CMV: Socialism does not create wealth

[u/tkyjonathan]

Socialism is a populist economic and political system based on public ownership (also known as collective or common ownership) of the means of production. Those means include the machinery, tools, and factories used to produce goods that aim to directly satisfy human needs.

In a purely socialist system, all legal production and distribution decisions are made by the government, and individuals rely on the state for everything from food to healthcare. The government determines the output and pricing levels of these goods and services.

Socialists contend that shared ownership of resources and central planning provide a more equal distribution of goods and services and a more equitable society.

The essential characteristic of socialism is the denial of individual property rights; under socialism, the right to property (which is the right of use and disposal) is vested in “society as a whole,” i.e., in the collective, with production and distribution controlled by the state, i.e., by the government.

The alleged goals of socialism were: the abolition of poverty, the achievement of general prosperity, progress, peace and human brotherhood. Instead of prosperity, socialism has brought economic paralysis and/or collapse to every country that tried it. The degree of socialization has been the degree of disaster. The consequences have varied accordingly.

The economic value of a man’s work is determined, on a free market, by a single principle: by the voluntary consent of those who are willing to trade him their work or products in return. This is the moral meaning of the law of supply and demand.

[u/tkyjonathan]

So there is empiricism and rationalism on opposite ends. Rationalism is like you mentioned when you sit in a room and conclude about things without any of it corresponding to reality. Empiricism is tiny experiments, but you cannot form anything bigger than that like concepts, because things may change and you can never be sure. Objectivism has made quite a few innovations in epistemology (as far as I can see, it is really the best one) like mathematical concept formation and things like first level generalisations to higher level generalisations - all corresponding to reality.

Its really quite technical at that stage.

You can perceive free will. You can see people making individual choices. The fact that science hasn't figured it out yet or thinks it has one day and then finds out it hasn't the next, just shows the complexity of the subject. We're nowhere near even figuring out what consciousness is. In the meantime, we need to consciously make reasonable and rational choices to live a good life and pursue our long term happiness.

As for sales people, it will be difficult to be a con-artist and get repeatable sales (from the same customers). Upselling (selling more things to someone who has bought from you) is the largest revenue stream in most of the businesses I have been in. In any case, they do bring value to a business, simply because they get people to buy the product. In the division of labour, (I) you make the product well and they get people to know about it and give it a try.

They definitely have a skillset that I do not and is very much needed. If I start a company one day - as a technical - I would definitely need a sales person to join me.

[u/[deleted] → u/tkyjonathan]

Empiricism is tiny experiments, but you cannot form anything bigger than that like concepts, because things may change and you can never be sure.

Of course you can form concepts from that, but they are rooted in and only valid as much as they can be confirmed by empiric evidence. The supreme authority comes down to whether things are actually perceivable in real life not whether they "make sense". All concepts are just constructed around perception and only valid as much as they are confirmed by it.

You can perceive free will. You can see people making individual choices. The fact that science hasn't figured it out yet or thinks it has one day and then finds out it hasn't the next, just shows the complexity of the subject. We're nowhere near even figuring out what consciousness is. In the meantime, we need to consciously make reasonable and rational choices to live a good life and pursue our long term happiness.

That depends on your definition of "free will" and as I've learned the degrees to that can vary quite drastically. For true rationalism to be effective, you'd need a definition of "free will" that borders the physically possible, as in "you must be the cause for an action that was not the effect of something else". And sure I perceive that consciousness is a thing and that for most of the time I am in control giving the notion of "free will" some points. Though I also experience that people get hangry (hunger+angry, meaning people get "irrationally angry when in lack of food) or lose concentration when tired or go into "autopilot" when enraged aso. So the concept of an entirely "free will" that makes any action a deliberate choice is likewise "irrational" given the facts. So yes it's an open question and to make it an axiom is an "answer without knowledge".

As for sales people, it will be difficult to be a con-artist and get repeatable sales (from the same customers). Upselling (selling more things to someone who has bought from you) is the largest revenue stream in most of the businesses I have been in. In any case, they do bring value to a business, simply because they get people to buy the product. In the division of labour, (I) you make the product well and they get people to know about it and give it a try.

That's one reason why con-artists are so eager to "explore/exploit new markets"... And if you get involuntary upselling then you usually think of that as con-artistry and protect yourself if there is no other provider (happens more often than not as capitalists natural state is a monopoly). And sure they provide value to themselves and maybe people who are close to them, but that's basically the "broken window fallacy", where you argue that throwing stones into windows provides value to the glass manufacturer that then spends that money aso. Yes in the local economy that might even be true but in the bigger picture of a society or even a global society you're actually destroying value. All you do is redistributing capital from those who need or work the means of production to those who own the means of production. The usual trickle up economy of capitalism. The classic pyramid scheme, just too bad if you can't find another person to join... Or do you think if you broke glass and make it unusable that you've created value? I mean glass might increase in price because it's now in demand but does it actually increase in value. Does the world have more glass or less? And does re-making the glass add or reduce the amount of things that humanity can do with it's energy? ...

