Your perfect society

[Antichrist_Online]

Personally, the issue for me isn't how the government spends its money or where they tax, because I take the pessimistic view that most of it eventually ends up in their back pocket. What my perfect society would have, irrespective of how it works, is a culture where people could be different without being made into outcasts and portraited as deviants for not fitting some majority ideal. Where people wouldn't be murdered for simply dressing different, or liking different music, or simply being different. At the minute it's illegal for me to be denied a job on the grounds of my sexual preference, race or gender, however it's perfectly legal to be denied a job because I had the wrong colour hair, or social class. Even part of my sexuality isn't protected, as people in D/s relationships have no legal defence against prejudice, such as bullying or being denied a position with a company.

This extends to in my perfect world, the ability to be who you really are to everyone. Parents accepting their kid's differences, and them not having to hide things. Of course there's limits, but I think the lessons in consent I've learned from serving my Mistress would be a sensible social application. There should be limits defined on age of consent and that's it, if people are consenting, it's ok, if not, then it's not ok.

Let everyone be free to be who they are and do what they want as long as everyone taking part is willing, and I'm sure the world would be a better place.

Just my two pennith... For whatever little it counts.

[SekoETC]

Socialism is ok in theory, it just fails in reality because people are greedy. But this topic is aobut dream societies so we can assume that in only contains dedicated individuals.

[Tiamo]

Socialism is ok in theory, it just fails in reality because people are greedy. But this topic is aobut dream societies so we can assume that in only contains dedicated individuals.

So you say the 'perfect' society is impossible, because humans are not perfect? For a perfect society we do not need humans, but robots? In a way i can agree with that.
But i must strongly disagree on the proposed assumption that all or even most individuals would/should/could cooperate with dedication in a 'perfect' society. In trying to describe a 'perfect' (or rather 'optimal') society we must base it on how humans are, not on how you want them to be. If you do the latter you are describing a society of something else (apes, robots, Klingons, gods, morons?), not a human society.

My opinion is that socialism has some good points, but also some serious flaws. So has liberalism/capitalism. And so has theocracy/conservatism. By combining the good points of those ideologies and avoiding the flaws a much better result can be reached than any single ideology ever could. Albeit not perfect.

[UloDeTero]

In trying to describe a 'perfect' (or rather 'optimal') society we must base it on how humans are

So, assuming you agree with Seko that "people are greedy", you'd base your perfect society on the acceptance of things like greed? Then wouldn't that quickly become anarchy?

[Tiamo]

UloDeTero,

people are born utterly selfish (see how babies and young children behave...), but humans can learn from experience. The vast majority of humans soon learn that cooperation, caring and even altruism are in the long run better for themselves (and others, of course) than plain selfishness and greed. But they also learn that you sometimes have to stand up for your own sake, and be competitive, selfish and even greedy.

So, yes, people are greedy, but people are also versatile, learn from experience, are cooperative and caring. People (at least most of them) are smart enough to realize that anarchy isn't good, that building and maintaining a civil society is for the good of all.
Even in our, imperfect, world real anarchism is rare, and is soon replaced by some kind of order.

Finally, if you read my posts carefully you will have noticed that i think a 'perfect' society of humans doesn't exist, even cannot exist. All we can do is make things better , not strive for perfection.

[Money]

Thats true. Its is in the human nature to be imperfect. Without our imperfections we would not be the same people we are today.

[Miri]

Why are you all stating human greed is bad, and is a source of all missfortune?
I was teached that it is the one and only thing that pushes humanity forward, makes people form societies, make rules, cooperate and help each other - just becouse this way they, themselves, can get more.
The "invisible hand of the market" of Smith is based on it - and it's working.

About minimum living standards of living for everyone - that doesn't work, not at all.
In Poland everyone's crying about high uneployment rate - all exept the employers, that have great dificulties in finding eployees, especially those low-educated. It doesn't pay off to work - you can get an uneployment benefit, while quietly working somewhere "in grey", then you've got all the privilages of the legaly working ones.
There's also that 'socially unfit' thing - class of people, mostly 30-50 year old - called that by psychologists and sociologists, that are 'not fit' to survive in open competition market. The psychos and socials say it's becouse they were raised in socialism, and now is capitalism, and they feel lost and need help; I say it's becouse they don't want to take any efort, if they can earn their living for free, just becouse now there's noone who'll lead then by hand to the place by production line, say "work here" and so on.

