Evolution selected socialism

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Self sufficiency depends on perspective.

The modern electronic urbanite is much less dependent on personal relationships than the paleolithic hunter or neolithic agriculturalist.

But at the same time we are much more dependent on the impersonal infrastructure.

Winter - a storm knocks out the electric - we here have no light. No heat. No cooked food. No water.

Summer - the pump in the well dies - we have no water. Including no sanitary facilities.

Any time - the car breaks down and the phone lines are knocked out and we are marooned with no access to food or medical assistance.

It's the depersonalization that does it.

Small scale communalism, like what the Amish and the Indians did works great and played a crucial role in the survival of our species. However, large scale attempts at communalism may be driven by lofty ideals and goals, their new society is a fertile breeding ground for tyranny and poverty, and the whole system is driven by fear and jealousy. There have been 24 communist countries that have completely abandoned a communist government, 2 that resorted to capitalist reforms (minus individual liberty) to remain functional, 2 that keep plugging away as near failed states, and one quasi-communist state run by lunatics that never really worked. Capitalism has been around for 10,000-12,000 years, and it doesn't look like anyone is going to come up with a better system anytime soon.

True enough. If you are going to DO large scale societies, one version or another of capitalism seems to be all that has a prayer.

I think it is the one system that CAN [though it can get perverted] build in the needed checks and balances, which various statisms - including L'etat c'est moi - will not provide.

Capitalism as it has operated successfully dependent upon the proper application of capital and the rewarding of offered labor by the majority of citizens with sustenance to participate in the system. Current operations are violating that basic arrangement and predictions seem to indicate that basic necessary arrangement will become more inoperative. That is not optimistic..

Extreme inequality is a bad environment for people. See how people's sense of outrage is triggered when faced with that. It's like forcing people to live in a toxic stew. That alone should be grounds to abolish extreme inequality as is being forced upon everyone. It's about time Mme. Guillotine got out of retirement - now that will be a very effective group therapy for millions.

The article that triggered this discussion argues that extreme inequality is not natural to human beings. Human beings are far better off in more equal societies, such societies are far healthier and the people in them are far healthier. I agree with that assessment. Now if you want to rationalise a destructive system perhaps on the grounds that grinding people into dust supposedly motivates them, well, one can do that but it doesn't change the facts of the matter.

I certainly see the Social Darwinism in that statement about how there are better people and that this justifies inequality, an inequality that presumably includes punishment for the lesser orders in order to keep their numbers down and cause the more fit to coalesce to create a superior form of human being. This is not however a healthy basis for a society.

Serious inequality is of course undesirable.

You do not have to be a Social Darwinist to recognize, though, that different people are different, with different abilities and disabilities.

And except in a society so regimented as to be no longer human, that WILL mean inequalities in lifestyle.

From each to each - fine as an idea. But some can plow more furrows than others. Some need more protein than others.

I do not want to live with everybody else in the long house. Simone would not have wanted to live in a solitary hut in the woods.

A viable society will provide yes equal rights and support. But absolute identical treatment is no Menschenstaat.

The article mentions that the studies show a Denmark-level of inequality to be optimal. I don't think that's total and absolute equality. Unfortunately Denmark is considered to a communist society according to the radical adherents of the Synergenic Selfishness cult that are running things into the ground. They demand brutal punishments for alleged failure to motivate people into a supposed better tomorrow. Terror - that's what these people offer.

There are certain minimum necessities that each human requires to maintain life which should be provided by society no matter the contributions of the individual. Beyond that a more generous society would provide further minimums to encourage individual development of individual inherent possibilities. There is no doubt that these possibilities have a wide spectrum in any society. But the society benefits greatly with the encouragement of these possibilities. When the abilities of some members of society permits them to sequester for their own use the wealth that should be devoted to both minimum necessities for all members and the development of fruitful potentials, society as a whole suffers greatly. That suffering is very evident in current capitalist society and society as a whole suffers for it and when the suffering reaches a certain potential violence will break out.