Imagine a system where contributing to the common good is our yardstick for success, not personal enrichment by any means possible.
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@screwlisp I guess. Although I could also do without the military-style structure.
(I do love Star Trek – well, at least what it was before the Paramount purchase by the fascist, who knows what it’ll be going forward. But my favourite sci-fi series? Farscape.)
@aral @screwlisp Mine is Firefly, for the same reasons. "I aim to misbehave."
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Imagine a system where contributing to the common good is our yardstick for success, not personal enrichment by any means possible.
Such a system would not extract a “cost of living.” A dignified life with access to modern housing, healthcare, etc., would be considered a human right. Furthermore, everyone would have a basic income they can use however they wish. Imagine the progress we could make as a species if more of us could contribute to science, to art, to all aspects of human knowledge and the human experience because we were no longer wasting our entire time on Earth just trying to make ends meet.
This is not some pipe dream. For the first time in history we have the technological means to implement such a system.
Instead, we choose to live under the yoke of capitalism, a cancer that rewards the tumours that feast on society. Instead we use our technology to build walls, to mass murder, and to destroy our own habitat.
Again for the first time in history, we have the technological means to destroy our entire species or to expand it to new horizons.
Humanity has reached adolescence. Whether we make it to adulthood is up to us entirely.
@aral It's wonderful to talk about a system that guarantees dignity, but the reality here in Gaza shows that the problem isn't just the economy. It's the siege, the closed crossings, the war, and the collapse of the most basic services and fundamental rights. We in Gaza aren't talking about luxury or the economy; we're living a daily struggle to secure food, clean water, medical treatment, education, hygiene, and security. 🥺🥺🥺
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Imagine a system where contributing to the common good is our yardstick for success, not personal enrichment by any means possible.
Such a system would not extract a “cost of living.” A dignified life with access to modern housing, healthcare, etc., would be considered a human right. Furthermore, everyone would have a basic income they can use however they wish. Imagine the progress we could make as a species if more of us could contribute to science, to art, to all aspects of human knowledge and the human experience because we were no longer wasting our entire time on Earth just trying to make ends meet.
This is not some pipe dream. For the first time in history we have the technological means to implement such a system.
Instead, we choose to live under the yoke of capitalism, a cancer that rewards the tumours that feast on society. Instead we use our technology to build walls, to mass murder, and to destroy our own habitat.
Again for the first time in history, we have the technological means to destroy our entire species or to expand it to new horizons.
Humanity has reached adolescence. Whether we make it to adulthood is up to us entirely.
@aral Just one thought of mine. Accumulating wealth is a thrive for some people, which does not always imply egoism.
Squirrels, for example, do collect and hide as many resources in as many different stashes as possible to ensure survival over not so prosperous times.
But the squirrel does not hold a grudge if some of it gets eaten by others either.
If one contributes to the community in large quantities, even if it comes from some personal accumulative thrive, others shall not judge over it.
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The late great David Graber had it right. The value of someones work should be defined as the amount of care a person does at work.
For example:-
I work in IT for a massive multi-national corporation. I have what Graber famously described as a Bullshit Job. Hardly anything I do has any impact on the rest of the world. I certainly don't do anything that could be described as care as part of my job. My salary puts me in the top 5% of earnings in the UK.
My wife works in a council owned day center for people with many different disabilities both physical and mental. She basically makes people happy for a job. This means that she gets paid a tiny fraction above minimum wage.
Under Graber's formulation our pay rates would be reversed. Or my job would be deemed entirely unnecessary and I would be made redundant (yet again)
I think Graber would have said that so called "AI" is useless as it cannot care for humanity. The people running the AI dog-and-pony show certainly don't care for humanity.
@robcornelius couldn't agree more. When I was at my highest earning I was in "B2B SaaS/PaaS" where we just go around optimizing each others' pointless workflows that that just make investor cash balloon while they feast on the excess value created by real workers.
I quite literally, actually did more good for the world when I was cleaning floors for below minimum wage.
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Like Aral is saying, I think: Our incentives are all out of whack. The world will never heal so long as we're waiting on some hypothetical angelic capitalists to come along and build a brighter future in defiance of the wicked systemic incentives. Our messed up system *has* to change.
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@robcornelius couldn't agree more. When I was at my highest earning I was in "B2B SaaS/PaaS" where we just go around optimizing each others' pointless workflows that that just make investor cash balloon while they feast on the excess value created by real workers.
I quite literally, actually did more good for the world when I was cleaning floors for below minimum wage.
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Like Aral is saying, I think: Our incentives are all out of whack. The world will never heal so long as we're waiting on some hypothetical angelic capitalists to come along and build a brighter future in defiance of the wicked systemic incentives. Our messed up system *has* to change.
Damn straight. If things don't change really quickly humanity is doomed
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Imagine a system where contributing to the common good is our yardstick for success, not personal enrichment by any means possible.
Such a system would not extract a “cost of living.” A dignified life with access to modern housing, healthcare, etc., would be considered a human right. Furthermore, everyone would have a basic income they can use however they wish. Imagine the progress we could make as a species if more of us could contribute to science, to art, to all aspects of human knowledge and the human experience because we were no longer wasting our entire time on Earth just trying to make ends meet.
This is not some pipe dream. For the first time in history we have the technological means to implement such a system.
Instead, we choose to live under the yoke of capitalism, a cancer that rewards the tumours that feast on society. Instead we use our technology to build walls, to mass murder, and to destroy our own habitat.
