Your perfect society

[SekoETC]

Well people would be raised to think that it's honorable to work, so they would feel ashamed if they weren't doing their best.

[UloDeTero]

Well people would be raised to think that it's honorable to work, so they would feel ashamed if they weren't doing their best.

That's exactly the point I made a while ago in a different forum. Except, my point then was that society would be better off without money, since it encourages greed and competition instead of altruism and cooperation.
In such a society where selfish concerns weren't a priority, people could develop a sense of community.

[Tiamo]

Well people would be raised to think that it's honorable to work, so they would feel ashamed if they weren't doing their best.

That would (and actually does) apply to most people, but reality shows that a growing group of people (the lazy i mentioned) will not be ashamed enough, and eventually just sit back and hold up their hand.
In some suburban areas there are families where three generations are depending on social welfare, without any of them having a chance of a decent job. The third generation will have grown up believing this is 'normal', and working isn't necessary to survive. All their friends and neighbours do, nobody teaches them otherwise.
If we could depend on moral values to build a perfect society there would be no crime, no hunger, no war. Wishful thinking, as human history shows.

Countries like the USSR and DDR have shown what happens when all individual initiative is frustrated by the government. Economy, and eventually society will fail.

In my own country (The Netherlands) we have a very generous social security system, especially for people with a 'labour-handicap' (physical, mental, or just al long lasting illness). Because of failing checkups, too lenient rules, outright abuse and companies dropping obsolete workers there (firing would be harder and costlier) this has gone way out of hand, so now about 10% of our workforce benefits from it in some way.
10% of all people between 20 and 65 are unable to work? That is ridiculous, of course.

Too much of a social security system, taking away the benefits of working for a living, apparently leads to laziness and unwillingness.
Taking away (or stealing away) the benefits of hard work from people kills off their will to do something extra, to take initiative, to take a risk.
Too little of a social security system of course causes a lot of people to suffer, like many third world countries show, and in fact the US shows.

I think there should be a balance between rewarding individual initiative and hard work, social solidarity, and keeping up high moral values (democratic politics are in fact tripolar, not bipolar!).
Guaranteeing a basic income, or guaranteeing everyone a job (even if such jobs simply don't exist) without asking anything in return is not balanced in my opinion.

[Tiamo]

UloDe Tero,

greed and competition are just as necessary for a society to exist, and survive, as are altruism and cooperation.

[UloDeTero]

greed and competition are just as necessary for a society to exist, and survive, as are altruism and cooperation.

How so?

[Sunni Daez]

Many good ideas.. some I don't like at all...but how many of you would be happy and content in a perfect society? Where the world was black and white, straight edged, no challenge, no comprimise.. Reminds me of a movie called Pleasantville.

Life is meant to be lived... not created... not controled and regulated...

one thing that has stuck... and I believe Seko said it but I don't feel like looking for it. Cars... tell me this... I am grown, I no longer have a family at home... my home is 6 miles out side of town, there is NO public transportation in this 2 stop light town... so if I was not allowed a car... I could never get to work... then what? There are no perfect solutions to any problem that took years and years to become a problem...

sorry, not real insightful... but my pennies worth....

[SekoETC]

If there were no private cars then naturally public transport would be improved to cover for the losses.

If a family has to live on welfare for several generations and they aren't given a chance to make a living, then for their mental health is better than they develop a way of thinking that says lazying around is ok. But in my society there would be no unemployment. If there was then they would take some robots and machines out of use and replace them with people so that everyone could earn their living. People could also come up with their own means of giving something to the community, but if they didn't know what to do then work agency would familiarize them with different options and let them discover something they're good at.

My dad told me once that in Soviet Russia, the price of bread was controlled so that it was always cheap, so people bought bread to feed their pigs because it was cheaper than forage. That's quite backwards. The price of things should reflect how much work and resources went into producing it. Actually Cantr is quite like that, it's all about the gathering and production rates. People don't dare to charge much for the machinery and tools that they had to invest in. Then there's also research and development but that aspect is lacking in Cantr, because all items can be made by all people with the right equipment and resources.

My dad also told me that a lot about third world countries going hungry now is because Western countries used to have excess grain and the producers were paid so much for taking food aid to third world countries that they were taking loads, and this imported food was so cheap that the people in the receiving end stopped farming their own food because of course they couldn't produce as much without big equipment. Now that the excess is used to make biodiesel, the people go hungry because they have forgotten how to farm or that they no longer have the farms and the equipment needed on the fields. There is that saying, give a man a fish and you'll feed him for a day, teach the man how to fish and he'll have food for the rest of his life. Well there's the point, people or regions should be self-sufficient, not rely on global welfare.

[Tiamo]

greed and competition are just as necessary for a society to exist, and survive, as are altruism and cooperation.

How so?

Without incentives for individuals to pursue new things any society will come to a halt, fall back into a comatous state, and lose the ability to react properly to unexpected outside challenges. Like muscles that are never used.
Greed and competition are examples of those incentives, they help preserving the versatility and inner life of a society, they give the muscles the practice they need.

Societies without individualism will eventually always lose out to societies that do encourage individual initiative, and perish. I already mentioned the example of USA vs. USSR in my last post.

I agree with Sunni Daez:

Life is meant to be lived... not created... not controled and regulated...

[Tiamo]

SekoETC,

if there were no private cars people would travel by bike, or on foot, or not travel at all. Public transport can replace private transport only partly.

