Denying the differences of systems, and asserting human behavior as inflexible and prescribed
That’s not what I’ve said, at all. I didn’t say any system wasn’t different, I just said that none of them have addressed the real problem. Also, I in no way said that human behaviour is inflexible and prescribed; the point I’m making is that people are flexible, and that these systems do not adequately account for that ingenuity when it is applied maliciously.
Social structure directs values, opportunities, and relationships.
If anything, you are implying that human behaviour is prescribed here. I think it is more accurate to say that social structure influences people. It doesn’t direct them, any more than a lone person with a stick can herd a sheep.
Shuffling up the system influences people to work harder when they grow complacent, and simultaneously gives those who have little a better chance to build something greater. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s better than the status quo, and encourages further change.
You seem to be framing argument around the premise that the driving force behind human behavior is seeking to harm others for fulfilling selfish ends, transcending personal experience and social environment.
I am challenging your underlying premise, as collapsing harmful outcomes into a singular cause, not strongly substantiated or thoughtfully conceived.
You seem to be trying to box me into some sort of scarecrow, so you can argue that instead, rather than actually reading and considering what I’m saying.
You have not presented any challenge here. You haven’t even addressed any point that I’ve made. If it isn’t people causing the problem, then what is it? What is the problem?
Lmfao where did I say nuke them all? You’re really trying it on now.
If you don’t have anything significant to add to the discussion, if all you want to do is try and twist things into a “gotcha”, then you should really just move on. You’re only embarrassing yourself right now.
You’re simply saying vague things and trying to expand the language to sound clever and definitive. And yet, when I have asked you to define specific things, you have deflected.
I have defined the problem: people, not the social structure. I have described how the social structures we have implemented so far are inadequate solutions at addressing the problem; people figure out the structure and play it to their advantage. I have suggested that we need to keep the systems in flux - to shuffle them up - in order to mitigate people taking advantage. Furthermore I have said that this will direct us to better societal systems overall in the long run. New possibilities require ongoing change, on a fundamental, not brief and superficial level.
You have offered little to nothing in this conversation. You’ve taken pot shots, but they’re firing further and further from the mark. You’re positioning yourself against me, as if defeating me will be some kind of victory. I would much prefer it if you worked with me so we can both figure out the objective truth. I don’t want you to say I’m wrong, I want you to prove what I’m saying is wrong, as if you succeed in that I’ll know things better.
Again, though, a problem that can be solved is not a problem simply described as “people”, unless you are making a suggestion that mostly everyone finds disagreeable, such as denying the existence of others, or advocating a collective suicide pact.
Is it not more coherent to frame as an objective how people may live together, as people in society, pursuing their shared interests as people?
Consider an analogy. Suppose a bicycle breaks. Would it not be sensible to try to find the flaws in the structure, and to replace or to reconfigure the parts identified as broken?
Would you take the bicycle to a repair shop, expecting the proprietor to explain simply that the problem is “bicycles”?
Do you see the problem, with framing as a problem, that which is already given as unalterable?
Again, the problems people face is not “people”, but of how we may live as people.
The problem I’ve presented isn’t just “people”, though, it’s more “people will find a way to be unpredictable”. Any system you throw at people, they will analyse it and try to find a way to defeat it. Even if you frame an ideal society, there will always be outliers who try to go against the grain and pursue their own interests, sometimes at the expense of others. Rather than trying to idealise everything and everyone, an effective system should recognise this human trait and attempt to account for it in such a way as to balance out or disinsentivize it.
If a bicycle breaks, the first step is to analyse the break, then to repair or replace the broken part. Sometimes it is more efficient to replace the whole bike, but in many cases that just isn’t practical - outside of commercial consumerism, replacing things isn’t practical in the vast majority of situations. Overall, it is better to focus efforts; rather than replacing the whole bike you just replace the parts that cannot be repaired. If the bike is designed and built well, rather than designed to be disposable, replacement parts will almost always be better than a whole new bike. I’ve had the same broom for the last 20 years.
If the bike was designed poorly, I would expect the bike shop owner to tell me I’ve bought a poorly designed bike, and to explain how other bikes were better designed and could better deal with the wear and tear I was experiencing.
However your analogy doesn’t really fit. The issue here isn’t the bike, it’s how people are riding it. A racing bike has a certain configuration; a mountain bike has a different configuration; your average consumer bike has neither of these. Capitalism requires people to give a fair and honest value to things. Communism requires ultimately the same, but as defined by fewer people. Both of these are like selling a BMX to someone who wants to ride on the road or trails, rather than a halfpipe.
I don’t think any system is unalterable. In fact, I would say that trying to advocate for comprehensive change is almost always a losing battle. You would not convince a mountain bike rider that they should do away with gears and ride a BMX. Rather, we should be taking the versatile mountain bike and make small changes to it to cover more different types of terrain, including that which BMX typically dominate.
However, if you really wanted to make a better BMX, you wouldn’t scrap the BMX and start from scratch. You would make iterative improvements on one aspect of it until you found the sweet spot, then you would move to another area and focus on improving that.
That’s what we need in society. Constant, iterative improvement, while simultaneously allowing for objective review of progress to ensure things are going in the right direction. Trying to flip things over all in one go really just gives opportunity for incumbant players to dictate the change such that they remain on top, then after the change the typical narrative is “Well, we’ve had one change, we can’t be having another now, not so soon”.
That’s not what I’ve said, at all. I didn’t say any system wasn’t different, I just said that none of them have addressed the real problem. Also, I in no way said that human behaviour is inflexible and prescribed; the point I’m making is that people are flexible, and that these systems do not adequately account for that ingenuity when it is applied maliciously.
