MillardJMelnyk
No bio...
User ID: 3663
MillardJMelnyk
1mo ago
I agree we need to solve scarcity emotions. In broader terms, we need to teach kids to mature out of infantilism, and we need to teach codependent adults to deprogram, relearn, and develop/mature into fully functional adults. Tech can help if used helpfully, but it's not required. The process is the same as coming out of a cult and taking back on the responsibilities of adulthood.
Communism could work if we were all near-constantly on an MDMA trip type of immediate feelings of love,
LOL, love it! Yeah, good feels can do what mountains of argument can't even touch. But communism? No. No way of thinking about these things that prioritizes material stuff first and higher over the far more important things and issues like every living being, their preciousness and integrity, intangibles (except you can feel them) like love and practices like honesty and collective experiences like peace, safety, freedom, and a bunch beside is ever going to "fix" anything or escape the vicious cycles.
Really good point about inheritance.
I see nothing about an alternative to the principled deprivation of ownership tho.
The definition your chatbot put out may serve your position, but it's clearly not standard and obviously not how ownership normally works. Which is this: Ownership is the right to not be deprived. I.e., the opposite of what you posit.
I like people who try flipping tables. Sometimes it has remarkable results. However, your chronology is backwards. At the point where ownership is established, there is no opportunity for anyone to deprive the owner -- at least for the short time during which no one is yet aware they own the article. Ownership establishes the right of global deprivation of every other human being on the planet of the owned article. That's its genesis. That must be in place before deprivation of the article from the owner even becomes a rational question.
Do I deprive you of my car? Does my mother-in-law deprive you of the vegetables she grows in her garden? Does my landlord deprive me of the apartment I rent? Do I deprive my employer of the wages I earn? Does a customer deprive a store of the products he buys? Does a hunter-gatherer in a jungle at the other end of the world deprive me of some berries and a squirrel? Do you deprive me of the device you use to post here?
Here's a point on which you're confused. Ownership is not the act of depriving. It's the legal right to deprive at will anyone, at any time or place. Again, the right precedes and justifies whatever action the owner wants to take. So, in answer to all those questions, for every single one, you have the right to deprive anyone you choose from access, use, "enjoyment of", benefit from the article, even if it would be judged immoral and causes great harm. No, having the right is not the same as exercising it, nor is there any requirement on an owner to exercise their right of deprivation. The owner can give the article away, share it, rent it, loan it, etc. So, those questions are actually irrelevant to question of whether the right of principled deprivation constitutes ownership.
I normally advise any would-be revolutionary to first understand why the world works the way it does before they waste everyone's time by implementing some half-cocked utopia that's made of fairy dust and ignorance. But posts like this are the opposite of understanding. It's wilful nonsense.
LMAO! Don't confuse your lack of clear thinking as lack of real experience in the real world on my part, especially since you don't know diddly about me.
MillardJMelnyk
1mo ago
Well, that's speaking "historically" for the last 10-15K years out of the currently estimated 2.8 million years that the Homo genus has been extant. You know what that's called? A statistically negligible data sample.
The "list of human universals" is changing radically, thanks to the archaeology of the last 50 years, especially the last 15-20 years. I'll let you review your list to see how out of date it now is. Anyone interested in the nature and history of our species and its immediate predecessors really should read Graeber/Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything. Anthropology is in the beginning of a 180 away from the thinking of prior centuries.
If something is truly universal, the best we can do is mitigation! Not abolition. We cannot abolish war, it is not human. We can however mitigate their frequency, severity, and impact.
Hearsay, speculation, and superstition, man. Dogma, more like. There has been no serious academic work that has established any of that. And again, ALL of our extant thinking rests on less than 10-15K years' worth of information. That's like trying to navigate the Titanic looking through a hole where one of the rivets popped out.
What you are trying to do is completely replace something that fundamentally cannot be altered. As such, you're philosophically barking up the wrong tree altogether. And we already have a word for the societal negotiation of laws governing how to mitigate the bad effects of property being a thing. It's called politics. You cannot escape politics.
