It's ALWAYS Oligarchs, an open challenge

[Brickjectivity]

Almost all oligarchs resist decentralized societies. It's harder to make huge profits in decentralized societies.

Producing electric power is still mostly not environmentally sustainable. (Maybe we'll achieve fusion power soon?) Until it is, even electric cars feed into the myth that the planet can remain healthy and sustain billions of individuals driving one-ton cars around the planet 10 or 20 or 30 thousand miles a year.

But even with that said, I like to think Elon is one of the "better" oligarchs.

Decentralized societies are made of individuals who like to combine businesses into larger and larger units, building structures which become monopolies. Did you know that the laws of Moses anticipate this and restrict the accumulation of property and wealth? That demonstrates people have been aware of this problem for millennia. When you let lots of property and wealth accumulate you have to eventually break its management back into smaller pieces. Ideally the world should be filled with small independent businesses and farms, but those small businesses and farms always seek the advantages of scale. Our societies today are technologically advanced, and so we have to find a new balance and the correct scale that fits our society. You say oligarchs are too big. Well, perhaps they are. What is the right size for businesses to be?

I believe Botanists have a much better shot at making carrots produce electricity than I think anyone has a shot at producing cost effective fusion. After much research, fusion remains a fun toy. The search for cost effective fusion seems unlikely to succeed.

 

[Valjean]

Fair challenge. Start with Elon Musk, since he's famous for giving things away.. How is his wealth making everything worse?

What's that wealth doing right now? Just sitting there, like overflowing granaries during a famine?
Fifty years ago I don't recall beggars at every intersection, tents tucked into every neglected lot, lines outside of food banks, cracks and potholes in the roads and people declaring bankruptcy from medical bills or dying from lack of access.

Most of the wealth has pooled at the top and is not contributing to the general welfare or even driving the economy.

 

[Kooky]

I hear this so much. If not capitalism, then what would be the alternative?

People have thought about this question long and hard for about as long as industrialized capitalism has existed, and have proposed a wide variety of possible alternatives:

Participatory economics
Co-operative economics
Market socialism
Mutualism (economic theory)
Corporatism
Anarcho-syndicalism

I'm not deeply familiar with every single one of these, so I can't exactly vouch for their viability as a global form of economics. Indeed, I would argue that the tricky bit is in actually implementing an economic model in such a way that we can improve upon its failures but preserve its strength. It would also be important to avoid the trap of relying on state oppression and authoritarian systems to enforce this economic system against the will of the majority, which would make it otherwise incompatible with the libertarian principles of self-rule and non-violence.

 

[PureX]

Hmmm. I'm not sure I see that happen very often in the world. I think your example is the rare one.

It's happening all around us, all the time.

A good example is (if you're old enough to remember) when women entered the job market in a big way back in the late 60s. And suddenly there were an ever increasing number of 2-income households. The prices of homes and cars and luxury items all shot up, and most other markets soon followed. Because there was more money available for consumers to spend. Now most households NEED two incomes just to survive. And those prices did not go up because costs of production went up. And they didn't go up because the production values suddenly increased. They went up because they could. And it's been this way since the middle of the last century when most people became fundamentally dependent on the markets for their survival. Creating captive markets that are, in essence, natural monopolies.

I've used this story before to illustrate.

There are two gas stations in a small town. And they are far enough apart that they each have their own clientele. And they each buy their gas from the same supplier, so they pay the same amount for their product, and therefor they charge the same amount to their customers. The mark-up is not huge, and neither of them wants to cut their profits by dropping the price to try and gain the other guy's customers. All that would get them is more work, (more sales, but with a higher cost for supply) but not more profit. So neither is interested in a price war.

But one day it occurs to one of the station owners that if he were to raise his gas price by 1 cent a gallon, he would not lose any customers. Because the customers would use up their potential savings in going to the other station, in the extra gas required to drive there and back. So he does it. He raises his gas price by a penny. And he was right; his customers pay the extra penny rather than drive across town to the other station.

