From all atop the parapets blow a multitude of coronets

[Yvain Wintersong]

And your Duke returns!

Ah, Brookshire. At last I view thee clearly as thy Duke. It's good to be in charge. Hmmm, let's see what's been happening. Hmmmmmmm. Yes. I see. Oh, that is something. Ah. Well.

I see that my ascension to the throne was viewed with some surprise.. I believe my first megalomaniacal and eccentric act as Duke will be to place a bounty on reindeer. Anyone who brings the head of a slain reindeer to my palace gets five erb! Spread the word far and wide among the hunters and foresters of Brookshire!

And it looks like we had a bit of a scuffle with the Elwynnese. I am pleased, but not surprised, to see that we came out on top. Let us never forget that we are Brookshire: the first, the best, the biggest! No foreigner will rule us so long as I have anything to say about it.

And Erik. I am pleased with your service as Regent and Emissary. As always, my coronet lies at your feet. Should you ever wish to take back the Duchy, you need only ask, and it is yours. But since you will not, the least I can do is confirm you as Baron of Dolor. Furthermore, for your good service I offer you a boon. Ask anything (reasonable) of me, and it will be granted.

And Krasniy. Krasniy Yastreb. My newest subject. I gather from your name you've an interest in communism, one that I as your local oppressive ruling class alas cannot share. But I am not a harsh man. I am prepared to meet you halfway on the communism issue. You drop the plank about killing me and my family and seizing our wealth, and I'll embrace Marx so far as subsidizing cheap vodka for all and holding big parades with tanks in them. If you ask nicely, I'll even let you create a cult of personality centered around me. I know a great guy in Brookshire Hamlet who makes ten meter high posters with my face on them.

And...hm. That would appear to be everyone. Three people, including myself. We are going to have to do something about that, oh yes. I will meditate on this Duchy's affairs and come up with a Plan of Action as soon as possible. Both of your comments are welcome, though I warn Krasniy that his comments are only welcome before he takes me up on that cheap vodka. I will not have this Duchy languish in boredom and weakness much longer. We are Brookshire, the first, the best, and the biggest of Duchies, and we will claim our birthright. Just as soon as I figure out what's going on politically, and why there are all those screams coming from the direction of Lunaris.

[Erik Mortis]

Once again, Welcome back M'lord.

I am quite content with my position as Baron of Dolor, and thank you for confirming it.

On the matter of my position while you have been gone, I take it you will be retaking your place in the Landsraad, and no longer require my services as Emissary?

[Krasniy Yastreb]

Indeed welcome m'lord. I bid you worry not about my political leanings. Truth is, since the days my Sovietesque micronational identity was established, I've moved on. Of course I retain the essential Marxian observation of the inherent injustice of a an economy based on the slushing around of surplus labour value which despite it's incalculability is eternally proven to exist through the very concept of profit... *deep breath* but I've dispensed with most of the rest. Particularly the ideas of dissolution of the family *shudder*

The fact is, unlike the weaselly surplus-skimming bourgeoisie your own aristocratic class is at least candid and open about keeping the common man down. For this I salute you. However I remain interested in your vodka offer Also the parades (Lower Lunaris is all flat farmland; good tank country).

As for the tortured howls of countless incarcerated souls drifting over from my county... just be glad they're not on the streets. That reminds me, I need to do an inventory of the tranquiliser stores....

[Aurangzeb Khan]

Lower Lunaris is all flat farmland; good tank country

I shall be along to test that shortly.

[Yvain Wintersong]

Of course I retain the essential Marxian observation of the inherent injustice of a an economy based on the slushing around of surplus labour value which despite it's incalculability is eternally proven to exist through the very concept of profit... *deep breath* but I've dispensed with most of the rest

Yvain wrinkles his brow and thinks for a moment.

I never did get Marxist labor theory. Yes, the currency value of your labor must necessarily be slightly greater than what you're paid for it. But isn't that true of all economic transactions? No two people will bother entering into an economic transaction unless each person thinks he will come out ahead afterwards. From an objective point of view, if the value of the goods exchanged is measured in currency, only one of these two people can be right. From a subjective point of view, both people can be right to think they're better off after the transaction.

