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How much automation would be required? What mechanisms would be required (social, economic, governmental).

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[-] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago

I think it's irresponsible and reprehensible to ever stop trying

[-] Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Good way to look at it

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

Huh?

It would just require taxation on a progressive rate that includes a portion where people earning no (or very little) money receive money as a negative tax bracket...

That's it, we could do it tomorrow.

What were you thinking of when you're talking about "automations" and "mechanisms"?

There'd need to be something that pays it out monthly or by weekly for budgeting, but that's not exactly a complicated thing, infrastructure is already built up for that

[-] Hapankaali@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago

Not only "could" it be done, it already exists - though probably not to the degree we could say such societies are "egalitarian" (except in a relative sense).

[-] Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Automation in the sense we are able to remove all undesirable jobs. Mechanisms like forms of government, law, economic structure, currency, social structures etcetera.

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world -2 points 1 week ago

In that case:

Automation: none

Mechanisms: way less than we invented to maintain wealth inequality

If anything, it would drastically simplify everything

[-] null@piefed.nullspace.lol -1 points 1 week ago

people earning no (or very little) money

In here is where the complexity lies.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but calculating wealth is nebulous and might not be possible by tomorrow.

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world -2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

wealth

Is not the same as

earning

Do you understand that?

But "we can't calculate wealth" is horseshit, it gets done every second of every day.

Especially for the oligarchs, because the live off loans that use wealth and assets as collateral to avoid realizing gains.

Those numbers already exist for the ones you think it would be hard to calculate.

And even if the numbers didnt that doesn't mean it would be impossible to get them, we've been doing it literally as long as human society existed

Like, I'm sorry man, I'm just literally dumbfounded at your comment for a lot more reasons than what I already typed out.

[-] null@piefed.nullspace.lol -2 points 1 week ago

wealth

Is not the same as

earning

Do you understand that?

So how are you calculating how much someone "earned", then? Do you mean their income?

But “we can’t calculate wealth” is horseshit, it gets done every second of every day.

Who said "we can't calculate wealth"? Are they in the thread with us?

Like, I’m sorry man, I’m just literally dumbfounded at your comment for a lot more reasons than what I already typed out.

More than half your comment is arguing with a strawman. I'm not surprised you're winded.

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world -2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

So how are you calculating how much someone “earned”, then?

You don't know what income tax is? Have you heard the phrase "income tax" before?

You're going to have to ask one question at a time if you want to have a chance at understanding explanations, we're literally starting at the very beginning....

Edit:

Actually...

Who said “we can’t calculate wealth”? Are they in the thread with us?

You did....

I’m not saying it’s impossible, but calculating wealth is nebulous and might not be possible by tomorrow.

Like, right there buddy...

You said it's so hard we can't really do it...

[-] null@piefed.nullspace.lol 1 points 1 week ago

You don’t know what income tax is? Have you heard the phrase “income tax” before?

Sure. Most wealthy people pay almost none of it. Their income is next-to-nothing.

So that's one calculation you're using, very good. Next one?

[-] null@piefed.nullspace.lol 0 points 1 week ago

To respond to your edit:

You did….

You said it’s so hard we can’t really do it…

Nope. You're wrong.

[-] null@piefed.nullspace.lol 0 points 1 week ago

For all your snark, you sure folded quickly lol

[-] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Not only is it possible, a decentralized egalitarian society was implemented with over 3 million people in 1936 Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War, and by all accounts it worked extremely well.

[-] the_abecedarian@piefed.social 6 points 1 week ago

Sure! it's a question of how we decide to govern ourselves as a collection of societies.

In a nutshell, I'd recommend a commune made up of federated communes, with decision making done at directly democratic assemblies at the most local level, then sending delegates (who have no power of their own and who can be instantly fired/replaced) to meet with other assemblies to make agreements, in steps going up to the broadest level (citywide, regional, etc) necessary for the decision to be made.

details and good ideas here: https://communalistlibrary.carrd.co/

[-] EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 5 points 1 week ago

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. I don't know the practical limits of how far we can get, but we aren't even pretending to try.

[-] MushuChupacabra@piefed.world 5 points 1 week ago

A requirement for any such society would be to establish a ceiling on personal wealth/power.

We have shown with consistency that when given power, we go out of our way to exploit others. There is no segment of the political spectrum that is immune to the desire to impose their will on others.

[-] Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

That's all reasonable.

[-] zxqwas@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Noone has succeeded so far. So I'm going with no, not within my lifetime at least.

Maybe I'll be proven wrong in the future, you may yell "I told you so" at my tombstone should you feel like.

[-] AskewLord@piefed.social 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

No society is egalitarian really. It's an ideal, not a reality.

Human beings are not wild for egalitarian behavior, and at best it would only really work in small populations of homogeneous people with strict social codes, like you see in Amish and other highly religious or aesthetic societies.

The problem with people is they tend to hate other people, especially people who are different than them, and having different amounts of wealth/income, makes people very different, and even when people are relatively equal financially, they start differentiating themselves based on the sources of their wealth and their consumptive habits. These societies rarely exceed triple digit populations.

A free, diverse, and open society can't be egalitarian and the irony I find is those who preach egalitarianism... don't want freedom or diversity. They want to pound everyone into conformity with themselves and their preferences and have illiberal attitudes towards self-expression, art, education, economic activity, etc.

If the culture/ideology allows for it, certainly. Evidently there's enough to go around, it's just concentrated in 3-4 cunts who have never known what working is, and many others don't mind because they don't want it to stop, they just wanna be on top.