Now, the other station owner sees this, and it occurs to him that he could raise his price per gallon by 2 cents, and still retain all his customers for the very same reason. They will not drive across town and back just to save 1 cent on gas, because they'll use up the savings in the gas expended to do it. So this station owner raises his price by 2 cents a gallon, and now has increased his profits by twice that of the other station's increase. And, of course, the first station owner then realizes that he can do the same thing in return, for the same reasons, so he increases his price, again, by 2 cents this time.

And on and on this will go, until the price for gas at both stations reaches the point where it's cheaper for the customers to drive to the next town over to buy gas. And both stations begin to lose sales. At which point the same increasing price dynamic will begin again, only this time between the stations in the two towns. And the only limitation to this price increase will be that their customers will simply stop driving, or drive as little as possible, because they can no longer afford to buy the gasoline.

You say you don't see this happen, and yet it's happening all around you all the time. And not just with gasoline, but with any product that the sellers all know the buyers must buy. Because when the buyers must buy, the only limitation to the price-gouging is the buyer running out of money.

 

[Valjean]

Now's the time to open a gasoline co-op station in the middle of town selling gas at cost, cost including wages, maintenance, &c.
Benefits everyone but the two capitalist stations.

 

[Revoltingest]

Now's the time to open a gasoline co-op station in the middle of town selling gas at cost, cost including wages, maintenance, &c.
Benefits everyone but the two capitalist stations.

One might find that the capitalist stations are still cheaper.
Why?
The real money is in the attached convenience store.

Who would finance the construction of the coop station?
Would they get no return on their investment & risk?
Sounds like something few would be willing to do.

 

[PureX]

What's that wealth doing right now? Just sitting there, like overflowing granaries during a famine?
Fifty years ago I don't recall beggars at every intersection, tents tucked into every neglected lot, lines outside of food banks, cracks and potholes in the roads and people declaring bankruptcy from medical bills or dying from lack of access.

Most of the wealth has pooled at the top and is not contributing to the general welfare or even driving the economy.

It's worse then that. Investment capital is predatory. It's used to capture yet more investment capital. And under capitalism, the investment capitalist controls production. Which give them all the advantage in this quest to capture ever more investment capital.

It's basically a runaway system unless limitations are forced upon it. Which it will resist by whatever means is available to it. Including that control of production.

 

[icehorse]

Counterpoint - the most populous nations on earth (China, India ~3 billion combined) are not Catholic, or even Christian. How does this then follow?

Can you name a major religion that traditionally champions education for women?

Setting aside the "ignorant women have more children" is a problematic assertion considering human females are not capable of parthenogenesis...

Mine is a statistical claim

... in what countries have oligarchs taken control of (aka, wholly privatized and rendered elitist) the education system? What do you mean by "taken control" and where's the evidence of this on a widespread scale?

Did I say "taken control"? If so I didn't mean to. I meant to say something like "warped or greatly influenced". In the US, textbooks and common core are far too influenced by corporations, instead of by the best teachers.

Counterpoint - infant mortality rate is trivially low such that this is a virtual non-factor. In general, mortality rates have plummeted and life spans inflated worldwide. How are oligarchs responsible for this?

Recently that's true, but not historically. And it's hard for culture to evolve quickly. So in those parts of the world where the population is growing quickly, they still have the "high infant mortality" mindset, even if that mindset is no longer true.

Hint - technology is far and away the dominant factor in causing human overpopulation. How do you connect human overuse and misuse of technology with oligarchy?

I'm not disagreeing, but can you say more? While it's certainly true that we've advanced the productivity of agriculture, my sense is that population growth has mostly followed standard exponential math, no?

 

[Kooky]

@icehorse

I know I've said it before - and I dislike being a 'broken record' as much as anybody - but the problem that is commonly named as "overpopulation" has actually very little to do with the number of children born to poor women. What it does have to do with a lot, is with the fundamental inequality and, frankly, injustice in distributing scarce resources among populations and individuals.