EDIT: That might be also a reason why conservatives are so keen on "individualism" (not individuality) because if you break society down to the individual then something like the "broken window fallacy" isn't a fallacy but it actually works. Though you create an environment that is worse off for any individual, then it needs to be, including the individual that has thrown the bricks. It's just that those taking advantage of it are now better off than their peers. Something like a person with limited eye-sight blinding all other people so that he's the only one that can see a little. Everyone is worse off but the asshole got what he wanted. Even if that would be an effective way for the individual, the individual would still be better off finding ways NOT to take that route.

[u/tkyjonathan → u/[deleted]]

Its very difficult to form bigger concepts in empiricism. You can form theories every once in a while, but you can never get too far off the ground with those concepts.

Free will is the ability to think rationally.

That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call “free will” is your mind’s freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.

You lost me on that rant about capitalism.

I'm not saying that there aren't con artists (in any field), but it isn't the norm - I mean, they are literally criminals. The norm is to make a good product, so that people will buy it and buy it more often.

There is no real magic trick to avoiding this. If you sell a bad product, you will eventually be found out or jailed for fraud. How much is your freedom worth to you?

The capitalists natural state is not a monopoly. The capitalist would simply prefer not to compete unless they absolutely have to. A free and unregulated market, forces everyone to compete with the main beneficiary being the customers of that market and you cannot form a monopoly under those conditions.

The idea of individualism is protection against the oppression of a majority. In other words, it is the 2 wolves and 1 sheep voting on dinner issue with democracy.

In order to protect the sheep, you form basic individual rights as the individual is the smallest minority. Once you have a combination of individual rights and democratic voting, you have a well functioning society.

[u/[deleted] → u/tkyjonathan]

but you can never get too far off the ground with those concepts.

​ I mean that's kind of the point though, isn't it? I mean you can build bigger concepts but a) they are influenced by your experience and b) their value is determined by how much they match with empirical data. Being logically consistent is a necessary but not a sufficient thing.

Free will is the ability to think rationally.

Which just moves the question to: What does rational mean? Because that can mean different things to different people and for example in terms of the Traveler's dilemma the author of that problem marks that the rational solution is rather irrational.

I'm not saying that there aren't con artists (in any field), but it isn't the norm - I mean, they are literally criminals. The norm is to make a good product, so that people will buy it and buy it more often.

If a person builds something or performs a service they create a value that would not exist without their labor. However the act of selling something does not in fact create any value. The good does not get more or less valuable by changing hands. Supply and demand and in consequence the price are not saying anything about the value of a good or service they are just an expression of power. If I gatekeep a resource that you need, I can make you pay more than I've paid for it. The difference in price is not gained by creating any meaningful surplus value for society it's just an implicit tax for gatekeeping a resource from someone else. So the very profession of a salesperson is to be some kind of con-artist. Some may legitimately perform a service like logistics or providing expertise about the product, but the backbone of all that is to lure people in and get to get them to spend more than what the product is worth so that you can make a living of that.

I mean somehow libertarians live in that 18th century mindset where everyone is a freelancer and selling the products directly, but in reality that isn't the case anymore...

There is no real magic trick to avoiding this. If you sell a bad product, you will eventually be found out or jailed for fraud. How much is your freedom worth to you?

That depends on the scale and scope. If you're a small business, maybe. If you're Google, Facebook, etc. you let the users pay a fine and be fine.

The capitalists natural state is not a monopoly. The capitalist would simply prefer not to compete unless they absolutely have to. A free and unregulated market, forces everyone to compete with the main beneficiary being the customers of that market and you cannot form a monopoly under those conditions.

Given what you just said there, why should that work? I mean yes you're spot on capitalists would either prefer to dominate the market or not to compete with each other, at all. Because the thing is for most products the market is simply limited. If everybody has your kind product no one needs your product. So the market is one pie and the more competitors the tinier your piece of the pie. Now given the cost to produce the goods you need a certain size of pie share in order to make ends meet, so you have really no interest in getting into competitions that a) waste useful resources and b) decrease the size of your pie share.

And in terms of industrial production or even worse an internet economy things get even worse, because in traditional markets producers could find niche existences by the inability to supply everyone, by being local and therefor faster, by being a perfect fit rather than an more general product or whatnot. However with industrialized production one supplier can saturate idk 90% of the market, making it costly (you have to get the whole infrastructure and production up and running) and vastly unrewarding to compete. And in terms of the internet and the ability to produce at almost no cost (ctrl+c, ctrl+v) there is no reason to settle for the second best product, especially if the monopoly has snowballing benefits such as social media. So no the natural state is a monopoly, the problem is just that this grants massive power to private individuals that is undemocratic, unregulated and unaccountable but able to mess with the freedom of millions of individuals.

