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

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

Hasn't that been your position all along? No arguments re: it all being built on slavery, but we've been through that - I'm not apologising. We are where we are.

The key is this: are the human rights abuses on which capitalism is based NOW worse than the ones that it was based on 200 years ago?

Yes - be careful which interwebs sites you look at. Then again, one thing that has US economists spooked at the moment are the trillions of dollars of investment that the Chinese are pouring into... Africa. They're not rounding up the population and chaining them in ships... they're building factories and power stations and mines, in situ.

Is the continued success dependent on human rights abuses? No. Is it likely that human rights abuses will continue, because the dominant power perpetrates them? Well... yes. (Then again, watching the US trying to take the moral high ground with China after Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib is a little nauseating).

But add on another question: is the likely incidence of human rights abuses on an upward, or downward trend as the world gets richer through capitalism? Sincere question...



And obviously I'd rather not be poor. BUT if you were to give me a choice between being long-term unemployed and socially-housed in 2011, or being the richest man in the world in 1711... I'd take the former. Wouldn't you?

>> if you were to give me a choice between being long-term unemployed and socially-housed in 2011, or being the richest man in the world in 1711... I'd take the former. Wouldn't you?

... on the assumption that fi I were born in 1711 could not specify an age-span? That I would be heir to a fortune, but have to take the risk of being one of the 25%-30% of children who didn't make it past infancy?

>>Hasn't that been your position all along? No arguments re: it all being built on slavery, but we've been through that - I'm not apologising. We are where we are

No, I didn't say that. The official Quote is 'The origin of Wealth is in Labour'. This does not necessarily imply slave labour - although as Marx pointed out slavery gave the possibility of maximising the labour yield from people which stimulated the industrial revolution. That stimulus and necessary could not have been provided by indigenous labour alone: the early capitalists needed a sudden boost of wealth input.

And this is related to whether Progress really is on a continuous upward trend. What happened when the need for growth necessitated by competition outstrips the availability of investment?

But...No. Really this *not* about apologies for the Slave Trade. You didn't get that from what I typed. I'm just using that as the most obvious example of a general mechanism.


>>And obviously I'd rather not be poor. BUT if you were to give me a choice between being long-term unemployed and socially-housed in 2011, or being the richest man in the world in 1711... I'd take the former. Wouldn't you?


Yes - but I'm not sure that means anything. Each of us lives in only one world and one tome and we are unable to compare. So what we know is that people living in (say) Bootle are often unhappy despite their regal luxury. Strangely, reminding of their good fortune doesn't always help.

Plus if they weren't skagged off their gourds we might be in trouble

>>But add on another question: is the likely incidence of human rights abuses on an upward, or downward trend as the world gets richer through capitalism? Sincere question...

Tricky one - and it often depends on what we mean by 'Human Rights Abuse'. For example, what of the civil wars that bedevilled Central Africa from 1950/60 onwards and included, as a side-effect the Rwandan genocide? Those, especially around Rwanda, were often related to the supply of raw materials to Western industries. Yes, in many areas those and similar conflicts have somewhat eased in the last 10 years or so, but they are not yet so distantly past that we can yet discount their return, I fear. What will happen in the Chinese Colonial Wars?

Or perhaps take a shufti at the UNDRC:

http://www.un.org/cyberschoolbus/humanrights/resources/plainchild.asp

How's our progress against those human rights? Are we making as fast progress here as we are in, say, smartphones?

Frankly, even if you could transport me now, as forty two year old man, to the position of richest man in 1711, I'd still stay here poor.

But you make an excellent point.

BORN poor in 2011 beats born to the richest woman in the world in 1711 hands down, for that reason even if no other.

Still without wanting to apologise for slavery, what do we think of these arguments:

Let's boost the economy by losing slave labour. It'll be horrible at the time, but give it a couple of hundred years and everyone will be living off the fat of the land and it will all be forgotten.

Or less controversially:

Let's shut down the factory and make hoovers overseas. The workers won't like at first but most of them will find other jobs. Maybe.

"Each of us lives in only one world and one tome and we are unable to compare"

Er... we demonstrably ARE able to compare.

"what we know is that people living in (say) Bootle are often unhappy despite their regal luxury"

Whoah, hang on.