Unemployment is inevitable from the moment you start producing products for trade (must be somewhere in economic theory). So, if you start de-efficiencizing in order to give people a job you will inevitably end up in the stone age, when everyone was producing for their own use, or for the use of their own family/clan.
Unemployment is NOT a problem in itself. Don't try to ban it at all cost, people can live a meaningful life without a 'job'.

In fact value is subjective, and depending on circumstances, even in Cantr. How much is 100 grams of meat jerky worth to you if you have no access to food, and will be dead by starvation within the next two days? An iron shield? 10K of steel? The keys to your raker?
And how much if you can just dig for carrots?
It's the same in real life. The price of goods will always be somewhere between what people are willing to pay for it and what the owner asks for it, nothing else. Basic economics.
Any attempt to regulate prices, like the Soviet bread price example, or the EU farmer subsidies, or import taxes, will eventually lead to problems. You cannot ease waves by slapping them down, that will only lead to more waves. The third world grain problem is actually a good example of this.

There is that saying, give a man a fish and you'll feed him for a day, teach the man how to fish and he'll have food for the rest of his life. Well there's the point, people or regions should be self-sufficient, not rely on global welfare.

I absolutely agree on this, people should be self-sufficient. Now apply this on the excessive social security issue, or even the 'no more challenges'-issue ...

[Money]

I think that social security is a good idea, All you need to have is regular check ups on these people also exchanging machinery for people is not feasible, Some one in another country would keept the machinery and be able to monopolize the market since all the other goods are more expensive and probablly have a higher amount of defects in them. Even if this did not occur their would be underground producers who would do this or companies would refuse to follow these rules.

[SekoETC]

In school we had this discussion about eggs. I proposed that it should be possible to buy eggs one by one, so you could have just the amount you wanted. But the teacher said that it was like that when she was young and it resulted in a lot of eggs breaking. Then I said that there could be egg counters where a clerk would place the desired amount of eggs in your box. That would create a job.

It's pretty amazing how up to 1950s it was all common to have servants, but nowadays only the rich people can afford them. What's up with that? When my grandma was young, she had a housekeeper coming over each day when she was at work. And they were never rich, they had three kids and low income. So how many apartments did that housekeeper have to clean up to make a living? Did she have much free time at all?

[Money]

That was also back in the day of the milk men who drove around and delivrd you milk.

[UloDeTero]

That was also back in the day of the milk men who drove around and delivrd you milk.

They still do that, at least here.

I don't understand why a lack of greed and competition is automatically associated with strict government regimes. Sure, you'd need a police system to deal with lawbreakers (the same as we have now, btw). The only difference is that the laws would be shaped to weed out greed and encourage cooperation. In other words: out with the bad and in with the good.
In my idea of a perfect society, the lack of money means that all work is done willingly, rather than out of greed or a need to 'make rent' etc. Which means people wouldn't have to work all kinds of hours just to make ends meet. The workload would be lessened because unnecessary jobs (such as financial analysts, insurance, etc) would be eliminated.
The fruits of one's labour would become one's own property, to be distributed as that person sees fit. There could also be voluntary (of course) distribution schemes, sort of like a syndicate.
Of course, as with any significant change, people would need time to become accustomed to it. For example, people might still be talking about 'economies' long after such things have become obsolete. That's not to say that some kind of accounting wouldn't be useful. Systems could be set up to keep track of the amount of goods around, and the places that have need or excess, and organise a fairer distribution.
The main point of this is that goods, particularly food, would be produced according to need/demand, and not according to profits/greed.
Also, environmental practices would be easier to maintain, because people wouldn't have to opt for the cheaper but environmentally-damaging option. Money would literally be no object.

Edit: I forgot to add that, because each person distributes the goods that they grew/made, they'd be more inclined to give them to good, honest, hard-working people and the needy. That in effect punishes the lazy, since if they refuse to work, the get less (or no) goods.

[Money]

But people would be less inclined to give away their goods, why not keep them for times of scarcity?

[nitefyre]

I don't remember if I said this already but: In my perfect society there would be basic income for everyone that lets you live a life worth living. Even if you were ill or handicapped or old. Currently even animals live better than old people. There are regulations about how often animals need to be taken out, but nothing about how often old people should be taken out, so they might get out twice a year.

Also there must be work for everyone according to their abilities. Must be. The money comes from the ones that are well of and in return they get the satisfaction of knowing that they are making poor people feel better, and that if they should get sick or old or disabled, they would be treated just as good as they treated others.

I'm sorry, but what you're describing is Marx's Socialism: "To each according to his need and from each according to his ability." In Cantr and stuff, it seems to work fine, especially at the very small towns; but in the real world, it has apparently been quite a major struggle: USSR, North Korea, etc, and China/Vietnam have both become very capitalized in their implementation. There are successes though in "socializing" capitalism, though, like FDR's New Deal and what's been seen throughout post-WWII Europe. At least from Sicko, Michael Moore's a big fan of it.

I agree with whomever brought it up earlier but the biggest issue is undoubtedly overpopulation. Overpopulation is a real tricky question--ethically, what does it mean to stop someone like you or me to ... not exist and have an opportunity at life (unless you believe in the Asian traditions of re-incarnation), and secondly, what does it mean to make someone not spread their seed as nature would have them to do (e.g. China's recent earthquake has taken away the "single children" that families have had and parents are too old to reproduce--their lineage dies)?

But overpopulation is a problem because it intensifies the need for natural resources, resulting in extreme competition, greed, and ultimately, violence. Overpopulation is also in effect slowly destroying us all through natural resource/environmental ruin with Global Warming, habitat loss, etc.