England headed for A Caliphate

[Elixir]

You’re missing the point again.
Yeah, all that wealth is a mean s of production - of wealth for the “owners”. That’s its primary purpose. It benefits its customers only to the extent that such benefit increases the return for the owners.

In the current system, a multi-millionaire like the guy who put forth the “switch wallets” idea, can sit back and do nothing, and still have income in excess of that of a hundred day laborers. That is FUCKED UP. Even multi millionaires know it.
The result of the current system is that even the multi-millionaire is unhappy, and is driven by guilt to be a workaholic.

The problem is you are looking at it as money sitting there doing nothing. No, it's means of production. Your world, everyone will spend, nobody will build for the future.

You’re saying YOU (if you were lucky and the switch made you wealthy) would spend and never produce.
* it’s not MY scenario
* You are not everyone.
Some people enjoy being productive. Others are driven to it by their own nature.
* The stigma of being unproductive would increase greatly. People would be reliant on others’ productivity.

I suggest you try imagining a world where not everyone is driven by the concerns that consume you in the current world.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I think you are looking at what the result of communism was and ignoring all the steps that led to it. Liberalism led to economic liberalism which led to horrific standards for workers in Europe in the 19'th century. You'd hardly, from this, conclude that the point of liberalism is to make workers suffer?

I'm skipping a whole bunch, admittedly. But I think you're making a very fundamental error in your thinking.

Standards for workers in Europe in the 19th century are horrific... compared to what, exactly? Compared to today in first world country, definitely. Compared to the state of peasants across the board in the 17th century, not so much.

Liberalism is better than Feudalism in terms of quality of life. Communism is worse.

The 19'th century peasants didn't move to the city to find opportunity. They were forced off the land. Improvements in agricultular techniques and mechanisation had led to jobs disapearing in the countryside. While factories needed labour. More women were forced into prostitution than in any other time.

England in the 1840's was one of the worst times and places to ever be alive.

Being a peasant in the 17'th century was way better. No stress. Farmers worked very little, compared to now. They had less stuff. But so did everyone else. It was a simpler time.

You don't need to speculate on life behind the Iron Curtain. You can just ask people who lived through it. For the average person life in the USSR was great. As long as you didn't get involved in politics or were ambitious life was pretty nice and stress free.

You still haven't explained why you think socialism is fundamentally against free speech and freedom of expression? Who ever gave you that idea?

 

[Bomb#20]

Nope. The total amount of wealth isn’t changing. A social safety net would still be possible. ...

When you eliminate the incentive to create wealth while turning the incentive to consume it up to eleven, the total amount of wealth isn’t changing. Right.

Initial state only.
Obviously “things are gonna change” but not from a single binary choice of material incentives. Nor would any trend necessarily be terminal.
But if so it would be interesting to see the point at which it stabilized. Neolithic tribes? Total surviving human population at min sustainable levels? HSS extinction?
I don’t see how the experiment could set us back more than a couple hundred millennia*, even if rigorously enforced the whole time.

* not that there’s anything wrong with that

Total human population at zero. Humanity is in a very precarious position, we are so dependent on the interconnections. And when those interconnections fail you'll have cascade failures that take out most of humanity, and the most likely outcome for the survivors is fighting over what remains to below sustainable population. Post-apocalyptic fiction is common but it never answers where the next meal is coming from and why said meal wasn't already eaten by somebody else.

Oh come on. The Sentinelese will make it.

 

[Bomb#20]

Who do you think is more welcome?

Indeed. Thing is, that’s the wrong question. It’s shortsighted.
Who will have the better long term effect, is a better question.
Is an urgent need of the billionaire class to have plenty of people on the edge of starvation, desperate to serve them for a crust.

Why do you believe rhetoric like that? Billionaires need people who can afford to buy what they're selling. Take a look at the list of all the countries with no billionaires here:

B

Post in thread 'All Morals & Ethics are Biased, Self-Serving - Exhibit A - The Brahmin & the Royal'

Feb 24, 2025

By medieval standards, there are, and we are fairly close to giving such pay and prestige to everybody.

Certainly as a society we can (in the developed world) easily afford for every person to live in a comfortable home with heating in winter and airconditioning in summer, and with enough food that they need never go to bed hungry.

If that doesn't strike you as wealth or prestige, then you haven't grasped what life was like for most of history (and still is like for many in the developing world).

In the Roman and medieval periods, the idea that everyone could live with such...

• Bomb#20

There are a lot more people on the edge of starvation in those countries than in the countries with billionaires.