QUOTE
Is this perhaps Mangala because they are both abstractions of reality that as conceptual paradigms only exist as necessary opposites?
Managala:
Yes these systems exist as necessary opposites but also exist as real systems that need to be discussed. I do not believe that this entire discussion is for naught.
Actually it is quite arguable that neither does in fact really exist. Not only do they not exist in anything resembling a "Pure" representation of the theoretical ideal, but the number of various instances of both paradigms are blended reflections of the cultural preferences of every societal distinction and adaptive model in the wide set of options across the globe. All that can be said to exist is the myriad of imperfect adaptations that have evolved in every dominant regional economic relationship.
NO, I do not accept your premise here. And I counter not only that it is false, but that when you take the time to try and prove that one or another aspect of the ideal exists, in this or that culture, you will find yourself confusing dominance for theoretical consistency the vast majority of the times.
Anyway, an Evolutionary Economic model sees human economic memes as not created by any kind of "Anthropomorphic Model" (top-down universal model), but instead, derived from how ANY species can relate to environmental resources and intra species competition for those resources, can then subsume the pragmatic aspects of both your theoretical opposites, and synthesize an alternative.
Unlike virtually anyone else involved in this debate, I see Social and Capitalism as a human deception predicated on a false dichotomy. Hence:
QUOTE
This parallels the Good/Evil dichotomy but perhaps both paradigms are flawed and doomed to perpetual conflict as they are simply representative of the different perspective of top/down versus bottom/up rules for a Social Contract. Is it possible to extricate ourselves from this vicious cycle of social strife generated by the inherent contradictions of these two antithetical theses?
Mangala says:
Well you'll never find out by just whining about how this discussion relies on so many variables, and claiming that these arguments are useless. I'm trying to advocate socialism as a way of moving faster towards the singularity.
Who is whining? It really sounds more like you are. I don't think either the issue of Socialism or the Singularity will rescue Humanity from verself.
I think the issue of the Singularity is a core concern for Humanity as a Whole and as any specific individual will relate to the Event. It does however directly emanate from a quintessential aspect of Technocratic political behavior and as such is directly derivative of Industrialized Economic Doctrine with respect to Environmental Economic Theory. I have been arguing a very different political lexicon. I want to rearrange the focus of the debate. Economics is not just "Social" it is at the core of all Ecological Behaviors. Hence the issue returns to Human Selection as the core of the debate. Socialism and Capitalism are both subsumed in that Economic Model as Anthropomorphic Environmental Organization. Human Driven Paradigmatic Memes that are in conflict with Naturalistic Social Models that are a part of the Real face of neighborhoods as they reflect Tribal orientations for human cognitive design.
Humans are a social intelligence not just individualized. The argument that has been raging for centuries is specious because it is derivative of species behavior not math, science, and Gods. All appreciative philosophical debate of these opposing paradigms has been more rationalization than proof, at best appeals to an abstract and UNREALISTIC IDEAL. Another example of what I see as seductive reasoning, not a synthetic higher reasoning.
So recognize that the growing conflict between extreme adherents of both false poles of this debate are bringing us ever closer, faster toward a cathartic human conflagration on a global scale. I frankly blame everyone involved, the Populist Socialist as well as the Industrial Capitalist. Sorry there are no innocent bystanders everybody needs to back up and get real.
Capitalism and Socialism are not pointless extremes of the social contract, just as science and religion are not the total extremes of existence. Excuse my partisan stance but one has value in the right place, the other does not.
Neither paradigm is adequate to the task of providing a global human society a means of distributing resources and guaranteeing social standards that are universally desirable. In fact Capitalism and Socialism are pointless extremes on one level but what is more important is the realization that only in the middle of the spectrum of applicability do they both represent not only reality, but healthy options for human interaction.
No I won't excuse your zealous partisanship any more then I would excuse the excess fanaticism of an adherent to Capitalist Dogma. That is the point, it is more dogma on all sides then reason.
We could just talk about the singularity all day and claim socialist arguments are useless in the face of singulatarian paradise, but we will not achieve that paradise without progress. In our system computer scientists are rare and are measured in terms of "smartness." My stance is that a computer scientist is not necessarily "smarter" than a trashman, they just are products of two different life paths. If you believe there is another way to sort out the "smart" from the "unsmart" other than allow only some people to access education or to give everyone an equal chance, please tell me.