I hate socialism. We had it here, and we still have hickups. Thank you very much.

[SekoETC]

But if you didn't lose any support even if you were working, then it didn't matter if you were working in secrecy or legally.

In preindustrial times everyone was required to work here. Usually they signed up to serve in a farm house for a year, the house gave them food and a place to sleep in and they gave work in return. If someone didn't have a place to stay in, they were vagrant and could be forced to work in a textile mill or other institution.

People have different concepts of what's considered a life worth living. In here a person can keep a studio apartment with cable tv even if they were unemployed. Heck you can keep a whole house if you have savings. You get to eat as many times a day as you like. If you're poor you may have to buy the cheapest stuff, tuna, porridge, macaroni. But what if you didn't have a queen-sized bed, what if you had only a mattress on the floor? No tv? Having to share a kitchen with 4 other people? Or sleeping in a dormitory, 12 people per room? Would that encourage you to try harder? In my country privacy is taken for granted. If you're a sane, intelligent person you get your own room in pretty much any case. Most people only live with their immediate family or alone. Only students may live with strangers, like me, and unless it's a dormitory you also get your own room. You could well fit two or three beds in my room. With three you would have to ditch the desk but if you're not studying or working, what do you need a desk for, you lazy bum? If you weren't allowed to live on your own unless you have a job, wouldn't that encourage you to get one?

[Miri]

Seko, the main issue about working secretly or legaly isn't the unemplyment benefit (that concerns only the emploee), but the taxes (that concerns both employee and employer).

I'll explain:
Person A wants to work legally for the employer. The gross wage is 2000 (lets call it minimal wage by law), and this is the cost of work for the employer. After all the taxing and social funds payments A receives about 1300 nett income.
Now person B works secretly. The employer pays him at most 1500, and B doesn't pay any taxes, neither social funds, so the gross value = nett value. Both sides do better in this situation, so neither of them is interested in changing it.
What's more, B, as he's registered as unemployed, gets even more money, and he has exactly the same rights to benefit from public health care or retirement benefits, although only A payed for it.

Now, the more social benefits you want to have, the higher tha taxes's got to be, and the more profitable working in secret becomes, and so you receive less taxes. Thuss even less poeple are working for even more of benefited ones.
And then "the last to leave the country turns off the light".

Or sleeping in a dormitory, 12 people per room? Would that encourage you to try harder?

In my country, I bet if would encourage 12 sues against all the officials for not providing right accomodation. They are citizens, aren't they? Human beings, by all the gods!
Ah, and beside the sues - a TV program, showing the whole country how poor and unfortunate they are, and how that heartless basterd officials don't do anything about it

[SekoETC]

Well yeah, the taxes... people should realize that taxes are used for the well-being of everybody. But if the impression is that it goes to the pockets of the leaders and members of the parliament then people don't want to contribute. MPs get obscene amounts of salary even if they were just sleeping in the meetings or constantly on sick leave or traveling. And they just keep raising their own salaries. If they had to live like the poorest members of society then they would make sure that everyone was treated equally. Now who was this philosopher that said that the perfect society could only be created if the creators of the laws were killed right after making them and would be reborn into any possible status in the society, including women, children, poor people, handicapped, insane people? Only if there was a chance you had to live like the least fortunate individual then people would make sure that their living conditions are decent.

[Money]

Miri do you know how hard it is to live without paying taxes? Hard, To drive you to be on a data base. Meaning you could be found in an instant by the government. To pay for your heating bills and electricity the company that supplies these things must know who you are. Meaning you are on your records which can more probably be easily found by the government.