Capitalism has made our man in the council house dry, warm, well-fed, well-clothed, healthy, educated and entertained.

You're saying he wants to be HAPPY as well? Jeez, you can't please some people.

Seriously though - capitalism can address material wealth, for the super-rich AND the poor. We are, as we agree, every single one of us in this country more materially wealthy than the richest man in the world barely two or three centuries ago.

But nobody promised spiritual fulfilment. That, I believe you have to sort out for yourself. Does communism, or any other economic system, even address the concept, much less promise results? It's been hard enough, and complicated enough, making everyone rich, and now all you can do is complain that they're not happy, too?

>>BUT if you were to give me a choice between being long-term unemployed and socially-housed in 2011, or being the richest man in the world in 1711... I'd take the former. Wouldn't you?


I personally think the question is unanswerable. We are where we are. We know what we know.

It is entirely possible that a 1711 man living in a draughty palace with lice, a short life expectancy, no access to dental anaesthesia* and no telly could be happy.

I'm not sure we have a good enough psychological theory of happiness. What we can observe *objectively*, though, is that modern-day poor people tend to suffer an increased incidence of depressive illness etc. etc. I really, really doubt the baseline happiness was lower back in the day.











* Gore Vidal says that this is the chief obstacle to time travel.

"Let's shut down the factory and make hoovers overseas. The workers won't like at first but most of them will find other jobs"

Hmm. Here's a thing. I could make a case for doing that being the most moral option. Consider: the sacked workers live in an advanced developed economy with a comprehensive welfare state and a free national health service. The hired workers live in a country without those advantages.

The global effect of moving production to the far east is to give jobs to people who really, really need them in a region where people are, in general, poorer, and to take jobs from people in a region where they can, yes, likely find other work, and even if they can't, they won't starve.

Obviously I'd rather not BE one of the sacked workers - but sooner or later you have to take a statistical approach to this stuff. You simply cannot make every decision based on what it would feel like to be one of the individuals negatively affected by it, otherwise you'd never do anything.

"It is entirely possible that a 1711 man living in a draughty palace with lice, a short life expectancy, no access to dental anaesthesia* and yikes no telly could be happy."

That wasn't the question I asked.

Answer the question I asked.

He might be happy in his blissful ignorance of the alterntive. HE, it is true, cannot make the comparison. You, however, can, if you stop persisting in avoiding the question.

Would YOU, with your knowledge of the possibility of dental anasthesia, telly, paracetamol, penicillin, goretex, radio, iPhones, cricket, h2g2 and all the other luxuries of modern life, be happy to be the richest man in a world where none of that exists yet?

"modern-day poor people tend to suffer an increased incidence of depressive illness "

When did that even become a diagnosis? How can you possibly even begin to speculate on the prevalence of depression in a time when most people would go their whole lives without ever meeting a doctor, a doctor who in any case wouldn't have any idea what you mean by "depressive illness" because his idea of a treatment for cholera would be prayer and a leech.

"I really, really doubt the baseline happiness was lower back in the day"

I don't. I just don't.

>>But nobody promised spiritual fulfilment. That, I believe you have to sort out for yourself. Does communism, or any other economic system, even address the concept, much less promise results? It's been hard enough, and complicated enough, making everyone rich, and now all you can do is complain that they're not happy, too?


Well actually Spiritual Fulfilment was where Marx started from. He was a philosopher first and foremost (Do we want to hear about Hegel? No?) The idea is to reach a state where one can be fulfilled. If you think it's all about making shit for the end of shit itself you've missed something.

Of course we want to be happy. Happiness requires conducive material conditions.

>>Obviously I'd rather not BE one of the sacked workers - but sooner or later you have to take a statistical approach to this stuff. You simply cannot make every decision based on what it would feel like to be one of the individuals negatively affected by it, otherwise you'd never do anything.

Oh, if I were a manager I'd agree. If I were a worker (and not living in post-Thatcher Britain)...I'd resist.

Good good. We've now reached an important topic: Dialectic. Progress *isn't* just a matter of someone making a decision and something happening. Someone might make a decision for perfectly sound economic (or moral) reasons. Others will be compelled to resist for perfectly sound reasons. What they decided to do will depend on their economic circumstances. And this is called (Ta Dah!) 'Class Struggle'

Hoo, would you rather be the richest man in the world now, or say a rock star/Lionel Messi/Usain Bolt, or one of the world's poorest 10% in 2212?

