bitcoin changing my ideology from socialism to libertarianism! What about you?

[Beliathon]

the real solution to this argument would be to cite  scientific studies which found out if majority of humans are selfish individuals or altruistic!

"Despite the mounting research evidence that humans are wired for empathy and often express their empathic regard by engaging in altruistic activity, the naysayers cling to the defense that people act that way because they have learned, through past experience and conditioning, that helping another person mutes their own empathic distress and provides them a sense of relief and, on occasion, even pleasure, because they have been morally accountable. Hoffman points out that just because one feels better because he or she was able to help another in distress doesn't mean that it is the sole or even a major reason for being altruistic. The pleasure might be an unexpected by-product, but not a prime motivating factor, for engaging in altrustic behavior in the first place." [refer to study 4 for elaboration]
-Jeremy Rifkin, The Empathic Civilization

Here's 5 studies and a TED talk for you. Four of the studies are for Homo Sapiens, one is for Capuchin monkeys.

Study 1:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/11641621/ns/health-childrens_health/t/roots-altruism-show-babies-helping-hands/
Psychology researcher Felix Warneken, of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Enthropology, published the results of a study of toddlers exhibiting altruistic behavior far earlier than previously expected, demonstrating the biological nature of human altruism. The following video will illustrate what happened:

Study 2:
http://news.yale.edu/2007/11/21/babies-prefer-good-samaritans

Study 3:
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/28/science/researchers-trace-empathy-s-roots-to-infancy.html

Study 4:
http://onthehuman.org/2009/10/empathic-concern-and-altruism-in-humans/

Study 5:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKhAd0Tyny0

TED Talk - Frans de Waal: Moral behavior in animals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcJxRqTs5nk

This world is also filled with ISIS like people who show no empathy!

Not so! ISIS members do have empathy, but only for a very limited sphere of family/comrades. For the rest of humanity, they show little to no empathy. This of course is illogical, incestuous madness, like something transported from the dark ages. Thanks religion, for dragging shitty bronze-age ethics into the 21st century!

If you trace back through history, there has always been empathy for tribe-mates, or family / blood-kin. Through social evolution, reason compels us to expand our sphere of empathy wider and wider. Today, empathy is commonly extended to all fellow citizens of one's nation. Not so long ago this would've been a radical idea.
The logical conclusion of this trend is that eventually, all human beings will see themselves as citizens not of a nation, but of the world. We will begin to see all our fellow humans beings as kin, who deserve our love and compassion just as much as our own sons and daughters.

Shouldn't we, as individuals and civilizations as a whole, aspire to be the best that we can be?

Yes, exactly, of course we should. Well said my friend.

“Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity.
Patriotism is its cult... Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love,
love for one's country which is not part of one's love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.”
-Erich Fromm, The Sane Society


Yours in compassion and solidarity,

World Citizen Beliathon



Your move, capitalists and sociopaths (insofar as there is any meaningful practical difference).

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[genjix]

sick cool post beliathon

[Beliathon]

sick cool post beliathon

Myth and falsehood are only worms, burrowing inside the great tree of truth. They are mortal things, while the tree is eternal, and so they are doomed to lose the war for the consciousness of humanity.

[tvbcof]

Seeing Socialism (or Collectivism) up close and personal in a recent encounter with the EPA has changed my views and willingness to call myself a Socialist even in jest.  I realize now that Socialism is unlikely to ever come about without being intertwined and fertilized with fascism (merger of state and corporate power.)

I believe that 'transfer of wealth' is the only workable way to have a steady-state society which is worth living in.  The reason why is that most people are hopeless losers and lack the potential to produce enough value to fund a reasonable life while a minority can do so with ease.  At least in our technical societies of these days...hunter/gatherer societies (which we evolved to exist in) did not produce the same dynamics.  It is this believe in the necessity of transfer of wealth that was the main reason I called myself a Socialist.

Many, if not most of my views mirror those ascribed to Libertarians (though not monopolized by them in spite of what they believe.)  I never did care for the dog-eat-dog survival of the fittest malice that I see in that movement even though I believe I could thrive in such an environment personally if I choose to do so.

