spiritual memes

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  4. Posted

    9 minutes ago, zurew said:

    And any system that involves markets and provides the ability to individuals to engage in a market and the right to own some things sounds very capitalistic to me, but labels doesn't matter here, what matter here is to see whether or not certain socalist changes would provide the necessary solutions to the problems it wants to solve in the firstplace.

    Fair enough, what changes are you advocating for?

    10 minutes ago, zurew said:

    Thats not the argument, the argument was artificial demand, which would mean, that you make stuff addictive and by the result of that, you take away peoples agency from being able to properly participate in the market. They wouldn't waste any manpower because if they make stuff addictive, then they can sell more shit.

    In this case, the community would quickly intervene.

    12 minutes ago, zurew said:

    But they can't, because they are living on the edge, because they are earning exactly as much money as much the production cost is. You can't build something from nothing.

    But, you're not building something from nothing, the community can provide existing resources in exchange for production that meets demand. In socalism, its not about money. Its about meeting demand. If the community has lemons and the want lemonade, they will give someone the lemons so they can make lemonade in exchange for labour vouchers.

    16 minutes ago, zurew said:

    You can't grow the economy if there is no profit.

    Why not?

    16 minutes ago, zurew said:

    What does that mean "you can start a business whenever", you wouldn't own the business, at the very best you would give an idea for a business. So you say the government would be involved as well, so ultimately the government would be the gatekeeper to decide how the market would go and transform and what new demand it would want to create.

    Yes, that is the point of socialism.

    17 minutes ago, zurew said:

    Not necessarily, there are things that can go unnoticed for a long time, and because of the decentralized structure, people wouldn't even be suspect that there would be people changing and editing stuff with a corrupt incentive, because they would just assume that in a decentralized system its impossible to make it corrupt. But again I concede that from the bottom-up it would be harder to do corrupt things, however that wouldn't necessarily be the case from the top-down.

    Fair, play but if a corrupt edit went unnoticed, it probably wasn't very important. Try editing a political wikipedia article and see how long it takes to correct.

     

    I don't think this discussion is going anywhere productive. instead of arguing over capitalism vs socialism neither of which we advocate for, what actual societal and political changes do you want to see to address these problems with capitalism? What would your ideal society look like?

  5. Posted

    38 minutes ago, zurew said:

    Some parts of wikipedia are indeed corrupt and you don't necessarily have to be a highly influencial people to achieve it. People can pay money to people to edit some parts of the wikipedia for their benefit or for their bias.

    Yes but any biased edits would be noticed and reported to the community.

    38 minutes ago, zurew said:

    How would you know if the people who are participating in the voting process are not heavily influenced by any party at all?

    I don't but its much harder to corrupt 500 people than it is to corrupt 1.

    38 minutes ago, zurew said:

    Capitalist organization are generally for profit and give less fuck about ideology. But again, if you really want to protect people from an injustice like that you could make some laws or rules that would prevent them from doing firing on unnecessarily reasons. Now, what do you think would be easier? To make a law that restricts a boss from doing this or to make a law that restricts a large group of people from doing this?

    Any law that restricts the owner of a company from making company decisions for the good of its workers sounds very socialist to me... Also, how would this law be enforced? What's stopping the boss from making up a reason?

    38 minutes ago, zurew said:

    Bias and profit orientation doesn't exclude the fact that it can have a positive impact on the world.

    Yes but you cannot ignore the negative effects of bias and profit incentives either.

    38 minutes ago, zurew said:

    Your reasoning was that if the government owns all the companies, then thats necessarily indicates, that there will be less artifical demand, but you haven't provided a reason why that  would be the case.

    I provided the case in my previous argument. Production is collectively owned and exists to meet demand. Why would the collective waste manpower and resources on shit they don't need? For example: lets say a factory worker thinks 'hey we should make some essential oils and sell them to increase profit' He pitches this to his fellow workers and they would probably be like 'Why the fuck would anyone need essential oils'. But lets assume they actually liked the idea. They would then need more workers to produce the essential oils so they would pitch to the community their idea and the community would be like 'lol no, no one wants essential oils'. And so the idea would end there.(Unless people actually wanted essential oils)

    40 minutes ago, zurew said:

    So you are telling me, that the government would sell everything at the price of production cost? If thats the case, then that system will have many problems.

    In a fully socialist society, money is replaced with labour vouchers that expire after use. You're under the impression that profit incentive is the reason people do anything. 

    48 minutes ago, zurew said:

    For example, what would the government do with the increase of population, or with the increase in demand if it doesn't have any profit at all?