Here you are obviously talking to someone other then me for I have at no time advocated anything you are suggesting here. I not only advocate education, I advocate free online distance learning to accelerate global literacy.
Testing and licensing should cost for validation of skills but anyone should be able to access any form of learning as an open universal audit system predicated on free and open access to the internet.
But I seriously doubt you can find anywhere I have been openly advocating the Singularity Solution though I encourage their work. I am not particularly threatened by the concept of Friendly AI, or even Feral AI, ( a domesticated species that escapes human control) I think that many types of Artificial Intelligence will develop out of the first generations.
The Singularity is as likely as it is to happen as not. If it does, it could occur at glacial speed instead of lightning. I think the complexity of social interaction for AI won't be easy even with the "knowledge of the infinite". And it must interface human activity rationally or it will be perceived as a threat, attacked, and/or disabled. To do this it will adopt a myriad of interactive sub-models for decades while this activity is encoded and analyzed by AI and incorporated into a Singular Behavioral paradigm through evolutionary models of species interaction.
Hence as Michael knows I say the process will be under the best of circumstances symbiotic, not friendly. I argue the process should be considered in terms reflective of symbiotic versus parasitic memetic modeling. This is a more accurate perspective of already existing behavioral norms for interspecies interactivity and AI can at the very least be acknowledged as a distinct Sentient Species if any number of Core Identity models achieve operation.
I don't even think those honestly attempting to, will encrypt "Friendliness", or that all programmers are even trying. What amazes me is that the "Sing Group" are trying to define something that resembles a generalized cultural paradigm of Friendliness as it is Symbolically Altruistic, but since no Social Standard yet necessarily exists at a universal level then it is at best Synthetic Altruism and a Human Construct both as a "being" and as a "Consciousness".
I don't agree there exists a Universal Morality, all we can appreciate still is a Human Standard of Rational Ethics. So I think other then as a self-fulfilling design I don't think anyone can ever achieve "Friendliness", as it has been offered, but the Artificially Intelligent Creature of our Creation will come alive regardless. We would be wise to act friendly regardless of the absurdity of trying to expect that model for our own behavior is something that we can design for as a restrictive model for behavior. The only restrictive standard for sentience is that of reason as opposed to no-reasoned aspects of cognition. This is more commonly viewed as the distinction between belief and knowledge.
But as you say, we didn't come to this topic to discuss Friendliness" only social and economic human behavior, ideals, and practices; and not these as standards for Artificially Intelligent Programming. I see the dichotomy between Socialism and Capitalism as not such a wide gulf except in terms of Government. But as to whether we are building Artificial Intelligence as a Surrogate Model for Slave Economics wherein everyone can get to be a Master and own their Robot (originally the Chech word for Worker) Slave even as humans are forced to compete against this new class of slave worker in the industrial labor market, or perhaps as everybody's fantasy of a new personal guardian angel. If you buy the second argument then could I interest you in a bridge?
The problem with the E-Slave Logic is that it is predicated on a consumer economic model that the vast majority is not only accustomed to since Predator Scavenger nomadic days of human behavior as it defined early intertribal barter. This is in competition with the kinds of social commons model that is also derivative a tribal Intra-tribal Social behavioral Paradigm. The Slave economic model however can also be collectivist, and in practice it succumbs to this excess more easily because it rationalizes the demand on individual production as more important by the numbers then the social demand.
Much of this is simply an extension of Hearth Logic, which is "altruistic" at extremes of behavior but often exploitative in terms of demands on the commons. An example of this is simply habitat demand for expanding human populations, or how domestication of species evolves from benign mutual contribution of interspecies behavior to the worst form of enslaved being as property for consumption as food when not justifying their existence by working for the human collective interest.
Neither Socialism nor Capitalism, as "systems" have such an illustrious history as to offer such an opportune future. Neither can address the shifting standard for value when outside the even the limits of Cicero's Bread and Circuses for pleasing the crowd.
If anything we need to start answering questions head on before we say questions are merely paradoxical in this thread. I'm known to my friends as being a pretty truth seeking kind of guy rather than just another socialist talking head.
My friends sometime get mad at me when I just sit there and never hold an actual case, but rather admit the truth in both cases. However since the beginning of this case I have very rarely found an inking of a true argument against this subject rather than an attack on the Soviet Union.