For example, I buy a can of soda from the local shop. The soda cost 3 rubles to make, and the shopkeeper's selling it for 4 rubles. From an objective point of view, I've been exploited, since I lost one ruble. From a subjective point of view, I'm happier having the soda than I am having the four rubles (or else I wouldn't have bought it) and the shopkeeper's happier having the rubles than the soda (or else he wouldn't have sold it). We both come out ahead.

Yes, I'd be even happier if I could get the soda at cost. But any shopkeeper who sold it at cost would have no reason to be operating a shop instead of doing something more fun with his time. The shop would close down and I wouldn't be able to get my soda at all.

I don't see why the situation is any different with labor.

[Krasniy Yastreb]

The 'fourth ruble' is justified if it goes to the shopkeeper. Mercantile labour is just as legitimate as that expended in production. But inevitably the following situation arises:

A certain proportion of that fourth ruble represents the shopkeeper's labour value. What's left represents the labour value of his superiors, distributors, suppliers, etc. Now to reflect the labour value of the soda's production, all the revenue gained from sale of the product must go to the workers that contributed to its sale (this is where it gets tricky, finding objective means to measure how it's divided up, hence the aforementioned incalculability). But inevitably in a capitalist system, we have a thing called Profit (revenue minus expenditure) which in many cases goes out as dividends to shareholders, who (unless the enterprise is 100% worker owned) have no part in the production of the soda. In buying their shares they have essentially laid claim to a proportion of the workers' labour value, and reap its rewards without lifting a finger. In ancient times that sort of thing was called slavery.

It's only accepted because people,nality, don't seem to mind if their wages are less than they should be, as long as the goods they buy are cheaper. And that would be fine and dandy if it weren't for the fact the system they're buying into widens inequality over time, with hard workers generally working more for less and their superiors working less for more. In the Marxian system this wouldn't happen as the value of a man's hard work would go back to him in full, instead of having a few pennies skimmed off it and concentrated into the hands of the undeserving.

Of course the Marxian model would only really work if some sense of objective labour value could be calculated. In this sense it is fatally flawed as bent merchants have been over-marking their price lists to the naive and desperate since the dawn of civilisation. But I stand by Marx's critique of the capitalist system, especially that the very incalculability of objective labour value provides a mask behind which to hide the fact that even without shareholder dividends, the wealth skimmed off worker's labour tends to end up in the pockets of their bourgeois superiors via subtly tweaked payscales.

*takes another deep breath*

Anyway in a few decades civilisation will lie in a smoking, resource-depleted ruin... so I tend not to sweat the small stuff too much. When we're all eating berries to survive, the last thing on people's minds will be the welfare of some redundant economic class...

[Yvain Wintersong]

Any business that spends money on something useless will be outcompeted by a business that doesn't. So the idea of a parasitic class being subsidized by profit seems very unlikely to me: if a zero-profit workers' cooperative were more efficient, these would outcompete capitalist companies and the marketplace would look very different. Since businesses that charge the extra ruble do outcompete businesses that don't, that extra ruble must go to something more valuable to the success of the company than workers' wages.

Giving it to shareholders is more valuable than workers' wages because it allows the company to sell stock, which allows it to buy more industrial capital and expand operations or become more efficient.

The more companies expand, the more demand there is for labor, and the higher wages go. So even though a naive surface-level view of profits suggest they hurt wages, in the complexities of a real economy they actually help them. That's why wages are so high in America and the Eurozone versus in communist countries where they're supposedly "fair" (well, one reason, anyway). If the economy is working right, it should be impossible for a company giving money to people who literally don't deserve it to succeed.

Of course, there are lots of possible economic pathologies in which this sort of healthy economic model doesn't hold, but it's by no means necessary that paying workers at less than cost should exploit them.