[Miri]

@Seko

Yes, I've heard something like that:
To have a person choose the most justise of societies, have him choose without knowing which role in it he'll be given to play. The person will then choose the society, in which in the worst case he'll do at least as well as in other societies he could choose from.
It sounds about right to me, to much of a difference between top and bottom sooner or later leads to the bottom kicking top's behind, and then many not so nice things happen just becouse for a moment people tend to ferget they're humans.
But, then, nothing should be given as granted, without any efford - even if the efford is just minimal. I like the idea (I've never been to US, so I don't know how it really works) of "starvation wages" (translation?) for those, who here, in PL, would be unemployed. Those people work, for very little money, but they do work, and then the social funds are filling the gap to the social minimum, or maybe to some extend over it. The main issue is the work - people are not getting lazy, forgeting how to do enything exept extending their hands for the benefit, and they work legaly.

Socialism is getting people lazy, even those who work. They forget how to take care of themselves, becouse the officials are for it. They are becoming something like a big, fat, spoiled cat in a house with a lots of mice in it - but, as he's forgotten what the mice are for, he'll just sit in the middle of the hall crying for someone to give him some canned pet food.

@Money
Not at all. You are in a database - as a person who's a registered unemplyed, and thus doesn't need to pay taxes. And so what?
They'll come to controll what do you have at home? "Oh, those are just petty gifts from friends and family of mine, they're helping me so much, such a good people they are, let the god pay them"
The're will be a controll in a company emplying someone in secret among the legal ones? "Oh, he's just a friend, came to give me a visit. Uneployed, but he's so eager to the company... hope he'll find himself his job soon"
etc...
Of course, everything could be controlled better, but those are tons of paperwork, and years of argues in the court. Really, they don't pay them enough for it.
Not to mention that all the controlls, even if they shouldn't be so, are being notified of in advance. About an year ago, being on holiday in a countryside, I've heard two women talking about the social controll coming in a week to see if they still need help, and discutting how many days before it they should firbid the kids washing themselves.
Funny? For the tax-payaer - not really.

[SekoETC]

Sometimes I think it's a good system, that people can have work even if the pay was crappy. But if people get ill then they'll be screwed because on a free clinic you need to wait for hours while if you go to a hospital, even walking into the building costs an obscene amount of money. I bet things would be much cheaper in the US if people didn't have to prepare for lawsuits. For example perfectly healthy recovering patients with nothing wrong with their feet or balance need to be rolled out of the hospital in a wheelchair just because probably some exploiter has sued the hospital for slipping on the floor. In my country if you burn yourself with coffee or fall over in some place, it's your own fault and you should just be grateful if someone brings you napkins to dry yourself or helps you up or calls the ambulance if you hurt yourself.

But anyway, I have no official training for the job I do, yet I earn almost 2.5 times what's American minimum wage. If wages were halved, there could be double the amount of workers and you didn't have to work as hard.

[Tiamo]

But anyway, I have no official training for the job I do, yet I earn almost 2.5 times what's American minimum wage. If wages were halved, there could be double the amount of workers and you didn't have to work as hard.

Then you are one of the happy few, Seko. In most societies the vast majority of people earns minimum wage or just over. With wages halved they wouldn't be able to pay their bills.
In my country it is almost impossible to support a family with children off one (minimum) income. Those families are (relatively speaking) poor. While the Netherlands are one of the richest countries in the world!

Every piece of luxury you enjoy has to be produced by you and people like you. If you let many people have useless or inefficient jobs that will hurt the total production of your society, and consequently your average wealth.
Money/income doesn't make a country prosper, production does.

Of course there is the question whether producing (and consuming) more and better goods always makes you happier, but that is another topic.

[Antichrist_Online]

People have different concepts of what's considered a life worth living

It's about needs and wants. Most people mistake wants for needs. Some of us with low expectations would be happy with just the needs dealt with and an oppertunity to try to fulfil some of the stronger wants. Medical care, shelter, security (for a given value), food, work, sanitation. That's about if for needs shared by all.

Personally speaking a life worth living would be anything better (or including) a crappy bed sit with a little privacy and the basics to keep me alive, as long as I still had my friends and could see my Mistress. Even if it meant sleeping on the floor and being a social pariah to others. Hell I happiness doesn't even involve my own place or bed, it's curling up on the rug at the bottom of Her bed... maybe in the next life it'll happen more...

Society as in the way people act not the government is really messed up on pirorities and personally I feel they should just go out and shoot half the people. Start in prisons, then anyone who won't let others live the way they choose if everyone is consenting and free (even if they choose to give up that freedom to another consentually).