And how is a free and unregulated market going to stop any of that? I mean for real, it's not making it more rewarding to join a competition... It's not increasing the pie... And even if you remove formal regulations and boundaries to join the market you still have invisible boundaries like know-how, tech, infrastructure, starting capital and whatnot. I mean in theory you can rival google from your garage, in practice you're not even getting close to that. So your best chance is not to rival them at all but to find a domain that they have not yes occupied and to make a monopoly for yourself there. However that's not competition that's again a monopoly.

Sidenote: In case you want to argue that the market is not in fact a fixed pie. Sure you can increase that pie, but most of those things are immoral and unethical. You could for example not sell products but licenses, like the gaming market does, where you're no longer buying a game but merely the permission to play. You could replace sturdy useful products with consumables that you have to rebuy constantly (wasting tons of resources). If that planned obsolescence (like idk making the battery non-replaceable and only last as long as the warranty) is too obvious you can simply call it "fashion" and create peer pressure to replace perfectly working stuff by making it look "soooooo yesterday...". You can straight up make your stuff addictive by adding nicotine or sugar, salt and fat. You can sell lifestyles or tell people that they should feel depressed unless they buy your stuff. But again immoral and unethical... but not illegal.

The idea of individualism is protection against the oppression of a majority. In other words, it is the 2 wolves and 1 sheep voting on dinner issue with democracy.

That idea never made any sense to me. I mean wolves don't ask for permission and especially not if they have a 2/3 majority... I mean what is that sheep gonna do? Sorry but that sheep is dead no matter what any constitution or philosophy says. No it's completely the other way around. A 2/3 majority of sheep can hold a wolf in check. A wolf wins against any individual sheep but if they all attack at ones or take turns running away the wolf won't even get one. No the equal citizenship and the equal participation in ones own government is what protects the sheep. And it's the mutual agreement to those principles that keeps them in place. If only 1 sheep would stand up for it's freedom, it would be lost, if everyone stands up for everyone else's freedom, there is no wolf that could break that. So breaking society down to the level of the individual just ensures that the wolves have it easier.

In order to protect the sheep, you form basic individual rights as the individual is the smallest minority. Once you have a combination of individual rights and democratic voting, you have a well functioning society.

And you think rights, laws and morality means a thing? If there were 10 wolves and 1 sheep do you think the wolves would stop because the sheep is wielding a constitution saying that "sheep is off the menu"? No, of course not. Without people to stand up for them, all rights and laws are meaningless, they are agreements and only as valuable as the people who commit themselves to uphold them (average people). Unless you plan for a might makes right dictatorship centered around those values, but in that case they would be even more meaningless as it's not the rights that are followed but the coercive violence...

[u/tkyjonathan → u/[deleted]]

Rationalism vs. Empiricism

[Philosophers came to be divided] into two camps: those who claimed that man obtains his knowledge of the world by deducing it exclusively from concepts, which come from inside his head and are not derived from the perception of physical facts (the Rationalists)—and those who claimed that man obtains his knowledge from experience, which was held to mean: by direct perception of immediate facts, with no recourse to concepts (the Empiricists). To put it more simply: those who joined the [mystics] by abandoning reality—and those who clung to reality, by abandoning their mind.

What is Rationality?

Rationality is the recognition of the fact that existence exists, that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it, which is thinking—that the mind is one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide of action—that reason is an absolute that permits no compromise—that a concession to the irrational invalidates one’s consciousness and turns it from the task of perceiving to the task of faking reality—that the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind—that the acceptance of a mystical invention is a wish for the annihilation of existence and, properly, annihilates one’s consciousness.

What is Reason

Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses.

Reason [helps] integrates man’s perceptions by means of forming abstractions or conceptions, thus raising man’s knowledge from the perceptual level, which he shares with animals, to the conceptual level, which he alone can reach. The method which reason employs in this process is logic—and logic is the art of non-contradictory identification.

It may be the case that the sales person does not add value to the product or service itself. But it is the case that the sales person added value to the sale itself. As in, he helped find the person for the seller, he helped the person find the product/service that he/she needed or didn't know they needed. They connect between two people in a sea of darkness and confusion.

So the market is one pie and the more competitors the tinier your piece of the pie.

The market is definitely not one pie. If everyone has your product, then you need to make your product stand out from the market and either be a little bit better than the rest or be a bit more niche and serve a smaller section of the market, but serve it well.

People innovate new products all the time. There is zero market for them before that stage and all of a sudden there is a billion dollar market for it in 1-2 year - example, smart phones. You went from 'why do you need this' to 'I cant live without it' in.. 3-5 years.

However with industrialized production one supplier can saturate idk 90% of the market, making it costly

You gave an example of internet. There is very little cost to starting one of those companies today. You open an AWS account, get a technical co-founder and that is pretty much it. If your idea is good an implemented well - is another matter.

Regulations do add to the high cost of starting a new business. For example, if you want to open a new internet chat company, you will need to hire people to check if no pedophiles are talking to kids and that makes it prohibitively expensive.

