The slow decay of Venezuela

[K. A. Pital]

No, it just means that while hunter-gatherer had some sort of classless system by default, the same isn't true for later settlements. There may have been some classless societies in neolithic times after mankind has moved on to farming, but these societies didn't become the rule.

There most certainly were large classless neolithic societies (large by their standards). They did not endure - this is the truth. Why? The answer is twofold. First, the increasing surplus from more efficient tools gave birth to inequality and, eventually, classes and class power. Two: class societies are agressors by nature. They seek to expand and annihilate classless societies. Even between different formations the class society will tend to destroy any competing society. Another feature of class societies is the inequality and group violence, which forces the disposessed to flee. Their flight expands the class society (a paradox), because they emigrate and colonize other places, establishing commercial ties with the land they left and eventually paving the way for conquest. The disposessed are eager to make use of the resources that are usually "underutilized" by classless or primitive societies. So its the nature of class society to expand and conquer.

In a capitalistic society, "only" the bureaucracy of the state itself is kind of everlasting, companies are not. This means that if the bureaucracy of a company becomes defunct, the company goes bankrupt. This leads to "creative destruction", which is a net positive for the society.

This does not matter for my argument. The fact that I have a gaming console (just an imaginary situation: I do not have a gaming console) full of bloody coltan and other conflict minerals does not mean I perceive it as a "net positive" for "society" (indeed, which society are we talking about) and it does not mean society as a whole has a "net positive" if we include those suffering. In fact, how do you calculate this "net positive" shit? In 1970, wealthy people did not have entertainment computers. They were not available. Conflict mining of coltan was pointless. Before the advent of the automobile and the mass use of rubber, there was no natural rubber boom which led to hands being chopped off in Congo with (by some accounts) a third of the population ruthlessly decimated. For which society you are discovering this "net positive"? Is the life of people today so much better than in 1970, when personal computers did not exist? If so, why? And is it worth the slaughter and carnage?

I fail to see how "net positive" (which is usually net positive for the non-suffering benefactor and a net negative for the robbed, the murdered, the disposessed, and thus no "net positive" for everyone) is relevant to my argument that inequality means suffering is distributed unevenly. This is incompatible with basic humanism.

In a classless society, how would this have worked?

It is completely unrelated to my argument. Basically, irrelevant.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Is explosive population growth possible in precapitalist or even pre-class society? The answer is no.

Where is your proof of this assertion? Because the evidence I have seen suggests the contrary.

No, and I said that already on the previous page. I also said I don't propose a return to the Neolithic era. Didn't you read that?

I did not. I apologize. This thread is full of very long posts, it is hard to parse through everything, so I didn't see you explicitly say that. But to be fair, I don't think that refutes my point. It is easy to cherry-pick and point at a Neolithic family unit of nomads and say, 'SEE! THOSE 5 PEOPLE WERE ALL EQUAL TO EACH OTHER!,' but I think once you make the decision to look backwards in that way to consider all of the implications. You can't just take a single, favorable element out of a social construct (like you have with equality in the Neolithic sense) and assume that you can just apply that to a completely different dynamic without considering the full context.

But unlike you, I admit industrial society also has its own industrial Hell and industrial Purgatory, as well as Industrial Heaven (in which you and I are). You seem to be too busy ascribing me opinions to care.

It is ironic that you commit such a monstrous and idiotic strawman in the process of trying to accuse me of strawmanning you. Your behavior in this thread has been consistently dishonest and disingenuous. Where have I ever said that industrial society and capitalism are perfect exemplars of morality? Did YOU miss when I said that I actually broadly agree with you?

As I said earlier in this thread, the only reason I'm responding to you is because I find your debating on this topic to be incredibly dishonest, and this is just another perfect example. You do this time and time again. You poison the well in the debate by turning every single disagreement with you into these melodramatic bullshit accusations. Yes, yes, waxing about industrial Hell and Purgatory is very poetic, my friend, but it is just another way to be a smarmy asshole while shrugging off the bulk of the criticisms of your arguments.

But hey, let's say you've definetely proven I have to submit to capitalism simply because it's impossible to return to prehistoric communism (a fact I'm already aware of, a fact everyone's aware of and a fact clearly stated as such by the leaders of industrial socialist thought).

Where did I have to say you have to submit to capitalism? Again, your refusal to debate honestly is infuriating.

How does this impact my narrow argument? It doesn't. Equality is natural. Sure, so is horrible infant mortality. All these things are natural. So the usual liberal argument "from human nature" (i.e. equality contradicts human nature) doesn't fly. That's all.

The point, that you missed, is that referring to this or that condition as "natural" is an entirely arbitrary categorization. It is only a natural condition if you impose very specific, arbitrary restrictions on what you consider natural. It isn't an honest categorization, nor is it actually a helpful one in determining moral rules.

You may get up on your high horse again. I didn't even expect you to actually consider the argument instead of making a strawman out of it by saying I am actually advocating a reconstruction of the Neolithic society instead of making observations on what conditions are natural for humans.

And I didn't even expect you to try and respond honestly to any criticisms of your viewpoints rather than just falling back on your usual, "WAAAAAAAAAAH capitalism is BAAAAD!" nonsense. Social stratification and hierarchy did not suddenly and magically appear out of the ether for no reason other than to oppress the proletariat, they were evolved structures that developed as a response to changing population dynamics and life styles. You decide this is not natural because you don't like it; but why is arbitrarily restricting the discussion to Paleolithic family groups of nomads the only way of determining what is "natural" for humans? Do you think that the notion of a hierarchical social structure is somehow unique to post-capitalist humans?

That is it. I really see no point in arguing this further.

I'm not you sure you have been arguing so much as grandstanding. A lot of your posts seem utterly divorced from those they are ostensibly in response to. Which is a shame, because I am very sympathetic to your beliefs on a broad ideological level.

But, per your usual conduct, you will take this post as evidence that I am somehow advocating capitalism and that I personally want to murder miners for extra pennies.

[BabelHuber]

There most certainly were large classless neolithic societies (large by their standards). They did not endure - this is the truth. Why? The answer is twofold. First, the increasing surplus from more efficient tools gave birth to inequality and, eventually, classes and class power. Two: class societies are agressors by nature. They seek to expand and annihilate classless societies. Even between different formations the class society will tend to destroy any competing society. Another feature of class societies is the inequality and group violence, which forces the disposessed to flee. Their flight expands the class society (a paradox), because they emigrate and colonize other places, establishing commercial ties with the land they left and eventually paving the way for conquest. The disposessed are eager to make use of the resources that are usually "underutilized" by classless or primitive societies. So its the nature of class society to expand and conquer.

Agreed.

This does not matter for my argument. The fact that I have a gaming console (just an imaginary situation: I do not have a gaming console) full of bloody coltan and other conflict minerals does not mean I perceive it as a "net positive" for "society" (indeed, which society are we talking about) and it does not mean society as a whole has a "net positive" if we include those suffering. In fact, how do you calculate this "net positive" shit? In 1970, wealthy people did not have entertainment computers. They were not available. Conflict mining of coltan was pointless. Before the advent of the automobile and the mass use of rubber, there was no natural rubber boom which led to hands being chopped off in Congo with (by some accounts) a third of the population ruthlessly decimated. For which society you are discovering this "net positive"? Is the life of people today so much better than in 1970, when personal computers did not exist? If so, why? And is it worth the slaughter and carnage?

Well, my grandmother would have died in 2002 with 1970ies medical technology. Because of modern dialysis, she survived until 2011.

I also wouldn't want to drive e.g. from Germany to Italy in a 1970ies car (exceptions like the Mercedes SE 450 6.9 don't count). Also, I wouldn't want to miss internet, my smartphone, I wouldn't want to mess around with analog records, cassette tapes etcetc.

But of course this is a first-world view.

The examples you cite really are a shame, but I don't think this is inherent to capitalism. It rather shows how bad the situation in the coltan-mining countries is. Regarding rubber production in Congo, this was just murder and slavery. But Congo is one of the worst examples in this regards anyways, being the private "property" of the Belgium king etc.

Instead I think that capitalism has to have its clearly-defined boundaries (no child labour, safety laws etc.). Also, the state should make it possible for anybody to get a good education. Finally, the social net should make sure nobody is starving/ homeless.

Of course you'll still have unequality in such a country, but nevertheless literally everybody is better off in such countries than 100 years before.

Let's just take Germany: 100 years ago the emperor had actually less quality of live than a long-term unemployed today.

The unemployed has e.g. much better healthcare than the emperor back then. If he has an old, cheap car it is still leaps and bounds ahead of the cars Kaiser Wilhelm II was driving. He has a radio, TV, internet etc.

I assume that even today's third world countries will slowly get these benefits in the next decades. Of course then you have countries like the USA where it seems perfectly OK to have homeless long-term unemployed. But this only the voters of the USA can change.