Wrong. Baseless. And I've already "escaped" lol. Already done.
MillardJMelnyk
1mo ago
No, there most definitely is one, and you're likely well familiar with it. Compartmentalization keeps it from occurring to you in this context.
I tend to avoid people who make crap up and pretend it's got anything to do with the facts. Opine on your judgment of the quality or snarkiness of what I say, speculate all you like about its origins, it's got nothing to do with the ideas I presented. It's just another kind of rank-pulling diversion to avoid engaging with the ideas.
FYI, the ONLY things I use ChatGPT or any other AI to do are to fact-check, criticize and stress test my ideas, and perform gap analysis. No, I don't get my ideas from an AI. I got them from living, engaging with life and people, research, study, and experimentation. I included that screenshot because I was surprised to get agreement on the first pass. It usually takes multiple rounds of debunking its (all the other AIs') misreads, unwarranted inferences, just plain dumb illogic, etc., before we get down to the crux of it. I wasn't just surprised that it hit principled deprivation on the nose, but by how it presented it -- like an uh-duhr, everyone knows this.
I don't have to convince you of anything. I'll refrain from sharing anything AI-related since it seems to get your goat. I've been actively writing about these things since 2009. Care to check it out? I'll give you links if you're interested. Characterize my post and comments as "Har-de-har let's unleash ChatGPT on the Motte..." all you like. It's your figment, not mine, and it's wildly wide of the mark. Plus, it FAILS to engage with the thinking, whatever its origin.
MillardJMelnyk
1mo ago
LOL, sure! But first see my reply to FCfromSSC at https://www.themotte.org/post/1860/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/323011?context=8#context
...I think it would be "pretty wild" for you to ignore an instance of the exact sort of "sharing" you're arguing for, or for you to engage in reluctance or avoidance, or throw up objections or attempt to dismiss the very principle you've expended such effort to draw attention to.
Sure would be... if I did...
I really need the money, too. Maybe even more than you do. So, where does that leave us?
More to the point, what do you think your comment actually demonstrates? I don't see anything much of merit.
At least you're clear on what the alternative is! Kudos for that! However, where did I "argue for" it? In fact, there wasn't a single argument in my post. You could take my little KFR comparison as an argument, but it's not. Nor did I present it as an argument, but clearly and explicitly as a way to give a sense of where I'm coming from.
argument : a coherent series of reasons, statements, or facts intended to support or establish a point of view https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/argument
Where did I present an argument? Quote please.
MillardJMelnyk
1mo ago
I'd love to be able to share some. As it is, I'm on a fixed income well below $2,000/mo, I have six sons, 4 DILs, 4 grandkids, and friends who are all in line before you. Sorry, but I think it'll be a long wait...
MillardJMelnyk
1mo ago
You seem to be hallucinating. I've responded to everyone who commented and addressed their arguments. Discussion, for me, isn't about give and take -- it's about honestly checking, constructing, criticizing, admiring, enlightening, correcting, informing, and a whole lot besides. If you actually read what I've written and how I respond to people, you'd see that.
I don't even know what "define away the flaws in your argument" even means, especially sincere there really wasn't an "argument" to speak of in the first place. What did you construe as an argument?
MillardJMelnyk
1mo ago
I think the question of which economic system is “right”
That question is completely off-topic to my statements and my invitation.
And to the rest of your comment, you're thinking wholly within the paradigm in which rights have been predicated as principled deprivation. I'm asking for an alternative to that predication. So, although there's some good stuff there, your comment is nonresponsive to my post.
MillardJMelnyk
1mo ago
I think you're the first one I've read so far with an actually responsive comment.
There's no form of collective ownership that doesn't involve the same definitional characteristic of denying someone some form of right over the property.
Agreed. But that's the equivalent of saying, "There is no form of collective deprivation that isn't a form of deprivation." Who wouldn't agree?