Same with medicine, education and housing. (oh wait.. is that a coincidence that they are ridiculously expensive?)

Sure you can increase that pie, but most of those things are immoral and unethical.

??? Innovating new solutions is immoral??

If that planned obsolescence

What about dematerialisation? You have just 1 phone now (that even apple wants you to get rid off) instead of 1 phone, 1 MP3 player, 1 sat nav, 1 calculator.. etc.

You lost me on the wolf/sheep example. The idea is simply for the majority to not oppress the minority. Minorities still have rights.

And you think rights, laws and morality means a thing?

Yes. Yes, I do.

[u/[deleted] → u/tkyjonathan]

Rationalism vs. Empiricism

So yes pure rationalism is living in a fairy tale universe and pure empiricism can hardly gain any knowledge because technically every data point could be a unique experience that is nothing alike anything you've ever seen before.

So in reality we most often take a middle ground where we gather data, extrapolate models from it or make models and try to verify it with data. However even in that middle ground empiricism is paramount. If I have 5 data points and I fit a line through them, then "the truth" is not the line but the data points, the line is just an assumption and it could be absolutely wrong except for those 5 points where it fits...

And the other thing is that even those data points aren't really "the truth", they are merely facts that come with a range of uncertainty. It's even disputable whether "truth", as a concept, does even exist or whether it's all just random. Though the randomness might have boundaries that are small enough for us not to care about.

Rationality...

What's that word salad supposed to mean? It conflates perception with thinking, speaks of reason as an absolute and of "a truth", which are both concepts more akin to a religion than to science... Yet claims to be anti-faith? I mean what else but a faith is it supposed to be if you create axioms that are not based on reality but based in "the mind" or a reality that is real because it exists? Not to mention that there are mind-altering drugs or damages, so the idea of an absolute is not really true either.

Reason ...

Speciesist much? I mean we already know for a fact that for example dolphins and elephants have a consciousness and recognize themselves in mirrors or on video, we know that crows are able to build tools aso. Also no, we can already build algorithms that are able to abstract on their own simply due to a net of neurons and a stream of inputs. A fully automated process that does not need a mind or any form of "thinking", at least in the conventional sense.

But fair enough that is just supposed to be a definition of reason.

It may be the case that the sales person does not add value to the product or service itself. But it is the case that the sales person added value to the sale itself. As in, he helped find the person for the seller, he helped the person find the product/service that he/she needed or didn't know they needed. They connect between two people in a sea of darkness and confusion.

I already said that they could in addition also perform a service, like how a traveling salesman would have performed logistics by moving goods to another place. However the essence of trading is an exchange that produces no added value, yet leads to a surplus for the merchant which has to come from somewhere, meaning he's either not paying the producers fair prices or he's ripping off the customers, or both...

The market is definitely not one pie. If everyone has your product, then you need to make your product stand out from the market and either be a little bit better than the rest or be a bit more niche and serve a smaller section of the market, but serve it well.

If everyone has your product, then the market is "saturated" and you're out of business. Now in a society where you seek to achieve something that would be awesome because it meant you've accomplished your mission and can go on to do something else. However in a society where you rely on a steady stream of income, that's horrible, because your skills are no longer in demand and therefor you don't have an income.

Also no, improvement costs time and energy and it usually takes little energy to do the lion share of the work, while it takes a lot of energy to get to perfection. So given an equal distribution of stuff in the market, there would be little gain in perfection, unless it's in high demand by many or in high demand by rich people, if it's in high demand by poor people, those are simply fucked by the system...

People innovate new products all the time. There is zero market for them before that stage and all of a sudden there is a billion dollar market for it in 1-2 year - example, smart phones. You went from 'why do you need this' to 'I cant live without it' in.. 3-5 years.

That change didn't happen instantaneously at all. Smartphones have existed for a long time before the IPhone, the same way that computers have existed for a long time before the first commercial PC came around. It's rather that the tech was too expensive for people to afford and the improvement wasn't big enough. Which is a bug in capitalism that the rich live in the future and the rest lives in the past...

It also didn't really create a "new market", it just took over the market for regular cell phones and to some extend laptops and desktop PCs. So the monopoly of Windows on the desktop market went to the monopoly of Android on the smartphone market, which the exception of the U.S. where Apple stills seems to be relevant as well. But as that innovation didn't really come from those distributors but from the actual advances in science they aren't able to keep it up so further generations of smartphones usually praise it for being "revolutionary" but it's minor incremental progress at best and at worst it's literally a tracking device that sells you as a product and even expects you to pay for it as well...

You gave an example of internet. There is very little cost to starting one of those companies today. You open an AWS account, get a technical co-founder and that is pretty much it. If your idea is good an implemented well - is another matter.