I fail to see how "net positive" (which is usually net positive for the non-suffering benefactor and a net negative for the robbed, the murdered, the disposessed, and thus no "net positive" for everyone) is relevant to my argument that inequality means suffering is distributed unevenly. This is incompatible with basic humanism.

I like to think that the above-mentioned benefits will trickle down to the whole planet eventually.

It is completely unrelated to my argument. Basically, irrelevant.

You still have to have a concept in place for progress. I wouldn't want to live in a classless society where typeriters are common while everybody else on the planet uses smartphones. Also, I wouldn't want to drive a shitty car because of this.

Rather I'd have a smartphone and a car I like while other people have much more money than me. I don't envy Bill Gates, his money is none of my concerns.

[K. A. Pital]

To Ziggy Stardust: if you think I strawmanned your argument, I apologize for this, too.

Please restate it concisely, so that I could reply to it directly.

I do not mean to strawman anyone's arguments, and this debate is actually becoming interesting, with Alyrium's contribution on behavioural evolution. I even appreciate BabelHuber's posts here.

But while criticizing, please keep in mind that I brought forward narrow arguments. Not broad ones. And bear in mind that the ability of Western kids to play on PS2, 3 and 4 does not rank highly on my value list. The suffering of coltan miners is more important. The ability of early XX century rich to drive thousands of automobiles with rubber tyres does not rank highly on my value list - the genocide of the Congolese and suffering of rubber plantation wage-slaves is more important. The ability of Westerners to buy clothes very cheaply does not rank highly on my list - dead workers in Bagladesh do. Thus, swaying my personal opinion is impossible even if you put forth a "net positive" argument. You can have me concede the arguments where facts are shown to be different from my view: like, e.g. with life expectancy and violent death rates in Neolithic society (not a core part of the argument, but still). There is no dishonesty, as far as I can see.

It is not some sort of math game where everyone's calm lives are excusing the horrible suffering of some. For the base take on this moral problem, see Le Guin's brilliant Leaving Omelas.

If you feel I have been dishonestly debating (even though I have clarified my stance even in the smallest details), please show me where. I would be glad to improve myself, as always.

I wouldn't want to live in a classless society where typeriters are common while everybody else on the planet uses smartphones. Also, I wouldn't want to drive a shitty car because of this. Rather I'd have a smartphone and a car I like while other people have much more money than me. I don't envy Bill Gates, his money is none of my concerns.

In this case we are different fundamentally and will never agree on this matter. I would not prefer to live in a class society just because people have typewriters instead of smartphones. If typewriters are made from iron ore that is more or less safely mined with neglible risk while smartphones are built from coltan and rare earths, mined bloodily, then I would choose the society with typewriters. I would rather live in a society of equals with shitty cars and typewriters than in a society with Bill Gates and bloody smartphones. Are typewriters so bad that they are worth submitting to Bill and his buddies? No.

Progress is not some sort of goal in and of itself. Von Braun built rockets murdering slaves in the mines. Would I rather not have rockets and not have von Braun and Nazis? Yes. I think it is a worthwhile tradeoff.

[Alyrium Denryle]

There most certainly were large classless neolithic societies (large by their standards). They did not endure - this is the truth. Why? The answer is twofold. First, the increasing surplus from more efficient tools gave birth to inequality and, eventually, classes and class power. Two: class societies are agressors by nature. They seek to expand and annihilate classless societies. Even between different formations the class society will tend to destroy any competing society.

Semantic nitpick, but an important one. Class societies dont seek to annihilate classless societies, so much as that is just a natural consequence of what they are and the scales upon which those societies tended to operate historically.

An agrarian society can artificially increase its carrying capacity (and thus size) by taking more land (and obtaining access to other resources like metals that might be locally scarce). They are larger by default (because agriculture creates a population increase), and have a smaller percentage of their population devoted to food production, leading to increased division of labor and specialization. So they have people like dedicated craftsmen and dedicated soldiers. Any conflict over resources can only really go one way in the long run, and that is before dispersal of persons to form new agricultural enclaves. Something they will do if the local farmland is over-utilized or if there is some sort of oppression.


My major issue is that you tend to ascribe motive a step or two further than is justified to get the observed results.

Where is your proof of this assertion? Because the evidence I have seen suggests the contrary.

Um.... agrarian societies are not pre-class. They are almost by definition class societies. They are primitive to be certain, but settled agriculture (or at least pastoral herding) is a necessary and sufficient condition to bring about social classes. Once you have that food surplus, class division arises very quickly as a consequence of division of labor and the necessity of mutual defense. A feudalesque system of farm laborers and craftsmen laboring primarily for the benefit of a local strongman/chieftan who controls the access to the land and protects laborers by way of armed specialists is one of the oldest and most primitive systems of government on earth once you get beyond (mostly) egalitarian gerontocracies in hunter-gatherer groups.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I wouldn't want to live in a classless society where typeriters are common while everybody else on the planet uses smartphones. Also, I wouldn't want to drive a shitty car because of this. Rather I'd have a smartphone and a car I like while other people have much more money than me. I don't envy Bill Gates, his money is none of my concerns.

Alternatively, and hear me out....

We can have our cake and eat it.

The one thing that has allowed humanity to survive is the fact that we can engage in innovative cooperation on a large scale.

Smart phones do not have to purchased with the blood of brown people. There is nothing mandating that coltan mining and refining has to be as outrageously awful as it is. We have plenty of engineers, we have OSHA and similar governmental agencies. We can reduce the human and environmental cost of both endeavors. Gold mining used to be soul and body crushing too, and we managed to fix it. The only reason that is different now is because most of the gold mines are in the developing world and we westerners want gold on the cheap and dont care about the lives of the african dude who will get his hand cut off if he tries to leave the pit. Marx was a shitty clinician, but he was a fantastic diagnostician. The concept of labor alienation perfectly describes that situation. Where we extract immense value from gold that the miner sees exactly none of, even though he did all the work and possibly died.

Is your smart phone with someone's life to you? Wouldn't you be willing to, say, pay a bit more for it if making it did not kill or maim someone else?

[K. A. Pital]

The shortest form of my present argument against inequality: there is no right for some to lead a suffering-free life while others suffer. An egalitarian society usually equally risks its members to suffer or to gain. In this case no one rises above the other. That is good enough of a justification for me - even discounting all the horrible things that happen when people separate into classes and, with a wide and far-flung division of labour, some never experience the suffering of others just because the others are as good as nonexistent to them, they live in a completely separate world, different world.

I know this comes as harsh and unreasonable to many of you. But you probably do not think you are guilty of coltan miners' death. I think that personally, I am. For reasons I will not further explain, I think that my right to life has long expired. This guilt is enough to drive one mad, so bear with me a little.

Smart phones do not have to purchased with the blood of brown people. There is nothing mandating that coltan mining and refining has to be as outrageously awful as it is.

It took us very long to fix the issues in many industries, and then they simply shifted to other people, negating the fix: shifting the burden is not removing it... Indeed, nothing mandates that this industry needs to be horrible as it is. Except for people who want their goods as cheap as possible, to such an extent they even call it "a market force", so that they will even make long-winded excuses for themselves (sayings about "human nature" belie the desire to find an apology for oneself as the part of this order). They design everything to be centered around competition, because it helps them to get the maxiumum value out of others, essentially. And if they are okay with inequality and Bill Gates does not bother someone (a millionfold gap), why would a tenfold gap, a thousandfold gap with someone else bother this person? Sure, bosses and rich guys are above, brown people are below... and the answer of most people to that is "fact of life".

[Alyrium Denryle]

And if they are okay with inequality and Bill Gates does not bother someone (a millionfold gap), why would a tenfold gap, a thousandfold gap with someone else bother this person? Sure, bosses and rich guys are above, brown people are below... and the answer of most people to that is "fact of life".

What really annoys me is that for a person like Bill Gates, they have so much money that they have run out of things to do with it. As income increases the marginal gains in quality of life that come from that income steadily decrease, and flat out reaches zero.

I dont go Full Communist. I am a social democrat, some competition and inequality can act as an incentive for innovation and personal achievement (without it, we would not have double-entry book keeping) that is probably just as important for the psychological health of human beings as relative equality is. But it has to be within the bounds at which quality of life meaningfully goes up, and it cannot be at the expense of abject poverty for someone else (or given global wealth distribution, several someones)

(in other words: ideal GINI coefficient should be ~.2 or .25, rather than the US current value of ~.45 or so, or the global value of .68)

The problem is, I dont see a way of making that happen in a way that wont just lead to dictators and the new boss being the same as the old boss--so to speak. The best I can come up with is through western countries going with a carrot/stick approach. Take gold mining. Massively increase our diplomatic core and have them go inspect localities that mine gold that is to be imported into the US to make sure workers are paid well, are not forced labor etc. If they are, arrest the board of the contracting US importer on various criminal charges (conspiracy, accessory to murder etc), seize their assets, distribute large portions of those assets to the mining community in the form of direct targeted development aid and help them set up a mining cooperative.