The problem isn't that there's no form of deprivation that isn't a form of deprivation. The problem is that you're unaware of an alternative to deprivation -- even though you're intimately familiar with it.
We fail to see what's right in front of us thanks to compartmentalization. When you light on the alternative, you'll get it. Part of the problem here is that everyone has excluded the alternative from the "these are the only things that work" compartment, and for reasons that are still mysterious to me, they refuse to look outside it -- kinda like a statist who rejects anarchism not because they understand it, but because they decide without understanding that "it could never work".
Well, I didn't ask for an alternative "that works" or claim that there's an alternative that would work (even though there is and it does) did I? I just asked what an alternative might be. This is as hypothetical as it gets. The fact itself that people for the most part avoid engaging with hypotheticals is hugely telling. I mean, what risk is there? Why the reluctance and avoidance? Why throw up objections and attempts to dismiss? It's pretty wild, really.
MillardJMelnyk
1mo ago
If we can agree on that basic premise (and avoid debating what "I" am, I'll stipulate that I'm just a brain which is itself composed of matter, I'll exclude the concept of souls for this conversation), then we can say that I own my body, and I can exclude you from control of it, as a pure matter of fact, for all practical purposes.
Nope. You're confusing owning with being. Ownership is a right. As a right, it's not real, but an agreed convention, an abstract human construct. If I say you don't own your bike and take it away from you, you have no clear right of ownership unless you can prove that you do have the right. What if you stole it from me last week, and I'd bought it 2 months ago?
So, that's 4 working pieces: you, me, the bike, and your right of ownership. In your "I own my body" there's at most 2 working pieces. The scenarios are not comparable, even if you allow for the distinction "I" as separate and distinctly identifiable from "my body".
To compare the bike scenario, in which ownership is obviously relevant, to our relationships to our own bodies is a category error: several of them, in fact. The two are not analogous. This isn't just splitting semantic hairs: no one "owns" their body. Everyone IS their body (and mind, or even soul and spirit, too, if you like.) This isn't merely "logical" (although it is logical). How can you detach from yourself to form an attachment that could be construed as "owning" yourself? It's just a figure of speech that doesn't correspond to the reality of the matter. On the other hand, a comparable analog to you owning your body would be the bike owning itself. You can talk that way, but it's sloppy and implies things that simply are not the case.
MillardJMelnyk
1mo ago
We all know how to share. It's one of the first things we were taught. I don't have a private definition for it.
To your example, it would all depend on what I do and how I think about the fact that you seized it, right? I could choose to share it even though you took it. I could choose to take it back. I could choose to make a scene and enlist the help of arbiters, whether peers or authorities. I could fucking punch you in the face, lol. I could do anything I wanted.
MillardJMelnyk
1mo ago
You need to do some research on that. Just a couple of counter-examples. If you rent something, you do not have the legal right to do what you want with it. Your usage becomes contractually limited and, for any practical purpose, non-existent for the term of the rental period (or lease, or whatever).
The only right that always makes it ownership, the absence of which guarantees it's not ownership, is the right of deprivation.
MillardJMelnyk
1mo ago
No, ownership is not possession, except in a marginally legal sense which is meaningless and useless unless ownership includes the more basic right to deprive. Loan, rental, lease, timeshare, etc., involve physical non-possession by an owner that continues to hold a right to deprive without regard to their physical possession of the property.
I don't know about "nullify possession". Both you and I know of an alternative that pays absolutely no regard to the question of possession, though. Would it be considered as nullifying possession?
// Set aside legalities, if someone has possession of a piece of property and doesn't want anyone else to have it what are your options for taking it from them? Overpowering them. //
But you're ignoring the preconditions for your scenario. If I have physical possession of a tract of land, what would possess you to try to take it from me at all? What is "possession" of property if not a legal concept? I can't physically occupy 100 acres, nor can I make incessant use of it in any way that totally deprives you of the opportunity of making any use of it, unless I set the whole plot afire -- and the fire will burn out. And if you want to "possess" it in the sense of make your own use of it, why can't you think of any way to do that other than overpowering me? Why do you uncritically assume that I'd resist? You've predicated your scenario in adversarial terms. Are those the only terms in which you can think about this?