At this point I feel that a cold hard world where one is free to exploit one's peers on an individual basis via ruthless competitiveness, as unpleasant as it may be for a majority of people, is STILL a better place to exist than one dominated by the fascism and the totalitarianism which is never far behind.  Not just better from me (as a guy who pulls more than my own weight) but for everyone in society except those tiny minority who end up with the reigns of totalitarian power.  In my current thesis, Socialism is not achievable without these completely intolerable evils, and evolution out of such a state would be very difficult whereas with Libertarianism or Anarchy moving beyond the awful aspects of these is actually likely.

Back OT, no, Bitcoin did nothing to move me from Socialism to Libertarianism, and if anything it made me even more aware of what thieving scum a lot of self-proclaimed Libertarians are.  I've more or less made the move in spite of Bitcoin.

[Elwar]

Seeing Socialism (or Collectivism) up close and personal in a recent encounter with the EPA has changed my views and willingness to call myself a Socialist even in jest.  I realize now that Socialism is unlikely to ever come about without being intertwined and fertilized with fascism (merger of state and corporate power.)

I believe that 'transfer of wealth' is the only workable way to have a steady-state society which is worth living in.  The reason why is that most people are hopeless losers and lack the potential to produce enough value to fund a reasonable life while a minority can do so with ease.  At least in our technical societies of these days...hunter/gatherer societies (which we evolved to exist in) did not produce the same dynamics.  It is this believe in the necessity of transfer of wealth that was the main reason I called myself a Socialist.

Many, if not most of my views mirror those ascribed to Libertarians (though not monopolized by them in spite of what they believe.)  I never did care for the dog-eat-dog survival of the fittest malice that I see in that movement even though I believe I could thrive in such an environment personally if I choose to do so.

At this point I feel that a cold hard world where one is free to exploit one's peers on an individual basis via ruthless competitiveness, as unpleasant as it may be for a majority of people, is STILL a better place to exist than one dominated by the fascism and the totalitarianism which is never far behind.  Not just better from me (as a guy who pulls more than my own weight) but for everyone in society except those tiny minority who end up with the reigns of totalitarian power.  In my current thesis, Socialism is not achievable without these completely intolerable evils, and evolution out of such a state would be very difficult whereas with Libertarianism or Anarchy moving beyond the awful aspects of these is actually likely.

Back OT, no, Bitcoin did nothing to move me from Socialism to Libertarianism, and if anything it made me even more aware of what thieving scum a lot of self-proclaimed Libertarians are.  I've more or less made the move in spite of Bitcoin.

A fair observation. The key is that if the small percentage of society that is actually capable of taking care of themselves are left free to improve their own lives they tend to improve more than just their own lives in the process. If, instead of working on inventing the lightbulb, Edison was obligated to spend half of his week feeding the homeless or doing some other charity work it would have been time wasted and the lightbulb would have taken much longer to get invented, if ever. But it improved everyone's life, not just his own. Did he make money off of it? Yes, that was part of his motivation to not just go live in the mountains and fish all day when things became difficult.

There are a lot of scammers out there in the Bitcoin world. The less intelligent will get taken advantage of. It is a clear case of smart, taking from less smart. But other smart people will be able to build systems to not only protect their own bitcoins but those of other people. They will certainly be motivated by profit for part of it as well as seeing a problem that requires a solution.

It has been said that if you were to take all of the money in the world right now and distribute it equally to everyone, it is very likely that over the years the balance of money would eventually end up again where it is today.

[gentlemand]

The idea of a libertarian society sounds worthy in principle. The reality would be grotesque for all but a hardened few. Strangely like how communism turned out, not that a truly communist society has ever existed.

[Beliathon]

I believe that 'transfer of wealth' is the only workable way to have a steady-state society which is worth living in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

The reason why is that most people are hopeless losers and lack the potential to produce enough value to fund a reasonable life while a minority can do so with ease.

