[p2p-research] The Production Bubble: Why Capitalism Withholds Solutions and Gets Away with It

[Michel Bauwens]

do you agree that there is a difference between:

1) knowing your gut and

a) based on the contradictory tendencies of our gut, built in the right
nudges against the most destructive  behavior

b) glorifying the worst part of our gut ('greed is good') and devising a
system that nudges us even more in that direction

what you see as the socialist system by the way, was completely built around
such desires for petty advancement ...

as far as I'm aware neither the amish or the tibetans have actually 'burnt
down the colonies' (have they?), but the hedge funders have nearly succeeded
in destroying our biosphere ...

Michel

On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 1:10 AM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 2:26 PM, M. Fioretti <mfioretti at nexaima.net>wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 15:18:19 PM -0400, Ryan Lanham
>> (rlanham1963 at gmail.com) wrote:
>>
>> > Scarcity is a function (always) of incentives.  What most people on
>> > this list fail to try to understand is the psychology of incentives.
>> > Incentives are why utopian colonies always fail.
>>
>> Ryan,
>>
>> _if_ you feel like it, may I ask you to elaborate (separately?) on the
>> last two sentences above? I understand (I think) everything else you
>> said, but the part above makes me real curious.
>>
>> TIA,
>>        Marco
>>
>>
> Hi Marco,
>
> I will try.
>
> There seems to be increasing evidence that, as apes, we care about caste,
> hierarchy, structure, relativity of reward and that these systems of reward
> and motivation are not to be reasoned away...they are in the bone.
>
> If this is true...if...then we must somehow come to terms with our own
> sense of desire.  We want.  We need.  We hope.  Intellectualize that away,
> and we become socialist robots devoid of our human desires...in Star Trek
> terms, we abandon our inner Klingon.  It will not be abandoned.
>
> For the Klingon in us is what makes sex power and joy and what makes cities
> vibrant and full of despair and dreams.  Kill the animal and AI has won in
> all the wrong ways.  The true AI will be emotional, devotional, wanting,
> passionate and hungry for experience, emotion, and experience.
>
> It is a strawman (as usual) to posit that the so-called neo-liberal
> transhumanist state leads to money-making robots talking to other
> accountant-like robots.  No.  The killers need to drink blood.  It is indeed
> the equilibrium seekers who expose their fear of their own humanity.  It is
> they who seek to be neutered.  To be sexless, emotionless, desireless monks
> lost in inner worlds of metaphysics because the real world is too emotional,
> too traumatic for them to bear.
>
> And so, we must know our gut.  We have to plumb passion if we are going to
> be peers.  We need to understand the tentative nature of our wants and the
> delicate balance of peace in a bar full of tail.
>
> Until we do that, until we realize that hierarchy and mud wrestling are in
> us like intestines and marrow, we're not on a good path.
>
> It is these passions set loose that kill the idealist and the utopian.  It
> is the Amish whore who burns the colony down.  It is the desirous monk who
> rises to command an army of Tibetans.  There is no abandoning these
> tendencies.  They are us.
>
> R.
>
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>


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