If anything, you are implying that human behaviour is prescribed here. I think it is more accurate to say that social structure influences people. It doesn’t direct them, any more than a lone person with a stick can herd a sheep.
Shuffling up the system influences people to work harder when they grow complacent, and simultaneously gives those who have little a better chance to build something greater. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s better than the status quo, and encourages further change.
You seem to be framing argument around the premise that the driving force behind human behavior is seeking to harm others for fulfilling selfish ends, transcending personal experience and social environment.
I am challenging your underlying premise, as collapsing harmful outcomes into a singular cause, not strongly substantiated or thoughtfully conceived.
You seem to be trying to box me into some sort of scarecrow, so you can argue that instead, rather than actually reading and considering what I’m saying.
You have not presented any challenge here. You haven’t even addressed any point that I’ve made. If it isn’t people causing the problem, then what is it? What is the problem?
Yes, silly. The unifying feature of all human society is that it is made up of people.
Do you have any values or aspirations for the kind of world in which you want to live, or is it just nuke 'em all?
Lmfao where did I say nuke them all? You’re really trying it on now.
If you don’t have anything significant to add to the discussion, if all you want to do is try and twist things into a “gotcha”, then you should really just move on. You’re only embarrassing yourself right now.
Listen. I am simply observing that your framing of society provides to no one any value.
The concern for people is how to configure people in a society that supports people achieving their shared interests as people.
It provides no value to anyone simply to assert as the problem having no solution simply that there are people.
I am encouraging you to consider, even just to imagine, the different possibilities for the world in which we could share.
You’re simply saying vague things and trying to expand the language to sound clever and definitive. And yet, when I have asked you to define specific things, you have deflected.
I have defined the problem: people, not the social structure. I have described how the social structures we have implemented so far are inadequate solutions at addressing the problem; people figure out the structure and play it to their advantage. I have suggested that we need to keep the systems in flux - to shuffle them up - in order to mitigate people taking advantage. Furthermore I have said that this will direct us to better societal systems overall in the long run. New possibilities require ongoing change, on a fundamental, not brief and superficial level.
You have offered little to nothing in this conversation. You’ve taken pot shots, but they’re firing further and further from the mark. You’re positioning yourself against me, as if defeating me will be some kind of victory. I would much prefer it if you worked with me so we can both figure out the objective truth. I don’t want you to say I’m wrong, I want you to prove what I’m saying is wrong, as if you succeed in that I’ll know things better.
Again, though, a problem that can be solved is not a problem simply described as “people”, unless you are making a suggestion that mostly everyone finds disagreeable, such as denying the existence of others, or advocating a collective suicide pact.
Is it not more coherent to frame as an objective how people may live together, as people in society, pursuing their shared interests as people?
Consider an analogy. Suppose a bicycle breaks. Would it not be sensible to try to find the flaws in the structure, and to replace or to reconfigure the parts identified as broken?
Would you take the bicycle to a repair shop, expecting the proprietor to explain simply that the problem is “bicycles”?
Do you see the problem, with framing as a problem, that which is already given as unalterable?
Again, the problems people face is not “people”, but of how we may live as people.
The problem I’ve presented isn’t just “people”, though, it’s more “people will find a way to be unpredictable”. Any system you throw at people, they will analyse it and try to find a way to defeat it. Even if you frame an ideal society, there will always be outliers who try to go against the grain and pursue their own interests, sometimes at the expense of others. Rather than trying to idealise everything and everyone, an effective system should recognise this human trait and attempt to account for it in such a way as to balance out or disinsentivize it.
If a bicycle breaks, the first step is to analyse the break, then to repair or replace the broken part. Sometimes it is more efficient to replace the whole bike, but in many cases that just isn’t practical - outside of commercial consumerism, replacing things isn’t practical in the vast majority of situations. Overall, it is better to focus efforts; rather than replacing the whole bike you just replace the parts that cannot be repaired. If the bike is designed and built well, rather than designed to be disposable, replacement parts will almost always be better than a whole new bike. I’ve had the same broom for the last 20 years.
If the bike was designed poorly, I would expect the bike shop owner to tell me I’ve bought a poorly designed bike, and to explain how other bikes were better designed and could better deal with the wear and tear I was experiencing.
However your analogy doesn’t really fit. The issue here isn’t the bike, it’s how people are riding it. A racing bike has a certain configuration; a mountain bike has a different configuration; your average consumer bike has neither of these. Capitalism requires people to give a fair and honest value to things. Communism requires ultimately the same, but as defined by fewer people. Both of these are like selling a BMX to someone who wants to ride on the road or trails, rather than a halfpipe.
I don’t think any system is unalterable. In fact, I would say that trying to advocate for comprehensive change is almost always a losing battle. You would not convince a mountain bike rider that they should do away with gears and ride a BMX. Rather, we should be taking the versatile mountain bike and make small changes to it to cover more different types of terrain, including that which BMX typically dominate.
However, if you really wanted to make a better BMX, you wouldn’t scrap the BMX and start from scratch. You would make iterative improvements on one aspect of it until you found the sweet spot, then you would move to another area and focus on improving that.
That’s what we need in society. Constant, iterative improvement, while simultaneously allowing for objective review of progress to ensure things are going in the right direction. Trying to flip things over all in one go really just gives opportunity for incumbant players to dictate the change such that they remain on top, then after the change the typical narrative is “Well, we’ve had one change, we can’t be having another now, not so soon”.