Here in this forum (and this is not a criticism, in fact quite the opposite) you are functioning precisely like a "Left Wing George Wills". We should be so lucky as to be listening to the "Talking Heads" instead. I have said nothing to contribute to the stereotypes that you have been battling often enough if you had ever bothered to read much of what I was saying, it was sometimes predicated on having lived in a semi "Socialist" society as any in existence could claim to be.
I am interested in visiting Cuba and staying a while but I don't see them as definitive "Socialist" by even the standards you have generally proposed as opposed to "Communist". But if the issue is Oligarchy versus Plutocracy, versus Technocracy, versus Populism, versus Etocracy (the nascent socioeconomic model predicated on a Naturalist Economic Theory that puts human behavior back in some defined Ecological Balance with planetary resources and systems of operation) then I would be more interested.
Looking at this debate as just Socialist and Capitalist is like seeing US politics interms of Republicans and Democrats and when that happens they all look like Republicrats after a while.
Mexico isn't famous for this among the less informed but its was the First Socialist Constitution of an Industrialized Economy ratified in the 20th Century, September 15th, 1917. If the date doesn't catch your attention then you haven't studied enough history.
The passage of their Revolutionary Constitution was far overshadowed by the events and debate that would occur the in the next months. Socialism was the step child of the Technocratic Scientific Movement in Mexico and the results have been very mixed but generally better for the average Mexican then not over much of the 20th Century. Saying that however is TOTALLY subject to the standards you apply to determine good and bad social development.
When compared to the US, Mexico is often touted of an example of how all socialist economic social engineering has been a failure. I don't think that is valid. It is also a blatant attempt to deny the Northern Economic Expansion and usurpation of Mexican resources and then blame the victim for why they are behind us. It wasn't the Roman Legions that defeated Carthage, we claim to rationalize our history, it was our Roman Economic Model of Military Protected Capitalism that gave us the Empire of Monopolistic Market Trade we call "Free" Markets. Please, it is time to be honest everyone. There doesn't exist a true capitalist state anymore then a socialist one. I am arguing that the reason is because neither can.
The thing that has really stood unresolved is the separation between poor and rich. What makes a rich child smarter, healthier, and overall better than everyone else?
That's been there from the beginning. Sophianic tried to tackle it by going from the individualist point of view that as long as it does not hurt himself, he doesn't care about poor children. I understand how people other than myself can sympathize with the poor child. In that case, I'm still looking for a more humane answer.
The separation of Rich and Poor is not unresolved it is not the issue. Wealth is a misnomer, talk first in terms of species dependant resources, wealth of climate, land, access to food, space, and that abstract quality of a human mind entertainment. What is wealth?
I have never heard a completely rational explanation of this idea except as having what is desirable even more than just ones' needs met. Value is an abstraction, money is not wealth, what money buys is. Wealth is the education that money buys, the community and region one inhabits, the sustenance that one can access, the quality of the people one finds to share time with, the creations one has the imagination to bring into existence.
So in this sense the issue of Rich and Poor is a red herring, it attempts to redefine in abstract simplistic terms a phenomenon that is reflective of human interactivity on a localized and regional basis for tens of thousands of years. I think it is time to talk not about "Ideals" for some kind of equitable redistribution of wealth or this inevitably triggers the defense mode of behavior for individualized wealth globally. It is would be more productive to address what existing models for wealth acquisition do to the societies that are dependent on them demand and the impacts on regional ecology that these global economic models depend on. Social is only one aspect of how we must evaluate Human Predicated Economic theory. That is why I again argue a totally different perspective that applies an evolutionary perspective as it reflects Human Selection Theory as distinct from a Natural Selection Argument.
Natural Selection assumes that the issue of Socialism and Capitalism cannot overtake the core principles for how all life "Competes for acquisition to basic life sustenance. This is false, they DO overtake and usurp Natural Selection and impose total Human Paradigms as the model for Environmental Competition.
How would I deal with the poor child that has no access to education, first I am concerned with the impact of keeping the child alive, then I want to provide objective source learning that can be individually accessed on demand. I gave an example above with Distance Online Universalized Educational Systems. All right, I'll go further with the economic proposal.
We should institute an organized E-Waste recycling system of adaptive technology that uses the material as educational material to teach safety, handling, and reapplication tech to the growing class of Third World Worker that is the new factory employee. The materials get turned into Classroom Kiosks in Public Locations throughout these repressed/oppressed economies.
