On Tue, 20 Jan 1998, s_sanderson wrote:
Some thoughts from future utopia.
> In the old Soviet Union, it was discovered that workers who received guaranteed
> employment and a guaranteed wage regardless of what work they did and how well
> they did it performed poorly. This contributed in an important way to the
> economic crisis and ultimate collapse of state socialism. A basic
> characteristic of human nature even agreed to by such WSNers as Chase-Dunn and
> Hall, is that humans follow a Law of Least Effort. That is, they try to expend
> a minimal amount of time and energy in the performance of activities, especially
> those involving toil. Socialist labor systems, much to their dismay, ran up
> against this hard fact and suffered accordingly.
>
What kind of work? Some drudgery work is sometimes difficult to maintain a
constant quality,do scientist share this same human
nature,pilots,musicians.Perhaps quality could be maintained by sharing
some of the least liked chores.
Is there any way to inspire workers in a guarnanteed enviorment,which is
one
of my ideals by the way.I would be pretty coopertive if I could live at a
good quality of life and be able to work at a satisfying position that fit
my ideals to a T.It would take a lot of vodka or too much cocaine to
really blow an ideal like that.
Where as the security of a budget that allowed a person to reach his
highest potential and never have to worry or have to sell himself into
slavery would seem more attractive.Im not sure what happened in ganawanda
land,but Im pretty sure most of the people I have met or worked with
wouldnt let the same human values be the cause of systemic collapse.
> Of course, Austin will now claim that there's no such thing as human nature.
> We've had that debate before. But the evidence from anthropology and history
> suggests otherwise.
>
> For all of its faults capitalism still works better in some ways than many
> other social systems, socialist societies included. Even world-system
> theorists like Wallerstein admit that overcentralization of production is a
> problem that has to be avoided in creating any future socialist system.
> Markets and incentives are important and have a role to play, even within
> "socialism."
Im angling for a simular enviorment where as budgeted members we can solve
all the problems of poverty which seems to be a by product of capitlism
with resulting crime.
By the way I live in capitalism and it works really well for about 2/3
of the nations base,I would want some modifications that included the rest
of society and I would also like to create something that was more
sustainable and was a little more oriented towards taking care of our
planet instead needing to exploit something like natural resources to make
a profit,I know that profit is a sacred cow but I would like to submit
this idea for your consideration,suppose each person was the raw
resource, then what ever activity each citizen was active at could return
to something I like to call a United system,that way we wouldnt need to
rely on chopping down all the trees or using up all the resources to keep
our economy going and maintain a quality of life for a whole society.
paul :)
>
> Stephen Sanderson
>
>
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