Oohhh, good question.

B

The people living on rubbish tips in Nairobi are in part there because parts of the world can grow so much they can give it away to poorer countries - thus destroying the basic farmer in that country, who then falls into starvation. Especially when we also introduce an embargo on buying his other products, which would compete with ours, or maybe subsidise our producers to the extent they can undecut them.

Building the worlds vacuum cleaners in India may seem a great idea, but eventually the only people with the money to buy them will be the people working in the manufacturing industries, plus the bankers and inventors.

Until there is a global wage rate there will continue to be sweat shops and child labour, and slaves.

The African situation is worsened by US and European farming subsidies which keep export prices artificially low.

Not Africa - other side of the Atlantic - but this is the standard illustration of the problem usually presented:

http://eurostep.antenna.nl/detail_pub.phtml?page=pubs_position_coherence_jamaicad

>>>
Feminists bemoan the situation, stating with some justification that the "pornification" of society leads to reduced respect for women, greater expectations for men that women can't or more likely won't conform to, and a generally unpleasant effect on society.
<<<

Most of the feminists I read are pro-porn. You do read Greta Christina, don't you? She is only the best atheist blogger out there. And she also wrote this: http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2011/11/09/why-i-probably-wont-do-porn-again/.

TRiG.

"would you rather be the richest man in the world now, or say a rock star/Lionel Messi/Usain Bolt, or one of the world's poorest 10% in 2212?"

Apples and oranges, and for two reasons.

Number one, I was NOT comparing a kind in 1711 to one of the world's poorest 10%. I compared a king in 1711 to one of the UK's poorest 10%. BIG difference. Huge. The poorest people in the UK are still probably in the top forty or fifty percent globally. We're a rich country. It's not *good* to be poor in a rich country, but it's better than being rich in a poor, undeveloped *world*.

I would contend that the living conditions of the *world's* poorest 10% are not noticeably different now than they were 100 or 1000 years ago, and they are unlikely to be noticeably different in the next couple of hundred.

Number two, I can make a meaningful comparison between life in 1711 and life now. I have a reasonable grasp of the differences in technology and their effect on life quality. I have absolutely no idea what life is going to be like for *anyone* in 2212.

If there's a global thermonuclear war in 2150, life in 2212 is going to be pretty bloody grim however rich you are. If there's a global pandemic, or an asteroid strike, or Yellowstone lets go, or any of a half-dozen other scenarios, wealth as we know it will become near irrelevant.

So, adjusting your question to make it consistent with mine: would I prefer to be mega-rich today, or among the poorest in one of the top ten richest countries in the world in 2212, GIVEN that the world of 2212 hasn't been substantially ravaged by war or natural disaster?

Give me the future - if nothing else out of curiosity. Give me the future if for no other reason than to KNOW whether there was ever life on Mars or Europa or Kepler 22b. Give me the future if for no other reason than to see people living, working and breeding in orbit, on the moon, on Mars. Give me the future every time.

Give me the choice between being born in 1100 AD and living for a hundred years in perfect health, or dying 24 hours from now but getting to spend those hours in 2200AD with someone who can tell me what's happened since now - give me the future. I need to know.

Might the occurrence of a thermonuclear war be in any way related to economic developments?

Mightn't someone from 1100 feel quite uncomfortable in our world?

And all the TC SciFi in the wotld probably wouldn't prepare you for 2200.

>>I was wrong. People DO reject civilisation.

Not quite; they reject OUR idea of civilisation.

I well remember a documentary from about 25ish years ago regarding an Amazonian tribe which found itself living on top of a valuable mineral reserve, making them all very rich. Cue footage of them trying to enjoy their wealth, traipsing around with (at that time very expensive) camcorders and other stuff. But in the end, they simply returned back to their way of life, because they found it preferable.

And why not? Another documentary (sorry that all my references come from the telly) showed a typical day in an isolated village. The women sat around chatting and busying themselves with crafts, while the men went hunting in the morning, and returned to take hallucinogenic drugs in the afternoon. And all in the rich and magical forest setting. I imagine there's a lot of people in our society who would love to have that sort of lifestyle (of course there are downsides regarding lifespan and such).