h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>But being a generalisation doesn't make it *false*, though, does it?

Perhaps not. But neither does it make it true. Nor - most crucially of all - useful.

I'm not just making a fancy-schmancy femiminist point here. I'm making a fancy-schmancy epistemological point.

>>A jobless man on benefit in the worst council estate in Liverpool lives in conditions of luxury and comfort kings could not dream of even a couple of hundred years ago, with clean water, enough food, health care, and chances for intellectual enrichment, education, entertainment and transport that would have been unimaginable. And it's capitalism that's got us there and kept us there.

This may be true. But hasn't the self same chain of transactions that has delivered sybaritic luxury to Bootle also forced people away fro their reasonably comfortable subsistence farms in the Nigerian hinterland and into a life livelihood centred around the rubbish tips of Lagos? For example? Perhaps it will get better for them - or their children or their grandchildren - soon and we can say that it all evened out in the end. But firstly there's a moral question (see OP) about whether the pain was ours to inflict. Secondly - might there be cases where the extremes of inequality become problematic even for those on the winning side?

Hoo, I guess my point is that in a social setting, some people will *always* have higher status than others. These people will tend to attract 'fitter' mates. In a post-scarcity society I'd bet that a star athlete/actor/celebrity walking into a club will get a lot of attention, just like now. Can't see that changing, although how they attain their status could well change. Essentially, status will never be post-scarcity: if we're all rich, then some other factor will come into play.

Never seen The Matrix ('cept the first 1/2 hour of the first one, which was shite), was thinking more about Revelation Space by Alistair Reynolds. Thoroughly recommend it.



Hi Maria , what I meant was that high status will always be attractive to women, even if it doesn't necessarily equate to economic status. Just like good looks will always be attractive to men. I'm not saying of course that they're the only things people find, or will find, attractive though.

<< it would be like taking a woman out to dinner and feeding her liquid through a tube direct to her stomach. >>

that sounds like a definite result!

In a (mythical) free-and-equal world, presumably women will be able to define 'status' in whatever terms suit them as individuals. When their material well being or that of their offspring is no longer determined by their mate's economic prospects they might go for something else. Like looks. Or sexual technique.*

So there's still be fierce competition in plastic surgery.







* Although that can be automated, obviously. Leave the guys to their CGI porn.

"sounds like a definite result! "

I'm appalled I didn't see the double entendre in something I typed. Appalled.

Re: Nigerian farmers. Our man in Bootle is where he is because his great grandfather suffered and toiled down't pit.

Are you perhaps suggesting that the benefits of an industrialised society should come to Nigeria, or anywhere else, without the effort and sacrifice of the majority of the people there?

I don't think there's any "perhaps" about things getting better - we seem on a pretty one-way trajectory with regard to healthy life expectancy worldwide. And finally, no, I don't accept responsibility for someone choosing to move from comfort to hardship, if indeed anyone has done that. "Reasonably comfortable subsistence farm"??? Oxymoron, much?

Extremes of inequality becoming problematic for the "winners"? I think the French can tell you about that. And not, I think, coincidentally, if I were to nominate a country in the world I consider to have just about the best quality of life, attitude etc., it would be France.

>>Re: Nigerian farmers. Our man in Bootle is where he is because his great grandfather suffered and toiled down't pit.

Not entirely. To a degree we are all where we are because we are the net beneficiaries of an economic example which includes (for carefully chosen example) an economic system which has made it cheaper for Nigerians to import food than grow it themselves, thus displacing people from the land into the sprawling Metropolises (with consequences for disease etc. etc. Epidemiologists now recognise that HIV/AIDS is a consequence of urbanisation, for example)

I was *not* trying to make the point that the folk from Bootle were making off Nigerians. The chain of transactions is far more complex than that.

The Bootle folks ancestors would more likely have been sailors, and dockers, btw.


>>"Reasonably comfortable subsistence farm"??? Oxymoron, much?

Well...it maybe not. As a comparison. More comfortable than a Lagos rubbish tip? Posssibly. No? Put Chinua Achebe on your reading list.



btw...do the people in Bootle believe they're living like kings? Even though they've never had it so good they might feel quite ungrateful when they compare themselves with others. Might extremes of resentment be problematic, even if they're caused by unreasonable expectations?

"do the people in Bootle believe they're living like kings? "

I doubt it. But the fact remains that, objectively, they are.

At the end of the day, one has to question what it is we'd like to achieve. Consider: you live in a world where you and your will live lives that are nasty, brutish and short. Even the very richest of you will likely live with lice and squalor, and die in pain before you're sixty.

