>>Not saying you are wrong, but your response is kinda avoiding/misunderstanding the question from @mikeman... just sayin' ...

He is also wrong, though. Communism is a much older idea than Marx, and really, it has religious roots. Thomas More wrote "Utopia" in the 1500s. Fourier was born 30 years before Marx. Robert Owen founded New Harmony in Indiana when Marx was 6. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(book)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_de_Saint-Simon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fourier
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Owen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Harmony,_Indiana

There are always initial seeds that lead to any established idea.  Karl Marx combined earlier ideas into what today is known as communism.  It began with Karl Marx, and swept the world like wildfire.  Really, what people think of as communism today is Karl Marx infused with the tactics of Vladimir Lenin.  Without Lenin, "communism" would be a very different thing.  What you call "communism" today is more Vladimir Lenin than it is Karl Marx.

That may be so, but then what you object to is not the actual common ownership of the means of production, but leninism - mainly vanguardism. Most of Leninism is how to organize a powerful centralized party, but this is not what we are talking about here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguardism

Remember that we're being "utopians" here - we're merely pondering on an "ideal" state of things without really considering how to bring it into being.

 

Yea, sorry @Kavik Kang, but expecting anyone to read through 300 pages is asking for too much. It really shouldn't be that tough to explain in one post what makes a system communist in your opinion. If you don't want to, by all means, don't. This is just an Internet forum, and we're all just loafing about here in the end. It's not as if this is Congress or Parliament  (EDIT: seems like you are trying to explain now)

@Gian-Reto, I think we can put an end to the colonialism debate, it's not appropriate here. I think we agree on more things than not. To address two things you specifically pointed out:

1): You stated that algorithms aren't a catch all be all and may never be perfect. That's why we'd have governments (democratic governments. Capitalism doesn't function perfectly all the time either. We have recessions, for example, and Govs work to mitigate them. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine dealing with machine issues instead. 

2): Machines revolt? I mean we aren't' talking about sentient intelligences, just good algorithms. Ultimately it can be a problem, but not anytime soon IMHO.

And finally:

4 hours ago, Gian-Reto said:

Just don't forget that his opinion stands for how pretty much at least 50% the population thinks in the westrn world today (well, "communism is bad", not the "kill the communist" crap). And they have just as much a valid voice as you, no matter how wrong you think they are.

And as little as I understand the ani-obamacare stance in the US, it seems a healthy part of the US population also thinks alike.

Instead of making fun of his opinion like @mikeman did when he proposed to leave hammer and sickle away from the communist flag (even though I understand the knee jerk reaction to kavid kangs sometimes abrasive rethoric in this thread, please note that the Hammer and Sickle is something that should be jocked about as much about as the swastika... that is, "if you have no problems with Hitler Pepe's, I am fine with your Stalin memes", so to speak), you probably should take is real points more serious and overlook some of the rethoric.

I don't believe I was mocking Kavik Kang. And I think we do agree, that as I have pointed out, that his contributions to the thread have not contributed to any discourse on the topic in question. Namely, that topic is the affect of automation on economies.

It's not possible to engage in discussion with what basically amounts to "Communism is bad, if robots mean communism, let's ban it all". I mean, what am I supposed to debate here?

4 hours ago, Gian-Reto said:

I think its something some US folk should learn in general: A compromise is a good thing in a healthy democracy, it is a win-win, not a lose-lose. Listening to your opponent when he does not listen to you makes you the winner, not him.

Engaging in this endless political fights has made the US politics the laughing stock of the western world, and it seems even some countries outside of it (given how the Chinese seem to joke about the "White Left", and its pretty clear they mean the US democrats with it).

 

But going off on a tangent here again, and maybe stepping on peoples toes more than I actually intend to do.

 

My point is this: If you want a big societal shift like this, you need the majority onboard. You will not get that with provocation, ridicule and counterattacks.

If Kavid Kang is using McCarthy-ist language to disprove your points... well, maybe give him some leeway there. I think the US has entered the McCarthy era again on both sides, with the "Brown Scare" on the liberal side trying to see Nazis where there actually are mostly nationalists, conservatives, libertarians, and even some leftists simply not down with the current party line.

And with the young anarchists feeling empowered by the current liberal outrage, I see the next "Red Scare" coming as a reaction to their Hammer and Sickle happy shenigans from the conservative side, after they have grown tired of their current "Muslim Scare".

 

So Kavid Kang using McCarty-ist language is just going with the time. I predict Conservatives witchhunting (mostly imaginary) communists in 2-3 years, if young far lefties continue to bang the communist drum. And with the witchhunt some "liberals" are currently engaging in against (mostly imaginary) nazis... yeah, it will be probably also a reaction to that.

 

Again, not trying to step on anyones toes here.... if Kavid Kang has not added anything else of use to the thread (and to be honest, I have read almost none of his responses, I expected a hard to decipher textwall...), he at least added some opposition, turning this thread from an echo chamber into an actual discussion... even though I read from your responses that his way of discussing is quite... confrontational without adding much perspective.