Do that a few dozen times and the cost of Alienating workers from their labor and enslaving them becomes too high "market forces" align and mining conglomerates will start treating their workers like people. Sure, the price of gold goes up, but you get massive quality of life improvements for the miners, with bottom up effects on the rest of the local economy.

[His Divine Shadow]

At least bill gates invested a sizeable portion of his private wealth to charity.

[K. A. Pital]

We are not so far apart in the program, I think.

I would like the ideal GINI for an industrial society to be between 1,7 and 2,3 (figures realistically attained by "real socialist" nations and Scandinavian social-democratic nations). I would like that said society does not exploit migrant or overseas labour in the name of their own population's luxuries - if this requires closing the market off to unethical corporations, so be it. No electronics until they stop using blood materials? Ok, there is no such thing as "right to a PS4" anyway.

I would like that said society does not profit off, or otherwise utilize hazardous low-paid labour - means its miners need to be compensated above average or it should not use hazardous mining. I would like that its leaders get as close an income to the average as possible, and live simple lives among their compatriots.

A society where workers own their companies, to the greatest possible extent - like in Yugoslavia, but even better. Even if the market is not abolished, people will be working for their own benefit most of the time.

Wages should be equalized over a long period, so that people will learn to live as equals and think of even very minor differences, personal awards etc. as enough signs of recognition. In this society, workers across different sectors could be communicating, they would always know that others do not significantly outstrip them. This society maybe will be no utopia, but it will be much, much better than what we have now. It will not mark the end of inequality, but it will be a good start.

I have a dream. At least in such a society people would not be endlessly tormented by horrors of inequality and always feel guilt for exploitation. I am even ready to take the risk of "zero growth" in such a society and a slower technical progress. Slower gains for all better than quick gains for some and loss for others. So what if this society keeps playing wooden toys when kids in unequal and imperialistic societies have smartphones? No big deal.

Then, this society should be different in many ways. Maybe it will never be rich as some of the First World vultures and robbers. I can live with it. I just don't want to stare down the abyss.

[Guardsman Bass]

RE: His Divine Shadow

It's the same thing, in theory, with other billionaires. While I think we should have steep estate taxes to prevent that wealth from becoming too intergenerational (while also encouraging them to bequeath it for philanthropic purposes), I'm not entirely against allowing that type of thing. They can often funnel the necessary money into research and philanthropic efforts that aren't being done in the US because of the toxic political environment and bigotry. For example, Warren Buffett's foundation was the one that paid for a program in Colorado to provide low-income young women with access to IUDs and other contraception.

[Simon_Jester]

Let's be quick now because you seem to have completely strawmanned my argument into something that it's not.

I accept your concession on the matter of how much to pay parliamentarians.

Even if (meaning, better NOT) they get the upper end of income ~ 150% or 200% of average, they shouldn't get greater luxuries. Where is the concession?

Well, if that was the position you have occupied all along, then you have conceded nothing- but in that case you have agreed with me on the subject of appropriate compensation for parliamentarians all along, and have simply been charging along in angry, violent agreement with me.

I think a reasonable salary for parliamentarians would be, oh, 150-200% of median, plus compensation for any expenses occurred specifically because of things it is mandatory that parliamentarians do (such as maintain residences in two places at once, which almost no other employee is required to do for any reason).

...no purpose is served by you banging your head against the wall and raging about how unjust it is that seven or nine billion humans cannot all be Stone Age farmers in an idyllic imaginary paradise that never existed.

Where have I described the Stone Age as a paradise? Where have I said we need to return to the conditions of the Neolithic farming settlements?

You have called those conditions superior to the alternatives. Now you are surprised that people think you want to go back?

I am not sure that your class, or you personally, are more disempowered than your counterparts of 1915 were. I mean, imagine the horror of watching the entire technologically developed world spiral into open warfare, with the working class of all the advanced nations, the ones that were supposed to be close enough to socialism that it might even happen in a generation or two... all slaughtering each other, over absurd, trifling nationalist reasons, over the pride and anger of emperors and the jingoism of propagandized crowds.

Your opinion - about me. Yep. Yet, some of these empires bite the dust in mere four years; crowns lying in the mud with nobody to pick them up. Uprisings rock the world, and even the core countries like Britain are not immune; they lose colonies, and basically a whole century of struggle begins. The world is not a monolithic capitalist thing ruled by US-based MNCs. This was not the end of history. It was the start of history. But today? Maybe I'm just too pessimistic, but it does look like the end. In a non-positive sense of the word "end".

Again, my point is fundamentally that your equivalents of 1915 had reasons for pessimism just as good as the ones you have, if not better. The only real difference is that their cause for pessimism was born of war (which meant change would come quickly, when it came), rather than of peace (peacetime change is usually slower).

I could equally well have cited the socialists of 1895, who also had excellent reason for pessimism, and who lived in a peacetime era when in fact they were facing a world order that had changed only slightly in their favor for decades and was unlikely to change drastically in the near future. Or of 1905- The Iron Heel was written when it was for a reason.

But to summarize, the mortality rates, measured in terms of deaths related to warfare or one-on-one violent killings, for traditional societies tend to be something like 1% per year or more

Okay, in that case your statement was justified, no doubt. In any case, thanks for providing this information. I had a general impression of the Stone Age as violent, but not based on actual studies of violence of the period. Once again - I did not suggest to reconstruct the Neolithic society. You misinterpreted my attacks on the division of labour - which are made from the standpoint of justice, namely, that in a society without division of labour suffering is distributed more or less evenly, whereas with division of labour suffering and risk are distributed unevenly, and with inequality of incomes (and outcomes) it means in such societies some people live a sheltered life while others risk and die to either construct this sheltered life or protect it. This is wrong.

I would argue that we are finally nearing the point at which it becomes possible for division of labor to put an end to the injustices it created. Because we are reaching the point- have already begun to reach it, but so far only in developed societies, where instead of saying "human A will live well while humans B, C, and D suffer from drudgery," we CAN say "humans A through D will all live well and the drudgery will be done by a machine."

We are not yet there, not quite, not even in the developed world. And the arbitrage created by low living conditions in the developing world makes it harder to reach that desirable state

But we are closer now than we were fifty years ago, and vastly closer than we were a century ago, and infinitely closer than we were two centuries ago.

It is at least within the realm of the possible that within our lifetimes, the means will be available for technological societies to break through to a fundamentally higher and finer level of being than that of the injustice-riddled messes and viciousness that has characterized human civilization since the days of Ur of the Chaldees.

So the injustices of divided labor... I would argue that those have the potential to fix themselves, with proper care and guidance and governance.

Whereas the injustices of undivided labor under conditions of primitive communism (e.g. mothers having to kill their babies on a regular basis because the tribe's condition does not make it possible to raise them to adulthood)... those do not fix themselves. Ever.

And yet in one of the two worst-hit countries of that war (yours), the death rate during the 20th century due to violence still managed to be lower than it was among a bunch of slightly more warlike-than-average Stone Age tribesmen. Several times lower.

During the whole century? Yes. It was mostly peaceful, after all. During the large wars themselves, however, people died in percentages greater than the hunter-gatherer violent death rate you quoted.

I would argue that this is beside the point.

No human in a technological society can know at birth whether they will live in times of war or peace. If they were born in Russia in 1896 they lived through about ten years of intense warfare and sixty years of peace- assuming the wars didn't kill them before then. If a person were born in Russia in 1946 the odds are good they've lived through seventy years of peace..*

*By this I mean this individual personally have experienced peace or war, not whether your entire society was uniformly and without exception at peace.

A human in a primitive society can know at birth that they will live in times of war, with little or no time of peace. With some of the surrounding tribes being mortal enemies for years at a time, often with the threat of massacre by one's neighbors as a common and routine danger. In any one year the odds of being killed by one's enemies in this constant Stone Age warfare may be low due to the primitive nature of their weapons and tactics. But the risk you experience of dying by violence, just as a result of being born, in such a society is much higher.

The fact that in a modern society all the risk of death is compressed into narrower parts of time and space- if anything this is progress, from an admittedly perverse point of view. Wouldn't you rather have five or ten years of danger, among sixty years of safety, rather than being in constant danger for all of your life?

It is simply that if someone performs a task on your behalf, the fact that they get paid more than you do does not mean that you are their servant. I was simply seeking to establish this point. In and of itself, the fact that A is more highly compensated than B does not make A into B's master.

In time, it does. Inequality is the foundation of class division. The settelements had special people enjoying a greater standard of life by giving them more than others. Eventually, these people formed a ruling class. Your point is invalid. At a snapshot, in a given moment, A and B's unequal incomes do not mean one is part of the ruling class and the other is not. In time, it does.