Actually, that's mostly down to genetic factors, and the income of your parents.

http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/10/genes-dont-just-influence-your-iq-they-determine-how-well-you-do-school
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/10/02/1408777111
http://www.businessinsider.com/sat-chart-score-vs-income-2014-3

Surprise, capitalism is super unfair! The fact that you couldn't google this shit yourself actually dovetails nicely into my next point...

I never did care for the dog-eat-dog survival of the fittest malice that I see in that movement even though I believe I could thrive in such an environment personally if I choose to do so.

Why am I not surprised? The fact that you're foolish enough to think you would thrive is a strong indication that you would probably fail and die horribly.



Anyway, social darwinism is top-notch bullshit-insanity.

At this point I feel that a cold hard world where one is free to exploit one's peers on an individual basis via ruthless competitiveness, as unpleasant as it may be for a majority of people, is STILL a better place to exist than one dominated by the fascism and the totalitarianism which is never far behind.

Fascism, you mean like the corporate oligarch neo-fascism that capitalist society is rapidly (d)evolving into as we speak?

[practicaldreamer]

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need"

This empathy/compassion/altruism isn't something that is alien to human beings - rather it defines us as a species. As soon as you step away from "From each..." you are one step closer to 1% owning a half of planet Earth. No way around it.

If, instead of working on inventing the lightbulb, Edison was obligated to spend half of his week feeding the homeless or doing some other charity work it would have been time wasted and the lightbulb would have taken much longer to get invented, if ever. But it improved everyone's life, not just his own. Did he make money off of it? Yes, that was part of his motivation to not just go live in the mountains and fish all day when things became difficult.

  The experience of the development of Bitcoin, and the reason we are all here in the first place having discussions like this, would seem to contradict this. Open source would seem to contradict this. Maybe we should ask Amir. Was your work, Amir, on the development of Bitcoin motivated by financial gain, or was it rather a vocation/a labour of love - because you realised that in Bitcoin there was something that might help make this world a better place ?


   We need also to seperate the economic from the political (although they are of course intertwined).

To me a system whereby the wealth of the nation (land/natural resources) are held in the hands of the people of that nation - and yet the free market is allowed to operate and offer incentives within this (public ownership) framework, seems about on the money to me.
   Something not dissimilar to the Chinese model - who, after all, have had to overcome huge obstacles to have recently become the worlds largest economy  . The political dimensions of China may be questionable(or they may not) - but a political superstructure built upon a privately owned economic infrastructure, as we have in the west, is a sham also - and perhaps more so than in China.

[cuddaloreappu]

Beliathon

As I am trying to read through the things  you referred, I am getting the feeling that you are trying to prove the existence of empathy and altruism in humans!

 there is no disagreement about the fact if scientifically proved and mirror neurons and such from my side, I accept there is empathy and altruistic consciousness among every one of us.

According to  evolution the genes for both selfishness and empathy are both inside every individual, and the more  expression of the respective genes determines the traits characteristic of the individual whether selfishness or altruism.

and therefore my argument is not that empathy and altruism does not exist but rather they are always under represented in any given population say around (5-10%)

So I want to get this clear to you...

 I am trying to find  scientific reference for the distribution of these characteristic and will get back sooner!

[tvbcof]

First, thanks for the points above Elwar.  I find most of them worth considering.

I never did care for the dog-eat-dog survival of the fittest malice that I see in that movement even though I believe I could thrive in such an environment personally if I choose to do so.

Why am I not surprised? The fact that you're foolish enough to think you would thrive is a strong indication that you would probably fail and die horribly.

I made the statement with some deliberation based on observations of my various achievements.  I do harbor some doubts about whether I really have the potential to be a successful warlord.  Certainly I would prefer not to try for a number of reasons, and this is the main reason I don't bitch about taxes a whole lot.