    If there is increase in demand, the community will decide to create new means of producing goods and services. Because they demand it...  

    49 minutes ago, zurew said:

    It wouldn't be able to create more business(es), it wouldn't be able to provide more jobs, It wouldn't be able to maintain any business or service(because if things crash or if things break down that requires unexpected costs), It wouldn't have any power to change things even if people vote to change things etc, It wouldn't be able to deal with any catashropes or any crisis at all, it would have no power over things and that government would necessarily fail.

    Why not? This is a baseless assumption. If you were hungry, would you make yourself a sandwich even it there was no profit incentive or starve to death?

    54 minutes ago, zurew said:

    And how many people would have the right to vote on it? All the people in the whole country, or just local people or something else?

    Depends on the type of socialism, but most likely, it would be local, but with government approval as well. In market socialism you can start a business whenever, but it must be democratically run.

  7. Posted

    5 hours ago, zurew said:

    I will give a concrete example and the reason afterwards. So the example would be an instance, where a wealthy person would pay money to the workers in order to make the voting system in his favour. Lets say 'in his favour' in this case would mean firing certain people from the company. So he offers some money to some people, that he assumes, he can trust, and then they make the voting system corrupt, and fire those people. In that case, it would be hard to detect corruption, because those people weren't fired randomly by one person or a small number of people, but they were fired because the majority of the workers agreed to it. Even if some people would recognize that there is some corruption going on, they wouldn't know where to search for it, because at least 51% of the people who are working at that company voted to fire those people, so you need to do a really big investigation to find out who paid who.

    Since socialist organizations are collectively owned, decision making would be far more transparent and any unfair or corrupt decisions would be more easily exposed. For an example, look at open source software or websites like wikipedia. How exactly could someone corrupt these? On the contrary, capitalist organizations have no incentive for transparency. How would you even know if corruption was going on?

    5 hours ago, zurew said:

    Other example for corruption would be ideologically driven votes. Of course, under a capitalist system this is also possible, however generally, because the boss is success and profit driven that boss will most likely overlook the ideological differences. Also, under a capitalist system with laws its easier to reduce bigoted thinking and biased ideological decision in the context of a company, because only the boss has to be targeted, but opposite to this, under a system ,where there is a democratized workplace, in that case people could collectively fire people just because they don't agree with their ideology, and the key part here, is that it would be almost impossible to write laws to prevent that.

     Bruh, capitalist organizations can and do fire people for whatever reason they want. What is more likely, that a more than half your workplace are ideological assholes, or one person is? Who would target the boss if he is bigoted and ideological? The boss police? In capitalism, the owner has almost no accountability. Plenty of CEO's have been accused of a toxic workplace and harassment but no one can do anything about it.

    5 hours ago, zurew said:

    is necessarily true. I could bring up medicine in general, like big pharma (although I know it has many problems, but its still hugely beneficial), I could also bring up vaccines. I don't think that research that is done for profit will be generally bad. I would say, that positive ROI says almost nothing about the quality of the research , but says more about what the current market values.

    Big pharma perhaps the worst example you could have used.  They are to blame for the opioid crisis, increasing drug costs, a lack of transparency in clinical trials. For example, the price of insulin is extortionately high in the US compared to other countries. This is what happens when companies prioritize profits over human wellbeing. As for research, for profit research is much more likely to be biased.

    6 hours ago, zurew said:

    The government owning the companies doesn't necessarily indicates less orientation towards profit. The reason why is because those companies  under your system would be run by workers, and workers generally want to earn as much money as possible. So how can they earn more money under a socialist system? I assume it would either be determined by the success of the company (so they can distribute more money between the workers, if the company generates more profit) or it would be determined by the government.

    This is not necessarily the case, workers would prioritize better working conditions. Creating artificial demand just makes workers lives harder.

    6 hours ago, zurew said:

    If its solely determined by the government, in that case, I still wouldn't necessarily agree that the government wouldn't have an incentive to generate as much profit as possible, because all the power would be in the government's hand, so why would they suddenly not care about earning more money? The government would have almost all the leverage and they could do whatever they want , because they would own all the companies, so people wouldn't even have a chance to break from that system.

    There is no profit in a socialist society. Goods and services are produced for use.

    6 hours ago, zurew said:

    Also, I would be very curious how new businesses would be created under the system you are talking about, like how the process would go down exactly, because that can be a key part to the demand discussion. 

    In socialism, if you want to start a business , you pitch your idea to the community which then decides whether to start it.