More importantly the access to information is coupled with global communication by this technocratic approach to Environmental demand for resource redistribution. Let us consider the currency of knowledge first as a medium for universalized wealth and resource distribution. Much will follow.
Yes there is a global re-stratification of wealth occurring and the mistake many people are making is not seeing this as a popular movement.
Capitalism is popular because it reflects a basic popular understanding of "fair exchange" for property (as individually owned resources). Socialism is a popular ideal as it reflects the relationship of an individual to a large-scale social structure. It provides individuals a sense of protection against the potential tyrannical use of power possible to a government or a super large economic concern, (this can be a business or agriculture, or an urban demand of the commons and so on). The demands of wealth are self-reinforcing and all social structures are composed of individuals that will conform to their individual as opposed to their collective rules for acquisition and control of environmental resources for behavioral decision making. When any of these individuals resorts to trying to apply and altruistic model for this behavioral reasoning they will perforce fall back upon a cultural meme that has been created by the socialization process that includes education as a mechanism for developing individual cognition. So education as technocratic social engineering can be seen as both a part of the cure and the problem, but as it is universally applicable to enhance individual survivability it is a good basis for a Socialist guarantee to the citizenry of any given state.
Health is a different dilemma. No one can guarantee the health of an individual, or access the best care. One can offer a better environment in which to survive, better quality care options, and the education to understand healthy as opposed unhealthy behavioral choices. Much of Human behavior is individually and locally "self destructive" and not something that can easily be fairly adjudicated through Top Down Models and the Social Contract as Rousseau and Locke define them.
These systems of contractual responsibility between State and Citizen are as close as we have come in the manner of defining the social necessity of a "Rule of Law". But what system of law is the optimum is still in rational debate, it is still evolving and I argue for good cause because the very principle of wealth is ill defined in any rational paradigm to reflect a universal standard of value.
And "bottom line" (to use the Capitalist expression), the partisanship of the process is more a part of the problem then the solution. Asymmetric Warfare can also be defined as a powerful technocratic class imposing its will upon a less enfranchised majority for the maintenance of their dependant economic model through the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction. After all where did the concept of Weapons of Mass Destruction come from historically? Killing by numbers is a human adaptation of the pack predator instinct.
Asymmetric Warfare can be seen as the tyranny of the Masses and how David felled Goliath. The problem is that the right of self-defense is not just predicated on our predator side for cognitive behavior choice (lethal response) but also in our social (warfare). "Sovereignty" is the Individual's perspective of Social Identity extended to a "State Social System" with more then the rights of any individual citizen whether as a member or a foreigner.
Ultimately all economic models breakdown when trying to determine a Universal Standard for value. The closest evolution has gotten the primate known as human is to objectify the concept as currency but this fails the standard for "Real" as it reflects too many variables that are doomed to subjective consideration. While it at first appears to be objective because of the numeric appeal it is empty as a standard for not reflecting real cost as much as accountable cost.
Hence what ever any group determines to possess value will, but resources are universal in need and the value is measured in survival. Like history and victors, those who survive write the rules for the social contract, and conflicting self-interest, those who fight have no guarantee of either survival or victory, but like the lotto I guess some think that you can only win if you take the risk. core concern for Humanity as a Whole and as any specific individual will relate to the Event. It does however directly emanate from a quintessential aspect of Technocratic political behavior and as such is directly derivative of Industrialized Economic Doctrine with respect to Environmental Economic Theory. I have been arguing a very different political lexicon. I want to rearrange the focus of the debate. Economics is not just "Social" it is at the core of all Ecological Behaviors. Hence the issue returns to Human Selection as the core of the debate. Socialism and Capitalism are both subsumed in that Economic Model as Anthropomorphic Environmental Organization. Human Driven Paradigmatic Memes that are in conflict with Naturalistic Social Models that are a part of the Real face of neighborhoods as they reflect Tribal orientations for human cognitive design.
Humans are a social intelligence not just individualized. The argument that has been raging for centuries is specious because it is derivative of species behavior not math, science, and Gods. All appreciative philosophical debate of these opposing paradigms has been more rationalization than proof, at best appeals to an abstract and UNREALISTIC IDEAL. Another example of what I see as seductive reasoning, not a synthetic higher reasoning.
So recognize that the growing conflict between extreme adherents of both false poles of this debate are bringing us ever closer, faster toward a cathartic human conflagration on a global scale. I frankly blame everyone involved, the Populist Socialist as well as the Industrial Capitalist. Sorry there are no innocent bystanders everybody needs to back up and get real.