In that case, we will likely never be free of class systems except by imposing primitive misery on all humans, or by turning all humans into useless drones while the robots do literally all the relevant work. Or perhaps by some bizarre Harrison Bergeron-esque scenario in which we artificially prevent anyone from doing anything valued enough that they are in a position to command any significant form of compensation that not everyone else gets.

In which case it is pointless to bemoan that which cannot be fixed.

The problem is not division of labor. The problem is that the means to create a better world are controlled by those who have no incentive to do so, and are unwilling to do so or even allow others to do so unmolested out of their own altruism.

Class originates with the division of labour, which is at first driven by necessity, but later - driven by class power, by the tasks set through the will of the ruling class. We can think of workarounds, sure - we overthrow the ruling class, we devise rules that combat the ruling class' power, we create our own alternative systems. But realizing that problem is the first step. Once again, at no point is this a talk about returning to the Stone Age.

Because the industrialized world may somehow produce nine billion people, four or five billion of them living in utter abject poverty of the worst sort...

You are saying that as if people were some sort of "tick" achievement in a strategy game to be produced. But they're not. And not being born is what China did to its children. You just hailed this solution, but in the next paragraph you state that people would not prefer not to be born. All industrialized societies practice birth control. That's millions of unborn for the welfare of the living. So I kind of... lost your point. The production of people is an industrial achievement or should we curtail the production of people?

Neither.

The point is, suppose our choices are as follows:

-Six or seven billion people are born into a world where living conditions for all of them are becoming acceptable, or more likely are already acceptable because of reduced overpopulation problems.
-Nine billion people are born into a world where living conditions for all of them are becoming acceptable.
-Nine billion people are born into a world, half of them have unacceptable living conditions.
-Nine billion people are born into a world, half of them have unacceptable living conditions, and three billion of those people die horribly in plagues and famines.
-Nine billion people are born into a world, a half billion of them have unacceptable living conditions, and the other 8.5 billion of them die horribly.

Clearly, each of those choices is better than the one above it.

"No division of labor" leads to the bottom outcome, the horrible outcome no one would desire. Living in a slum is better than dying of starvation. If this were not so, well... it's not as if the slum-dwellers don't know how to starve to death, if starvation would be preferable than their current existence.

Now, before I did not speak precisely enough. I referred to this point (that slum-dwellers would no doubt rather be alive in a slum than having been born and then died of starvation). But I referred to it by saying "ask the slum-dwellers if they would rather not exist at all."

So you became confused, and thought I was referring to birth control, when I was simply referring to not allowing people to starve.

Basically, if those nine billion people are all alive in 2050, rather than having died horribly, it will be because of the Light Side of division of labor. Half of them will live in slums because of the Dark Side, but if you interviewed them, I suspect they would consider the Light Side consequence more significant than the Dark.

And literally any thing that our world can possibly do to reduce or limit the suffering of those nine billion people (population control, development aid, etc.)... all those things will in turn flow from the Light Side of division of labor.

So while the Dark Side of division of labor may exist and in some sense be 'the root of class inequality and suffering,' this is only true in the same sense that one can blame the water cycle for hurricanes. It isn't the fault of the planet's ecological water cycle that hurricanes happen, even if hurricanes could not happen without the water cycle.

Talking at length about how the water cycle is (or even about how it can be) an evil is deeply counterproductive.

And one minute you're attacking all division of labor

And I keep attacking it from the chosen angle. Who said that you get the right to enjoy a sheltered life with cheap clothes and cheap food while the textile workers die in droves and farmers suffer from First World dumping in the Third World? You get no such right - nobody does, and I don't think I have a right to even live.

I don't have such a right. However, if there is to be any chance of ending the suffering in the Third World, rather than merely making it worse...

...That ending will come through division of labor.

Therefore, I cannot reasonably call division of labor an evil, since it always solved roughly as many problems as it created, and sometimes solves many more problems than it created, and may in the relatively near future even find us a way to solve all the problems that it created.

You can say that your ancestors took this right by violence; by a kind of natural selection among nations, etc. That's all social darwinism recast. Means you get the right to something just because you punched the other guy in the face and stole his things. Division of labour produces inequality which you defend. I attack it solely because the separation of sufffering between people is injust.

Except I didn't

Why are some suffering, but not all? Why is one suffering, but another is enjoying better conditions because of the first one's suffering?

You don't have a good answer to that. Nobody here does.

My answers are:

1) The alternative is for everyone to be suffering, and for the vast majority of them to suffer worse- even the miserable slum-dwellers in the Third World do not run off into the jungle to be Stone Age tribesmen, even in places where that is theoretically possible such as New Guinea. Indeed, the reverse is true- people are deserting the tribal villages in favor of the slums. And they are even better informed about the consequences of making such a choice than you are.

2) The current world system is far more unjust than it should be or 'needs' to be in any meaningful sense, because, and this is the fundamental source of evils, NOT division of labor:

Owners are rats. The mechanisms that would allow us to make the world a better place in a fair manner are so consistently under the control of people who will not use them for that purpose, and who skillfully prevent them from being used for that purpose. This is a problem that urgently needs fixing- far more urgently than any problem that is a direct result of division of labor.

If we didn't have division of labor it wouldn't matter if the owners stopped being rats, because we still wouldn't be able to lift the world out of misery no matter what we did.

And like I expected, it did fell on deaf ears. You've done well - first saying that equality is unnatural and flies in the face of anthropology and history, to which I correctly replied with the Paleo- and Neolithic classless society (indeed, what could be "natural" - 1% of human history or 99%?)... and then attacking me as if I wished to reconstruct the Neolithic society. Perfect!

What I actually said is:

" But at the same time, people are making a wide variety of arguments based on a wide variety of different kinds of evidence for the idea that it is not realistic, that it contradicts all of human history, sociology, and psychology, to create a situation in which every person's living conditions are just exactly those of the median person."

The hell of it is... even in a primitive society this remains true. Everyone's living conditions may be commensurate, but they are not identical. In particular, the healthy are vastly privileged over the sick (because there is no meaningful health care). Those who have stable family ties are vastly privileged over social outcasts or orphans (because there is no support structure other than the extended family that will show any caring for you at all). Those are perhaps the two most prominent examples.

Now, nonetheless, the fact that everyone lives under commensurate conditions is at least less unequal in some ways than a typical technological society. But if you look at what I actually said... frankly, the example of primitive societies was not relevant to that in the first place.

Nothing is more insulting than inequality. Death is fearsome; suffering is painful. But inequality - that thing is insulting to the mind, and hateful, hateful beyond measure.

If you are prepared to embrace an arbitrarily large amount of suffering (for yourself or others) in order to remove a finite amount of inequality...

Well, let's just say that when I meet a man who is willing to inflict vast injuries for the sake of removing an insult, I worry about his sanity.

And I will note that Starglider's deliberate parodies of your position become more validated, when you explicitly claim that you find suffering and death to be less bad than inequality, without setting any limits on how much suffering and death are acceptable, so long as everyone enjoys equality.

After all, the easiest equality of all to attain is the equality of the cemetery.

[K. A. Pital]

I think a reasonable salary for parliamentarians would be, oh, 150-200% of median, plus compensation for any expenses occurred specifically because of things it is mandatory that parliamentarians do (such as maintain residences in two places at once, which almost no other employee is required to do for any reason).

You said they (MPs) should be in the top 10% (as an example, for UK this is 80k GBP). This would put them above 200% of median or even average income. In fact, this would be even slighly worse than their current income disparity for many nations, were we to grant allowances on top of this income. Some nations have a lawmaker to average coefficient of 1,2-1,7 while what you suggested was more in line with the 2,5-3 range. Once again, a digression, but an important one.

It's just not realistic to take the people who, in terms of political power, are by design among the top 0.001% of your entire nation, and pay them a salary that doesn't even put them in the top 10%.

You even went as far as to claim it is unrealistic to expect these people to be anywhere but in the top 10.

You have called those conditions superior to the alternatives. Now you are surprised that people think you want to go back?

Have I really? I think some backing-up is in order.

If we just abolish the division of labour now, we go back to hunter-gatherer society or communal farming real quick. No hope of maintaining the modern living standard. Hence why I think it is a better idea to concentrate on some aspects for now. Striking at the root of this problem is very hard. ... As for being desirable - I personally do not belong to primitivists or luddites and only support gradually removing the division of labour on a new, advanced level with abundance. But I can damn well understand their feelings.

Again, my point is fundamentally that your equivalents of 1915 had reasons for pessimism just as good as the ones you have, if not better. .. Or of 1905- The Iron Heel was written when it was for a reason.

It is one thing to write the Iron Heel and another thing to see it take over the world in a century of war and live under the heel. But again, digression.