[-] Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Yeah striving to be the top is kinda always gonna be there with current thought.

[-] Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

In my case its, grew up wicked poor and refuse to let that happen in my adult life. Money is tied so closely to anxiety, fear and stress. So I got in a "good" earning position and set myself up in a few other ways to be insulated.

[-] rickdg@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Enough automation to remove the need for jobs where people primarily risk their health.

Ultimately remove the need for all jobs entirely.

[-] Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Yeah I'd guess something along those lines.

[-] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 week ago

Unchecked, power consolidates. Marx notes in Das Kapital the Capitalist will always seek to capture regulatory bodies in the name of profit.

The goal, thus, becomes to distribute political power (including wealth) as diffusely and evenly as possible, and create a system that checks efforts from outside to attack and break its integrity.

The USSR was beleaguered from the beginning by sanctions by the rest of the western world, as pressured by President Wilson. As problematic as the Leninist model was, we don't know how it would have fared if it were left to engage with the world on its own terms.

[-] HubertManne@piefed.social 1 points 1 week ago

Can do it with tens. junter gatherers. Just need a clean and fertile world. People do what they can and cooperate. There is leadership but they still join in tasks and do things. Someone might be punished but they likely have to do some pretty bad trump. Someone who is lazy is just called lazy and maybe made fun of. Sorta like at work places. The lazy guy does not get paid less he just is kinda a joke. No mechanisms needed at all. Tech level does not really matter.

[-] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

I don’t think humans are capable of thinking in terms of millions or billions so it’s gonna be hard to get them to do anything remotely as complicated as this sustainably.

Yes, absolutely.

...Oh, you meant a human population. Nevermind.

[-] Paragone@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago

The key principle is that the lower the population-density, AND the lower the multiplicative-power of their technology, .. the less-restrained one's own rights are, by others' rights.

Extreme cases:

  • a person who is the only inhabitant of a jungle-planet, & one has only primitive-technology, they would have to work really-hard to do sooo much damage to the place to cause significant damage to the ecology's future-viability.

  • a person who is 1 of billions, in a city-world, with nearly-no-ecology-left, who has guns/explosives/poisons, who decides to butcher many-many-many-lives, either directly ( mass-shooting, destroying a bridge while many others are on it, 2001-Sept-11/airliners-as-weapons, whatever ), or indirectly ( destroy key-ecology-protection-laws, remove civilrights, etc ), .. CAN do immense harm to the-rest-of-the-world's/population's-lives, from now on.


Therefore, there are 2 dimensions that have to be measured accurately, in order to discover how to limit someone's rights, for sake of the overall ( & all individual-rights are in-relation-to overall-rights, & to other-individual-rights )

Therefore, the definition of "egalitarian" itself is dependent on the population-density!

It also is dependent on the technology-power-to-harm-others..


In a small-town where everybody-knows-everybody, & it is social-pressure which enforces obedience, the everybody-adult-is-armed paradigm may work, until some cabal/gang gains control of it.

In a city where anonymity is normal, everybody-armed can't work: DarkTriad-types simply aren't restrained by the regime.

Therefore, in a city, more-careful-vetting is required, for that right.


In a small-town where everybody-knows-everybody, it may be possible for elections to produce good matches between individual-nature & civil-authority-roles.

In a larger population, where DarkTriad is automatically advantaged by political-process, political-process is itself the wrong means of deciding who has what civil-authority-role.

Judging has to be much-more-finely-grained, dimension-by-dimension, & the DarkTriad/DarkTetrad types HAVE to be prevented, automatically, systematically, from having any civil-authority-role.


These are simply systems-questions.

IF you configure a system so that it is simple, THEN it can do simple function.

IF you configure a system so that it is truly-complex, THEN you have myriad ways in which it can go wrong, so getting the "skeleton" right, for the kind of function required, is absolutely crucial.

Sea-sponges have only 2 kinds of cells: surface & interior.

They can be made in any sea-sponge-form, & they'll work.

Vertebrates, however, have IMMENSE diversity of cell-types, & that diversity has to work in hierarchical-concert, for the organism to be viable, & to work properly.

The greater the complexity of the civilization, the more-accurately its function has to be tuned.

& the distributed-male-monarchy fantasy of the "wild West" glorifiers, or the bulls+cows "traditional relationship" that the zionists, christofascists, islamists, & hindutva are all working at enforcing.. those aren't either egalitarian, or that civil, tbh..

Egalitarianism requires that people value & respect others' validity & LivingWorth!

Narcissism won't do that.

Machiavellianism doesn't do that.

Sociopathy-psychopathy can't do that.

Therefore, truly-egalitarian civilization requires that DarkTriad be prevented from exercizing civil-authority, legislative-authority, etc.

That is prerequisite to it working.

It isn't the only criterion, but without it you aren't even playing-that-category-of-game.

_ /\ _

[-] DeuxChevaux@lemmy.world -1 points 1 week ago

I don't think that it's possible. We are a pack animal like dogs or apes/monkeys and work best in small groups like tribes. Groups of millions are just unnatural to us,

[-] Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

That's a fair point.

[-] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world -1 points 1 week ago

yes but it would require us to abandon democracy and return to a republic monarchy similar to what Rome had.

the republic rules the people and the emperor rules the state.

it has to be this way because there is no way the chaos of a changing government every n years allows for enough stability for an egalitarian society to subsist.

you want a utopia? either give all your power to one person or give up all power entirely(no government).

this post was submitted on 12 May 2026
45 points (94.1% liked)

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