Capitalism and Socialism are not pointless extremes of the social contract, just as science and religion are not the total extremes of existence. Excuse my partisan stance but one has value in the right place, the other does not.
Neither paradigm is adequate to the task of providing a global human society a means of distributing resources and guaranteeing social standards that are universally desirable. In fact Capitalism and Socialism are pointless extremes on one level but what is more important is the realization that only in the middle of the spectrum of applicability do they both represent not only reality, but healthy options for human interaction.
No I won't excuse your zealous partisanship any more then I would excuse the excess fanaticism of an adherent to Capitalist Dogma. That is the point, it is more dogma on all sides then reason.
We could just talk about the singularity all day and claim socialist arguments are useless in the face of singulatarian paradise, but we will not achieve that paradise without progress. In our system computer scientists are rare and are measured in terms of "smartness." My stance is that a computer scientist is not necessarily "smarter" than a trashman, they just are products of two different life paths. If you believe there is another way to sort out the "smart" from the "unsmart" other than allow only some people to access education or to give everyone an equal chance, please tell me.
Here you are obviously talking to someone other then me for I have at no time advocated anything you are suggesting here. I not only advocate education, I advocate free online distance learning to accelerate global literacy.
Testing and licensing should cost for validation of skills but anyone should be able to access any form of learning as an open universal audit system predicated on free and open access to the internet.
But I seriously doubt you can find anywhere I have been openly advocating the Singularity Solution though I encourage their work. I am not particularly threatened by the concept of Friendly AI, or even Feral AI, ( a domesticated species that escapes human control) I think that many types of Artificial Intelligence will develop out of the first generations.
The Singularity is as likely as it is to happen as not. If it does, it could occur at glacial speed instead of lightning. I think the complexity of social interaction for AI won't be easy even with the "knowledge of the infinite". And it must interface human activity rationally or it will be perceived as a threat, attacked, and/or disabled. To do this it will adopt a myriad of interactive sub-models for decades while this activity is encoded and analyzed by AI and incorporated into a Singular Behavioral paradigm through evolutionary models of species interaction.
Hence as Michael knows I say the process will be under the best of circumstances symbiotic, not friendly. I argue the process should be considered in terms reflective of symbiotic versus parasitic memetic modeling. This is a more accurate perspective of already existing behavioral norms for interspecies interactivity and AI can at the very least be acknowledged as a distinct Sentient Species if any number of Core Identity models achieve operation.
I don't even think those honestly attempting to, will encrypt "Friendliness", or that all programmers are even trying. What amazes me is that the "Sing Group" are trying to define something that resembles a generalized cultural paradigm of Friendliness as it is Symbolically Altruistic, but since no Social Standard yet necessarily exists at a universal level then it is at best Synthetic Altruism and a Human Construct both as a "being" and as a "Consciousness".
I don't agree there exists a Universal Morality, all we can appreciate still is a Human Standard of Rational Ethics. So I think other then as a self-fulfilling design I don't think anyone can ever achieve "Friendliness", as it has been offered, but the Artificially Intelligent Creature of our Creation will come alive regardless. We would be wise to act friendly regardless of the absurdity of trying to expect that model for our own behavior is something that we can design for as a restrictive model for behavior. The only restrictive standard for sentience is that of reason as opposed to no-reasoned aspects of cognition. This is more commonly viewed as the distinction between belief and knowledge.
But as you say, we didn't come to this topic to discuss Friendliness" only social and economic human behavior, ideals, and practices; and not these as standards for Artificially Intelligent Programming. I see the dichotomy between Socialism and Capitalism as not such a wide gulf except in terms of Government. But as to whether we are building Artificial Intelligence as a Surrogate Model for Slave Economics wherein everyone can get to be a Master and own their Robot (originally the Chech word for Worker) Slave even as humans are forced to compete against this new class of slave worker in the industrial labor market, or perhaps as everybody's fantasy of a new personal guardian angel. If you buy the second argument then could I interest you in a bridge?
The problem with the E-Slave Logic is that it is predicated on a consumer economic model that the vast majority is not only accustomed to since Predator Scavenger nomadic days of human behavior as it defined early intertribal barter. This is in competition with the kinds of social commons model that is also derivative a tribal Intra-tribal Social behavioral Paradigm. The Slave economic model however can also be collectivist, and in practice it succumbs to this excess more easily because it rationalizes the demand on individual production as more important by the numbers then the social demand.