I would argue that we are finally nearing the point at which it becomes possible for division of labor to put an end to the injustices it created. ... But we are closer now than we were fifty years ago, and vastly closer than we were a century ago, and infinitely closer than we were two centuries ago. ... It is at least within the realm of the possible that within our lifetimes, the means will be available for technological societies to break through to a fundamentally higher and finer level of being than that of the injustice-riddled messes and viciousness that has characterized human civilization since the days of Ur of the Chaldees.

Good that you talk only about industrialized - or rather, even so-called "postindustrial" (what a fucking joke) societies. So the Gods of Elysium will rise even higher above the dirt-crawling mortals: "technological societies" (imperialist metropoles, essentially the robber-barons of the world in national form) will enjoy freedom from dreadful and hazardous labour, machines will do all the dirty work inside these societies and wage slaves from the poor world will take care of anything that isn't automated by the time. Instead of just the capitalist class, whole nations will turn into rich overlords, making the prophecy of Marx come true, breaking the unity of struggle of workers of the First and Third world... Maybe rich first-worlders will even have biological immortality. They will break through the top, but on the backs of everyone who has suffered to ensure their welfare. I don't know what is more sad: that this vision is appealing to you or that you think it is appealing to me. I said I have no desire to look back, but what you describe as the future is horrifying. You describe equally distributed prehistoric suffering as a never-healing injustice. Your projection is not healing or comforting either: it just propagates the division into eternity, rewarding the already-advantaged and increasing the gap between them and the rest more and more.

in any one year the odds of being killed by one's enemies in this constant Stone Age warfare may be low due to the primitive nature of their weapons and tactics. But the risk you experience of dying by violence, just as a result of being born, in such a society is much higher.
The fact that in a modern society all the risk of death is compressed into narrower parts of time and space- if anything this is progress, from an admittedly perverse point of view. Wouldn't you rather have five or ten years of danger, among sixty years of safety, rather than being in constant danger for all of your life?

Not so sure. The times when they start killing industrially through war may actually mean survival chances are very low at a given point in time.

In that case, we will likely never be free of class systems except by imposing primitive misery on all humans, or by turning all humans into useless drones while the robots do literally all the relevant work.

That is what you think? Humans cannot ever live without class inequality except in "primitive misery"?

Neither.
...
Basically, if those nine billion people are all alive in 2050, rather than having died horribly, it will be because of the Light Side of division of labor. Half of them will live in slums because of the Dark Side, but if you interviewed them, I suspect they would consider the Light Side consequence more significant than the Dark.

Not being born is not the same as dying horribly. You are confusing my question whether several billion people living in horrible conditions is better than a lot fewer people, but perhaps less people in horrible conditions, for a question on whether these people would prefer to die than to live. You must surely know the survival instinct in humans is so strong that they try to survive even when murdered without mercy, like in Dachau. Surely you have seen that people strive to live even when they, by their own admission, later say the life was so bad that dying would be merciful, would be a release from suffering. I am not sure being alive is a value in and of itself. It is how you live that makes it valuable.

If it was so awesome why do Foxconn workers kill themselves - though they are not in Dachau? They are living a much better life than Neolithic humans, aren't they? And it is not a death camp, either. But many end their lives voluntarily. Surely you that fact is not lost on you. Perhaps the survival instinct in some people is not strong enough to just overpower the realization of just how horrid the conditions are and how bleak life is with a hefty dose of hormones.

I don't have such a right. However, if there is to be any chance of ending the suffering in the Third World, rather than merely making it worse...

Indeed. I guess you are a consequentialist. I am no longer one. I want to walk away from Omelas or destroy it. I do not want to think about everything in terms of "end justifies means". I also do not want to commit an error like you do, saging division of labour solves "roughly as many problems as it created", because that is a purely subjective view of yours. For those who died and still in the mines, the division was not solving more problems than creating: it was and is creating more problems than it is solving. This sheltered view I cannot follow. Even if, through pain, I admit the necessary evil, it remains every bit as evil as it was when viewed alone. And like I said, fringe benefits for entitled fuckers do not justify massive suffering of others. What problems did coltan mining in the Third World solve that were not solved already? Was there malnourishment in the First World? Or maybe a housing shortage? What "problem" did the mass expansion of entertainment computing solve? And why the First World chose not to mine coltan inside their own nations, eh? What else will it be: pure renewables in the First World, clean air for demigods - and a world full of dreck from rare earth mining?

1) The alternative is for everyone to be suffering.

Maybe you should suffer then. Maybe its you who should be in the coltan mines, "solving" some problem of fat entitled gamer kids. Your answers are not good. They are not answers. Communist dreamers who said the division of labour will be abolished "on a new level", among them Marx, at least gave me a goal. You offer nothing.

But at the same time, people are making a wide variety of arguments based on a wide variety of different kinds of evidence for the idea that it is not realistic, that it contradicts all of human history, sociology, and psychology, to create a situation in which every person's living conditions are just exactly those of the median person." The hell of it is... even in a primitive society this remains true. Everyone's living conditions may be commensurate, but they are not identical. In particular, the healthy are vastly privileged over the sick (because there is no meaningful health care). Those who have stable family ties are vastly privileged over social outcasts or orphans (because there is no support structure other than the extended family that will show any caring for you at all). Those are perhaps the two most prominent examples.

Okay. Healthy over sick. Our current society prioritizes one First World sick person over billions of sick others. We could produce more generics and "heal the world", but we produce very costly rare medicines to help First World people combat rare diseases: cancer, monogenetic failures, et cetera. Orphans? Really? You even forgot that tribal societies do not have a fixed monogamous family unit, having collective childrearing instead. And I am supposed to be the one who does not look at the facts?

If you are prepared to embrace an arbitrarily large amount of suffering (for yourself or others) in order to remove a finite amount of inequality... Well, let's just say that when I meet a man who is willing to inflict vast injuries for the sake of removing an insult, I worry about his sanity. And I will note that Starglider's deliberate parodies of your position become more validated, when you explicitly claim that you find suffering and death to be less bad than inequality, without setting any limits on how much suffering and death are acceptable, so long as everyone enjoys equality. After all, the easiest equality of all to attain is the equality of the cemetery.

Then I maybe that is it, and we will be equalized in death. I think you know full well that often someone's rule over you was not actively meaning you will suffer. And yet, people often hurled themselves en masse towards a huge risk of death just to free themselves. Only a perception, on one hand, and dying to change this perception? That is what people do. Go on and claim that they were simply insane. Inequality was (and always is) finite, but the death or suffering of people fighting against it was final. They did not rise from the dead. They risked infinity, their entire lives, to fix a finite inequality. I guess all them were madmen, right?

Worse yet, you directly called me a madman for opposing Russia's capitalists which at the time carried a direct risk of losing life and limb (submitting to capitalism carried no such risk) - for risking infinite and total loss just for some "finite" inequality - because even the Russian oligarch inequality, horrible as it is, was not infinite. I hope you realize this.

But what is it to you? To you our problems are about to resolve themselves, "division resolves the problems it creates". Well, you shall have your capitalist First World utopia, lazy and wealthy, then. Staying in Omelas is bad enough. But defending it - in that, please, go on without me. Even the suffering of one miner is more important than the happiness of all who use cheap entertainment computers! There is no "happiness stock exchange" where you measure the happiness of entitled whites against others who make their goods for them, dying. Sorry, it does not work that way and thus division of labour creates only problems for some and only benefits for others..

In this thread some already said that it is more important for them to have smartphones instead of typewriters.... That is how much human life costs?

[Alyrium Denryle]

You said they (MPs) should be in the top 10% (as an example, for UK this is 80k GBP). This would put them above 200% of median or even average income. In fact, this would be even slighly worse than their current income disparity for many nations, were we to grant allowances on top of this income. Some nations have a lawmaker to average coefficient of 1,2-1,7 while what you suggested was more in line with the 2,5-3 range. Once again, a digression, but an important one.

I think what he is getting at is that MPs or their equivalent should be compensated on par with any other highly skilled high-stress profession such as physicians, engineers, architects, researchers, veterinarians (like physicians, only they have to know more species), computer programmers, and for that matter certain types of manual labor (like crab fisherman and certain types of mining/refining).

Whatever those cutoff points happen to be. The UK has one of the highest GINI coefficients in the EU, so its top 10% is going to be a bit higher than say, Norway's top 10%.

Indeed. I guess you are a consequentialist. I am no longer one. I want to walk away from Omelas or destroy it. I do not want to think about everything in terms of "end justifies means". I also do not want to commit an error like you do, saging division of labour solves "roughly as many problems as it created", because that is a purely subjective view of yours. For those who died and still in the mines, the division was not solving more problems than creating: it was and is creating more problems than it is solving. This sheltered view I cannot follow. Even if, through pain, I admit the necessary evil, it remains every bit as evil as it was when viewed alone. And like I said, fringe benefits for entitled fuckers do not justify massive suffering of others. What problems did coltan mining in the Third World solve that were not solved already? Was there malnourishment in the First World? Or maybe a housing shortage? What "problem" did the mass expansion of entertainment computing solve? And why the First World chose not to mine coltan inside their own nations, eh? What else will it be: pure renewables in the First World, clean air for demigods - and a world full of dreck from rare earth mining?

