My friend Derin is pretty interesting. He’s a wide-eyed idealist, who constantly fights for justice and is active politically and whatnot. He also has a strong moral backbone. This contrasts heavily with me; while I wish to consistently act ethically, I’m relatively amoral and apathetic about greater social causes. I still donate to charities and read about ethical violations and whatnot, but I don’t really believe in “fighting for causes” anymore. Derin, on the other hand, wants to hold people responsible for their errors. For example, in discussing the shithole that is Africa, I noted that cancelling a majority of the debts of the third world to the first world would do little to hard the world economy.
Derin stated that such an action would be corrupt “as hell”, considering that it does nothing to punish the irresponsible people who created the debts in the first place. I guess this is the main difference between moralists and ethicists. I wish to help the people right now, and don’t particularly care about punishing people, while others seem to feel the need to make sure people “learn their lesson”. I want the prison systems, for example, to be more like Norwegian ones. I admit that it is probably important for people to learn to do things correctly, but punishment, I feel, isn’t the correct way to go about things and will only beget more strife. In this way I guess I’m even more of an idealist than Derin, and a hypocrite besides.
I expect all people to be essentially good and wish for the betterment of others, but in certain conditions people will grow to be exceedingly selfish; indeed, beings in nature often cannot survive unless they are so. That being said, the current government and economical system I feel is not sustainable, and is doomed to failure eventually. I’m not predicting a Malthusian cataclysmic collapse, but instead tiny market failures that snowball and turn after a long time into larger ones; we will never reach a utopian society this way.
Some people say that the technological singularity, and all that it entails, will save us from ourselves. Eventually, theoretically, we will become scientific gods of unimaginable power. This is possible, but we don’t know that our exponential growth in paradigm shift speed will continue, and futurists also tend to assume that a growing population innately translates to growing research speed. I’d like to note, however, that the largest population growths tend to be in areas of poverty, meaning low scientific research, and that science tends to advance quickest in wartime, which doesn’t happen very often anymore. Not only that, but technological singularity considering our current world state will probably only effect first-world nations. In other words, it will only make a population of white, upper-middle class intellectuals into smarter, whiter, richer entities.
The problem, I feel, is with the current state of the world. Capitalism, in theory, allows people to create greater and greater amounts of goods by giving them the means of production. In reality, only certain people can gain said means, it is nearly impossible to gain said means if you are not born into them. I may be a little capitalist here, but American society is really divided into two classes. The Rich, and Everyone Else. Even those we often consider the elite spend hours upon hours getting through college, spend years paying off their loans, until they are old and tired and are maybe able to save up enough to let their children live their same slave like existence.
The rich, on the other hand, control the means of production. This gives them a monopoly of power and money over the working class, who are forced to sell their labor to the capitalists. In theory, this is a fair trade, but in truth, the entire market is rigged against the poorer people through monopolies and oligopolies. In effect, every corporation says to its worker, “I’ll allow you to work on these conditions: what you create belongs to me, and I’ll pay you back a fraction depending on how much I think that you are worth”. Rich People then proceed to hire lobbyists and spokespeople to hide behind and blame. I’d like to note that the entire lobbying industry would simply be seen as corruption in any other country. Our respect for individual property rights has created a monster; we worship money. Theoretically, any person could lobby, but you can’t lobby unless you have money, and you can’t get money unless you lobby.
What we have come to respect is not the “Power to” which Neitzche thought would turn people into supermen, but “Power over”, a very dangerous argument. We respect positives rights even when they conflict with negative ones. Simply put, American Capitalism expects the greed of both those in power and the disaffected to be a positive force, when it is actually a negative one. An entire sector of the American economy simply functions on keeping poor people poor. Check Cashing, Rent-to-Own, Payday Loans, and Bankruptcy auctioning all take advantage of the working class. The current consumerist culture that prizes non-durable goods to be thrown away and bought anew may help “stimulate the economy”, but results in people working all their lives to do nothing permanent other than damage the environment. People are made “happy” for a short while when buying things, but that happiness is short-lived; the buyers need to move on to consume the “next big thing”, throwing away hours of their lives to get the money for it.
Let’s go back to the eudaemonic post-scarcity economy I talked about earlier. I said that it was already here; I sorta mean it. Other than basic needs like sleep, food, shelter, and waste excretion, we can obtain basically anything with nothing but an internet connection in modern society. As American individuals, we can consume all that we want. This is huge, because we were programed by evolution to always want to consume. We’ll keep working because we always want more, and this is what American capitalism takes advantage of.
Furthermore, to stay soluble, modern corporations must create scarcity out of those unlimited goods; people, being greedy, will not work unless they have proper motivation to. Books, for example, can now be reproduced and distributed freely. And yet, we still pay for them. We pay to “obtain” and “object” there is a theoretical infinite amount of. It’s the same with online movies and even porn. In the current economy, scarcity has to be invented. That’s how the bottled water industry works; they find water, mark it up two hundred thousand percent, and then sell it to dopes like me who are perpetually thirsty. You see? Even people who know that the system is flawed can’t help but to buy into it.