<snip - Lord Russell graphic with quote>

How funny.   I was just recently quasi-studying Russell, or at least looking up some of his quotes within the last few days.  I ran across this one first:

"Scientific societies are as yet in their infancy. . . . It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries. Fitche laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished. . . . Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. . . .”----Bertrand Russell,1953

All I could do is stand awestruck and think: "My gosh, they pulled it off!"  Quite possibly in the way that Russell prescribed [predicted? warned?].  It's always been a source of interest to me that Assange and Snowden followed the atypical career path when it came to education.

FWIW, the reason I stumbled upon the quote is that I happened to have taken an interest in trying to figure out why the autism rate is now around 1-in-70 and on a path to be 1-in-small_int within my lifetime.  This will absolutely effect me personally unless I meet a bus, so it is a source of mystery worth studying.

Another quote I especially like is this:

“Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other people's.”

I find Lord Russell to be something of a soul-mate in that he has a sort of a brutal honesty that I admire and try to achieve.

I am fairly unimpressed by the eugenics work of Russell, Huxley, Rockefeller, etc.  As far as I'm concerned they did little more any Mongolian tribesman or other members of societies who lived by animal husbandry accomplished countless times over the eons.  Being animated by Darwin's  theories presented during the age of enlightenment simply served to elevate their own sense of self-importance it seems to me.  The basic ideas are easily grasped and/or formulated by a clever teen...and it is fortunate to do so at that age because one may move on more easily.

Anyway, social darwinism is top-notch bullshit-insanity.

Interesting read.  At least the first few pages.  I'll get back to the rest later.

At this point I feel that a cold hard world where one is free to exploit one's peers on an individual basis via ruthless competitiveness, as unpleasant as it may be for a majority of people, is STILL a better place to exist than one dominated by the fascism and the totalitarianism which is never far behind.

Fascism, you mean like the corporate oligarch neo-fascism that capitalist society is rapidly (d)evolving into as we speak?

Yes.

To be clear, I now see the push toward Collectivism to be a major engine accounting for this rapid devolution.  And an engine carefully tuned by the very 'corporate oligarch neo-fascist capitalists' of which you speak.  It's a recent epiphany for me and one which I'm finding rather soul-crushing but that's the price one pays for being prone to call a spade a spade.

[tvbcof]

The idea of a libertarian society sounds worthy in principle. The reality would be grotesque for all but a hardened few. Strangely like how communism turned out, not that a truly communist society has ever existed.

This is where I have some very recent questions in my philosophies.

Yes, I agree, but consider how grotesque life could be for people living in stack-n-pack human habitats, kept going mentally with a cocktail of antidepressants, physically by pharmacological measures pioneered in cattle feedlots, and occupying their day in service to some corp/gov entity who they love and trust mainly because of a lifetime of highly tuned propaganda and some measure of chemical lobotomization which is, for many people at least, tuned to just avoid destroying their productive capacity.

Would the battle for survival in a more 'primitive' social mode really be that inferior to the crushing numbness of something like the above?  I'm starting to have some real doubts about it.  I guess that was what Orwell was trying to get at in his comparison between the outer party and the proles.

Part B in my recent re-orientation is a question about whether we are really at the point where we need to adopt a 'human habitat' model in order to 'save the earth.'  At least here in the U.S.  I've always been skeptical about this but only recent really started to think about it in more hard numeric terms and think about how/why the philosophy is so deeply ingrained.  At least in 'my people' (for lack of a better term.)

[MasterCasino]

The idea of a libertarian society sounds worthy in principle. The reality would be grotesque for all but a hardened few. Strangely like how communism turned out, not that a truly communist society has ever existed.

Blah blah.. They are all the same.. You know who loses? Us, the people.

[Beliathon]

If you really wanted to prevent horrendous ecological catastrophe, you would need to stop global industrial production in its tracks. And the time to do so would've been twenty years ago. It is abundantly clear that this train we're on is not going to stop anytime soon. It is not even going to slow. There is no political will for non-profitable anti-industrialism to be found within capitalism.

My advice: Forget about Earth.  You're powerless without the ability to communicate in the language of capitalism - that is, without the capability to dispense violence on a mass scale.  Just enjoy the crazy ride of the Halocene Extinction event as we plow on toward our own potential extinction.