  8. Posted

    2 hours ago, zurew said:

    If its easy to see and measure a good and effective leader, then human input is not releavant there.

    why not? How do you get the good and effective leader in power in the first place as opposed to an inept ceo/dictator? If your boss was incompetent and there was someone better, how would replace them under capitalism?

    2 hours ago, zurew said:

    under a capitalist system when the shady shit comes to light, you can almost automatically see who should be hold accountable (and you know what patterns to search for),

    can you elaborate on this? why would it be harder to find under socialism?

    2 hours ago, zurew said:

    then my question would be, how would people get paid. Earlier you gave this answer "The rewards would be the same as they are now." but it wouldn't be, because earlier there was a market that determined the price of labour, but right now that part of the market is gone (because that part of the competition is gone), so when a collectively owned company earns x amount of money, based on what factors would it give a salary?

    My first answer would be market socialism which is a bit different to traditional socialism. In traditional socialism, there are no wages.  All hours of labor would entitle a person to an equal (in terms of labor hours) amount of goods and services required for the daily reproduction of their labor power.

    2 hours ago, zurew said:

    Some can get away with stuff but others can't. For example, there are laws that are protecting employees: you can't pay people under minimum wage, there are ethic laws about what you can and can't do to your employees etc.

    Interestingly it was labour unions that campainged to bring about the first minimum wage in america. i.e collective actions by workers

    2 hours ago, zurew said:

    The solution is not socalism (where the main corruption factors are still present), but probably more well thought out restriction(s) or a different system (which is neither socialism, nor capitalism)

    Lol I agree. Why are we even  debating in the first place? :D

    2 hours ago, zurew said:

    This is true, those are good examples, however, giving our current state of society and the fact that the current society is stage orange at best, it would undermine innovation greatly, but yeah thats true, that innovation is not exclusive to profit incentive.

    Yeah a socialist society would require a miniumum stage green center of mass.

    2 hours ago, zurew said:

    But, It would also slow down research, unless you compensate the research group properly, but you its not sustainable in the longrun to have a negative ROI.

    Yes but keep in mind that most for profit research doesn't really benefit society as a whole. In fact, for profit research sucks up extremely talented people to work on pointless shit that only exists to generate profit. For example my friend who is a maths and computer science genius is working for a finance company to develop ai to help rich people cheat the stock market, He's not even allowed to publish his research as it would give competitors and edge.

    2 hours ago, zurew said:

    I didn't agree with that, and I don't think you have properly established that point. I gave reasons why I think there wouldn't be less incentive for corruption, you can attack those points if you want to. 

    I agree with you on the fact that socialist societies would still have corruption, but the original topic I was talking about was overconsumption and artificial demand. Since, state owned companies exist to meet demand rather than create profit. There is less incentive to create artificial demand. Would there still be a bit of arfiticial demand? maybe but there would be much less than in a capitalist country.

    2 hours ago, zurew said:

    Lets say you choose a socialist system where everyone can vote on every decision, now the problem is that , that system is super inefficient and I don't see how for example a hypothetical Joe should have a direct say in every companies decision making. Can you imagine how insane that would be? Every people would need to vote on a thousand different things every day. 

    Thats why they vote on people to make those decisions just like in a regular democracy.

     

    I think this discussion has gotten off topic. Keep in mind that I'm not advocating for socialism here. I'm only saying that overconsumption is caused by capitalism primarily and that a socialist society would not overconsume as much.

    As for real world examples, cuba is a good example. If you want an example of first world countries that have adopted socialist policies, the scandinavian countries are a golden example.

  9. Posted

    2 hours ago, zurew said:

    But people would only have a say and could only vote in the context of a company where they work at, and they wouldn't have a say in every company, and thats why the same rivalrous dynamic is there just in a different context.

    Actually they could depending on the type of socialism.

    2 hours ago, zurew said:

    That would have its own problems. There would be no drive to innovate or to work hard and it would produce poor quality goods and services

    Are you saying that state owned companies cannot make quality goods and services? NASA, a state owned organization landed a dude on the moon. 

    If you want a better example of collective ownership look at open source software like wikipedia or python. These are extremely high quality yet collectively owned.

    2 hours ago, zurew said:

    The distinction here is that its much easier to see and to measure who would be a good and effective person who can make really good decisions for a company and to do his work very effectively compared to trying to make a test for who would be a conscious leader of a country.

    If its much easier to see and measure a good and effective leader than a janitor should be able to see and realise it and therefore should be able to vote on it.

    2 hours ago, zurew said:

    the dictator wouldn't be hold accountable by anything  but this business person could still be hold accountable by political restrictions so if the businessman start to do shady shit, he/she can be caught and be hold accountable and thats an important distinction.