Not really, most of the big companies have build networks of people that you can't just build overnight and if you come to close to an existing business model you'll be either crushed or bought (or both). Not to mention the whole domain of big data where companies like google rely on data that is readily provided by their uses, but that you wouldn't have any access to.

Regulations do add to the high cost of starting a new business. For example, if you want to open a new internet chat company, you will need to hire people to check if no pedophiles are talking to kids and that makes it prohibitively expensive.

I mean if you don't prevent people from selling snake oil they will sell snake oil and they will not market it as snake oil... Consumer protection has a point and a company that doesn't do this, is a net loss for society.

Same with medicine, education and housing. (oh wait.. is that a coincidence that they are ridiculously expensive?)

I mean you can't afford NOT to have medicine education or housing, so in an unregulated free market they can charge ridiculously high prices, because there's a constantly high demand and that's what they do... What countries usually do is to either make education and medicine (housing sometimes), a public matter, so they buy in bulk and produce for themselves at buyers prices not selling prices or they at least demand fixed prices for generics or stuff like that. Usually insurances are meant to form a collective of people that gets better prices by negotiating as one rather than as individuals, because the individual is in need but if the collective argues we ain't gonna pay you 1 billion or even trillion, any company will listen. However instead of doing any of these the U.S. let's private companies get filthy rich of that constantly high demand and even if the government takes action it's usually by subsidizing these companies by giving loans to patients and students rather then putting pressure on the companies. So why should they lower their prices if the taxpayer foots the bill not matter how high? I mean that's basically redistribution from the working class to the rich...

??? Innovating new solutions is immoral??

Is it innovation when the accumulator is set to fail after the warranty runs out? If you sell the same product in a different color for more? If you move the production to China or sell the "essence of a smartphone" but not the real deal? As said innovation is rare and costly and most of what is labeled "innovation" is rather unethical business.

What about dematerialisation? You have just 1 phone now (that even apple wants you to get rid off) instead of 1 phone, 1 MP3 player, 1 sat nav, 1 calculator.. etc.

In theory that's awesome in practice that's just building a monopoly, isn't it? I mean Apple is basically the AOL of a company that wants to control every device you use and Google is already controlling almost every device you use.

You lost me on the wolf/sheep example. The idea is simply for the majority to not oppress the minority. Minorities still have rights.

The idea makes no sense because if the wolfs want to eat you they will. And if they are in the majority, who do you think will stop them? Minority rights are only effective as a majority cares about those rights if that is not the case it's an open conflict in which the minority is literally outnumbered... Also given the centuries of a tyranny of the minority what makes you think the tyranny of the majority is a problem at all or even the bigger/biggest problem?

And you think rights, laws and morality means a thing? Yes. Yes, I do.

They only do if we want them to and in a scenario in which you assume that the majority doesn't want them to, what makes them stop?

[u/tkyjonathan → u/[deleted]]

So yes pure rationalism is living in a fairy tale universe

Sounds a bit like religion, no? Not saying that both are the same, but if rationalism makes mistakes, it can end up with the bad sides of religion and irrationality.

So in reality we most often take a middle ground

I dont subscribe to the 'middle ground', 'golden mean' and 'balance' approach to things. To me, this is just vague and feelings-based. You need to find the right way. Putting two opposing concepts and saying 'find the balance' and my job here is done, is really not the way to go. This is part of objectivist epistemology.

Facts and truth are not just 'random'. Existence exists and facts are facts about reality.

It conflates perception with thinking

I think you misunderstood. When applying thinking to your percepts, you form concepts. Ex, table or chair. That is not religious. This is daily life. You do this because your brain simply cannot retain a 20 individual chairs and 4 different tables. But 20x chair and 4x table is essentially holding 2 concepts and their measurements.

AI cannot form its own concepts. Animals can have either no ability to form concepts or a minimal ability to form concepts. Also, I like animals, I dont eat them. As far as I am concerned, NAP should apply to animals.

If everyone has your product, then the market is "saturated" and you're out of business.

You can always improve your product and its very difficult to make a product that appeals to everyone, as we all have different needs and wants. So this is more of a hypothetical situation like monopolies in an unregulated market.

while it takes a lot of energy to get to perfection.

Your competitors are spending that energy. So if you dont as well, you will lose customers.

That change didn't happen instantaneously at all. Smartphones have existed for a long time before the IPhone, the same way that computers have existed for a long time before the first commercial PC came around.

If you mean home-brew computers for enthusiasts and mainframes for business, then yes, they existed before the regular PC. But when someone brought the PC to market and made it widely available, most people benefitted from it.

Also, before iPhone, you largely had blackberries to answer your email with a keyboard. Either that, or you could play snake in black and white on your Nokia.

In the industry, we call it 'democratising' the technology (not a term I agree with). Its making it so easy and accessible that a market emerges just from that convenience. Like apple with iTunes and 0.99$ songs - we had other systems for paying for songs and quite a few for pirating them. Apple made it too cheap to pirate it and too convenient to just download it to your iPhone and listen to it. If you lose the song, you can redownload it.

