Cyprus woes

[DunkleSeele]

On its most basic level, money represents the value of an object. But when you factor in economy, money means nothing. It's just some sort of void entity that can be used to barter stuff with, that appears out of thin air, vanishes into thin air again, and that people pretend is really important and permanent.

And it'll continue to work as long as people believe it's still a real thing.

Then change the game of greed. Social engineering, sorry, education, could very well do away with greed; hell, find the gene sequence that causes the proficiency for greed and switch it off.

Don't switch it off. Greed is really important to progress. It's the thing that makes us want to do more with less.
What is needed is a way to switch it so the object coveted is something that will benefit society if you collect more of it. Right now, piling up money doesn't help anyone. We love people who are so greedy they design a car that does a hundred miles to the gallon. We need them. Now lets give them something that will make them come up with something even better, instead of something that will make them stop working or motivate them to make something worse because they get a better reward from that.

(The whole concept of "sell crappy shit so we make more money off of support" model.)

I was being facetious.

Greed isn't the only game in town. Education is, in my mind, the cornerstone of our civilization. Without education and the spread & search for knowledge, we'd be impulse driven greedy, short and malnutritioned cavemen. Somewhere along the line we figured shit out and improved our lives, by just figuring out stuff, like, it was a bad idea to shit where we eat.

Yes, and in Soviet Union and similar societies people were "educated" to think that their system was the best. Look how it turned out.

[DunkleSeele]

Excellent, in theory. Now, who will decide what benefits society?

It's not just "a decision", just a different approach to wealth. People have some sort of intrinsic reason to do what they do. If you don't have a lot of money; getting money is a good motivator. But if you have a billion dollars, "getting more money" seems an unlikely final goal. There must be something else behind it that is really triggering them to spend time obtaining even more money. (Could be something as simple as power, really. Or maybe attention.)

Now we need to figure out a way to give that to people who do something truly beneficial. If we rated artists by who was the most charitable instead of who we'd prefer to bone the most (or, heaven forbid, the art they put out!) then we'd see completely different artists.

In the end, money is just some digital construct that we pass around. But it's not the final motivator for people who already have a bunch of it. They're getting something else, and we should aim to change who we give that to. It might motivate them to use their resources differently to obtain it.

I hope I'm still making sense, I shouldn't be thinking philosophically while I'm also at work :P

I see what you mean, but we're running again into the same issue: who decides what's really beneficial to society, and who decides who are the ones doing something beneficial?

You see, if the most boneable "artist" get the money instead of the most charitable or the most talented ones it's because there's people out there who find it more beneficial to themselves to look at scantily clad bimbos instead to listen to good music. And then there's those like me who favour Tchaikovskij or Pink Floyd over Shakira (I'd still bone her, though...).

[Plu]

Ultimately, society as a whole. Which is why we should push as many people as possible to a higher level.

(And yes, I'm going there by claiming people who prefer to spend their time watching Jersey Shore and listening to Nicky Minaj are on a lower level)

[DunkleSeele]

Ultimately, society as a whole. Which is why we should push as many people as possible to a higher level.

(And yes, I'm going there by claiming people who prefer to spend their time watching Jersey Shore and listening to Nicky Minaj are on a lower level)

And again, how's this "higher level" defined?

My point is: you can't escape the fact that humans are extremely heterogeneous in space and time. This concept of "society as a whole" where all members, or its majority, share the same goals and ideals is utopian (or dystopian, even).

[Plu]

And again, how's this "higher level" defined?

Amount of effort expended in making your own, your family and everyone's life better.

That should align, at least roughly, to what I consider lower and higher level.

[DunkleSeele]

And again, how's this "higher level" defined?

Amount of effort expended in making your own, your family and everyone's life better.

That should align, at least roughly, to what I consider lower and higher level.

First let me say that, in principle, I agree with your definition.

Now, we just have to define "better"... 8-)

[Plu]

I was typing something about better :P But then I remembered that I'm supposed to be working because otherwise I won't have enough money to buy internet so I should probably get back to that.

I'll comment again later :P

[DunkleSeele]

I was typing something about better :P But then I remembered that I'm supposed to be working because otherwise I won't have enough money to buy internet so I should probably get back to that.

I'll comment again later :P

Can I infer that, without internet, you'd consider your life worse, even slightly so?
Still, there's plenty of people out there who don't have internet, don't want it or even don't know what it is and still don't consider their life "worse" than ours.

[Plu]

I wouldn't miss "the internet", but I'd miss the ability to socialize with some of my friends, and the easy access to information. I would hope that the desire to socialize with friends and the ability to have access to information you want would at least be more or less universal.

The internet is just the best tool for the job at this moment. Other people have their friends close and get their information from a different source. They probably wouldn't miss the internet, and I don't blame them.

[DunkleSeele]

What about hermits?

[Plu]

Are they really a part of society? ;)

[DunkleSeele]

Are they really a part of society? ;)

Well, I still consider them as such. At least to the extent that they're human beings just like you and me.

And besides hermits, there's plenty of people out there who may not be socialising much or caring much about information but they're still part of the society in the sense that they have their jobs, their families and so on. And may be very happy with their lives as they are.

[Plu]

If they have a family, they're probably socialising with it. If they have a job, they probably have access to the information needed to do it. They might need access to enough information to be able to fix their car. Or enough information to be able to find the phone number of someone who will. These are pretty low-level requirements. Not everyone needs the same level of socialising, or the same level of information, but anyone has a certain need for it that needs to be met for them to be happy.

My desire for information just happens to be really high, which is why the internet is really important to me. If someone else has a very low desire for information, they probably don't need the same tools to obtain it. But at a bottom level, there's a few things that everyone needs at least a basic level of. Information (whether it be science journals or town gossip), socialising (whether it be just with your partner, or with hundreds of people all around the world), sustenance (whether it's macdonalds or haute cuisine), safety, etc.

I'm spending too much time thinking about this xD Back to work.

[DunkleSeele]

And that's exactly my point: we all define our needs differently, therefore there's no way to univocally say what's "better" for the community as a whole. We may all agree on some very "basic" concepts which are anyway given for granted nowadays, but from that point on opinons will diverge.

[Shiranu]

Then change the game of greed. Social engineering, sorry, education, could very well do away with greed; hell, find the gene sequence that causes the proficiency for greed and switch it off.

Social engineering was already tried in some places. Look up Soviet Union. It failed.

You really don't want to see the basic problem, do you? All these experiments you mention ("credit" system, social engineering, genetic engineering, etc.) must be imposed by someone on the rest of the population. Now, who controls those who are in power?

The people of course.

Have you met the people? I have. They are not fit to control themselves, much less the government.