And speak for yourself: in a few decades, I intend to be playing with nanotechnology in a post-scarcity economy.

Oh, I'm sorry. Did I mention I'm always like this? More political opinionatedness than sense, I guess.

[Erik Mortis]

I smell social Darwinism...

[Yvain Wintersong]

Absolutely not. I am completely opposed to social Darwinism on an individual level. When I mentioned that more efficient businesses outcompete less efficient ones, I guess you could interpret that as Darwinism on an economic level, but I don't know anyone except the most hard-core communists who don't agree with that. If you read my post more closely, you'll see that I was arguing for economic competition precisely because I think it helps "the little guy".

[Krasniy Yastreb]

Capitalism emulates Darwinian natural selection, but fails to account for the equally natural tendency of species reliant on survival by exponential growth to consume all their resource base and become extinct.

Humans lived for 2 million years as hunter-gatherers in what was essentially a Marxian economy - from each according to ability, to each according to need. Therefore it can claim to be the most successful economic model by longevity. The perpetual growth model we see in civilisation, on the other hand, has only been going for 8,000 years and certainly will have eaten itself to death within this millenium (even if we colonise other planets to exploit, the sheer exponential speed of the process will exhaust them too in a short time). I'm not blaming capitalism alone for this madness - all civilised societies including socialist ones contribute to it - it's just that capitalism is the most aggressively shameless about it.

Much as you have political opinionatedness, so I have a tendency to extend all questions of human existence to an anthropological level. We're animals just like any other, subject to the same laws of nature...

[Yvain Wintersong]

You can't generalize success in a tiny tribal economy to an advanced global economy of today. Evolutionary psychology (have you studied it formally? You seem like the sort of person who might be interested in it) suggests that beyond groups of about 150 people, informal and friendly relationships become impossible and formal legalistic frameworks become necessary. I've seen no evidence that Marxism can function in those situations.

I, for one, would rather not revert to a pre-technological agrarian state with a life expectancy of 40. I realize our resources are being used up at an alarming rate, but because of the incentive structure of capitalism, as long as everything doesn't fail at once people will be motivated to find solutions before it's too late. Witness the current interest in hybrid cars and renewable energy.

I also have a lot of faith in technology. Even if we don't get a singularity in two decades like I'd hope, workable fusion power would solve a lot of problems. Genetically modified crops have already made a liar out of Malthus, and their potential hasn't even begun to be tapped.

I agree that we have no guarantee of surviving the next few centuries as a growth-oriented, technological culture. But if the alternative is reverting to ignorant ape-men, I say we try.

[b3n|<3r|\|]

We're not animals like any other. Animals are controlled directly by their instincts. Humans have what they believe to be independant thought influenced heavily by their instincts. That's what sets us apart.

Oh... and this guy. ->

[Krasniy Yastreb]

It wouldn't matter if humans were absolutely omniscient, we're still subject to the laws of nature

Anyway, in Paleolithic times, life expectancy in some parts of the world was almost as good as it is today. It only took a dive during the Neolithic transition to monocropping agriculture, reducing diversity of diet and impacting people's health as a result. That's the period Thomas Hobbes famously described life as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short".

And indeed Marxism couldn't function in the traditional sense if it were reliant on Dunbar's Number (the 150 you mentioned). But in principle it could remain in such small decentralised spheres if reinforced by cultural and social customs alone. It doesn't necessarily need a state framework to support it (indeed in its final form it cannot; Marx said this himself).

Technology may be able to maintain the bloatedness of our species for a while longer, but the idea of being so dependent on the product of something as narrow as human intelligence chills me. Far better in my opinion to stay close to the rules of nature, which has a few thousand times more experience....

[Erik Mortis]

HA

We're not animals like any other. Animals are controlled directly by their instincts. Humans have what they believe to be independant thought influenced heavily by their instincts. That's what sets us apart.

Oh... and this guy. ->

!!!!!!!!!!!


HAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[hypatias mom]

I happen to agree with Benkern. The idea of trusting nature for her benevolence toward our species implies that a impartial nature would treat us better than it has other species in the past. After all, over 90 % of all species of all time are extinct, and untul recently, not one was at the hand of humans. No it was at the hands of this wondrous Nature, and all that implies. I would rather believe we can use our intellect and attempt to forestall the "natural" results of human mistakes and foolishness. But natural or intellectually aided, I believe man alone will not be sufficient to solve all the problems looming for humanity.

[Erik Mortis]

In the long run we are doomed.

[Aurangzeb Khan]

We should devote our resources to escaping and plundering other planets. As for the post-scarcity economy - well we might get there but there will be a few hellish corrections along the way (biofuels for instance, how on earth did we convince ourselves that was a good idea).

[Yvain Wintersong]

It wouldn't matter if humans were absolutely omniscient, we're still subject to the laws of nature

Nature is a very tolerant mistress. As long as you don't try to go faster than light, create mass/energy out of nothing, or move heat against a gradient for free, she pretty much lets you do anything you want as long as you're smart enough to think up the technology for it. I'm not going to sit back and cry that I can't freely move heat against a gradient as long as I can use technology to meet my basic needs (which in my case include a warm house, a filling meal, and unlimited power).

Anyway, in Paleolithic times, life expectancy in some parts of the world was almost as good as it is today. It only took a dive during the Neolithic transition to monocropping agriculture, reducing diversity of diet and impacting people's health as a result. That's the period Thomas Hobbes famously described life as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short".

Interesting. What's your source? Even if that were true, lovely as it would be, it wouldn't help me personally. I happen to have terrible, terrible nearsightedness. Every morning I pop in a cheap contact lens that gives me 20-20 vision, but if I'd been born in the Paleolithic, I'd probably have been left out to die because I could never make a good hunter. So I think I still prefer modern society, thank you.

And indeed Marxism couldn't function in the traditional sense if it were reliant on Dunbar's Number (the 150 you mentioned). But in principle it could remain in such small decentralised spheres if reinforced by cultural and social customs alone. It doesn't necessarily need a state framework to support it (indeed in its final form it cannot; Marx said this himself).

Ah, I think I was misled. I was imagining you, based on your feelings about wages, as a traditional steel-and-coal Soviet communist, whereas you're really a more back-to-nature purist sort. In that case, I agree with you that the Paleolithic life-style might be more conducive to human happiness than our own. But unless there's some clever plan I haven't heard of, communism doesn't claim to be able to bring back the Paleolithic hunter-gatherer life-style. The best you could do is create farming communes sort of like post-agriculture Neolithic village society.

And the only person I've ever heard of who actually tried that on a large scale was Pol Pot. He failed for quite a lot of reasons, but the most important seems to be that you really can't turn back the clock. Even though we as detached philosophers might be able to agree that a Paleolithic life-style is better, for people actually living it, modern society with its conveniences and good food and fancy clothing is irresistably attractive. The only way to keep an agrarian communist society going would be through a repressive police state, which spoils the purpose of the whole project.

Right now, we're both people living in a 21st century society in which humans have a certain human nature and we have less than complete control over the political systems. In this situation, I believe that our chances of creating a successful Paleolithic or Neolithic style communal society are very close to zero. Our chances of making capitalism work a bit better in order to prevent it from collapsing until we have enough technology to save ourselves are, in my opinion, pretty high. One reason I am wary of communists is that they have no interest in doing this, and usually try to harass and cause trouble for those who do.

Technology may be able to maintain the bloatedness of our species for a while longer, but the idea of being so dependent on the product of something as narrow as human intelligence chills me. Far better in my opinion to stay close to the rules of nature, which has a few thousand times more experience.

First, I don't quite agree with your terms. Everything that is, is natural. Cockroaches evolved to be hard to kill because they're small and hardy. Humans evolved to be hard to kill because they're smart and develop technology. Our instincts are exactly what's driven us to the society we're in today. The course you recommend, voluntarily abandoning useful tools, is an extremely unnatural way for an evolving species to think. I'm not condemning it on those terms, because I don't think "natural" has to inevitably mean "good", but if you do believe that, it's something you should be considering.