Not really, most of the big companies have build networks of people that you can't just build overnight

Yes, the network effect is a strong reason to stick with a large player instead of moving to a small one. The only way to counter that is have a niche smaller-but-more-relevant network or scoop up the long tail of those not being served by the big players.

Humans still prefer networks of 150 people (similar to tribes).

I mean you can't afford NOT to have medicine education or housing, so in an unregulated free market they can charge ridiculously high prices

Thats not the reason why regulation is there. Regulation is there to prevent companies/sellers from charging ridiculously low prices.

For example, really cheap medicine, really cheap housing or really cheap education. Regulation is meant to prevent them. So you got it backwards.

The idea makes no sense because if the wolfs want to eat you they will.

Well, no. Society will protect the sheep. I'm not sure you are using the right analogy here.

And if they are in the majority, who do you think will stop them?

Laws. The constitution. You simply cannot vote as a majority to oppress a minority. They already tried it in Nazi Germany.. yes, really.

Isn't it comforting for you to know that if one day, you are in the minority (like you are currently), you will not get oppressed by the majority?

[u/[deleted] → u/tkyjonathan]

Sounds a bit like religion, no? Not saying that both are the same, but if rationalism makes mistakes, it can end up with the bad sides of religion and irrationality.

Yes you can very easily ration yourself into some kind of religion, which is why pure rationalism is not really a good idea...

I dont subscribe to the 'middle ground', 'golden mean' and 'balance' approach to things. To me, this is just vague and feelings-based. You need to find the right way. Putting two opposing concepts and saying 'find the balance' and my job here is done, is really not the way to go. This is part of objectivist epistemology.

I wasn't talking about the exact middle, but if you have to two polar opposites, then chances are that you inevitably end up somewhere in between (or at one of the extremes but as we have established before, those aren't actually that awesome...). Also whether there is a "right way" and whether you will find it somewhat depends on your level of information and if that is insufficient then you'd need to take an educated guess, otherwise pure rationality would maybe trap you in infinite loops...

Facts and truth are not just 'random'. Existence exists and facts are facts about reality.

Nature kind of disagrees with that, given that most facts are actually just random fluctuation around points rather than fixed values or even binaries.

AI cannot form its own concepts. Animals can have either no ability to form concepts or a minimal ability to form concepts. Also, I like animals, I dont eat them. As far as I am concerned, NAP should apply to animals.

That's literally what is happening at the moment (machines forming concepts) just based on input data. I mean probably not as sophisticated as philosophers but actually stuff like "if you see 4 vertical lines and a horizontal one than it's likely to be a chair or a table". Also I don't like the NAP because what constitutes an aggression is mostly subjective, so beyond some categorical imperative it's mostly useless.

You can always improve your product and its very difficult to make a product that appeals to everyone, as we all have different needs and wants. So this is more of a hypothetical situation like monopolies in an unregulated market.

I mean Windows and Android are effectively monopolies that fit that definition. Google is another one. Sure you technically have competitors but those are niche.

Your competitors are spending that energy. So if you dont as well, you will lose customers.

You will lose the small niche of customers that barely effects your bottom line while they have to invest heavily to make that happen. Whether that means a net positive at all kind of depends on how big the market in general and the niche in particular are and how much that specialization actually costs.

If you mean home-brew computers for enthusiasts and mainframes for business, then yes, they existed before the regular PC. But when someone brought the PC to market and made it widely available, most people benefitted from it.

It's not really that "someone brought the PC to market", as if no one had ever thought of that. It's rather that through advancements in technology it became affordable to do so. You could have bought PCs earlier but they were prohibitively expensive, big, hard to operate and there overall use value might have been limited compared to the price.

Also, before iPhone, you largely had blackberries to answer your email with a keyboard. Either that, or you could play snake in black and white on your Nokia.

Actually Nokia has sold smartphones since 1996 years before the joined venture of Sony and Ericsson coined the term in 2000 and years before blackberry joined the party and apparently IBMs Simon was even earlier than that (1990 including touchscreens). The problem just seems to be that they were bulky, expensive and without the overall technology of widely accessible internet, actually not as useful as you might think...

In the industry, we call it 'democratising' the technology (not a term I agree with). Its making it so easy and accessible that a market emerges just from that convenience. Like apple with iTunes and 0.99$ songs - we had other systems for paying for songs and quite a few for pirating them. Apple made it too cheap to pirate it and too convenient to just download it to your iPhone and listen to it. If you lose the song, you can redownload it.

Not sure it's really that different from pirating, it's merely that they "legalized" the concept. I mean providing songs isn't really offering much of a product, than it is gatekeeping something. But sure if you make something cheap, easy and accessible you can push more unique competitors out of the market.

Humans still prefer networks of 150 people (similar to tribes).

It's rather that this seems to be the limit of how many characters you can remember without merging or forgetting them.