// The only plausible alternative I can think of is something like gay luxury space communism where there's such abundance that the value of material goods has come down to basically zero. //
That's an interesting thought that actually gets to something fundamental which I'm not sure you had in mind. Scarcity of desirables is a huge factor. In the 80s, in an Econ 101 class, the definition of "economy" presented to us was "the science of managing scarcity". No scarcity, no economics? Maybe.
The problem is that almost no one (at least up to the mid-20th century) seriously questioned the doctrine of naturally-occurring, incessant scarcity. Big blind spot. No one ever established that scarcity is a given, a necessity, an inevitability, or any such thing. No one has ever gotten traction in any attempt to rectify the root causes of scarcity. Hardly anyone even thinks it's possible. Oxfam's decades' old report on "extreme poverty" claimed that it could be permanently eradicated globally with a one-time expenditure that amounted to 3 months' income of only the richest 100 people (at that time). Musk alone has equivalent capability today. Why haven't the uber-rich been able to do it? Well, because it's got nothing to do with capability and everything to do with the fact that they do not in any way, shape, or form WANT to do it.
We're not dealing with possibilities, capabilities, limitations, or anything else we can't change. We're dealing with perverse, entrenched will on the part of the elitist parasite class. The problem doesn't lie in the "economics". It lies in the psychopathy of a fraction of human beings.
MillardJMelnyk
1mo ago
The question of how desirables come to be -- picking them up off the beach, digging for them, panning for them, building them, manufacturing them, painting them, or whatever -- has no relevance to how they're handled once they exist. I'm open to hearing how desirables (goods and services and more) are handled differently. Can you give me an example where they're not handled like kidnap hostages?
Threatening to kill a hostage or destroy "the merchandise" any other way is neither necessary nor central to kidnapping/hostage-keeping. Sure, it provides incentive. The real threat of kidnapping is that the people being extorted for ransom will never get the hostage back, not until they pay, regardless how that's achieved. Killing a hostage is just a method. This is exactly the case with storage/warehousing (and holding hostage in showrooms, for that matter): you will never get it until you pay the ransom. The only difference is that in the case of merchandise, you never had it and had it taken away from you. Or, you could see it like Proudhon: the fact that you don't have it even though you need or want it itself represents theft.
I just love how this model works. It's been around for a decade now. No one yet has succeeded in pointing out a significant, legitimate flaw in the parallels it presents. That doesn't mean there aren't any, though. That's why I keep exposing it.
This is not new at all, it's the Proudhonian definition of property as privileges of exclusivity those who rule society grant themselves by the sword. Which is then naturally argued to be theft that should be abolished.
Well, kinda not. I never said that ownership as deprivation is "new". I do say that realistic, practical recognition of the fact and its implications is almost non-existent.
Both "property" and "theft" make no intelligent sense except in the context of ownership as deprivation. Proudhon did not reject the deprivation central to ownership, nor did he attempt to find an alternative. His issue was with exploitative deprivation, not deprivation per se.
So, in that respect, what I'm talking about is quite "new". I'm really not sure how its "newness" matters and, frankly, I couldn't care less. It's irrelevant to the merit of the fact, admitting the fact, and exploring it. But since you brought it up, the idea of an alternative to the predication of our relationships to desirables on principled deprivation is definitely new. To wit: no one yet has said anything at all about what it could possibly be.
"... one has to recognize that exclusive domains of ownership are and always have been a natural part of the human condition."
No, absolutely not. On the contrary. Graeber and Wengrow made this very clear in the culmination of their joint work, The Dawn of Everything. Exclusive domains of ownership are and often have been a legally and socially enculturated part of the human condition in certain kinds of societies -- typically called, "civilized societies" -- during the last 10K - 15K (at most) of the millions of years of humanoid life on the planet. I give it precisely the statistical weight it deserves: not much.