My problem with what you're saying is that if we close to nature, our species probably has a million or so more years, tops, before we get hit by an asteroid or a climate-changing volcano or something and wiped out, just like any other species. If we take advantage of our species' unique advantages and advance, we might get wiped out tomorrow, but we might also be able to get enough technology to deflect asteroids, stop up volcanoes, and be the one species to escape Earth and survive indefinitely. I think that would be pretty neat.

A question for you, then. What's your goal here? Human happiness? Preservation of the environment? Survival of the species for as long as possible? Satisfaction of some ideology? Or what? And is this just something you say, or are you hoping it gets implemented in the real world? How do you want it to be implemented?

[Aurangzeb Khan]

Quote:
Anyway, in Paleolithic times, life expectancy in some parts of the world was almost as good as it is today. It only took a dive during the Neolithic transition to monocropping agriculture, reducing diversity of diet and impacting people's health as a result. That's the period Thomas Hobbes famously described life as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short".


Interesting. What's your source? Even if that were true, lovely as it would be, it wouldn't help me personally. I happen to have terrible, terrible nearsightedness. Every morning I pop in a cheap contact lens that gives me 20-20 vision, but if I'd been born in the Paleolithic, I'd probably have been left out to die because I could never make a good hunter. So I think I still prefer modern society, thank you.

Sounds awfully like the noble savage trope to me.

[Krasniy Yastreb]

The nobility of a given savage varies widely according to local circumstances. Of what we know about surviving primitive trives today, some are chilled out and almost hippie-like in nature. Others are built entirely on cycles of ritual abuse. I'm not saying a paleolithic mode of existence is guaranteed to be pleasant, but it bodes quite well for the survival of our species. Means to an end, Ardy, I'm sure you of all folk can appreciate the good sense of it

Bringing me on to goals... I don't necessarily wish for some kind of organised effort to bring such a sustainable existence about - in fact doing it that way is oxymoronic and impossible (the Pol Pot example is a good one). As was mentioned, nature is all that is... and if it suits nature better to have paleolithic humans, it will achieve it by a biological overshoot, dieoff and reformation of humanity along decentralised and less complex lines. I understand the technology-will-save-us argument, I just don't believe in it. As a species we'll trip up somewhere eventually. Nature doesn't trip up because nature is inviolable in the long run. It's a longevity contest we have no hope of winning.

For what it's worth, I'm physically slim and my upper body strength is pathetic. I wouldn't exactly be leading hunting parties myself. Maybe I'd get a gig as a crazed shamanic medicine man or something. Or I'd just be left on a rock to die. Point is, I'd probably accept whatever was coming to me. Call it a weak will maybe... I call it pragmatism

[Erik Mortis]

Interesting. What's your source? Even if that were true, lovely as it would be, it wouldn't help me personally. I happen to have terrible, terrible nearsightedness. Every morning I pop in a cheap contact lens that gives me 20-20 vision, but if I'd been born in the Paleolithic, I'd probably have been left out to die because I could never make a good hunter. So I think I still prefer modern society, thank you.

And the race would be stronger for it.... (I'd be dead too)

[Yvain Wintersong]

I guess none of us would have done so well in the Paleolithic, then.

But now the three of us have spent one day and one night discussing Marx's value theory of labor together. According to ancient legends, that forges a bond among men that can never be broken. I love you both. Long live Brookshire!

For absence of a better place to say this: Krasniy, if you have any strong opinions on the Musica issue, this is probably your last chance to tell me.

[Krasniy Yastreb]

Musica can burn to the ground for all I ca... *looks at calendar* Hehe...

Carry on as you will, m'lord!

[Yvain Wintersong]

Today I found a webpage where adorable kittens attack the labor theory of value.

[Krasniy Yastreb]

Looks like someone needs a spell in the Kitty Gulag...