Or he is saying that we will, soon, have the technology at such a low cost that raising everyone to a higher standard of living free from the dreck of rare earth mining will be possible.

I am not sure I buy that on the technological end (bluntly, we have the technology to free people from horrible mining conditions now, but the argument can be made that with legal and economic leverage and developments to reduce the costs of simply providing the necessary infrastructure to miners, that such a thing could become feasible. Of course the technology to simply eliminate domestic drinking water contamination also exists, but no one wants to pay implementation so color me skeptical), but he is proposing it as a means of mitigating the human cost of a modern industrialized standard of living or eliminating it completely.

It is a bit pie in the sky, but he is not proposing crushing the world's poor even deeper beneath our boot.

[K. A. Pital]

You know, coal mining at least gave humans something that reduced the suffering of others on a steep scale. Look, coal mining is really necessary to develop a viable energy sector. Still inexcusable, the children in the mines. But something for all, or at least so it seemed.

What does coltan mining do? Would a world where computers were few be endless suffering? Doubt it. We'd have to then admit the Western welfare state of 1970s to have severe suffering of workers. That is obviously false.

So you see, for an incremental improvement in the lives of privileged, the poor have to work and die. Not equivalent, this division of labour is.

And in the future, how many more tiny pleasures for those already having no suffering (no malnourishment, no shortage of homes, no shortage of almost anything!) will be bought with the lives of others? For a tiny improvement, man. That's not a joke. Does a man who loads his car with biodiesel understand that cropland - a scarce resource - is being converted into land for fuel, and some people are suffering genuinely while if he had no car, that would be merely a mild inconvenince compared to the lives they live?

And the root I exposed; the buying power of a wealthy Westerner is enough to kill Third Worlders. Inequality kills. By supporting the "free market", a Westerner - the Westerners - makes corporations race to the bottom and kill people in textile factories, makes them kill miners.

How many Westerners are ready to say they do not need PS4 or 3-dollar clothes sold at nearest Walmart? Are the demigods noble? The fuck they are.

Actually, saying "we'll have technology at low cost" is a bit threatening. How low will the cost of technology be? And what will it mean for those producing the raw materials for this technology? We will have cheaper and cheaper computers until all the assembly lines shift to Africa to contain the rising costs of Chinese labour? Or will coltan become even cheaper? "Cheap technology" is a misnomer...

[madd0ct0r]

Just to focus on that example stas, since you've used it a few times.

from wiki: "In 2006, Australia, Brazil, and Canada produced 80% of the world’s coltan".
>>While I'm not so sure on Brazil, the other two don't seem problematic.

"As of 2012, coltan’s main producers are Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mozambique, and Democratic Republic of Congo via Rwanda, countries that produce about 66% of the world’s coltan.[3] Additional coltan reserves have been found all over the world on every continent except Antarctica. It is believed that sufficient reserves exist in developed countries, but for a variety of reasons, the burden of the world’s coltan needs is falling on undeveloped countries and conflict regions. Currently, coltan products are sold in private, unregulated markets,[4] unlike metals such as gold, copper, zinc, and tin. This means that there are no standards for mining operations and any safety procedures must come from the mine owners or their home countries."

So the solution dosen't have to be banning smart phones or whatever. It's regulating the market, and setting OHSA and driving those standards up. Just as European countries have done internally. Banning computers seems a waste when we already have organisational solutions to the problem.

---

It's like the solution to the previous horrendous health and safety record (that fell unfairly on poor workers)in UK construction and rail work wasn't to ban the products, it was to fix the procedures and accept higher costs or reduced profits. I've not found a way to drive up construction health and safety standards in Vietnam yet (and certain risks do actually become negligible compared to just living/driving there, so those other risks need to be fixed first) but things are better then they were 10 years ago, which were better then 10 years before that.

I am focused on the conditions of the poorest, improvement at the bottom line is the only thing that makes a difference.

[K. A. Pital]

Let's establish the facts then.

1. Personal entertainment computer is a luxury. Westerners were not suffering without in the 1970s. Biofuels are a luxury. Westerners did not suffer without them. Ultra-cheap clothes from megabrands are a luxury. Westerners did not suffer without them. Westerners did not have malnourishment, they had ample supply of food, homes and clothes.

2. Tantalum production
http://investingnews.com/daily/resource ... rc-canada/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltan#Pr ... and_supply

Here are the top eight tantalum-producing countries from 2014:

1. Rwanda

Mine Production: 250

Rwanda produces the majority of the world’s tantalum, but their standing is fraught with controversy. It is an open secret that much of the Rwanda’s mineral production arrives from other countries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2012, the Securities and Exchange Commission instituted new rules that force companies to disclose when they use minerals from conflict zones in their products. As a result, Congolese miners generally sell their wares to neighboring countries that do not carry the stigmas associated with mining in the Congo, according to a report from Bloomberg.

For this reason, it is difficult to ascertain how much tantalum is actually produced by Rwandan mines.

2. Congo

Mine Production: 180 tons

The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the world’s biggest tantalum producers, and the metal is just a small part of the country’s valuable mineral resources. National Geographic estimated that Congo produces up to 50 percent of the world’s tantalum, though mining practices in the country are known for being unethical and corrupt.

The SEC rule aimed at discouraging conflict mineral does not seem to have diminished Congo’s production of tantalum, as production in 2014 represented a 10-ton increase over the previous year. The nature of mining in the Congo makes it impossible to know what tantalum reserves the country possesses, but it’s likely that tantalum production and the controversy surrounding it will continue in the Congo for years to come.

3. Brazil

Mine Production: 98 tons

Brazil is the largest tantalum producing country that does not have the stigma of conflict mining. Overall, Brazil is home to 36,000 tons of tantalum reserves.

The country’s largest tantalum mine is the MIBRA project, owned by Advanced Metallurgical Group N.V. (AMS:AMG). In light of issues facing tantalum from Rwandan and Congolese suppliers, Brazil has the potential to become a major source of tantalum for companies around the world in the coming years.

4. Mozambique

Mine Production: 85 tons

Tantalum production in Mozambique dropped over the past year, as the country produced 115 tons of the metal in 2013, and just 85 tons in 2014. The largest licensed tantalum project in the country is the Muiane Project, which is wholly owned by Pacific Wildcat Resources (TSXV:PAW). According to MBendi information services, the Muiane Project is Mozambique’s most developed tantalum source.

5. China

Mine Production: 60 tons

China is a major tantalum producer and is the biggest supplier of tantalum metal to US companies. Almost 30 percent of the tantalum metal exported to the US comes from China according to the USGS, and the country’s production has held steady year over year.

6. Nigeria

Mine Production: 60 tons

Tying with China in terms of annual tantalum production was Nigeria. The country is thought to harbor large reserves of the mineral, but unfortunately, development efforts have been stymied by continued conflicts in the country.

7. Ethiopia

Mine Production: 40 tons

Ethiopia ramped up tantalum production significantly in the past year, with output increasing from 8 tons annually to 40 in just 12 months. Weak results from 2013 reflect a mine shutdown that occurred due to high levels of uranium in the available tantalum. Production is likely to increase further as companies expand mining efforts at the Kenticha Tantalite Deposit, according to the Ethiopian Ministry of Mines.

8. Burundi

Mine Production 14 tons

Rounding out the top eight is Burundi. The country borders Rwanda and Congo, and Newsweek reported minerals from the country are often sourced from conflict mines.

Do you see Australia, Canada anywhere? Neither do I. Rwanda (a fron for Congo operations) tops the list as the largest producer and exporter.

If we take Wikipedia's word on it (which I wouldn't do), we can see that out of the 590 tons of coltan produced in 2013, for example, Rwanda - 150, Brazil - 140, Congo - 110, Canada - 50.

Meaning African coltan mining is making half the world's production, and 90% made in the Third World. Canada, the only First World nation to figure in the latest lists, makes 10%.

3. Biofuels.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/scien ... ml?hp&_r=0

I am not sure even ONE fucking full gas tank excuses this. Are you? Full gas tanks are a fucking luxury of fucking white fatbags. Food is not a luxury.

In a country where most families must spend about two thirds of their income on food, “the average Guatemalan is now hungrier because of biofuel development,” said Katja Winkler, a researcher at Idear, a Guatemalan nonprofit organization that studies rural issues. Roughly 50 percent of the nation’s children are chronically malnourished, the fourth-highest rate in the world, according to the United Nations.

The American renewable fuel standard mandates that an increasing volume of biofuel be blended into the nation’s vehicle fuel supply each year to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and to bolster the nation’s energy security. Similarly, by 2020, transportation fuels in Europe will have to contain 10 percent biofuel.