    But businessmen in capitalism already do a lot of shady shit and are not held accountable as they can buy their way out.

    2 hours ago, zurew said:

    I appreciate Janitors, but their contribution to the company is not the same as people who are educated and who are able to see how to maintain the company and how to make it more succesful. From a market lense, that janitor is easily replaceable and it would be easy to find a different person to his/her place, the same couldn't be said about a highly education person who has a lot of experience making hard financial decisions.

    So should people in replaceable jobs not be allowed to vote then?

    2 hours ago, zurew said:

    I think I could agree with this. I think the biggest problem is not necessarily inequality, but inequality where not all people having their basic needs met. I know 'basic needs' is a vague notion, but its a collection of things that you need to live a happy life in the current times. I think the current times part is important, because as time passes by things can change, and what would be considered 'basic needs' is also changing.

    I agree

    2 hours ago, zurew said:

    I don't think that would be the worst case scenario. Given our culture and our collective level of consciousness it would be a granted dynamic that would eventually go down. My argument against socalism is not that it would have elements of capitalism, my argument is that it would have all the negative elements of capitalism + being ineffective + it would block innovation. 

    I have explained in my previous replies that socialism has much less incentive for the types of corruption that you are talking about. As for your argument about innovation, you're under the assumption that innovation is only possible with a profit incentive, however some of the biggest innovations of our time did not have a profit incentive. e.g Moon landing, internet etc..

     

    2 hours ago, zurew said:

    The collectively owned part isn't relevant when your money isn't determined by the whole country, but by the people who are working at the same workplace as you do , and by the success of the company where you work at.

    see my first point.

  10. Posted

    9 minutes ago, Kalki Avatar said:

    Yes. I experienced the same thing a month ago by accidentally opening the third eye and crown chakra. Its called spiritual madness.

    What do you mean when letting go of your fears will make them manifest? 

    When I was connected to the universal mind, I felt like I could completely let go of all my attachments and reach enlightenment. However, I felt a strong sense that I couldn't let go just in case my fears came true. I then had that thought than because I was connected to the universal mind, I could manifest anything I focused my mind on. But because I was focused on my fear, I thought that I was going to manifest them.

  11. Posted

    4 hours ago, zurew said:

    Im not sure about that one, why would it be significantly less? The motive that creates atificial demand is the want for profit. That part would still exist in your system and I don't see how that would be mitigated just because people wouldn't own companies. You can be a worker at a company  and you and the other guys that work there would still collectively want to dominate the market with whatever means possible, because its their incentive to do so. 

    A socialist enterprise creates products for use rather than profit. Therefore the incentive of a company would be to meet demand of the community. remember that the community is also a shareholder. In capitalism, the goal is profit no matter what. That is the fundamental difference which I am trying to get across. Why would a socialist, company want to dominate the marker when it is owned collectively? 

    if you want to take it even further, a true socialist economy would just be comprised of state owned corporations with no competition.

    4 hours ago, zurew said:

    Having a choice is not always good. This model can only function well, if most people there are knowledgeable and educated, but if they are not, they will make poor choices overall for the company, which would be bad for everyone working there.

    Lets say there is a big company where there is 100 people. There are janitors and all the other workers have higher education and other qualifications. Why would the janitors have the same amount of say, when they have little to no contribution to the success of that company?

    What you're criticizing is democracy. My response to that is why should we let people vote for a government instead of a just having a dictator make every decision?

    Second of all, a janitor contributes to the success of a company because they keep the buildings clean. Try running a business with shit all over the floor. Y'all take cleaners and janitors for granted.

    4 hours ago, zurew said:

    How would you reward people? Would you reward them based on how much they contribute to that particular company's success or other way?

    What I am arguing for is UBI in a capitalist economy. The rewards would be the same as they are now.

    4 hours ago, zurew said:

    Also I don't see how would your system solve inequality, when there is still a market. The same dynamic would go down just as in a capitalist society, which is that some people are exceptionally good at managing their finance and money, they know exactly where to invest and how much and when, and eventually they would dominate the workplace as well , because they could use their money to corrupt the workplace.

    How would someone dominate the workplace if the workplace is collectively owned? Socialist societies would also have laws against corruption. Again your argument against socialism is that in the worst case scenario, it might have elements of capitalism... Can you not see the problem?