Again for the first time in history, we have the technological means to destroy our entire species or to expand it to new horizons.
Humanity has reached adolescence. Whether we make it to adulthood is up to us entirely.
@aral@mastodon.ar.Institutional failure often begins with a lie disguised as efficiency: the claim that people can be cleanly reduced without remainder to categories and managed from a distance.
So one fix is simple to state and hard to fake: make abstraction answerable to the people it governs. A policy, classification, or model should not be allowed to harden into authority unless those it sorts can contest it, revise it, and force it to absorb what it missed. The moment a system can define people who cannot define themselves back, it is already drifting toward domination.
A second fix is to put cost back on the abstractor. Dehumanizing systems thrive when the people making the map never suffer for distorting the territory. So build in audit trails, review, appeals, and real consequences for bad classifications and bad policy frames. If abstraction is cheap for power, it will become reckless.
A third is to break the monopoly of the single frame. The most dangerous systems do not just simplify; they make one simplification official. That is where plural review matters: minority reports, adversarial oversight, competing models, organized dissent, and direct participation from the people being governed. Not because pluralism is morally pretty, but because it keeps categories from sealing themselves shut.
A fourth is to force contact with lived reality. Systems become cruel when their abstractions float free of narrative ground... Where metrics replace testimony, proxies replace experience, and administrative neatness replaces truth. So keep direct reporting, field contact, local knowledge, and first-person correction in the loop. A category that cannot survive contact with the people inside it does not deserve to survive.
The technical version is no different. Do not ask systems to “feel” more. Force them to expose uncertainty, preserve variance, show their assumptions, and remain revisable by the people they classify. A good system should make it easy to challenge a decision, inspect the frame behind it, and show where alternative interpretations were suppressed.
That is the real answer. Empathy is too flimsy when treated as a virtue. It can be performed, marketed, and weaponized. It only becomes reliable when turned into a design constraint: no abstraction without corrigibility, no classification without recourse, no power without feedback from the lives it organizes.
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Imagine a system where contributing to the common good is our yardstick for success, not personal enrichment by any means possible.
Such a system would not extract a “cost of living.” A dignified life with access to modern housing, healthcare, etc., would be considered a human right. Furthermore, everyone would have a basic income they can use however they wish. Imagine the progress we could make as a species if more of us could contribute to science, to art, to all aspects of human knowledge and the human experience because we were no longer wasting our entire time on Earth just trying to make ends meet.
This is not some pipe dream. For the first time in history we have the technological means to implement such a system.
Instead, we choose to live under the yoke of capitalism, a cancer that rewards the tumours that feast on society. Instead we use our technology to build walls, to mass murder, and to destroy our own habitat.
Again for the first time in history, we have the technological means to destroy our entire species or to expand it to new horizons.
Humanity has reached adolescence. Whether we make it to adulthood is up to us entirely.
@aral It would require addressing the deep-seating fears and anxieties that plague us: death and the other, for starters. Fear, as the man said, is the mind killer.
Too few revolutionaries put in the necessary work to understand the psychological foundations of our sociological pathologies. The world is the way it is for reasons. We cannot solve problems if we ignore root causes.
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@aral “The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.” -- Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: First Contact. Meanwhile I have to go back to being a rational market actor, which does not necessarily mean what some people might want it or believe it to mean, it entirely depends if you consider Milton Friedman as an evolutionary mistake in rational economic theory or not.
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Imagine a system where contributing to the common good is our yardstick for success, not personal enrichment by any means possible.
Such a system would not extract a “cost of living.” A dignified life with access to modern housing, healthcare, etc., would be considered a human right. Furthermore, everyone would have a basic income they can use however they wish. Imagine the progress we could make as a species if more of us could contribute to science, to art, to all aspects of human knowledge and the human experience because we were no longer wasting our entire time on Earth just trying to make ends meet.
This is not some pipe dream. For the first time in history we have the technological means to implement such a system.
Instead, we choose to live under the yoke of capitalism, a cancer that rewards the tumours that feast on society. Instead we use our technology to build walls, to mass murder, and to destroy our own habitat.
Again for the first time in history, we have the technological means to destroy our entire species or to expand it to new horizons.
Humanity has reached adolescence. Whether we make it to adulthood is up to us entirely.
@aral
Everyone would have a basic income... if money even still were to exist. -
Imagine a system where contributing to the common good is our yardstick for success, not personal enrichment by any means possible.
Such a system would not extract a “cost of living.” A dignified life with access to modern housing, healthcare, etc., would be considered a human right. Furthermore, everyone would have a basic income they can use however they wish. Imagine the progress we could make as a species if more of us could contribute to science, to art, to all aspects of human knowledge and the human experience because we were no longer wasting our entire time on Earth just trying to make ends meet.
This is not some pipe dream. For the first time in history we have the technological means to implement such a system.
Instead, we choose to live under the yoke of capitalism, a cancer that rewards the tumours that feast on society. Instead we use our technology to build walls, to mass murder, and to destroy our own habitat.
Again for the first time in history, we have the technological means to destroy our entire species or to expand it to new horizons.
Humanity has reached adolescence. Whether we make it to adulthood is up to us entirely.
"The abolition of armed forces had at once almost doubled the world’s effective wealth, and increased production had done the rest. As a result, it was difficult to compare the standard of living of twenty-first-century man with that of any of his predecessors. Everything was so cheap that the necessities of life were free, provided as a public service by the community, as roads, water, street lighting, and drainage had once been."
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