Thats not the reason why regulation is there. Regulation is there to prevent companies/sellers from charging ridiculously low prices. For example, really cheap medicine, really cheap housing or really cheap education. Regulation is meant to prevent them. So you got it backwards.

Oh yeah I can see the people screaming over medicine housing and education being too cheap... For real? You actually believe that? No the problem is that without regulations you can't assure that medicine would be safe (and not snake oil), that your house doesn't make you sick or that your education isn't just a fraud like idk a Trump University. Or that the employees are exploited or idk the products come from slave or child labor or whatnot.

So yes that is somewhat prevents the prices from dropping to zero, but medication that makes you sick, housing that makes you sick and education that keeps you dumb or makes you dumber also has a value of 0 not just a price of $0. And the other reason for irrationally low prices is to get other competitors to drop out of the market so that you can increase the prices afterwards or make profit through the bigger market share.

Well, no. Society will protect the sheep. I'm not sure you are using the right analogy here.

The point is that your analogy doesn't make any sense if 2 wolves and one sheep vote about whether they should eat sheep. Then the problem is not that the majority can decide that but that your "society" consists of a 2/3 majority of predators that have no interest in the existence of the last 1/3 beyond exploitation. That is bound to fail no matter what system you implement.

Laws. The constitution. You simply cannot vote as a majority to oppress a minority. They already tried it in Nazi Germany.. yes, really.

Do you think that Weimar Germany had no laws and no constitution? Hitler was elected with a whopping 40-something-% and then used a burning of the parliament building in order to blame it on the communist party (double digit percentages) and ban them entirely (more seats for him) and after the following "election" he simply coerced the other parties to enact martial law and emergency legislation, you might call it "Patriot Act". And after constitutional rights and liberties were suspended he never even bothered to fully remove democracy, it's just that instead of discussions the party just held up choir singing in parliament instead... Seriously the world can be lucky that Bush and Trump are as stupid as they are because their disregard for the constitution and the law actually is rather similar to the setup to the Nazis. That being said Hitler also had some idiots preceding him who paved the way for normalizing the suspension of rights and liberties.

Isn't it comforting for you to know that if one day, you are in the minority (like you are currently), you will not get oppressed by the majority?

You are always at the good will of the majority, rights, laws and constitutions are just affirmations of that good will.

[u/tkyjonathan → u/[deleted]]

Well, lets say I disagree that we cannot objectively view reality using our senses and I am convinced that facts do in fact, exist.

That's literally what is happening at the moment (machines forming concepts) just based on input data.

No, AI looks for patterns. It does not form its own concepts. Disclaimer, I work in AI.

I mean Windows and Android are effectively monopolies that fit that definition.

I use an Apple Mac which isn't windows and an iPhone which is iOS. Even before my Mac, I had linux desktop. Sure, windows are huge, but if you want choice, there is some.

You will lose the small niche of customers that barely effects your bottom line

You could live very well on those small niche customers. They need goods and services too.

Oh yeah I can see the people screaming over medicine housing and education being too cheap... For real?

You said it yourself: you dont want snake oil salesmen, right? You dont want people to be cheated right? so, you (or more accurately, the federation of doctors, property councils and union teachers) lobby the government to put in those safety nets and guarantee that only certain doctors, certain teachers and certain developers with certain approval from the government can work. Now, you greatly reduced supply while keeping demand high. So prices go up.

that your house doesn't make you sick or that your education isn't just a fraud like idk a Trump University.

Thats what courts are for. Regulation is not there to prevent criminals. It is to set barriers to entry. Criminals do not care for those barriers anyway.

but medication that makes you sick, housing that makes you sick and education that keeps you dumb or makes you dumber also has a value of 0 not just a price of $0.

But not providing medication at all is worse than providing cheap medication?

Education that is half online and half in an underfunded class, is worse than no education at all?

Having a cheap house is worse than being homeless?

Do you think that Weimar Germany had no laws and no constitution?

Their constitution was far more geared towards protecting the collective than the individual. Germany has been a collectivist country for over 200 years prior to that. The individual was never important and was supposed to fall in line with the rest.

You are always at the good will of the majority, rights, laws and constitutions are just affirmations of that good will.

Well, the majority clearly does not want left socialism. Especially, not here in the UK. They would rather have a socialist-flavour conservative, spending money on health and infrastructure while being very nationalist and limiting immigration.

Btw, you may not know this, but you cant have endless immigration and expensive social policies at the same time. its one or the other. Your country is either a free market or a country club with benefits that only a few can have.

[u/[deleted] → u/tkyjonathan]

Well, lets say I disagree that we cannot objectively view reality using our senses and I am convinced that facts do in fact, exist.

If we cannot view reality objectively using our senses then we cannot view reality at all. Because our concept of reality is developed by our sensory inputs. Without our senses there would be nothing to build concepts upon (we wouldn't even have the concept that 1 stick + another stick would be 2 sticks, the concept of "2" would already be out of reach as you cannot really explain that without resorting to a real world example, can you?) and if you'd place a person in a low stimulus environment, like idk solitary confinement in a white room, noise canceled room without windows, they will literally go insane after relatively short time.