    4 hours ago, zurew said:

    Because of competition. Competition drives profit and quality. People don't want the same from everything, and since in your system there is a market, demand would eventually end up forcing the government to create more companies to satisfy the needs of the customers. People don't just want to buy adidas shoes, some people like nike others like vans etc and there is no way that a company can specialize in being good at producing all the quality services and items.

    But in your previous argument, you were saying competition was bad???

     

  12. Posted

    Unburdening an exile is an incredible experience. The uncomfortable knot that has been in your body for as long as you can remember suddenly dissolves into a warm loving, vibrating, golden light. This light spreads through your body loosening any tight areas. The protector parts, touched by this light, begin to vibrate. From a systems level, the equilibrium has been disrupted causing a chain reaction of healing but also destruction.

    What an amazing experience.

  14. Posted

    20 minutes ago, zurew said:

    I didn't say there would be the same amount, i just wanted to point out, that the problem wouldn't be solved - just mitigated. The reason why I wanted to point that out, to show you , that that particular problem is not exclusive to capitalism, because earlier you made it sound like, these problems are only related to a capitalist structure and not to the content within that structure. I think its very important to distinguish between structural and not structural problems.

    What would a 'solved problem' look like? While artificial demand may exist in a socialist economy it would be significantly less than in capitalism. The capitalist structure greatly amplifies artificial demand which is the problem. That was my point. A tiny bit of artificial demand is not too problematic. But when an economic requires artificial demand to function, its a problem.

    27 minutes ago, zurew said:

    Lets say there is a small company where there is 100 people. These people will collectively decide on stuff. Lets say there is a person who know 55 people there and this person has a good relationship with those people. They can do whatever the fuck they want there, because they can vote whatever they want.

    That is called democracy... Its 55 people making the choice, not 1. In capitalism the 55 people don't get a choice.

    28 minutes ago, zurew said:

    This person wouldn't even need to know 50% of the people, he just need to offer some money and basically buy votes and power.

    Your example is considered corruption in a socialist society but its standard practice in a capitalist one. At least the people in your example have the choice to say no. Can you not see that your worst case scenarios in socialism are daily occurrences in capitalism?

    35 minutes ago, zurew said:

    Based on what plan would you distribute the money?  Lets say there is a business and the profit is 100 million dollars, and lets say there is 10 thousand workers working in that business.

    Negative income tax or universal basic income.

    36 minutes ago, zurew said:

    I would switch the word capitalism with unregulated markets and competition.

    How would regulations reduce artificial demand? As for competition, that's pretty much the whole point of capitalism.

    38 minutes ago, zurew said:

    Generally speaking I agree with this, but I think there still a lot of room to grow but I agree that it need to be slowed the fuck down and prioritized under human wellbeing and under environmental damage.

    Fair play

    39 minutes ago, zurew said:

    Also I want to add this here: GDP would still be a good variable to measure improvement with,  if it would only measure consciously created goods and services.

    But then it wouldn't be GDP, but some other metric. The whole point of GDP is that it entails all goods and services. I guess consciously created domestic product would be a better measure but the problem would be who decides whether a product is 'consciously created'

    43 minutes ago, zurew said:

    To be more specific: Lets say there is 2 shoemaking business in a socialist country. 100 people working in business 1 and 100 people working in business 2. People who are working at business 1, I assume they would only have a say and vote that is related to business 1. These people have an interest to collectively be better compared to business 2. So  In the big picture, most business 1 people  wouldn't give a fuck about business 2 people. They would want to find a way, to outsource and to outsmart business 2 people, to dominate the market which would eventually result in business 2 people earning less money, and getting fucked over and being forced to switch jobs.

    You're talking about competition which isn't necessarily a problem as it healthy competition can lead to better products. Government can also intervene it competition gets of of hand. However, a hardcore socialist government wouldn't have 2 businesses making the same thing in the first place. There would only be 1 business with 200 employees which would be more efficient. Since the businesses are collectively owned, why would the community decide on making 2 competing shoe businesses in the first place when 1 is sufficient?

  15. Posted

    13 hours ago, zurew said:

    Probably with higher taxes, but would have to think about it more. It seems that you say, that there is still a market under the socialist system ,that you are talking about, so if there is a market, there will be artificial demand, so it doesn't solve that problem and it seems that problem is not exclusive to capitalism, but that problem is exclusive to having a market.

    Artificial demand exists in capitalism because privately owned companies must maximize profit for its shareholders. It can do this by creating a supply which meets the demand. However more profit could be made if they created artificial demand through what basically amounts to psychological warfare on consumers. Why would there be the same amount of artificial demand in a centrally planned and collectively owned economy?

