Significantly less, since commerce and the ability to trade things for a different value forms the basis for civilization. It’s easy to grow and hunt your own food, because that’s immediate and concrete. The farther away you get from that, the more abstract that thing becomes. It’s going to be harder for people to feel any sense of connection and purpose with making the rubber that goes into a seal on the International Space Station when they don’t see any direct benefit from the research done there, and they likely can’t even see the indirect benefit of that fundamental research.
For good or ill, commerce is how civilizations universally work, and you’d have to imagine a completely different species that evolved under vastly different circumstances to have anything else.
So you think we’d have to be an entirely different species for communism to work?
I’d argue a hell of a lot different, try n stop someone from doing something (sure keep them fed, sheltered, all the good stuff) but give them absolutely nothing to do. Try n keep them from killing themselves lol, sounds like actual hell to me
For communism to work as intended past a tribal or perhaps city-state level, yeah, I’d say that we would need to be a different species. Communism works fantastically well when everyone is pretty closely connected; the larger a society gets, the less well it ends up working, without having draconian measures in place that largely eliminate all personal liberty.
I’m not saying that capitalism works well, unless you have a perverse definition of “well”. Capitalism does tend to give individuals some kind of incentive to work for what is nominally the greater good by creating the appearance that their own personal effort is tied to the results that they get. Conversely, communism, in large societies, has your input largely decoupled from what you get back. On a large scale, I think that democratic socialism will give the best overall results, but you have to ensure that no one has the ability to entirely fuck off and leech off the labor of everyone else without risking that infecting everyone, and resulting in nothing at all getting done.
I think you’re conflating commerce with capitalism. I don’t think you could have communism without commerce. Even if you did away with currency and the rubber farmer is paid with grain and other foodstuffs that would still be commerce.
Is it time to advance to the Fortress Age?
Commerce is just the exchange of goods and services. If we all stop exchanging goods, in what sense would we have a civilization? What would you or anyone accomplish if you had to grow your own food, make your own clothes, build your own house…?
Commerce is fine, greed is not. OP missed that distinction.
Commerce != currency
An exchange of goods and services means you get nothing unless I get something. Maybe OP means everything is given as you take what you need with nothing expected in return.
You grow carrots, you bring them to town once a week. Other lady raises chickens, brings eggs once a week. If you need either you take some. You use the eggs to make cookies, you have extra, you give them away to anyone you see for the day.
This works at a feudal technology level. Who makes the trains? They train makers need steel and literally no one would work in a forge or a mine for fun/preference.
Who makes computer chips?
People with the skills show up and collectively make chips, there may be less than produced by typical “blood from a rock” endless growth pacing, but there would at least be enough chips for hospitals, emergency services.
And without the profit motive, the products made would actually be built to last and engineered to be serviceable because there’s actually incentive for them to NOT be disposable.
Well, we would be still in caves cause commerce is the basement of civilization
Wow. Good luck building your stick cabin in the woods all by yourself and growing and foraging all your food because you refuse to trade your labor for produce from a farmer because that would be evil commerce.
Project much? 🤣🤣🤣
Your title is literally putting down commerce and you accuse me of projection? I don’t think you know what projection means.
You probably don’t even know what commerce means.
What is a commerce based civilization? Isn’t everything commerce based?
Interesting, what would be the alternative? Technology, culture, religion, military? Taking those options out of Civ
I think that’s the key question. Like, I get capitalism is hedgemonical (is that even a word?), but what alternative do you propose?
“Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others.”
What about socialism - ie, everyone gets their basic needs met, but is free to work for more.
Something like universal basic income along with free healthcare, education and social safety nets definitely is an attractive idea but even providing the basic needs for everyone is expensive as hell and you can’t just pay for it by cutting CEO pay. Economy is such a complex system that radical changes like this are guranteed to introduce new unexpected problems. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try and find ways to make the world a better place for everyone but I feel like so many people naively think that the solution is obvious and right there and we’re just not doing it.
What about a meritocracy based system where any type of contribution is rewarded, whether it be research, garbage cleanup, etc.? (I’m sure there’s holes to poke in it, just thinking outside of the box.)
The problem with that and most other proposals for whatever other moneyless utopian society is that they all implicitly require some manner of all-powerful central authority to ensure that the rewards get distributed, the labor gets allocated, and the rules stay followed.
And we already know how well that’s going to turn out.
That’s odd, me and my housemates can distribute our housekeeping jobs amongst ourselves without having someone come along and tell us what to do.
Yet when it comes to the country I live in, this is suddenly unimaginable because who would want to live somewhere functional of their own volition.