The deeper problem is the fact that almost everyone ridiculously overweights the significance of this last little authoritarian blip on the timeline, far beyond any empirical basis for it. That's a colossal bias.
MillardJMelnyk
1mo ago
I don't disagree much with your points per se. My criticism of thinking like yours relates to contextual bias. Game theory is a prime (but not the only) example. It applies only to human affairs in which actors are predominately self-interested and operate from self-interest. The predication of the theory tacitly asserts that self-interest is fundamental in all human interactions among all humans. What if that premise actually applies only to people suffering from psychopathologies? At any rate, the idea that it covers the whole of human experience is ribald. No, it doesn't, as any loving parent can tell you.
That was just one example of contextual bias. There are more we could talk about.
"Ownership greatly predates humanity, much less civilization." Your data, evidence, serious empirical research for that claim? I've seen none, and I've been looking for it most my life -- let's just call it more than 50 years. If you've got some, I'm all ears -- produce it.
Ownership is a LEGAL concept. Wanting, using, belonging, possessing, protecting, depriving (and a lot more) are reflections of different kinds and degrees of attachment to desirables. Only ownership is legalized, which means ownership exists only in societies where laws rule -- even if just the "law" of a family patriarch. So, no, ownership does not predate humanity, unless laws predate humanity. I know of no laws among wolves. On the other hand, any human or animal attachment can easily and incorrectly (or at least baselessly) be characterized as "ownership". Characterizing something does not make it what it is. More often, when people resort to characterizations, it's precisely because the thing is not what they want it to be.
"The above wiki link is one place to look to see why this is positively wrong, but here it's normatively wrong as well."
I'm well-capable of researching. It's how I got to where I'm at. I didn't come to The Motte for unsolicited help on improving my research capabilities -- although I do appreciate the link and I'll look at it. I came here for discussion. If you think that "paranoid who don't understand the concept of sharing" is positively and "normatively" wrong, explain. If you can't explain, then you can understand that it casts a shadow on the credibility of your ipse dixit claim. How do you know it's wrong? How is it wrong? What parts? I register that you are one person, a stranger to me, who thinks it's wrong. Your opinion has weight with me. But I didn't come here to sift through opinions. If your opinion has merit, show it.
On top of that, what someone else said in something you link to says nothing about your thinking about the material. That's what's interesting to me. What's primary or important in your grasp of the material? What parts apply here, and to what degree, and to what result? I'm glad to make my thinking clear. I expect you to do the same.
MillardJMelnyk
1mo ago
Sure I can put more effort into it. I just wasn't interested in wasting my time writing a tome if all I was going to get (as usually happens) are snide responses like JarJarJedi's (above).
What points do you need clarification/elaboration on?
My point at this point, which I think is quite clear, is that ownership is essentially and definitionally the right to deprive others. That's it. I don't like that. In fact, I detest it with passion and rage. I hate it. So, I want an alternative.
In fact, the alternative is sticking us in the nose, which makes the fact that most people act clueless about it (whether they are or not) all the more ironic. One minute (not 10, JarJarJedi) is all it would take for a relatively intelligent person doing nothing more than looking for the logical compliment to deprivation to realize what a very familiar alternative is.
I really don't care how thousands of years of use has convinced us that ownership is useful or what "problems" it "solves" -- problems conceived of in the same paradigm where ownership was conceived, characterized by thousands of years of staunch neglect and refusal that it's all about deprivation. "Usefulness" is beside the point. War is universally considered useful, too. How is that relevant to the fact that it's obscene, horrific, and destructive?
Have you ever considered the fact that ownership is the right to deprive? You might spend a little time ruminating on that.