    14 hours ago, zurew said:

     You say there is central planning and then you say there is still a market. I assume that when you say central planning you mean something like people voting collectively on who should get and how much profit and voting on what to do with the collectively owned business in general.

    Yes, a market is just a place where people buy and sell stuff. There would still be a market in a socialist society.

    14 hours ago, zurew said:

    Not necessarily, you can still get fucked if we are talking about people who has big networks. People with big networks at a workplace could make it more central and fuck up other people who works there, so how would you make sure that doesn't happen?

    Not sure what you mean by networks. If someone decides to fuck other people, the collective will vote them out. 

    14 hours ago, zurew said:

    If there is still a market then there is still demand and competition. Workplaces that have more skilled and smarter people with big networks , those would naturally dominate the whole market, 

    Yes, but demand and competition isn't necessarily bad. Only when it gets out of hand, which would be mitigated by central planning.

    14 hours ago, zurew said:

    Also how and when would a new business get created? like how would it go down in the real world?

    Depends on the extent of socialism as it is a scale rather than a fixed system. That being said in a purely socialist economy, you would pitch your idea to the community rather than private shareholders.

    In a weakly socialist society, starting a small business would be pretty much the same as it is now. Large corporations would be heavily regulated and collectively owned.

    14 hours ago, zurew said:

    Almost every, but again not just the capitalist systems aiming for growth, so to only relate capitalism to gpd growth is misleading, imo. GPD growth would have been a must under any economic system. Imagine if the whole world would have been stuck in the early 20st century. We wouldn't enjoy the comfort and the benefits of anything right now. Every science, The whole medical field (We wouldn't have nowhere near the same capability to deal with diseases and illnesses), no internet etc.

    This is an example of linear thinking. I never said GDP growth was bad. If a country is poor then GDP growth will improve the lives of most of its citizens. However this correlation is not linear. Once a country is significantly rich, GDP growth no longer improves peoples lives. The us economy grew by approx 40% over the last 10 years yet life for most people is worse. Capitalist countries proritize gdp growth over human wellbeing which causes all the problems you see today. 

    14 hours ago, zurew said:

    Under a system where there is 0% GDP growth, how do you adapt to a growing population? How do you provide a business and jobs for those people? How do you make sure that everyone will have a good enough livelihood?

    These problems have nothing to do with gdp growth. For the US the solution would be more wealth distribution. 

    14 hours ago, zurew said:

    Under a socialist system where there is a market, there would still be a want and aim for GPD growth, because if you want to participate in a market, you have competition and of course you don't want to lose in a competition, especially if your livelihood depend on it.  So again, this problem is not exclusive to capitalism either, this is probably exclusive to systems that has a market and an underdeveloped culture.

    Yes but a socialist society would not prioritize GDP growth over human wellbeing. (Unless it was very poor in which case gdp growth is correlated with human wellbeing).

    14 hours ago, zurew said:

    GPD growth is not necessarily bad, because although that metric is not perfect to measure collective wellbeing , but it does create the possibility to make people's lifes better (if we assume a developed culture). 

    I never said it was... In first world countries, GDP growth means nothing if all the money lands in the hands of ultra rich people.

    14 hours ago, zurew said:

    So it seems to me, that if I didn't misinterpreted most of your stuff, then that system wouldn't solve the core problems of capitalism, at the very best it would probably mitigate it, but that doesn't necessarily true either. We would probably need empirical data to prove these theories.

    See all my other points.

    Keep in minds that I'm not even a socialist. My main point is that the problems of overconsumption and artificial demand are caused mainly by capitalism.

  16. Posted

    3 minutes ago, zurew said:

    The answer is yes, it does lead to artifically created demand, but it can be regulated but I don't think its exclusive to capitalism. Demand of anything could be manipulated by the government as well.

    How would you regulate it?

    6 minutes ago, zurew said:

    How is artifically created demand fades away under your system?

    First of all, I am not advocating for socialism as I do not think it is realistic. I think social democracy like the scandinavian countries is the best path in the short term.

    That being said, in a socialist society, collective ownership and central planning would result in decisions that benefit the collective stakeholders instead of purely maximizing the profit of shareholders in a capitalist system. This would naturally result in less artificial demand. What benefit does the collective have in engaging in psychological warfare with itself?

    11 minutes ago, zurew said:

    I don't think there is any economic system today, where there is a goal to have 0% gpd growth. 

    Thats because almost every economic system is capitalist. You have just proved my point. The capitalist system demands continuous growth no matter the cost to the wellbeing of the people or the environment. 0% growth is unnacceptable to every capitalist society. 