[practicaldreamer]

All I could do is stand awestruck and think: "My gosh, they pulled it off!"  Quite possibly in the way that Russell prescribed [predicted? warned?].  It's always been a source of interest to me that Assange and Snowden followed the atypical career path when it came to education.

Absolutely agree. Ivan Illich, in "Deschooling Society" is instructive here. Anyone who knows anything has always attained that knowledge through autodidacticism, in my view. They may or may not have been formally educated. Einstein springs to mind writing his notes under the desk in the clerks office (though he was of course formally educated also) - and Wittgenstein, whose formal education was in engineering but was basically self taught in philosophy. The point being that the freedom from academic constraint helped them to flourish.

Which elephant is the smarter ? The one that has been taught to climb through hoops in the circus - or the one providing for itself in the wilderness ?

“Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other people's.”

I find Lord Russell to be something of a soul-mate in that he has a sort of a brutal honesty that I admire and try to achieve.

LOL - Lord is the operative word there  . British aristocracy. Though I wouldn't for one minute use that to detract away from Russells genius.
I don't really know what he meant by the statement above as we don't have the context - though I suspect that it wasn't without irony.


It has to be said, as a matter of interest, that it could be argued that Russell (in his private life at least) was a "libertarian". Certainly, he believed in "open love" (the primacy of the free market perhaps ?) in his relationships to his lovers, especially Lady Ottoline Morrell.

Unfortunately, though Russell himself was more than happy to take on lovers in addition to Morrell, it soon transpired that when it was she that was taking on the lovers it worked much less well for Russell  

In the context of this thread, read into that what you will.

[Beliathon]

Ivan Illich, in "Deschooling Society" is instructive here.

That's a great book. Since we're on the topic of education, you folks may enjoy this:

Ken Robinson - Changing Education Paradigms

and this: Ken Robinson - The Element

and this: John Taylor Gatto - Against School

[practicaldreamer]

Do you realize that the greatest ever economic development policy in the history of the United States is also the most socialist in the history of the United States? Lincoln's Homestead Act.

Anyone wish to comment on this point ? Any of you libertarians out there ? Or will it be one of those little pearls of insight that is forever condemned to shine alone within its own private, yet perspicacious shell ?

[Beliathon]

Anyone wish to comment on this point ? Any of you libertarians out there ?

Yes, come on libertarians. What are you waiting for? Bring on more of your capitalism-apologist economic fundamentalist folly. I do enjoy crushing your weak arguments with extreme prejudice.

[forevernoob]

Anyone wish to comment on this point ? Any of you libertarians out there ?

Yes, come on libertarians. What are you waiting for? Bring on more of your capitalism-apologist economic fundamentalist folly. I do enjoy crushing your weak arguments with extreme prejudice.

Yeah like when you left the thread for 2 weeks because you had no counter arguments.
I didn't know you enjoyed debating "economic fundamentalists". At least in the past you have referred to them as "not intelligent enough to engage in debates".

[jonald_fyookball]

Do you realize that the greatest ever economic development policy in the history of the United States is also the most socialist in the history of the United States? Lincoln's Homestead Act.

Anyone wish to comment on this point ? Any of you libertarians out there ? Or will it be one of those little pearls of insight that is forever condemned to shine alone within its own private, yet perspicacious shell ?

i wouldn't consider it that socialistic to give land grants.  The problem is not the government giving away it's assets but rather forcing others to do so.

[shawshankinmate37927]

Do you realize that the greatest ever economic development policy in the history of the United States is also the most socialist in the history of the United States? Lincoln's Homestead Act.

Anyone wish to comment on this point ? Any of you libertarians out there ? Or will it be one of those little pearls of insight that is forever condemned to shine alone within its own private, yet perspicacious shell ?

I'm sure Whitney Houston thoght that first hit of crack was the best thing that ever happened to her, but where is she now?  Sure, government intervention in the market feels great in the beginning, but not so much when society becomes addicted to it.