It works for 4 people. It does not work for 4 million.
You’ve tried?
There’s this thing called democracy, where people can come together as a community to discuss issues and work out solutions - such as allocating work loads as need be, you see this in many large community projects across the world. That’s the same underlying principle my house uses, communication not authority.
That is literally an authoritarian system.
What do you think the role of ‘General Secretary’ was? Its tankie shit.
That is literally an authoritarian system.
Huh, wonder how they went from communism to authoritarianism. Well, surely that was a one time coincidence and not indicative of a systemic failure of communism as an ideology.
I’m genuinely curious, how could communism be applied to millions of people without any central authority to oversee the system? Say, the sewer need to be maintained, and the people assigned to the work by the community decided “nah, I don’t want to clean the sewer” and not show up to work, what would the community do? What if the people assigned to mining coals decided they don’t want to mine coal anymore because it’s a horrible job and no one volunteer to replace them? Will the community force them to work or face punishment? If so, who make the decision if not a central authority?
Since no one is spelling it out for you.
Commerce is just one caveman trading sea shells with another caveman.
Capitalism is when the caveman with the most shells becomes a ruler over the other cavemen that have less.
deleted by creator
You used the word “commerce” when you probably meant “capitalism”. Some commenters are not acknowledging that but are instead tearing into your shower thought as if you truly meant commerce.
I did you the kindness of explaining simply what they intentionally left out presumably so that they could be argumentative and feel superior. And then you reply to me with an attempt to be snide presumably because you took my remark as an insult.
No good deed goes unpunished, I suppose.
Imagine agreeing on how to make decisions which affect other people.
imagine everything humans could accomplish if we used billionaires as food and fuel
Wouldn’t using them as food just be using them as fuel anyways? The only difference is what you’re going to fuel with them.
came to say this. food is fuel, we are merely labyrinthine biological furnaces that chemically incinerates whatever unfortunate matter may enter us. the fuel’s affluence is not typically relevant, but I’m a little out of touch on the science, I might be wrong.
Capitalism may hold us back in some regards but really helps in others.
The majority of people would likely be feudal peasants, working under a warmonger family that owns the sustaining land by force. No upward mobility except through bloodshed.
Capitalism optimizes for efficiency. Sadly slavery is terribly efficient in terms of economics. Therefore capitalism needs to be capped by society at certain acceptable limits. Which is called socioeconomics and its not perfect but the best system we have. insert handwavy remark about whatever america is doing here
the problem with this is that we depend on the capitalist overlords to keep their pinky promise of not fucking with our rights.
right now they are breaking it again because they can.
i also don’t think having the majority of the money/value going to a few owners is efficient at all.
Capitalism is based on free exchange and wage labor. Unless a slave has volunteered to be a slave, using a slave is not “free exchange”.
That’s literally how it is now
When you lack the imagination to think about how it could be worse, you can still get the detailed descriptions of it from history.
And yet no one cares because this is what we’re dealing with now
No, you are not dealing with the life of a feudal peasant. Just stop
No, we’re dealing with worse. Much, much worse.
You can’t make me stop
No I can’t. Just one way in which your life is different than that of a feudal peasant.
Yet you’re still desperately trying so it’s obvious our suffering is valid and that you can’t just invalidate it by comparing our situation to that of people 500-600 years ago, can you?
You can keep trying to get one over on me, though. I suppose it’ll take the sting out of the last two times you failed. 🍿
The majority of people
would likely beare feudal peasants, working under a warmonger family that owns the sustaining land by force. No upward mobility except through bloodshed.FTFY
No you don’t understand, this 9-to-5 job that’s slowly but surely wearing me down is just a stepping stone to my millions of $$. That’s why I keep voting for tax breaks for the rich; because I’ve just been temporarily down on my luck for 30 years. /s
No, if you’re lucky, clever enough, overwork yourself, or manipulate others you can live a somewhat comfortable life. Those methods don’t require taking a life.
overwork yourself
comfortable life
Make it make sense
Comfortable as in “you have a heated living space, food on the table, and security.” Don’t be dense.
That’s not living comfortably, that’s the bare minimum everybody should have
100 years ago people round here still had no electricity and depended on wood stoves yet. You are really spoiled.
Capitalism optimises for concentrating resources.
Dividends, return on investment, profits, etc. are all inefficiencies in the production of value, and require more resources, labor, and suffering per unit of value than for example a circular economy.
But it does concentrate wealth efficiently, which in turn gives access to enough resources to start larger ventures.
If you feel the need to defend capitalism, then you should read “The Jungle”.