 

Call me devils advocate an all fronts in this Thread ... but really, when I see Kavid Kang write responses that actually make sense and I can read, I have to at least give him that he is trying this time to engage in a discussion. Whereas in some of his other threads, I wasn't really sure what his intentions were.

US politics is a different discussion entirely. I'm not getting into it here.

3 hours ago, mikeman said:

But Gian-Reto, you know, we kinda are talking about words and symbols here.

Let me explain : deltaKshatriya proposes, so to say, a system where an army of "slave robots" would be working for the needs of the majority of the population - the driving force here would be to satisfy the needs of the many, not the profits of the few. Supposedly, a central(world-wide?) planning AI would decide how this would best be done - and I guess this planning AI would also determine the wage differentials for the human jobs that still exist, in order to encourage productivity and innovation - so, for example, a neurosurgeon gets paid 3x as a school teacher.

Do I really need to say that what makes capitalism, well, capitalism, is that the decision-making process about the allocation of resources(what should be produced, what should be invested, when and where) belongs to individuals with the motive of maximizing profit? What deltaKshatriya is proposing here is to take this decision-making power away from individuals and entrust it into a central planning AI that would decide the allocation based on what the needs of the population are, and also possibly calculate wage differentials(I assume within reasonable limits, so for example a ratio that does not exceed 1:5 or something like that) for the highly-skilled human labour force that remains, with the goal of increasing productivity and innovation - reward those who do a better job.

This is *de facto* communism. I'm not sure it is understood fully here(even by deltaKshatriya) that this essentially does away with capitalists completely. Capitalists' function is precisely to decide resource allocation of an enterprise - and they capture the lion share of the profits if said enterprise is successful. Take that decision-making away from competing human capitalists and give it to a central AI...what exactly do you think you have done here? You have basically completely dismantled capitalism. You have done away with the Bill Gates and the Steve Jobs - all their functions are entrusted into a central benevolent body now that makes the decision they used to make.

You have not done away with the Wozniaks, nor you have done away with the concept that the more skilled of them should enjoy more luxuries as a way to incentivize, but that is secondary. Resonable reward for harder or more high-quality work is not what makes capitalism what it is - what makes it what it is, is what you have just dismantled. It does not matter one bit if, say, more skilled engineers are paid somewhat higher or enjoy more luxuries than less skilled engineers - this is by no means incompatible with communism, though it's understandable that many people think communism has this obsessive need for everyone to get exactly an equal wage, which is false.

There is still the incentive of doing a better job - making a new invention that would be rewarded(by the central AI?) with a bonus/larger wage/access to extra luxury goods or services, but the possibility of starting your own enterprise based on that invention goes away. We have already agreed that the resource allocation is done by the central AI in order to satisfy the needs of the population, didn't we? The invention you made is put into the disposal of that central AI then, and you get your moderate material reward, along with the moral awards of contributing to the community, recognition from your peers, and the joy of solving a difficult problem. Am I wrong here to say this is how things are going to work with what deltaKshatriya proposes? There is a ceiling here - by working harder, or by doing higher-quality work, you can hope to get a larger wage, a larger bonus, more fame and recognition - but you cannot hope to get the power of deciding resource allocation, we already agreed this is done by the central planning AI.

So what you have done, is that you have transferred the decision-making power of the allocation of resources from individual capitalists competing for profits to a central planning entity whose state goal is to satisfy the needs of the whole population, whether currently employed or unemployed. At this point, what we are arguing here are mere words and symbols : if you guys don't want to call this "communism", then let's don't, let's find a new "brand", let's call it whatever you want, but that's what it is. It doesn't involve gulags, it doesn't involve Red Guards, it doesn't involve liquidating the kulaks, it doesn't involve Stalin's mustache, but the basic transformation is done : Allocation of resources is not done by competing individuals with profit motive, but by a central benevolent(obviously) planning body with the motive or satisfy the needs of the population.

Of course, the whole thing is an artificial model : We suppose the entirety of the population agrees on it, there is little to no resistance from those that do not want to relinquish control of their industries to a central planning AI, and the problem of "how do we ensure that a central planning body which has in its disposal the entirety of resources uses it for the good for the population and not for its own good" is solved by just making that central planning body a machine(or network of machines), which are simultaneously smarter than an equivalent central planning body composed of human planners, but also ego-less, so impossible to abuse its power. This vision is kind of disappointing to a degree, because it presupposes that humanity can never truly become a self-governed global community - we have not shed our worst qualities, we have just delegated the decisions to an machine that is free of those qualities to begin with. But I digress.

This is pretty much what I see. And you're right (with a couple of exceptions). Basically what I did was:

"I'm not proposing Communism/Socialism but I propose <proceeds to propose machine communism>"  thanks for the reality check @mikeman.

