From: athe nonrex (athenonrex@godisdead.com)
Date: Sat Jul 26 2003 - 13:55:39 MDT
[joe dees 6]
Communism is the system where talent and time-costly learned skills
were decoupled from compensation, and as such, it furnishes a
historical object lesson of my point. Not providing fair compensation for
labor in a field destroys the incentive to enter it. This could also
happen in the music industry, if artists are not fairly compensated for
their creativity because their creations are taken without compensation
(it's called stealing). Communism, it has been said, is the perfect
system for perfect people; however, since people in the real world are
not perfect (if by perfect one means absolutely altruistic rather than
wanting to be fairly paid for their labor), it was destined to fail - and so it
did.
[athenonrex 7]
no money, no incentive? umm....what i'm proposing (and what the book is proposing) is that money would not exist...without monetary means, there is no economy. the people (as you put it) in "industries" that are there for the money, in which there would be no other insentive (let's say, in the music industry), are what we commonly call "hacks" i believe. ie, a musician that writes music solely for the money it could produce for him is a musical hack. (s)he is not a musician. commonly these are pop musicians, but sometimes these are soundtrack composers, and even other mainstream types of music..l
[joe dees 6]
There are indeed people such as this, but they are not in the majority,
much less the totality, as such a system would require. Under
communism, or any system where people are not fairly compensated for
their labor, people would only indulge in such professions as hobbies,
not employment, and if they cost a lot of time and/or money to indulge
it, only the otherwise idle rich (a theoretically nonexistent class in a
communist system) would possess the wherewithal to so self-indulge.
[athenonrex 7]
implying that most people are hacks at heart? interesting standpoint. you miss the point though, once again. there would be no money to compensate them, because there would be no incentive for money in the first place. there would be no cost to engague in these activities. and with no real jobs to speak of, people would have an aweful lot of time to work with their "hobbies" as you put it.
[joe dees 6]
Only because of an excess of shortsighted greed motivating the voters.
This is why I support a balanced budget amentment to the US
constitution; a constitutional (as opposed to an absolute) democracy
can indeed forbid destructive yet popular (for bigots) behaviors, such as
racial, age, gender and sexual orientation discrimination, and
destructive yet lucrative (for greedheads) behaviors, such as pollution
or the uncompensated appropriation of the fruits of others' creativity, by
virtue of the judiciary declaring any laws passed to permit them to be
unconstitutional. Of course, this is all still a work in process, as the US
is an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, system; when conditions
progress so that new rights, responsibilities and obligations are
necessary (such as intellectual property rights and informational privacy
rights), there is a mechanism called the legislature that can augment
the system to address them by passing appropriate laws.
[athenonrex 7]
taken directly from left field...firstly, your arguement doesn't hold much water, especially as of late. "intellectual property" and the such, as far as
that goes, is more of an issue for "the law..." thread that it's relatively popular right now...but if i must....the US legal system as a whole is very poor grounds for example, as it is often subject to lobbyists, flat out bribes and other such means of coersion for a person or group to get it's way regardless of what the "ethical" thing to do would be. evolutionary my arse. "devolutionary' at most, stationary at best.
[athenonrex 7]
the legislature (congress and senate) has "evolved" (as you put it) into a privatized checking system instead of the checks and balances system it's supposed to be.
[athe nonrex 5]
> joe, no matter what i post...regardless of subject matter, content,
> manner of presentation, manner of perspective, or how calm or vehement
> i am about the said subject matter, you seem to post opposite of me
> and/or my view/comments/ideas/etc...
>
> just curious, are you "contra pro contra?" [contrary for the sake of
> being contrary?]
>
[joe dees 6]
No, I am disagreeing for the sake of being correct (besides which, I
must note, my original post was not in response to yours; rather it
seems that you have contrarily responded to me). It is not my fault that
you so often adopt flawed positions on issues.
[athenonrex 7]
quite a strong assertation. yet what is being expressed here is opinions of a projected potential future, if certain trends are granted...but you seem to have ignored all of that....your original post was indeed contrary to mine, as me and hermit were elaborating different aspects of this "projected potential future" and you started making assertations....that therefore pertains to me.
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