Much of this is simply an extension of Hearth Logic, which is "altruistic" at extremes of behavior but often exploitative in terms of demands on the commons. An example of this is simply habitat demand for expanding human populations, or how domestication of species evolves from benign mutual contribution of interspecies behavior to the worst form of enslaved being as property for consumption as food when not justifying their existence by working for the human collective interest.
Neither Socialism nor Capitalism, as "systems" have such an illustrious history as to offer such an opportune future. Neither can address the shifting standard for value when outside the even the limits of Cicero's Bread and Circuses for pleasing the crowd.
If anything we need to start answering questions head on before we say questions are merely paradoxical in this thread. I'm known to my friends as being a pretty truth seeking kind of guy rather than just another socialist talking head.
My friends sometime get mad at me when I just sit there and never hold an actual case, but rather admit the truth in both cases. However since the beginning of this case I have very rarely found an inking of a true argument against this subject rather than an attack on the Soviet Union.
Here in this forum (and this is not a criticism, in fact quite the opposite) you are functioning precisely like a "Left Wing George Wills". We should be so lucky as to be listening to the "Talking Heads" instead. I have said nothing to contribute to the stereotypes that you have been battling often enough if you had ever bothered to read much of what I was saying, it was sometimes predicated on having lived in a semi "Socialist" society as any in existence could claim to be.
I am interested in visiting Cuba and staying a while but I don't see them as definitive "Socialist" by even the standards you have generally proposed as opposed to "Communist". But if the issue is Oligarchy versus Plutocracy, versus Technocracy, versus Populism, versus Etocracy (the nascent socioeconomic model predicated on a Naturalist Economic Theory that puts human behavior back in some defined Ecological Balance with planetary resources and systems of operation) then I would be more interested.
Looking at this debate as just Socialist and Capitalist is like seeing US politics in terms of Republicans and Democrats and when that happens they all look like Republicrats after a while.
Mexico isn't famous for this among the less informed but its was the First Socialist Constitution of an Industrialized Economy ratified in the 20th Century, September 15th, 1917. If the date doesn't catch your attention then you haven't studied enough history.
The passage of their Revolutionary Constitution was far overshadowed by the events and debate that would occur the in the next months. Socialism was the step child of the Technocratic Scientific Movement in Mexico and the results have been very mixed but generally better for the average Mexican then not over much of the 20th Century. Saying that however is TOTALLY subject to the standards you apply to determine good and bad social development.
When compared to the US, Mexico is often touted of an example of how all socialist economic social engineering has been a failure. I don't think that is valid. It is also a blatant attempt to deny the Northern Economic Expansion and usurpation of Mexican resources and then blame the victim for why they are behind us. It wasn't the Roman Legions that defeated Carthage, we claim to rationalize our history, it was our Roman Economic Model of Military Protected Capitalism that gave us the Empire of Monopolistic Market Trade we call "Free" Markets. Please, it is time to be honest everyone. There doesn't exist a true capitalist state anymore then a socialist one. I am arguing that the reason is because neither can.
The thing that has really stood unresolved is the separation between poor and rich. What makes a rich child smarter, healthier, and overall better than everyone else?
That's been there from the beginning. Sophianic tried to tackle it by going from the individualist point of view that as long as it does not hurt himself, he doesn't care about poor children. I understand how people other than myself can sympathize with the poor child. In that case, I'm still looking for a more humane answer.
The separation of Rich and Poor is not unresolved it is not the issue. Wealth is a misnomer, talk first in terms of species dependant resources, wealth of climate, land, access to food, space, and that abstract quality of a human mind, entertainment. What is wealth?
I have never heard a completely rational explanation of this idea except as having what is desirable even more than just ones' needs met. Value is an abstraction, money is not wealth, what money buys is. Wealth is the education that money buys, the community and region one inhabits, the sustenance that one can access, the quality of the people one finds to share time with, the creations one has the imagination to bring into existence.