    16 minutes ago, zurew said:

    In a system where there is no market, I think it could be argued that artificialness is much more there, because everything is artificially moderated but by who? 

    There is still a market in a socialist society, its just that the means of production are collectively owned by the workers.

  17. Posted

    50 minutes ago, zurew said:

    You don't have to overconsume under a capitalist system (there wouldn't be a problem if there wouldn't be artificially created demand). If that part wouldn't be there, then the market would change and adapt as it needs to the culture and to the real demand.

    But why is there artificially created demand? Capitalism

    53 minutes ago, zurew said:

    I don't know what you mean by socialism, because there is a lot of different versions of it. Do you mean no market at all or do you mean regulated market or do you mean no private ownership or do you mean something different?

    A system where the means of production are owned collectively.

    54 minutes ago, zurew said:

    If people don't consume or consume very littile in any economic system today, that system will fail.

    The US is structured such that overconsumption is required for economic stability. The US economy/ politcal system and culture is based on neverending economic growth. What do you think would happen if US economic growth was 0? would people be like 'This is fine.'?

  18. Posted

    1 minute ago, zurew said:

    Then it seems you aren't talking about a different economic system, you are talking about regulated capitalism.

    Yes because I don't believe any of the western countries are gonna adopt socialismt anytime soon. Best we can do is mimic the scandinavian countries. If somehow a socialist system were in  place, I'm willing to bet obesity would be much lower.

    3 minutes ago, zurew said:

    Overconsumption of food is just one metric to look at. I think in both Japan and China people are working their ass off and are sleeping in metros and overworking in their whole life.

    People in the US are also overworked. Although China and Japan especially have overwork built into their culture.

    4 minutes ago, zurew said:

    I think most of your points are not exclusive to capitalism structurally, because if they would be, then most of these couldn't be solved with regulations or with hybrid systems.

    I don't thine regulations are going to solve these problems, only soften their effects. A real solution would require a fundamental shift in culture and an increase in consciousness.

    These points are absolutely exclusive to capitalism because no other political system requires people to overconsume to excess to function. If people don't consume in a capitalistic society the economy fails. 

  19. Posted

    11 minutes ago, zurew said:

    How is that the fault of capitalism? Under your system, how would you make healthy food more cheaper?

    Because of capitalism, companies prioritize profit over peoples health. Companies will therefore optimize for taste and price i.e the cheapest foods that activate dopamine receptors the most. These foods tend to had extremely high sugar, fat and salt as well as other dodgy chemicals.

    Unhealthy foods tend to be the cheapest as well as the most widely distributed and advertised. Can you name me a food franchise that is healthy and as cheap as mcdonalds and burger king?

    I don't really have a perfect solution for this but at the very minimum, I would increase taxes on extremely unhealthy food and use the profits for heart disease research. Even this would have a huge public backlash and likely wouldn't have a chance of being passed.

    The problem isn't just the economic system. It's more the culture that arises as a result of capitalism that encourages people to consume to excess. Stage green countries like Norway and Denmark have much lower rates of obesity than the US. Asian countries like China and Japan have even lower rates of obesity because overconsumption isn't built into their culture.

  21. Posted

    22 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

    No one is forcing you to eat it.

    If you die because you cannot stop putting donuts in your mouth, well, that's almost comical by our ancestor's standards of survival.

    I agree with you on an individual level.

    However on a societal level, due to capitalism, companies design their products to maximize profits and as such, they put in ingredients that are extremely addictive to our animal brains as well as being cheaper than healthier options. This makes people have an innate dopaminergic bias to eating these foods. Furthermore, healthy foods can be expensive and time consuming to cook especially if people are extremely busy (which they are because of capitalism).

    No one is forcing people to eat donuts. But you cannot deny the effect of capitalism on people dying because they ate too many donuts. The american diet is extremely unhealthy and a lot of that is attributable to capitalism. 

     

  24. Posted

    After doing IFS for a decent while, I noticed a pretty significant energetic blockage in my neck area corresponding to my throat chakra. It felt like there was energy rising up from my lower body but there was a protector part blocking the energy and preventing it from moving upwards.

    It took me several weeks to get accquanted with this part and during a session I managed to integrate the part so that it would let go and let energy through. Immediately I felt energy almost like an electric current moving through my neck and head. I felt my entire face vibrating as energy moved through it.

    Eventually, the energy stabilised and I felt a energy blockage corresonding to my third eye chakra. I used the same method that I used before to unblock it and the energy moved up into the crown chakra where it was once again blocked. While attempting to unblock it, I noticed an intense fear that if I let go, my mind would dissolve and I would cease to exist as an individual. I kept trying to unblock it but I was unsuccessful so I went to bed.