If a small minority of people is hogging the vast majority of resources, then a large population of people who are uneducated, poor, and destitute is indeed the most plausible outcome.

But perhaps, instead of blaming women or families who have to cope with bad situations, we could step back, look at the bigger picture, and ask ourselves why we see it as a fait accompli - indeed, a natural, perhaps even necessary state of the universe - that a minority population should get a majority share of the world's resources, both natural and man-made, concrete and abstract.

 

[Quintessence]

Can you name a major religion that traditionally champions education for women?

That's not really my point - for some reason you pointed a finger at Catholicism (Christianity) as being at fault here in spite of them being a distinct minority in the most populous nations on earth. Why? I don't think "religion" (as narrowly defined in the West - organized and hierarchical, which often slides into oligarchical) has much if anything to do with the problem in countries where those models of religion don't exist or apply poorly.

Mine is a statistical claim

I think it'd be interesting to have some sources for this, and also to establish that the correlations here suggest causation. I suppose I find women's rights to be a bit more complex of an issue than this considering that again, human women can't do parthenogenesis. What about the other half of the picture here? Why point specifically at female ignorance when male ignorance also existed simultaneously? I doubt you intended this to come across as sexist, but that we would be inclined to tell the story in this way seems reflective of sexist overculture to me. I mean, ignorant males thinking with nothing but their dicks could also be the story here.

Did I say "taken control"? If so I didn't mean to. I meant to say something like "warped or greatly influenced". In the US, textbooks and common core are far too influenced by corporations, instead of by the best teachers.

I ask for evidence or examples of this because speaking as someone who is plugged into the education system, I just don't see this at all in my country. We have a public education system; corporate influence is virtually non-existent. I struggle to think of a single example of it in my experience with the U.S. education system. I mean, if corporate brainwashing was so prevalent there's simply no way in hell I'd have been raised on environmentalist public school curricula. I'd have been fed "climate change is a lie" and "smoking doesn't cause cancer" and the like.

Recently that's true, but not historically. And it's hard for culture to evolve quickly. So in those parts of the world where the population is growing quickly, they still have the "high infant mortality" mindset, even if that mindset is no longer true.

Yes, although when talking about human overpopulation, only recent history matters because it is a recent problem.

To get into some population dynamics basics, population growth is a function of birth rate and death rate. When birth rates outstrip death rates, we get population increases. This continues until the species runs up against another limit, the carrying capacity - this is the number of organisms an ecosystem can sustainably support. What human (mis)use of technology has done is bypass these normal limitations on top of reducing death rates, especially within the last few centuries. This would not have been possible at all without technology: sanitation, medicine, transportation, industrial food production, etc.

What gets labeled as "poverty" is a lack of access to technologies that have allowed other cultures to "safely" bypass the environment's carrying capacity. I put some of those words in quotes because... the long and the short of it humans need to do a better job grappling with the fact that overshooting carrying capacity with ecocidal technologies - living beyond our means as it were - is not desirable and cannot continue indefinitely. Folks in my culture prefer to decry "poverty" as the problem rather than take a good, hard look at dependence on technology. To be clear, dealing with technology deficiencies ("poverty") can be done while using tech more appropriately or sustainably, but... well... the track record is poor considering we're now in a human-induced sixth mass extinction event that shows no signs of abating.

All that aside, how does oligarchy fit in here? It's worth giving a think. Considering it was largely regular people looking to survive who have (mis)used tech over the past few centuries, I'm hard-pressed to buy the "it's always oligarchs" scapegoat on this issue. I think this is more intrinsic to human animal nature than that. Humans are ecosystem engineers, and the more tools they have to do this with, the better/worse it gets for everyone involved. Oligarchs could be absent from the equation and this'd still be the case, I think. Though if you want to suggest oligarchy is also somehow intrinsic to human animal nature, well... then maybe it isn't really that spectacular of a declaration to blame them for anything. It's just humans being humans one way or another, right?