How much automation would be required? What mechanisms would be required (social, economic, governmental).
I think it’s irresponsible and reprehensible to ever stop trying
Good way to look at it
Huh?
It would just require taxation on a progressive rate that includes a portion where people earning no (or very little) money receive money as a negative tax bracket…
That’s it, we could do it tomorrow.
What were you thinking of when you’re talking about “automations” and “mechanisms”?
There’d need to be something that pays it out monthly or by weekly for budgeting, but that’s not exactly a complicated thing, infrastructure is already built up for that
Not only “could” it be done, it already exists - though probably not to the degree we could say such societies are “egalitarian” (except in a relative sense).
Automation in the sense we are able to remove all undesirable jobs. Mechanisms like forms of government, law, economic structure, currency, social structures etcetera.
In that case:
Automation: none
Mechanisms: way less than we invented to maintain wealth inequality
If anything, it would drastically simplify everything
Not only is it possible, a decentralized egalitarian society was implemented with over 3 million people in 1936 Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War, and by all accounts it worked extremely well.
Interesting I’ll look into it
Sure! it’s a question of how we decide to govern ourselves as a collection of societies.
In a nutshell, I’d recommend a commune made up of federated communes, with decision making done at directly democratic assemblies at the most local level, then sending delegates (who have no power of their own and who can be instantly fired/replaced) to meet with other assemblies to make agreements, in steps going up to the broadest level (citywide, regional, etc) necessary for the decision to be made.
details and good ideas here: https://communalistlibrary.carrd.co/
Noone has succeeded so far. So I’m going with no, not within my lifetime at least.
Maybe I’ll be proven wrong in the future, you may yell “I told you so” at my tombstone should you feel like.
I wouldn’t yell at your tombstone.
A requirement for any such society would be to establish a ceiling on personal wealth/power.
We have shown with consistency that when given power, we go out of our way to exploit others. There is no segment of the political spectrum that is immune to the desire to impose their will on others.
That’s all reasonable.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. I don’t know the practical limits of how far we can get, but we aren’t even pretending to try.
No society is egalitarian really. It’s an ideal, not a reality.
Human beings are not wild for egalitarian behavior, and at best it would only really work in small populations of homogeneous people with strict social codes, like you see in Amish and other highly religious or aesthetic societies.
The problem with people is they tend to hate other people, especially people who are different than them, and having different amounts of wealth/income, makes people very different, and even when people are relatively equal financially, they start differentiating themselves based on the sources of their wealth and their consumptive habits. These societies rarely exceed triple digit populations.
A free, diverse, and open society can’t be egalitarian and the irony I find is those who preach egalitarianism… don’t want freedom or diversity. They want to pound everyone into conformity with themselves and their preferences and have illiberal attitudes towards self-expression, art, education, economic activity, etc.
I don’t think that it’s possible. We are a pack animal like dogs or apes/monkeys and work best in small groups like tribes. Groups of millions are just unnatural to us,
That’s a fair point.
If the culture/ideology allows for it, certainly. Evidently there’s enough to go around, it’s just concentrated in 3-4 cunts who have never known what working is, and many others don’t mind because they don’t want it to stop, they just wanna be on top.
Yeah striving to be the top is kinda always gonna be there with current thought.
Money-worshippers. 🤷
In my case its, grew up wicked poor and refuse to let that happen in my adult life. Money is tied so closely to anxiety, fear and stress. So I got in a “good” earning position and set myself up in a few other ways to be insulated.
Unchecked, power consolidates. Marx notes in Das Kapital the Capitalist will always seek to capture regulatory bodies in the name of profit.
The goal, thus, becomes to distribute political power (including wealth) as diffusely and evenly as possible, and create a system that checks efforts from outside to attack and break its integrity.
The USSR was beleaguered from the beginning by sanctions by the rest of the western world, as pressured by President Wilson. As problematic as the Leninist model was, we don’t know how it would have fared if it were left to engage with the world on its own terms.
Yes, absolutely.
…Oh, you meant a human population. Nevermind.
Enough automation to remove the need for jobs where people primarily risk their health.
Ultimately remove the need for all jobs entirely.
Yeah I’d guess something along those lines.
Can do it with tens. junter gatherers. Just need a clean and fertile world. People do what they can and cooperate. There is leadership but they still join in tasks and do things. Someone might be punished but they likely have to do some pretty bad trump. Someone who is lazy is just called lazy and maybe made fun of. Sorta like at work places. The lazy guy does not get paid less he just is kinda a joke. No mechanisms needed at all. Tech level does not really matter.
yes but it would require us to abandon democracy and return to a republic monarchy similar to what Rome had.
the republic rules the people and the emperor rules the state.
it has to be this way because there is no way the chaos of a changing government every n years allows for enough stability for an egalitarian society to subsist.
you want a utopia? either give all your power to one person or give up all power entirely(no government).