But many worry that Guatemala’s poor are already suffering from the diversion of food to fuel. “There are pros and cons to biofuel, but not here,” said Misael Gonzáles of C.U.C., a labor union for Guatemala’s farmers. “These people don’t have enough to eat. They need food. They need land. They can’t eat biofuel, and they don’t drive cars.”

What is the reason for that? Can you explain to me WHY these people have to suffer horribly because of NOTHING?

4. Cheap clothes...

Not sure I even want to touch this, for now. Or extend that list. And for each given case, the same will be true; a tiny improvement in the life of a Westerner will be made possible through the sweat and blood of others. Westerners will outprice; they will outbid, and they want their corporations to give them the cheapest possible goods. In that, they are murderers. They stand accused.

The Western paradise is built on blood. It is actually remarkable how you say OSHA is the solution; indeed, it is - but the logic of the Westerners is logic of the market. They want that their corporations should offer them cheap goods, which means producing them outside nations that regulate their working environment like OSHA, it means diluting the global raw materials supply with the bloodiest things found. Cheap and very cheap. In fact, that was the CLAIM Westerners threw in our face, they said WE here in the West live BETTER than you because everyone can buy a smartphone, everyone can buy loads of cheap clothes, loads of cheap food, it's cornucopia!

And if you are unsure I'm right, let's take history. Gold mining, already mentioned. Why gold? Is it industrially necessary? What fraction of gold mining goes to industrial production and which fraction goes to luxuries? I heard industrial use is 10 percent! And why, if paper money was already invented by other societies even before gold? What is the reason for that? Why poor people had to die for the luxury of some? Westerners had a crazy obsession with gold; and so they had people die mining it. No real reason for that, just history. 90% of all gold miners who had ever died did so for NOTHING.

[His Divine Shadow]

It seems to me that technology is important. It is the only thing that could even potentially alleviate the problems and inequality in the world. It's really that or collapse and death of a lot of people by this point.

With technology we could potentially unlock resources and overcome bottlenecks, technology is already helping to increase its own pace of development. And it has a lot of good effects, especially in medical technology. Soon it looks like we'll be able to cheaply cure cataracts for instance, imagine the millions of people it will help. Unfortunately it will be unequally distributed at first because we're living in an unequal world with an unequal system, but it seems to me that techology is the best way to break the system we got now. Even if it leads to teh worst outcome with an immortal-ultra-elite that won't be tolerated and likely lead to the destruction of the current system, i.e. that which you seek. At any rate we're already comitted to this path now and must follow it, speed it on even, the faster it goes, the shorter time people will have to suffer. The sooner we can grow more food to help with starvation, the sooner we can give limbs to the limbless and sight to the blind, cure deadly diseases and born handicaps. What about all the children born deformed, I often think of them and wish we had advanced more and faster so we could help them. What about all the children that will be born. We must advance, go forward, make a better world. You talk of inequality but what of the built in inequality in nature, the flaws in biology that makes someone be born deaf, blind or without limbs or a myriad of other problems? That is the worst and most offensive inequality I know of and I can't wait for the day it's a thing of the past. Though I will likely be dead by then.

I talk of technology like a god, perhaps it is.

[K. A. Pital]

Look, I've provided more than one example where technology was actually harmful - but all these examples are about how inequality is harmful, actually.

Can biofuel starve children? Yes. Vote for a person who signs the law on mandating biofuels? Or worse, tank your car with bio? Torturer and sadist: literally, buying the malnourishment of others, a cannibal!

But let's imagine all people in the world have the same buying power. Let's say there was a "Great Equalization" in which the First World was somehow equalized with the Third - no matter how, for now, let's say it just happened. This is the crash of Elysium that I'm looking forward to, something which could occur because the gap keeps rising.

Now we must consider that each person in the world has around $3000 per year at his/her disposal, with a purchasing power relatively equal to that of a solid China worker. That person is now not in a position to be starved, because he or she can also compete with the post-equalization biofuel buyer on the same terms. The biofuel buyer(s) can't outbid that person, because they just don't have big enough a disparity to do it! In fact, it's possible biofuel production would just go nowhere because there's so many people who can buy food products now, and they'd make the use of cropland for anything other than farming impossible through the sheer power of their demand.

One of the many advantages of equality.

P.S. Hey, I have an idea. I'll actually compile some economic data to see which luxury/non-essential goods that were invented, mass-marketed, and later consumed in and by the West, have directly led to malnourishment, suffering, murder in the Third World, and for a second consider the price of the "cornucopia" for the Western middle class that was paid by the rest of the undeveloped world. I shall try to expose that cost. And then we shall see if people are still thinking that it's more important to have smartphones not typewriters.

P.P.S. This discussion has long outgrown Venezuela. If thread participants want, I can split our entire talk here to SLAM.

[madd0ct0r]

I think you are taking Bablehunter's line about typewriters out of context. He did give the rest of the planet smartphones, implying they were all richer then his society.

Reet.

1, Luxury, schmuxury. I'm not arguing that and you know it. I'm not even sure anyone in this thread is arguing that. Still.

2. Coltan. I quoted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltan_mining_and_ethics, didn't check the main article. I think my earlier post about regulation and OHSA still stands.

3. Biofuels (food fuels specifically, sewer gas and rice husk remain legitimate resources). a) yes I agree with you that situation is horrific. b) one of the truly horrific bits there, though, is the land distribution and lack of welfare net.

wife back, more tomorrow.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Point of information with respect to biofuels. It is perfectly feasible to produce biofuels with agricultural waste products (read: Corn husks etc) rather than the actual food crop (corn mash). It just costs more to do it that way (because an extra breakdown step is required to go from cellulose to glucose and from there either fermentation to ethanol or direct GMO production of petrochemicals, depending on your requirements). Also ANY kind of carbon neutral fuel is preferable to climate change, which sure as shit is going to kill or displace a hell of a lot of people in the developing world.

And because we can... we should eat that cost.

[K. A. Pital]

Also ANY kind of carbon neutral fuel is preferable to climate change

Poor Third World farmers barely benefitted from oil (automobilization of these societies is low), but now they will be made to pay for the luxuries of the First World despite not being guilty of anything: either by malnourishment (biofuel - and I fear that the Western corporations will continue to look after their profits and set the lowest prices... and not "eat the costs", Alyrium...) or by drowning and displacement (global climate change caused by basically the richest population, the ~10% percent of inhabitants of the industrial world, unleashed on the rest like a hammer).

The guiltless are crushed while the guilty continue to lead a problem-free live. I'm reminded of Neo-Seoul in "Cloud Atlas" - their corporatist society perfected engineering and resettled people under massive climate change-caused flooding... And you can't help but wonder what happened to the less fortunate socities which had no guilt in causing it...

He did give the rest of the planet smartphones, implying they were all richer then his society.

If the world around has blood smartphones and his society does not, his society is at least - and maybe wilfully, consciously! - not taking part in the cannibalism. His society is making the moral choice, right?

Luxury, schmuxury. I'm not arguing that and you know it.

Then I ask you why? What's the reason? There's no real reason except inequality and callousness. People are callous, they are cruel, the people; and inequality allows them to act on it.

I think my earlier post about regulation and OHSA still stands.

I agree with your desires; I just think that because the market operates under certain laws (minimization of costs: in case of humans too, humans are a cost and liability, and constant creation of new products, and finally competition of buyers: outbidding of poor by rich), there will never be a way to regulate everything. We regulated coal mining in the developed nations, critical as it was, and took us almost a whole century of struggle and blood to stop people from dying to heat our apartments. But coal, like I said, was maybe critical (was it?). Luxuries are not. So making the production of luxuries "cheaper" actually - in the immediate present and future - means killing people.

But let me say something else. The West will continue what it does. Clothes, consumer electronics and fuels will cost cheaper and cheaper relative to the wage, and so will food. Capital goods will be more and more expensive (they cannot really be reliably purchased outside the nation). The consumers will demand compensation, because they're already struggling to save enough for homes with bottomed-out savings rates. They will cry for cheap smartphones, clothes, food. These are the people of one nation pitted against another nation through the power of capital.

And capital will win like it won before - with United Fruit Company and cheap bananas, with Congo's rubber and good ole' Ford's cars, with Congolese and Rwadan mines and "smartphones for everyone", with the dead lakes near Baotou and clean wind towers of Germany. One will win, and another suffer.

And... SLAM or not to SLAM?

[madd0ct0r]

Thinking it over, Stas, are you trying to produce policy or just prove blame?because for the latter I agree with you, the west are collectilvy guilty as hell

[K. A. Pital]

Not just correctly show who and why is to blame, not to make people question their role in building and supporting this system - it is very important, but as a critical thinker, I must go further! I must do more!

I'm trying to show the danger of jumping to fast and simple consequentialist conclusions.

