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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:
Anyone want to brainstorm a viable alternative to "ownership"?
/images/17459352527399495.webp
Circling back around because I do enjoy a little bit of what are essentially economic thought experiments. In your world where we do away with ownership what is the model of production for semi-complex goods? Presumably we'd still have like pencils and paper in the world you envision. Who is working in the pencil factory and why? Who is working with sanitation and ensuring human waste is properly processed, the hands on parts of the job in particular?
Well, you've galloped way off beyond the post. A big part of what I do is uncover and explicitly examine assumptions*, which is where the real "devil" is (not in the details, lol.) I came asking for brainstorming on alternatives to ownership as preemptive principled deprivation. I've gotten mostly nothing on that, and your response is one example. But sure, we can talk about what a world without legal mechanism to justify deprivation. I'd love to. Are you willing to make your assumptions explicit and put them on the table for scrutiny? I am. To be clear on what I mean by "assumptions", here are the assumptions I see in your comment:
Nice touch bringing up sanitation/waste handling. Yeah, it's hard to imagine people who would love doing that enough so that they never "work" a day in their lives, lol. That's a question, maybe even a problem, but it's certainly not a show-stopper. Nor does it justify jumping ship, let alone sinking it. 😁
Your move. You're welcome to list the assumptions I'm making. I'll address them. Or other.
Speaking of work, what is/was your line of work? It may just be an engineers mindset but when I hear a critique of some fundamental part or tool I'm using I have two concerns.
Part 2 is pretty important because if no alternative is actually better than the tool itself then it makes step 1 pointless. If there is not an actual alternative to ownership then why should I care about your critique of it? It's like putting forward a critique of how much trouble it causes that humans must excrete waste. You can say tons of bad things about our need to excrete waste, it smells, we must do it at inopportune times and it's processing requires much effort. But as this practice cannot be eliminated we must make peace with it and the infrastructure and sewers must be built, damn the cost.
Ownership means people must be deprived of some things. It's not alone in that downside. The need to breathe oxygen and inability to survive at extreme levels of pressure deprive every human of a safe tour of the Titanic wreckage. As humans being deprived of things is just something we have to accept unless we can find a better alternative. We will probably never overcome deprivation on our ability to walk on the surface of the sun, whatever one might call the surface of a giant nuclear explosion.
I think a lot of the frustration you're seeing in response here is that the ball seems to be in your court on this topic but you refuse to acknowledge that and instead insist that the ball is in our court. You're proposing some pretty radical interpretations of society and then refusing to elaborate in anything but vagueness.
I'm perfectly willing to accept your definition of ownership for sake of conversation. It's just a word. If we come to somewhere I don't think you're using it in a consistent way or trying to garner strength from a connotation ownership has that isn't present in your definition I'll let it be known that we differ.
Sure, this is a pretty important thing. If you're proposing we collapse all of society and return to monkey or whatever I'd like to say straight up that I have no interest in giving up modern conveniences. I think society as a whole is pretty great and produces many wonders. If this is what you are proposing it would save us all a lot of time if you came out and said it. Then you could defend that position and maybe say something interesting. But it's pretty unsatisfying to have to guess at what you're even talking about.
I would greatly prefer you to list these. That I don't actually know what assumptions you're making is the problem here. You seem to think it's some kind of virtue that you're minimally engaging. It's not. It makes discussion practically impossible. The totality of what I know about your position is that you believe ownership to be unjust and that now that you also think work is bad.
Just read it. just seems like more unworkable fancy. His view on pre-industrial society is rose tinted and his proposal for an alternative, which I'll at least credit him with putting forth, is pure fantasy. I understand it's satisfying to say you don't like having to work for a living and this kind of thing can feel cathartic to imagine, ideally with friends while passing around a joint in your early twenties, but it's just nonsense. No, we are not going to be able to spontaneously organize society such that the waste gets handled joyously by small children by awarding them medals for doing a good job. No, we are not going to leave it up to people's whims to accomplish necessary jobs like providing us with food or maintaining our buildings and infrastructure. No, war will not be abolished because of this slick new idea where we all just chill out, war over resources is older than humanity, the monkeys and apes do it.
As it was once put
Beyond even the unfeasibility of his solutions I find something spiritually dismal about them. This yearning for a dead past and uninterest in further progress. I find it frankly pathetic. It is the attitude of a stoner with arrested development. A society of Bob Blacks would never explore the stars, wouldn't not have sent a contingent to the moon, would not have even ever come down from the trees. I welcome him and those who think like him to find their fellows and move into some still remaining stretch of wilderness and live life as they wish.
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