    While I was in bed, I tried to sleep as I had a job interview next day, however, there was so much energy in my crown chakra that I was unable to sleep. I tried once again to unblock it with a more gentle approach and this time it was successful. I had an extremely intense psychedelic experience where I merged with the universal consciousness. Its like the consciousness/energy in my body was water in a bottle in the ocean and by opening my crown chakra, I had removed the lid and allowed the water in the bottle to merge with the ocean.

    However, before I could fully surrender to this infinite consciousnes, I was hit with intense intrusive thoughts which showed me my worst fears and must fucked up thoughts (People I love dying horrific deaths). This was a protector part trying to stop me from completely letting go, it convinced me that because my worst fears are technically possible, I could not fully let go. It also convinced me that because I was connected to universal consciousness, my worst fears would manifest due to the law of attraction and my trying to make them go away, I was actually giving them energy which would make them even more likely to manifest. This created a nasty feedback loop which almost felt like a bad trip which stopped my from fully letting go.

    I decided to use the IFS approach to understand the protector part responsible for my intrusive thoughts. Its trying to prevent me from letting go of fear because life contains fucked up stuff. Therefore I have to have some underlying fear and clinging to be prepared. Its trying to protect the parts of me that are traumatized from seeing the fucked up aspects of the world.

    This greatly lessened the intrusive thoughts but I was unable to surrender my ego to the universal mind. I also had a job interview the next day which i was worried about which also prevented me from letting go. I lay there in bed trying to sleep. However, instead of going unconscious I started seeing intense hypnogogic visuals almost remniscent of DMT. I started dreaming but I was still conscious and self aware of my dreams although they more resembled weird thoughts and shapes rather than any thing realistic.

    I woke up the next day fairly normal, but damn what a weird experience. I'm still not sure what exactly happened. Anyone been through anything similar?

  25. Posted

    I just had the craziest experience. 

    After doing ifs for a decent while, I noticed a pretty significant energetic blockage in my neck area corresponding to my throat chakra. It felt like there was energy rising up from my lower body but there was a protector part blocking the energy and preventing it from moving upwards.

    It took me several weeks to get accquanted with this part and during a session I managed to integrate the part so that it would let go and let energy through. Immediately I felt energy almost like an electric current moving through my neck and head. I felt my entire face vibrating as energy moved through it.

    Eventually, the energy stabilised and I felt a energy blockage corresonding to my third eye chakra. I used the same method that I used before to unblock it and the energy moved up into the crown chakra where it was once again blocked. While attempting to unblock it, I noticed an intense fear that if I let go, my mind would dissolve and I would cease to exist as an individual. I kept trying to unblock it but I was unsuccessful so I went to bed.

    While I was in bed, I tried to sleep as I had a job interview next day, however, there was so much energy in my crown chakra that I was unable to sleep. I tried once again to unblock it with a more gentle approach and this time it was successful. I had an extremely intense psychedelic experience where I merged with the universal consciousness. Its like the consciousness/energy in my body was water in a bottle in the ocean and by opening my crown chakra, I had removed the lid and allowed the water in the bottle to merge with the ocean.

    However, before I could fully surrender to this infinite consciousnes, I was hit with intense intrusive thoughts which showed me my worst fears and must fucked up thoughts (People I love dying horrific deaths). This was a protector part trying to stop me from completely letting go, it convinced me that because my worst fears are technically possible, I could not fully let go. It also convinced me that because I was connected to universal consciousness, my worst fears would manifest due to the law of attraction and my trying to make them go away, I was actually giving them energy which would make them even more likely to manifest. This created a nasty feedback loop which almost felt like a bad trip which stopped my from fully letting go.

    I decided to use the IFS approach to understand the protector part responsible for my intrusive thoughts. Its trying to prevent me from letting go of fear because life contains fucked up stuff. Therefore I have to have some underlying fear and clinging to be prepared. Its trying to protect the parts of me that are traumatized from seeing the fucked up aspects of the world.

    This greatly lessened the intrusive thoughts but I was unable to surrender my ego to the universal mind. I also had a job interview the next day which i was worried about which also prevented me from letting go. I lay there in bed trying to sleep. However, instead of going unconscious I started seeing intense hypnogogic visuals almost remniscent of DMT. I started dreaming but I was still conscious and self aware of my dreams although they more resembled weird thoughts and shapes rather than any thing realistic.

    I woke up the next day fairly normal, but damn what a weird experience.