11mo ago

Imagine everything humans could accomplish if we were not a commerce based civilization.

106 comments

Capitalism may hold us back in some regards but really helps in others.
The majority of people would likely be feudal peasants, working under a warmonger family that owns the sustaining land by force. No upward mobility except through bloodshed.
- I suppose not much has changed then
- The majority of people ~~would likely be~~ are feudal peasants, working under a warmonger family that owns the sustaining land by force. No upward mobility except through bloodshed.
  FTFY
  
  No you don’t understand, this 9-to-5 job that’s slowly but surely wearing me down is just a stepping stone to my millions of $$. That’s why I keep voting for tax breaks for the rich; because I’ve just been temporarily down on my luck for 30 years. /s
  
  No, if you're lucky, clever enough, overwork yourself, or manipulate others you can live a somewhat comfortable life. Those methods don't require taking a life.
- Capitalism optimizes for efficiency. Sadly slavery is terribly efficient in terms of economics. Therefore capitalism needs to be capped by society at certain acceptable limits. Which is called socioeconomics and its not perfect but the best system we have. insert handwavy remark about whatever america is doing here
  
  the problem with this is that we depend on the capitalist overlords to keep their pinky promise of not fucking with our rights.
  right now they are breaking it again because they can.
  i also don't think having the majority of the money/value going to a few owners is efficient at all.
  
  Capitalism is based on free exchange and wage labor. Unless a slave has volunteered to be a slave, using a slave is not “free exchange”.
- Thats still in a sense a commerce based system. The only reason that warlord fights for that land is because it has value, be it food, a cash crop, a strategic location.
  Warlords hoarded land and power in similar ways billionaires hoard money and power.
- Capitalism optimises for concentrating resources.
  Dividends, return on investment, profits, etc. are all inefficiencies in the production of value, and require more resources, labor, and suffering per unit of value than for example a circular economy.
  But it does concentrate wealth efficiently, which in turn gives access to enough resources to start larger ventures.
- That's literally how it is now
  
  When you lack the imagination to think about how it could be worse, you can still get the detailed descriptions of it from history.

Commerce is just the exchange of goods and services. If we all stop exchanging goods, in what sense would we have a civilization? What would you or anyone accomplish if you had to grow your own food, make your own clothes, build your own house...?
- Commerce is fine, greed is not. OP missed that distinction.
  
  Commerce != currency
- An exchange of goods and services means you get nothing unless I get something. Maybe OP means everything is given as you take what you need with nothing expected in return.
  You grow carrots, you bring them to town once a week. Other lady raises chickens, brings eggs once a week. If you need either you take some. You use the eggs to make cookies, you have extra, you give them away to anyone you see for the day.
  
  This works at a feudal technology level. Who makes the trains? They train makers need steel and literally no one would work in a forge or a mine for fun/preference.
  Who makes computer chips?
- A lot more than we do in this shithole

Significantly less, since commerce and the ability to trade things for a different value forms the basis for civilization. It's easy to grow and hunt your own food, because that's immediate and concrete. The farther away you get from that, the more abstract that thing becomes. It's going to be harder for people to feel any sense of connection and purpose with making the rubber that goes into a seal on the International Space Station when they don't see any direct benefit from the research done there, and they likely can't even see the indirect benefit of that fundamental research.
For good or ill, commerce is how civilizations universally work, and you'd have to imagine a completely different species that evolved under vastly different circumstances to have anything else.
- I think personally That commerce as we know it has played it's role in the success of humanity But now more and more of the bad is showing and way way less of the gain
  I personally think it's time to move on or at the very least adapt the systems we have in place
  Edit: this was more focused on capitalism not commerce
  Imagining a society with out trade is a very hard one for me to grasp
  
  Well it doesn't have to be private exchange between entities. There doesn't have to be like for like. There can just be stockpiling and withdrawing, for lack of a more nuanced conception.
- So you think we'd have to be an entirely different species for communism to work?
  I'd argue a hell of a lot different, try n stop someone from doing something (sure keep them fed, sheltered, all the good stuff) but give them absolutely nothing to do. Try n keep them from killing themselves lol, sounds like actual hell to me
  
  I think you're conflating commerce with capitalism. I don't think you could have communism without commerce. Even if you did away with currency and the rubber farmer is paid with grain and other foodstuffs that would still be commerce.
  
  For communism to work as intended past a tribal or perhaps city-state level, yeah, I'd say that we would need to be a different species. Communism works fantastically well when everyone is pretty closely connected; the larger a society gets, the less well it ends up working, without having draconian measures in place that largely eliminate all personal liberty.
  I'm not saying that capitalism works well, unless you have a perverse definition of "well". Capitalism does tend to give individuals some kind of incentive to work for what is nominally the greater good by creating the appearance that their own personal effort is tied to the results that they get. Conversely, communism, in large societies, has your input largely decoupled from what you get back. On a large scale, I think that democratic socialism will give the best overall results, but you have to ensure that no one has the ability to entirely fuck off and leech off the labor of everyone else without risking that infecting everyone, and resulting in nothing at all getting done.