I now offer you the possibility that you and yours will live lives of comfort and leisure. Your water will be clean and pure, your food nutritious and safe, your doctors and dentists free and competent, your education free and comprehensive, your shelter and security guaranteed. Your lifespan will increase by decades, and you will live the majority of it in functional good health.

And now I hesitate - I hesitate to offer you this boon, because with it comes a caveat. And the caveat is that now, the very richest among you will live lives of even greater ease. They won't live any longer, or at least not by much. They will have more, but compared to what you had before not *much* more. I hesitate to raise you up, in case you're unhappy that others have more.

Do you:
(a) thank me for my consideration, but turn down my offer because you'd rather live in a world where all were equal, and the thought of billionaires would make you unhappy or
(b) do you angrily tear off my arm and beat me to death with the wet end for thinking, even for a second, that the existence of a minority of the super-rich diminishes YOUR material improvement in lifestyle?

The problem with asking me about the relative comfort of a Lagos rubbish tip is that, obviously, I'd rather live where I am than there. But I'd have to ask some pertinent questions, such as: is my continued life on the tip subject to the vicissitudes of the weather to the extent that subsistence farming is? I.e. am I realistically going to starve to death there? One thing about the garbage of an industralised society - it's a LOT more reliable and continuous than the weather. Subsistence farming is a shitty way to live, which is why people would sooner live on a dump than do it. It's a choice, and unfortunately for people who romanticise the noble savage, every single time "primitive" people are given the choice, they choose Nike trainers and hooky Rolexes over slash-n-burn farming in the forest, and screw cultural diversity.

>>every single time "primitive" people are given the choice, they choose Nike trainers and hooky Rolexes over slash-n-burn farming in the forest

Apparently not:

"Some of these groups are truly uncontacted, having no direct knowledge of the outside world. Other groups are actively choosing to live in isolation. "They know the outside world exists and they want nothing to do with it" "
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/03/0310_030310_invisible1.html

There's a difference between hunter gatherers and subsistence farmers.

Fair cop. I was wrong. People DO reject civilisation.

... not many of them, though.

And without bothering to google it, I'd bet folding money that the number of people rejecting civilisation is outstripped over a hundred to one by people actively rejecting their old culture in favour of the dubious benefits of western capitalism. Disagree?

I believe you're mistaking what I'm saying, SoRB.

I'm *not* saying 'Down With Progress!'. I even recognise that Capitalism has delivered progress. But a salient feature of the history of Capitalism is upheaval in Labour - originally from the countryside to cities and towns. On the positive side some would have been drawn by the bright lights and opportunities of the city and to escape a nasty brutish and short life expectancy of 35 to die at an advanced age of 38. Others would have been pushed to the city by their previous livelihoods drying up. For example nobody to buy your milk because American maize is cheaper*.

Out of this upheaval there were winners and losers. Some of those drawn there were unsuccessful. Some that were pushed were successful. But the point is there was upheaval. Ongoing. Does it matter so long as, in the end, everything works out OK? Well you'd expect a different answer on that from the winners and losers.

Furthermore, we still have the issue of competition to contend with. Can anyone think of any major conflicts that have arisen between competing economic powers? Would anyone like to lay money on peace in our time?










The same can happen in modern, urban environments when, say, a hoover manufacturer might realise it's cheaper to manufacture his hoover overseas. Did I say 'hoover'? My bad.

There is definitely a cachet applied to things because of their perceived status.

Salmon was a luxury food 20 years ago; farming has made it more common, but nowhere near as common as it was in London in the Middle Ages when apprentices went on strike to ask for something else, anything else to eat.

As for Rolexes.... I actually own a Rolex. It was a gift from my ex who was impressed by such things. It loses about 5 minutes per month. I was quoted 400 quid to have it serviced and calibrated. I don't think so....! I am too tight to replace it, I like its weight on my wrist, and my phone keeps good time.

I think pedro is right about the reason why the powerful don't want a wealth-free world. Middle aged men with dandruff, moobs and clammy hands need wealth; how else will they pull pert-bottomed 23 year olds?

Hoo said: >> (Plus, in my experience, feeding them liquid through a tube direct to their stomach when you've promised to take them out to dinner is a one-way ticket the "friend zone", and who wants to be there?)

You've DONE this? You are more disturbing than even I thought.


Regarding our man in Bootle, isn't he there because of the riches of an Empire built on the cousins of the Nigerian farmer, shipped to the New World and working in cotton and sugar plantations as slaves? Where did the cotton come from for the Lancashire mills?


And regarding people rejecting civilisation - how many colonial powers observe the prime directive? How many non-technological cultures had the choice?




Just a note to say that I am enjoying the tone of this debate; yes, the people in the thread disagree pretty fundamentally, but it's a discussion not a p**sing-contest or a cave-man fight.

I do hope I've no jinxed it now.