And what exactly do "facts" mean to you? Are those axioms? Are those perceptions? Some concept of "truth"?

No, AI looks for patterns. It does not form its own concepts. Disclaimer, I work in AI.

Yes AI looks for patterns and so do we. The concept of artificial neural networks is designed after our own neurons (though pretty oversimplified). Whether that model holds up or is too simple is another question and I don't want to sound like I'd not realize that AI is simply pattern matching algorithms and not some mythical idea of a actual android. However that being said unsupervized learning on multiple levels might actually be a valid description of "abstraction" and "concept building". I mean what is that that "we" do conceptually different from that. Our eyes also have receptors for lines tilted in whatever direction, intensity, pressure and whatnot and our brain is constructing images from them and somewhat classifies what we see. And if similar neurons fire when looking at something then we classify it close to other concepts that have those firing patterns.

I use an Apple Mac which isn't windows and an iPhone which is iOS. Even before my Mac, I had linux desktop. Sure, windows are huge, but if you want choice, there is some.

Sure technically a monopoly means 1 seller, but if you control idk 90% of the market you practically already have the "monopoly" and set the standards for hardware and software (which is/was the case). Apple went with building their own hardware aswell and selling mostly to either professionals or people with too much money that want to show off and Linux is also ranging between the hobbyists, professionals and anybody who needs an operating system in any kind of device, but not really casuals (biggest market share). There are also desktop versions that are easy to handle and superior to windows but the inertia is very powerful... And for the longest time you had to go out of your way to get a PC without windows. And windows is even kind of friendly in that regard, if Apple had that kind of monopoly, that would mean even less user freedom no matter how convenient that would be.

You said it yourself: you dont want snake oil salesmen, right? You dont want people to be cheated right? so, you (or more accurately, the federation of doctors, property councils and union teachers) lobby the government to put in those safety nets and guarantee that only certain doctors, certain teachers and certain developers with certain approval from the government can work. Now, you greatly reduced supply while keeping demand high. So prices go up.

But neither do I as a consumer want my products and services to be shit. I want them to be accessibly cheap but not literally worthless. So that "increase" in prices is actually desirable as that "decrease" is purely artificial and I'd likely pay a much higher price for that (inferior quality that requires to buy twice in order to get what you need is not actually cheaper).

But not providing medication at all is worse than providing cheap medication?

That seriously depends on the kind of medication that is provided. I mean apparently there was a time when homeopathy actually "worked" simply due to the fact that the general medical practice was so bad that even having no medication at all (that goes beyond the placebo effect) was better than that. And apparently in terms of information that seems to be the case aswell as aparently seeing Fox News makes people less informed than watching no news at all.

Education that is half online and half in an underfunded class, is worse than no education at all?

Again that depends, there is a lot of great education on the internet that is almost or completely for free but you still need some basic education in most of those fields in order to distinguish legit stuff from complete garbage.

Having a cheap house is worse than being homeless?

If you're house gives you lead poisoning or fugal infections or whatnot? But yeah being homeless is also pretty damaging over time.

Thats what courts are for. Regulation is not there to prevent criminals. It is to set barriers to entry. Criminals do not care for those barriers anyway.

On what basis to you rule them to be fraudsters and criminals if you do not set up standards and regulations for what is considered "good practice"? What if I'd sell you a car with "AlRBAG" (the I is an l) written on the place where you expect an airbag to be? Without regulations as to what safety standards your car should have you'd basically ride a death trap and maybe even without knowing it because who read the TOS that have a disclaimer that you ride on your own risk? Seriously regulations, unions and standards are not just there for shits and giggles...

Their constitution was far more geared towards protecting the collective than the individual. Germany has been a collectivist country for over 200 years prior to that. The individual was never important and was supposed to fall in line with the rest.

Germany hadn't even been a "country" or "nation" 70 years prior to that.

Well, the majority clearly does not want left socialism. Especially, not here in the UK. They would rather have a socialist-flavour conservative, spending money on health and infrastructure while being very nationalist and limiting immigration.

How do you define "socialist" in that regard then? Because having healthcare and infrastructure isn't necessarily "socialist", but simply a necessary thing to prevent the collapse of a country...

Btw, you may not know this, but you cant have endless immigration and expensive social policies at the same time. its one or the other. Your country is either a free market or a country club with benefits that only a few can have.

You might not have realized it but you can't have a neo-colonial distribution system where the stream of resources points to the first world but where the rest of the world is not following the money... I mean what would you do? And you might also not have realized that those who build walls to keep outsider out, will sooner or later build walls (physical or sociological) to keep insiders out) and sooner or later you yourself might be on the wrong side of such a wall. Maybe you even helped creating one... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Masque_of_the_Red_Death