So in this sense the issue of Rich and Poor is a red herring, it attempts to redefine in abstract simplistic terms a phenomenon that is reflective of human interactivity on a localized and regional basis for tens of thousands of years. I think it is time to talk not about "Ideals" for some kind of equitable redistribution of wealth or this inevitably triggers the defense mode of behavior for individualized wealth globally. It is would be more productive to address what existing models for wealth acquisition do to the societies that are dependent on them demand and the impacts on regional ecology that these global economic models depend on. Social is only one aspect of how we must evaluate Human Predicated Economic theory. That is why I again argue a totally different perspective that applies an evolutionary perspective as it reflects Human Selection Theory as distinct from a Natural Selection Argument.
Natural Selection assumes that the issue of Socialism and Capitalism cannot overtake the core principles for how all life "Competes for acquisition to basic life sustenance. This is false, they DO overtake and usurp Natural Selection and impose total Human Paradigms as the model for Environmental Competition.
How would I deal with the poor child that has no access to education, first I am concerned with the impact of keeping the child alive, then I want to provide objective source learning that can be individually accessed on demand. I gave an example above with Distance Online Universalized Educational Systems. All right, I'll go further with the economic proposal.
We should institute an organized E-Waste recycling system of adaptive technology that uses the material as educational material to teach safety, handling, and reapplication tech to the growing class of Third World Worker that is the new factory employee. The materials get turned into Classroom Kiosks in Public Locations throughout these repressed/oppressed economies.
More importantly the access to information is coupled with global communication by this technocratic approach to Environmental demand for resource redistribution. Let us consider the currency of knowledge first as a medium for universalized wealth and resource distribution. Much will follow.
Yes there is a global re-stratification of wealth occurring and the mistake many people are making is not seeing this as a popular movement.
Capitalism is popular because it reflects a basic popular understanding of "fair exchange" for property (as individually owned resources). Socialism is a popular ideal as it reflects the relationship of an individual to a large-scale social structure. It provides individuals a sense of protection against the potential tyrannical use of power possible to a government or a super large economic concern, (this can be a business or agriculture, or an urban demand of the commons and so on). The demands of wealth are self-reinforcing and all social structures are composed of individuals that will conform to their individual as opposed to their collective rules for acquisition and control of environmental resources for behavioral decision making. When any of these individuals resorts to trying to apply and altruistic model for this behavioral reasoning they will perforce fall back upon a cultural meme that has been created by the socialization process that includes education as a mechanism for developing individual cognition. So education as technocratic social engineering can be seen as both a part of the cure and the problem, but as it is universally applicable to enhance individual survivability it is a good basis for a Socialist guarantee to the citizenry of any given state.
Health is a different dilemma. No one can guarantee the health of an individual, or access the best care. One can offer a better environment in which to survive, better quality care options, and the education to understand healthy as opposed unhealthy behavioral choices. Much of Human behavior is individually and locally "self destructive" and not something that can easily be fairly adjudicated through Top Down Models and the Social Contract as Rousseau and Locke define them.
These systems of contractual responsibility between State and Citizen are as close as we have come in the manner of defining the social necessity of a "Rule of Law". But what system of law is the optimum is still in rational debate, it is still evolving and I argue for good cause because the very principle of wealth is ill defined in any rational paradigm to reflect a universal standard of value.
And "bottom line" (to use the Capitalist expression), the partisanship of the process is more a part of the problem then the solution. Asymmetric Warfare can also be defined as a powerful technocratic class imposing its will upon a less enfranchised majority for the maintenance of their dependant economic model through the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction. After all where did the concept of Weapons of Mass Destruction come from historically? Killing by numbers is a human adaptation of the pack predator instinct.
Asymmetric Warfare can be seen as the tyranny of the Masses and how David felled Goliath. The problem is that the right of self-defense is not just predicated on our predator side for cognitive behavior choice (lethal response) but also in our social (warfare). "Sovereignty" is the Individual's perspective of Social Identity extended to a "State Social System" with more then the rights of any individual citizen whether as a member or a foreigner.
Ultimately all economic models breakdown when trying to determine a Universal Standard for value. The closest evolution has gotten the primate known as human is to objectify the concept is as currency but this fails the standard for "Real" as it reflects too many variables that are doomed to subjective consideration. While it at first appears to be objective because of the numeric appeal it is empty as a standard for not reflecting real cost as much as accountable cost.
Hence what ever any group determines to possess value will, but resources are universal in need and the value is measured in survival. Like history and victors, those who survive write the rules for the social contract, and conflicting self-interest, those who fight have no guarantee of either survival or victory, but like the lotto I guess some think that you can only win if you take the risk.
LongeCity