I kinda feel like we would have done way, way worse without commerce. We're social beings. We do better when cooperating than trying to go at it alone. Commerce is merely one of the many glues that keep us cooperating on some level. Yes, it also leads to competition; but less so than it would without it. Why kill you and take what you have that I want when I can just give you something I have that you want for it?
Capitalism, and making commerce the end all be all of civilization is what we could do without. It's a means to an end, not the goal.

Interesting, what would be the alternative? Technology, culture, religion, military? Taking those options out of Civ
- I think that's the key question. Like, I get capitalism is hedgemonical (is that even a word?), but what alternative do you propose?
  
  "Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others."
  
  You could start by giving everyone a share of profits rather than pushing all the money up towards the people who have the most.
  Let machines do the work so we can do what we want with our time. We're working more than people did in the past despite our technology. And the reason we have to is the alternative is starving to death in the streets.
  Both of these things violate the principles of capitalism.
  
  Kinda the spelling is hegemonic for further reference.
  
  Not having merit based on how much money something makes would be a start.
  
  barter system worked fine for thousands of years
- religion
  I'd love to see how that one plays out. Lol
  
  Tbf we ostensibly already have and are again.
- Being a lonely hunter gatherer.
  If you have crafted nice spears and axes, but you have no food, that’s too bad. You’re not allowed to barter with talented hunters who can’t make spears as nice as you can. Go hunt your own food or die of starvation in this non-commerce based society.
  Oh wait, how about we allow trading after all?
  
  Comparative Advanta-whoosy whatsits?
  Seems complicated, let's get rid of it.

I'm currently reading The Day The World Stops Shopping by JB Mackinnon, which argues the same point you're asking about, I think you'd find it interesting.
https://www.jbmackinnon.com/the-day-the-world-stops-shopping

imagine everything humans could accomplish if we used billionaires as food and fuel
- Wouldn't using them as food just be using them as fuel anyways? The only difference is what you're going to fuel with them.
  
  came to say this. food is fuel, we are merely labyrinthine biological furnaces that chemically incinerates whatever unfortunate matter may enter us. the fuel's affluence is not typically relevant, but I'm a little out of touch on the science, I might be wrong.
  
  Food is a combination of fuel and building material

What is a commerce based civilization? Isn't everything commerce based?

If you feel the need to defend capitalism, then you should read "The Jungle".

Imagine agreeing on how to make decisions which affect other people.

What about a meritocracy based system where any type of contribution is rewarded, whether it be research, garbage cleanup, etc.? (I’m sure there’s holes to poke in it, just thinking outside of the box.)
- The problem with that and most other proposals for whatever other moneyless utopian society is that they all implicitly require some manner of all-powerful central authority to ensure that the rewards get distributed, the labor gets allocated, and the rules stay followed.
  And we already know how well that's going to turn out.
  
  True meritocracy also leaves the disabled, elderly, or otherwise unable to contribute in the cold.
  
  And yet here you are, in the fediverse.
  
  he problem with that and most other proposals for whatever other moneyless utopian society is that they all implicitly require some manner of all-powerful central authority to ensure that the rewards get distributed, the labor gets allocated, and the rules stay followed.
  that really isn't the case..
  Communism by definition is not only moneyless but also stateless and classless (if there is an "all powerful" anything - it isn't communism).
  anarchism by definition abolishes all hierarchy, so again, no one person or even group gets to a point of having any significant power over anyone else.
  In both cases (which are the two most notable far left ideologies I would say, along with socialism which is inherent to both) not having an all powerful central authority is literally the point.
  
  That's odd, me and my housemates can distribute our housekeeping jobs amongst ourselves without having someone come along and tell us what to do.
  Yet when it comes to the country I live in, this is suddenly unimaginable because who would want to live somewhere functional of their own volition.
- Kinda like how when we contribute our time to our jobs, we're rewarded with... money?
  Lol

Well, we would be still in caves cause commerce is the basement of civilization

Since no one is spelling it out for you.
Commerce is just one caveman trading sea shells with another caveman.
Capitalism is when the caveman with the most shells becomes a ruler over the other cavemen that have less.

Wow. Good luck building your stick cabin in the woods all by yourself and growing and foraging all your food because you refuse to trade your labor for produce from a farmer because that would be evil commerce.
- Project much? 🤣🤣🤣
  
  Your title is literally putting down commerce and you accuse me of projection? I don't think you know what projection means.
  You probably don't even know what commerce means.

106 comments