as a proxy between the jobseekers and jobgivers. Their role is almost rudimentary in this regard. If there is no regulation between closing jobs and providing new ones (to ensure an equal ratio), there will always be people with problems and without jobs. Those people usually then suck onto the governmental social policies in order to survive (or become criminals), which is again a burden for the capitalist doctrine.

 

You speak about facts, but you provided none so far. Everything you said is like reading an economics text-book without the perspective on a real-world situation.

 

I'm sick of people saying 'this is where our evolution brought us', and 'capitalism is a nearly-perfect structure'. None of the so-called systems (capitalism, communism, socialism...) were employed in their pure form. Usually the people who were in charge of its inception, made sure there is always a margin for exploitation, because this is where the evolution has brought us. Pretty much not far from medieval feudalism in respect to reason and conscience.

[Npoess]

The almost perfect world to me, socially and politically: the 90's (not fashion wise )

 

No recession

Financially stable decade

End of the cold war and the Berlin wall fall (technically the 80's... whatever)

Almost fear-free decade (unless you lived in Yugoslavia or the Middle-east)

The internet wasn't a addictive substance quite yet.

 

 

Maybe I'm just being a nostalgic twat...

 

That makes me one too. It was also a decade of innovation in the gaming industry as well as music industry. Hell, take IDM for instance - the genre on which WATMM was based in the first place.

 

Speaking of the '90s, this came to mind when I read the thread title:

http://youtu.be/KH5He9TW0mE

 

I was just about to post that song

 

The 00's was such a shitty decade.

 

sry.. back on topic

[goDel]

I'm sick of people saying 'this is where our evolution brought us', and 'capitalism is a nearly-perfect structure'.

 

Here's another *fact*: "this is where our evolution brought us" does NOT imply "capitalism is a nearly-perfect structure".

 

Please, keep on putting words in my mouth to allow yourself to make the argument you're so desperate to make.

 

And because you appear to be a particularly lazy reader: the facts I pointed you towards, and rather explicitly, I might add, were those that Hans Rosling presented at TED.

 

And because I'm such a nice person, here's an example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpKbO6O3O3M

 

And the other facts were indeed economics text-book. Because the facts are that the economic principles are slightly different to the way you presented them: cheaper goods do not ruin the consumer idea. The real world does indeed work a bit more complex than that. Ironically, that part you did understand. Sort of. But you keep the real-world nuances only to prove your own points, instead of the opposite. Which could be equally possible, I assume. But again, I'm not here to defend capitalism.

[LimpyLoo]

The most common thing I see is the attitude that the "world happens to currently be a cold cynical place, so being cynical is the appropriate adaptation."

 

 

And that, since the world is one way, that is the only way that is possible or that makes sense.

 

 

There is an alternate universe out there where people aren't so jaded and isolated and everyone acts to make this world pleasant for everyone else, like the dynamics of a well-adjusted household.

 

Maybe I'm naive or "half-baked" but I think human nature is neutral and can be swayed either way, and we just happen to live in a dangerous world where people have lost heart.

 

But really, despite the world's current attempts to turn me cynical, I have faith in humanity and I envision a beautiful world someday.