And even if we rage against said scarcity, it’s the only thing that is keeping the current system afloat. If we ever find a way to make cold fusion or dyson spheres or space elevators possible and have an infinitely sustainable, infinitely productive society, we’ll still need to channel small amounts into the market at a time.
Don’t believe me? Just look at DeBeers. Diamonds are actually very common in Africa. Even jewelry-grade diamonds can be found pretty easily. When DeBeers found out about this, they were doubtlessly devastated. But then the found an oh-so-clever solution. They bought up every single diamond collection they could, then hired Executive Outcomes to protect their African interests. They basically invented the idea of a Wedding ring in order to drum up sales, and then their cartel was guaranteed riches for ages to come. Even new machine-generated diamonds are produced in small amounts, to ensure that the prices never fall too low. Even though there are theoretically infinite amounts of diamonds to possibly create.
Ireland is the top exporter of bananas in Europe; every year they buy the entire banana crop of Belize and sell it to the rest of Europe. They do this because they have the connections and capital to market it over the continent, and so act as middlemen towards the Belize who do the actual growing.
I’m not saying that our current system is all bad, of course. Poverty has been steadily decreasing, quality of life and life time has been increasing, and peace is always nice. But I think it could be better.
Hobbes said that a society without a police system was doomed. I only have to look to Burning Man and Black Rock City to refute that. Said society has the Black Rock Rangers, of course, but that force is more to protect the City from outside interference. The economy is entirely gift-based.
But this society also shows the inherent weaknesses of an anarchic one without a strong corporate or government base. It produces little to nothing other than “art”, and never creates any real research breakthroughs. Medical experts must be educated in the “Real World”, as there are no real hospital buildings, and lemon juice must be imported to protect against the corrosive desert sands. People need a large organization to make trade and whatnot on a larger scale possible.
Similarly, thought experiments like Cascadia and Libertaria have inherent failures. And the problems found in America can probably be found in every other country. The main difference, I think, is that America is focused greatly on self-improvement and therefore is not ashamed of talking about its flaws.
It feels almost as if a revolution is needed in order to create a better world. I think this is why I’m so politically apathetic; I’m a radical who realizes that his ideals are impossible.
My ideas probably come from a rather weird, unsocialized upbringing and making a lot of weird and radical friends. Some were true anarchists, I guess. They were experienced in breaking in entering, although they generally didn’t steal anything, a la The Educators, and tried not to give in to “The System” too much. They refused to use credit cards, didn’t borrow money from large banks, and quite a few refused to work for Corporate America. One makes his living donating semen and blood. Another rips off government-funded gun drop boxes by making his own guns and “donating” them for a handy profit. Still more sofa surf, squat, or take unemployment money while still holding an under-the-table job.
Sometimes I want to live like them. I’d take advantage of Adverse Possession laws to take over unused properties and flip them for a handy profit. I wouldn’t go so far as to live in the Humboldt country marijuana farms or Alaskan log cabins or get involved in Security Cultures, but it would be fun to live a survival-focused life. I’d pick up orphans in Sao Paolo or China or India then pick up my free lot of Kansas land (twice as large as the average suburban property!) I’d start creating guerilla gardens once again.
Then I return once again to reality and realize that I’m insignificant and can’t change very much on my own. A low impact life also benefits others very little. I’m not very good at foraging or dumpster diving, and offal and road kill makes me feel sick. I don’t have the heart for trashing, can’t keep my calm when trying to hide from the police, and if compatriots needed me to mix cocaine and animal’s blood to kill a dog’s sense of smell I wouldn’t have the necessary ingredients in any case. I do not have the heart of a revolutionary, though I’d like to.
If I were a braver man, and infinite capital, I’d look to create a larger revolution. I’d go claim the terra nullius of Bir Tawi, and go on to found my own sovereign nation. I’d establish offshore wind farms and OTEC facilities near the Principality of Sealand and other micro nations. Then I’d fail hilariously as a country other than Egypt or Sudan would invade.
The thing about standing armies is that they are needed as long as any other country has an army. If you do not have an army, you will be invaded. However, two countries having standing armies simply lose value. This is actually a sort of Prisoner’s Dilemma, too. Armies are further made inefficient by civilian leadership. For example, if we were to look at the war in Iraq in a Clausewitzian way, we are clearly the attacker and must therefore assume the weaker position and achieve a positive goal. We, however, had a broad, easily subverted goal. The only possible way to bring peace to Iraq now would probably be to inundate it with soldiers, allowing American troops to cover a larger amount of area without being spread ridiculously thin. This, however, would be losing sight of the Zweck in favor of the Mittel.
How would a eudaemonic society work? First of all, people have to be trusted to be essentially good and generous, something that isn’t found often. Power and being a bad person tend to correlate. In order to create a non-capitalist society that worked, one would have to relinquish the idea of economic feasibility and create an essentially socialist society. When the idea of “profits” is ignored, the full power of the post-scarcity economy can be utilized. Vertical farms actually become viable, technological application can be put aside in favor of pure science, and cumbersome patent law can be done away with.
And that’s why I should never talk about politics.