I am just wondering why we dont using technology to rull the world together yet…
just get unite and work together
how many people using open source hardware/software?
I have a lot of questions and I wanna hear ALL opinions…
no prejudice so kill me now ;)
You realize Marx already wrote thousands of pages to solve this problem right?
just get unite and work together
Well, it’s been a few thousand years and we’re still having trouble with that part. Why do you think us “using technology” will change that? Tools are tools. Guns, computers, industry, it’s all a bunch of tools which only mean as much as the people able to make use of them. People don’t just flock to software that shoves ads in their face because they like ads. People don’t just not fix problems because they like having problems. Things like knowledge, motivations, environmental pressures, society and economics are all intertwined and determine how people use or don’t use tools like technology.
A lot of people on this site including me will say many of the problems are rooted in capitalism and the way it necessarily makes people and companies care about profit over people and society. So, let’s say that is the case, how do we do something as massive as abolishing capitalism? The most powerful people in society want to defend it, and to convince others to defend it! It’s not easy, and technology only helps so much against an enemy that large.
Revolution isn’t unheard of; most people here are in countries that used to be ruled by kings and queens, or by colonial empires. Even socialist revolutions have happened around the world and even in recent decades. But it’s not easy, and as always powerful people want to keep things things the way they are.
People have spend decades trying to figure this problem out. Hopefully you can stand on their shoulders and get us closer to a better answer than liberalism was.
currently tech companies are exploiting the people at scale and the only solutions against them are: rule of law, strong public institutions, critical thinking and open discussion so why not get rid of false motives and abuse instead;)
Nobody has really pitched an idea that’s caught on.
Society is complicated. Who’s going to develop drugs that aren’t profitable? Who’s going to hold others accountable? Who decides what to teach?
What if there’s tradeoffs in the new system? If it doesn’t work for some small group but works for plenty others? Would we struggle too much as a society to accept the new system, even if it’s better overall?
Big ideas don’t work unless they’re forced top-down or opt-in. With so many fundamental blockades, all we can do is keep our heads down and chaotically charge forwards.
Who’s going to develop drugs that aren’t profitable?
That’s easily solved. Patents are the crutch that causes that problem.
How so? I don’t see a way around the central problem under a market system that it takes a large amount of money to bring a potential drug to the market, and at any step it may fail at the cost of billions of dollars. A planned economy would just shift that decision from market forces to the decisions of government bureaucrats who may or may not know what they’re doing.
It takes a lot of money to bring any product of any kind to market, even if it is simple and not novel. What you mean to say is you only see 2 options, artificial scarcity / monopoly (aka patents) or planned economy.
But these are not the only 2 options. With patents, the argument is, the only way to make sure a manufacturer is able to recoup their development cost is to grant monopoly, that the only way to provide incentive for further development of new drugs is the reward of false scarcity. This is simply not true.
Let’s imagine a world where all invention and scientific discovery is always public domain, Pro Bono Populi. If there is no profit motive to find that one drug that everyone needs and continuously sell more of it, there is now a profit motive to continuously find new drugs that someone needs. This actually encourages development of drugs and therapies that are niche, it also encourages cures over lifetime therapies. Competition is moved to the good of humanity rather than the good of one person’s purse.
It really is that simple.
This doesn’t make much sense to me. The company has to recoup that cost of R & D, which currently happens via a higher price on new drugs. If generic producers can simply piggyback on R & D immediately, the developing company can’t charge a higher price for new drugs. And the idea that the company would then dump a bunch more money into new therapies that in return yield no profit is wishful thinking.
this can be maybe better question…
How to get rid of rullers and make corruption obsolete?
projects like this can help…
Are you know about anything else what can be helpfull to final goal?
That’s gonna be a tough one, and probably a world which you wouldn’t want to live in.
People are inherently selfish. It’s in our genes. We’re constantly in conflict with all other people over resources which will allow us to procreate. In order to get those resources, we need power over other people. It’s basically impossible to equally divide power amongst all people.
There will always be a small inequality, where some have a little bit more power than others. That small inequality will quickly grow, making a handful of people by far the most powerful. Over the history of mankind, we’ve seen that happen time and time again. Empires conquering Europe, landlords, slavery, modern capitalism, etc. There’s no escaping it.
So what we need is a system of checks and balances for those with the most power. Government is an integral part of that. It has the power to fight against the (selfish) interests of industry, hyper-wealthy individuals, other countries, etc. Naturally, government’s power must also have checks and balances, which is why, amongst other things, we have democracy: the power of the people to choose their government and to keep their power in check.
None of it is ideal, none is without flaws. Sure, sometimes governments will use their power to enact things that are against my personal best interests, but that’s the whole point: I’m selfish and so is everybody else, so government will always need to find a balance between everybody’s interests.
Technology can aid us in keeping those checks and balances. It can increase our privacy and help with communication. This is why we have to be so careful of letting a single power dictate how we use technology. But in the end, technology is just a tool; it can be used for good and evil. It’s not a solution for anything, merely an aid to make us more effective and efficient.
In short: there will always be rulers, it’s just the nature of things. We need to keep the rulers in check. One way we do that is with governments. A tool to aid us in doing so can be technology.
People are inherently selfish. It’s in our genes
What makes you say that? Humans, before the establishment of classes, lived for millennia (and some still do) in small, relatively egalitarian communities characterized by the collective or common ownership of resources, where everyone worked to provide for the means of subsistence of each other, in what some call primitive communism. That is the very opposite of being selfish. In fact, I’d say that the very capacity for humans to adapt to their environment and to cooperate with others is what made humans such a successful species. If humans were selfish by nature, they would have become extinct by now.
Just going to reply to myself after giving it a little bit more thought…
The problem is scarcity. There aren’t enough resources to go around for everybody, so we have conflict with each other over those resources. If we could use technology to increase the amount of resources available such that there is no more scarcity, we wouldn’t need conflict anymore, and as a consequence there would be no point to having power, and no need for governments.
The big question is: is there a limit to technology which will prevent us from getting enough resources? We’re already using up this planet’s resources and soon we’ll start using the resources of our solar system. Mankind will simply expand to fill this new abundance of resources, because procreation is our nature. Resources will start getting scarce again, meaning we’ll have to venture out into our galaxy. But can we even do so, technologically speaking? The speed of light is finite, so the very laws of nature may mean a never ending scarcity of resources available to us.
Scarcity is definity a big factor in the struggle for power, but I wouldn’t say it can be the full story. Consider the rise of digital file sharing as a possible case study of post-scarcity: I would say it has had MASSIVE benefits in information sharing and accessibility of some information (e.g. academic papers, piracy circles, online download stores) but has also prompted artificial scarcity. I would even assert we already see artificial scarcity in things like food waste. We have the technology, skills and people to do much more than we can, but our society pushes people to act selfishly simply to ensure food, shelter, security and luxury.
digital file sharing […] has had MASSIVE benefits in information sharing and accessibility of some information […] but has also prompted artificial scarcity
You mean artificial scarcity of those resources by, for example, companies charging access fees, as is the case with scientific journals?
I think that problem is still inherently a cause of scarcity. File sharing is cheap enough that it doesn’t have to be scarce, but companies want money, and they’ve figured out a way to make those resources artificially scarce. But if food and shelter and whole bunch of other stuff wasn’t scarce, companies wouldn’t even need to exist. Why work if all resources are readily available for free?
Do note that I’m talking about some Startrek-esque future utopia with basically unlimited availability of electric power, natural resources and automation. Maybe we’ll get that far as a species someday, but for now I guess there’s plenty of scarcity to go around. Pun intended. ;-)