And I return you to your original programming.

>>And without bothering to google it, I'd bet folding money that the number of people rejecting civilisation is outstripped over a hundred to one by people actively rejecting their old culture in favour of the dubious benefits of western capitalism. Disagree?


Ah, but you see - it's not like there's a choice. Economics determines lives. Another important point from yer man from Trier.

Plus often there's a certain degree of compulsion. For example from 1750 onwards in England it became increasingly difficult to follow a culture centred around herding grazing animals. Similarly my guess is that you see relatively few hunter gatherers in your town nowadays.

Yes - there probably *sensible* not be grazers or hunter gatherers - but it's not a choice. A choice between...what?

"Can anyone think of any major conflicts that have arisen between competing economic powers? "

That's an interesting one. A more interesting variant on that question is this: can anyone think of any major conflicts that have arisen between mutually dependent economic powers?

There was a cartoon in, I think, The Economist a few years ago. It showed a belligerent United States laying down the law about human rights to the Chinese government. The US was portrayed as a tiny little Uncle Sam figure, standing in a valley shaking its fist up at a colossal dragon which was sitting, grinning, with one paw on a floodgate marked "Debt".

The point was that China held such a massive reserve of US currency that it could afford to simply ignore anything the US said. Any hostile or inconvenient action by the US could result in the Chinese simply dumping their dollars onto the international market, rendering them worthless and the US economy utterly crippled.

However... China won't do that, because a large part of their success economically is dependent on having the US to sell to. China and the US aren't in competition. Each is dependent on the other... for now.



As for upheaval of Labour - fair enough. And yes, winners and losers. Obviously.

But what you don't seem to take on board is - in the most successful capitalist economies, even the losers are winners. Yer man in the council house, living like a king whether he believes it or not. I'd sooner be poor in 2011 than rich in 1711. Wouldn't you?

"a hoover manufacturer might realise it's cheaper to manufacture his hoover overseas"

There was rather more to it than that - there are complex business climate factors to take into account. The enterprise doesn't exist in a vacuum. (BOOM!)

You build a hoover out of bits you buy in from suppliers. And you sell the finished article to consumers.

Now... if most of your suppliers are in the far east... and you're the best-selling hoover in Australia and NZ... and your fastest growing other markets are in the far east... then, even if it cost exactly the same to do your manufacturing in the far east, it would still make sense to move there.

>>Regarding our man in Bootle, isn't he there because of the riches of an Empire built on the cousins of the Nigerian farmer, shipped to the New World and working in cotton and sugar plantations as slaves? Where did the cotton come from for the Lancashire mills?

Indeed.

'...the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins...signalled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.'

Karl Marx - Das Kapital.

Basically, the industrial revolution didn't just happen because of Clever People. They needed investment capital. The way they got that is to find people who they could extract more money from than yer common-or-garden European peasant.

Totally trashed the West African economy too, of course. What happens when there's more money in rounding people up and selling them on than there is in selling their agricultural produce? It was a long, long time ago but the economy still hasn't recovered.

In the case of my mother, she was in Bootle because it was possible, by means of violent coercion, to extract a quite incredible quantity of (technical term) Surplus Value from African-American Labour which could be invested in ships to bring cotton to Lancashire and other goods from elsewhere and to pay those who worked the ships (my Grandpop and his Pop before him) a somewhat lower wage than they were making on the goods. The reason my mother stayed around is that there were enough similar wage earners paying taxes to fund her job. But it all started with people being rounded up in West Africa.

Question: Does it matter so long as we're all happy now?

>>But what you don't seem to take on board is - in the most successful capitalist economies, even the losers are winners. Yer man in the council house, living like a king whether he believes it or not. I'd sooner be poor in 2011 than rich in 1711. Wouldn't you?


Is it relevant to ask if you'd like to be poor now?

Genuine question!

On the Chinese/US question.

It's often said that if you want to really make Capitalism work, put the Chinese in charge. I have some sympathy with that. Love him or hate him (and trust me...the latter!) Mao developed a profound, theoretical understanding of Capitalism. Some say that the Chinese government are no longer influenced by Communism, but quite often you can see it in the language they use. And they understand that the best way to make capitalism deliver is through coercion. (cf American slavery).

Having said that - they *have* been massively successful in eradication starvation (let's not mention that a lot of it was caused by Mao). So by the SoRB model of Things Can Only Get Better, they're doing quite well. They'll be on the moon before you know it. Just be careful what interwebs sites you visit.

And as SoRB says, the Chinese and US (and therefore our own) economies are interdependent.

Therefore...I'm sure you know where I'm going with this...

Does this mean that the continued success of Western Capitalism is dependent on human rights abuses?

Does it matter? So long as it all works out OK in the end?