"You really need to proposal and alternative to ownership as a concept and not just leave it hanging out there..." Oh, really? No, not at all. How does the fact that there aren't enough lifeboats on the Titanic we're sailing, or the fact that I can't tell you where there's one with room for you, have any bearing on the fact that the ship is going under? No one owes you a solution. Are you just going to stand there until someone gives you directions or leads you by the hand? It's up to you if you want to use that as an excuse to refuse considering facts that are right all our faces.
I agree, it's difficult to build anything without using a central concept that we've been indoctrinated with from birth and never thought beyond. Just like it's difficult for cultists to take their minds outside their cult paradigms and think about things from different angles.
Regardless, none of the practical considerations you brought up have any bearing on the clear point: ownership is right to deprive. What do you think about that fact? What could possibly be an alternative to predicating entire societies on the principle of deprivation? No idea?
MillardJMelnyk
1mo ago
LMAO! No one's twisting your arm, dude. But just FYI, more like 15 years of research, study, analysis, and debunking has shown that 10K years (a mere blip in the history of humankind) is full of shit.
If you have to not only straw man an issue, but belittle it, you just unwittingly hoisted a white flag thinking it's your banner.
I do feel free, btw. 😁
MillardJMelnyk
1mo ago
What if our fundamentals are exactly backwards?
New to The Motte, looking for constructive, critical discussion.
Here's an example of what I mean by a "fundamental":
Every economic system that has seemed credible to most people since the dawn of civilization has revolved around the legal establishment and safeguarding of property through the concept of ownership.
But what is ownership? I have my own ideas, but I asked ChatGPT and was surprised that it pretty much hit the nail on the head: the definitional characteristic of ownership is the legal right to deprive others.
This has been such a consistently universal view that very few people question it. Even fewer have thought through a cogent alternative. Most people go slack-jawed at the suggestion that an alternative is possible.
Here's something from years back, before I'd zeroed in on the perverse nature of ownership:
Capitalism makes sense to the paranoid who don't understand the concept of sharing. Capitalism is the application of KFR (kidnap for ransom) to resources (and human beings as "human resources"):
Usurp rights over resources (physical or intellectual, materials or people or property) by fiat and, if necessary, by fraud and/or force
Kidnap (abduct) said resources (e.g., put them into captive situations with no alternative)
Hold hostage
Demand ransom
Release upon payment
You'll recognize the capitalistic counterparts as:
- Title/Ownership
- Acquisition/procurement
- Storage/warehousing
- Pricing
- Sale
Capitalism is psychopathy with a makeover.
Anyone want to brainstorm a viable alternative to "ownership"?
MillardJMelnyk
1mo ago
fair enough!
MillardJMelnyk
1mo ago
I guess I'd also say that my post lies at a deeper level of conceptualization than do culture wars (having read the list of examples), which is partly why I posted it on its own. Ownership is far more basic than the examples, involved in and underlying them.
MillardJMelnyk
1mo ago
Hi, I'm sure this is an uh-duhr, but I don't see how to specify that a post should go into a specific thread. I see the "Culture War Roundup" threads. I see I can comment there, but I don't see how to post there. A little help for the newbie?
MillardJMelnyk
1mo ago
Sure thing! I wasn't sure that it was a fit there, but I'll get the hang of this... Thanks!
I call it adversariality. It's a mental pathology, and a lot of people can't manage to think about things in any other way. To them, it's not "realistic". Well, that just shows the narrowness and lacks in their experience. Love and mutualism and cooperation are very real, and over the span of homo sapiens' history, it's by far the majority report. Even these last 10-15K years, although our "history" gives the opposite impression, quantitatively, the vast majority of human experience in person-hours has been at least mutualistic and cooperative, if not friendly, if not loving.
Your last paragraph is a characterization that does not engage with the idea. It's a tactic. You made a couple of fair points, but nothing that detracts from the obvious parallels.
Yes, the real question is what gets/gives us the best outcomes. How are you going to determine that without trying alternatives? And how are you going to try alternatives when a guy can't even get you to explore them?
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