My main exception is that human governments will still govern. Republics will still exist. Democracy will still exist. The judiciary, etc. will all exist. We won't be ruled by machines necessarily (at least, before sentient AI, but then the rulebook is out the window, and that's not the focus of this thread). I'm not advocating for authoritarian rule. The only thing that changes is how our economics work.

We can sit around and argue about technicalities (such as what the role of the inventor of a new cool piece of tech will be, rewards, etc.) but this is essentially what I'm saying.

12 hours ago, Kavik Kang said:

They were essentially saying that robots will inevitably lead to communism.  If that is the case, then we can save millions of lives by outlawing robots.  Human lives are more important than the convenience of automation.

Again, you have not responded to any of the points posited. This is not constructive. Nowhere has anyone advocated for fascism or authoritarian rule. It's not as if implementing automated resource allocation will suddenly lead to the end of all democracy and rights. I have stated multiple times that republics and democracy will exist. I can't quite get what I'm even supposed to debate here if you're simply going to repeat "robots should all be killed if they're going to bring Communism". No one has even said that robots are leading to Communism. This is a way to utilize automation in a different system of economy. In fact, @ChaosEngine and others presented other alternative scenarios. I get that @Gian-Reto is arguing that many will have a similar Luddite/McCarthyist response, but I mean, this isn't a constructive debate. There are multiple issues with what you are repeatedly posting with regards to what others have posted and the point of this thread.

12 hours ago, Kavik Kang said:

nd I didn't say anything that was "poorly researched" about Dear Leader's enslavement of the American people to his preferred corporations.  I explained, in very specific detail, why it was unconstitutional and an affront to human freedom.  Are you saying you would have no problem with being commanded to turn over $100 per month to Haliburton?  That would be the same exact thing, so you think that is a good idea too, yes?

First and foremost: this is NOT a thread on Obamacare. You brought this up. We are talking about automation and economies. Secondly, that's a false equivalency. And no, I'm not going to argue this any further because, as stated earlier, this is a thread about automation and economies. 

>>First and foremost: this is NOT a thread on Obamacare. You brought this up.

Actually, I did, but when you hear someone lamenting that "America is slowly descending into communism", this is a dogwhistle so loud that is heard all the way to Sweden and beyond.  

Just now, mikeman said:

>>First and foremost: this is NOT a thread on Obamacare. You brought this up.

Actually, I did, but when you hear someone lamenting that "America is slowly descending into communism", this is a dogwhistle so loud that is heard all the way to Sweden and beyond.  

Well my mistake then, but I'm gonna say this again, we aren't here to argue about Obamacare.

7 minutes ago, deltaKshatriya said:

Yea, sorry @Kavik Kang, but expecting anyone to read through 300 pages is asking for too much. It really shouldn't be that tough to explain in one post what makes a system communist in your opinion. If you don't want to, by all means, don't. This is just an Internet forum, and we're all just loafing about here in the end. It's not as if this is Congress or Parliament  (EDIT: seems like you are trying to explain now)

 

Yes, the last thing gamers want in a game is lore, right?  And the Territories timeline has been downloaded 350 times, so people are reading it.  If you think that communism can be explained in a single short post, then you are a very long way from understanding communism.  I have a unique perspective on the subject, much of which I learned from my grandfather, who was one of the founders of the OSS, General MacArthur's bodyguard during the occupation of Japan, and was with American military intelligence from its inception until the late 1960's.  I actually have an inside perspective on the true nature of Soviet/Russian intelligence.

I set out to do exactly what you are asking for here, and it wound up taking about 300 pages to do.  There is also the aspect that, if I write some 30-page post on communism here you will all start screaming "off topic!".  It's here on this site to download, without cluttering this thread with a lengthy explanation of the activities of Soviet/Russian intelligence.  

1 minute ago, deltaKshatriya said:

Well my mistake then, but I'm gonna say this again, we aren't here to argue about Obamacare.

It is though a fine example of the knee-jerk reactions a large segment of the American population has.

I mean, discussing idealized plans for a benevolent "machine communism" is all fine, but in the present time you guys can't even discuss universal healthcare without 5 of 10 at least going "this is 'Merica, not Soviet Russia!"

Which brings us back to reality - whatever change will happen, it will not happen by all the peoples of the Earth coming together and agreeing on a rational plan that benefits everyone. There will be fierce clashes of interests first, and 2nd, a large amount of the irrational - people that would actually benefit from said plan will reject it because of other prejudices.

Investing in pitchforks does sound like a good idea.

"Universal" healthcare is not possible within the framework of the constitution.  That is why "this is America, not Russia" is the response of so many Americans.  Government cannot sieze your property and turn it over to another citizen or private entity.  It's amazing that so many people have so much trouble understanding such a simple concept.  The 4th Amendment stands in the way of your communist dream of utopia.

Dude, this is the 4th Amendment :

"[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

This, in no way, forbids, say, progressive taxation that will be used to fund essential public services like healthcare, ffs.