--- Division of labour also solves the problems it creates (and will soon resolve all the problems).

Yeah, but remains unanswered whose problems though? The dead miner is dead eternally; the capitalist or the customer who bought the coal/coltan/gold is not, and continues to enjoy the fruits of not only his own labour, but also that of others (including dead others; their labour is included in his private goods as legacy). Division of labour solves the problems for those who are not on the receiving end of the stick. Those who are crippled, dead or commit suicide are not the same set of people which benefits from the results of the division. Indeed, it would be strange to talk about benefits or "solved problems" for a person who kills himself/herself, is killed or is disfigured for life. A honest answer would be that we humans, we have not learned to solve the problems that division of labour creates, that division of wealth creates, the separation of victims and benefactors of sacrifice is not solved.

Why is socialism at least a partial solution? Because socialism means workers owns the total product of society. In that, the contradiction is partially resolved because when the worker kills himself via workplace accident, at least he or she was working to create something that belongs to him/her. This is the first stage and the imperfect solution. Of course, a higher and more perfect solution requires to largely negate the division of labour (no going around it: socialists have realized this and attacked it agressively with plans of total self-management, "autonomous communes", later ones with techno-socialism where machines fuse with man, relegating him to the Thinker and Inventor role and they do all the various kinds of work - we all become programmers, essentially, and in that the division of labour is abolished). People who do not understand this are probably just too afraid to look truth in the eyes.

The danger here is not to fall to the "future justifies present" trap: humanization of labour now can lead to a temporary halt to technical progress, it can stun economic growth - but here comes the difference, socialists are not techno-fascists. The price of getting "THERE" must also be kept as small as possible. Perhaps our greatest failure has been the wild submission of socialists to primitive consequentialism in the XX century - putting Nazism aside, I am sure that "ends justify means" has caused suffering and death for plenty of people. All that under the division of labour making it injust and horrible. And goal-setting isn't a PC game here. Always pushing the good times when this solution will be applied "to the future" is a path to defeat.

--- Soon we will have abundance because there is abundance in the West, we reached it look, postindustrial society!

The Western abundance has exploitation and blood as foundation not just historically but even currently, therefore lying to the people about the immediate or very close onset of abundance is not acceptable. The people who go to the city in the search of this "abudance' and then throw themselves out of the factory windows are the direct result of such lies. "Make it big in capitalism". Fuck that.

If we start adjusting the costs of many things which are cheap in the West because the labour exploitation and economic damage has shifted abroad, we would quite probably deal with a tenfold increase in the price of textiles, even more massive monopolization thereof (to remain profitable in a high-capital intensive economy), an increase in the price and drop in quality of consumer electronics, and more expensive food too if we're willing to go all the way and stop dumping subsidized food exports on undeveloped nations. We will then find that the mirage of total welfare starts crumbling. The poor of the most unequal societies in the West (US, UK) will be the first to suffer, because their societies are so unequal. The best would be the most equal societies - there a rise in costs will not mean a huge number of people will be pushed beyond the brink as most have a job and have a close-to-average income.

If Western abundance suddenly becomes less "abundant" these societies risk upheaval and collapse from their own poor underclass. In that, justice will triumph - people will suddenly have their brains cleaned from the capitalist shit-lies by violently colliding with reality.

--- Cheaper technology will soon mean we will solve our problems through technology. Technology is GOD and we have to push for cheaper and cheaper tech.

This is dangerous and borders on techno-fascism. Cheap technology has an immense cost in blood and environmental destruction. What is cheap and ubiquotous? Cars and computers. One is slowly destroying our entire habitat through climate change, the other is paid for in the blood of the factory suicides, the blood of miners, because a push by corporations to MAKE IT CHEAPER will inevitably result in cost-cutting... which is an euphemism for death considering these cirumstances.

--- Inequality is a harmless thing and total equality is unattainable; people should only be equal within their occupations/income brackets/professional groups. I am not bothered by the fact someone makes more than me.

This is also dangerous thinking because the same thinking is then applied to entire socities: okay, so what if the US has a wage of 27000 USD and Guatemala is 1200 USD? Can't be too bad, right, these people are just in their own nation, they have their own cost of living? As shown by the fact they bear the environmental cost and the cost of competing directly for food with the rich, this is not so and inequality kills. Separation into classes eventually gives birth to massive nations which oppress each other and in this the killing is manifested, "for the want of a nail". Remember that the division of labour applies on the international level too: a society of engineers does get more than the society of farmers... and then it murders or starves the farmers. Yes. That's division of labour but applied to a time-span, not just a moment. That's Ricardo, hehh.

You know how I feel when typing all this on a computer?

Imagine now that I'm also the guy who runs a computer producing shop, pretty much like the owners of that cafe in "Cloud Atlas".

[K. A. Pital]

I want to further expand on the topic of slums. Simon responded to my challenge here

With this:

And even if this endeavour fails, and four billion people are living in slums... I would turn to them and ask them to tell you, would they rather not be alive at all?

...

If we compare the slum-dwellers of Jakarta to the peoples whose lives are most similar to those of Çatalhöyük, who still live in areas where government is sparse and the world ownership-class has not found anything it desires from them... in many ways they are living in worse conditions than the slum-dwellers. Unless of course you talk about intangibles, and claim that the noble savage's life is inherently better than that of the slum-dweller, but at that point I feel like the argument is degenerating into special pleading.

...

This question is illustrated by the fact that people are, even now, choosing to leave those tribes and villages and move to the cities those slums occupy.

I suspected something fishy with this, and I was right.

I think that something that needs to be taken into account is that I think suicide attempt rates for the Kampala slum are at 20% (quoted by memory from a Swahn study), and a whopping 30% of slum youth contemplated suicide. Ah, there, found the picture.


But let's move to the bare facts, past the subjective feelings of slum inhabitants and to simple data on their actual mortality. The slum mortality is often worse than rural mortality in poorest nations (the rural conditions in which are also the worst type of rural conditions possible, as they lack modern amenities).



But worse yet, slum child mortality in certain Nairobi slums managed to actually top the under-5 mortality in hunter gatherers.

Kibera slum in Nairobi - U5MR is 187 per 1000 or 18,7%.
Embakasi slum in Nairobi - U5MR is 254 per 1000 or 25,4%.

I took Hadza as an example, with their under-5 mortality being approximately 20%. As it looks, the Nairobi "atomic age" slums aren't offering much of a progress in child survival compared to - let this sink in - people leading a lifestyle of Paleolithic or Neolithic society.

A bit from India:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15297683

The nutritional status of slum children is worst amongst all urban groups and is even poorer than the rural average. Urban migration has not provided them salvation from poverty and undernutrition.

Child healthcare coverage in Gujarat - rural vs. slum:


FAO:
http://www.fao.org/ag/agn/nutrition/urb ... ent_en.stm

These data show the prevalence of underweight, stunting and wasting were higher in the slum areas than in the rural or urban (total) population.

I just hope that we can put the myth of "slums are an improvement!" to rest, finally, because they aren't really. People who write data-less opinion editorials "in praise of slums" in journals like "the Economist" and other capitalist rags are filth.

Hey, even a very broad transnational slum study found this to report:

Second, and most importantly for the question raised in this paper, we find that children in slums have mortality risks that are not statistically significantly different from those of children in rural areas, but are in general much higher than those of non-slum urban children. While the point estimates reported in Tables 2 and suggest that slum residents fare on average slightly better than rural residents for neonatal as well as post-neonatal mortality, we cannot reject the null that mortality in these areas does not differ from mortality in rural areas once a full set of controls is added.

Taking all three age brackets together, the overall risks faced by urban slum dwellers appear to be largely the same as the risks faced by children growing up in rural areas.

Finally, to strike down the idea that the SLUMIZATION IS PROGRESS and expose that those advocating it are actually the architects of poverty:

Praful Bidwai reported in the Asia Times in 2000:
The government is cutting spending on rural development, including agricultural programs, and rural employment and anti-poverty schemes, as well as on health, drinking water supply, education and sanitation. Income growth in the rural areas, where 70 percent of Indians live, averaged 3.1 percent in the 1980s. It has sharply declined to 1.8 percent. Real wages of rural workers decreased last year by more 2 two percent.

Infant mortality rates are rising even in states like Kerala and Maharashtra, which have relatively good social indicators. But luxury consumption is booming within the upper crust.

So, are SLUMIZATOR folk to blame for the fact rural poverty is not decreasing as fast as it could, and also for the fact that cities have turned into slum hives? Basically, by reducing the income growth in rural locations, they forced the rural poor to run into an even worse place - they made them jump from rural settlements into the abyss of slums.

Let this sink in for all of the people present in the thread. People saying 'slums = progress compared to rural life' are actually the engineers, the architects and supporters of both rural and urban misery - by cutting down rural investment, they are the architects of both rural poverty and death AND slum poverty and death.