AnyAppearance3827 t1_j8067i9 wrote on February 10, 2023 at 5:34 PM

It's not going to phase out an exploitative system. It's just going to be more effective at exploiting resources and people.

Profits allow investment in new fields and new growth, profits come from reducing costs and increasing revenue and taking the excess value. It is impossible to have a complex system where people get exactly the value they produce and have an organization with specialization. An administrator doesn't make any revenue, but he maximizes the revenue of others, same for an accountant or a secretary or an executive. They exist because of the excess value of the front line worker muscle. If the front line work got all the value of his actions, you could not pay the value maximizers, so you would not have an organization at all.

This applies to countries as well, western workers derive their increased quality of life by exploitation of the third world. Increased value production is always predicated on exploitation of a lower class, even in nature this is the case, following the food chain.

AI won't free anybody, it's just not possible for it to do so.

JoeKingQueen OP t1_j808i7c wrote on February 10, 2023 at 5:49 PM

If you are a real person then you need to go full Descartes on yourself. Like from the ground up. I can't tell if this is satire, extreme brainwashing, accumulated misinformation.. there's too little to draw reliable conclusions. The best person to help you is yourself.

I would personally reevaluate everything from the most basic building blocks I can, small fact after small fact. Don't take any assumption that involves more than a single factor for granted, that's where people usually go off track. We have to act like everything we don't know for a fact is wrong. Anything taught, any "just remember this", any shortcut in thinking, etc.

While doing this the logical fallacies need to be kept in mind. Some common fallacies. There is also a master list but it takes more time to get through them. Master list.

AnyAppearance3827 t1_j813q7d wrote on February 10, 2023 at 9:13 PM

How are you going to construct a non exploitative system? Who is being exploited in the current system and how are they being exploited? Why does that system of exploitation exist? How can you construct that system differently?

If you can answer those without defaulting to "greed" as an explanation I will accept your viewpoint. In my experience exploitation occurs because it's necessary to run the systems in a manner that achieves things on the scale necessary for the system to exist. People who say things run that way because of human greed are usually academics that make statements primarily to justify their existing biases that form in a vacuum without experience of the reality of running those systems.

Industrialists in the thick of their experience will give you much different reasons that are usually based on hard facts of the reality of the situation that don't have high minded moral posturing behind them. Usually things happen because of the necessity of the action.

JoeKingQueen OP t1_j81lsnz wrote on February 10, 2023 at 11:17 PM

Difficult to explain the intricacies of a naturally evolved exploitative system. However it's easy to list examples, and if we begin with the statement "we are being exploited" then a single example is enough to prove it. What it doesn't do is tally every exploitation and every benefit and measure them against each other, but let's be real that's too much to expect from a reddit comment.

One well studied example is the US health insurance system. It used to be that a person could afford to visit a hospital out of pocket, now that's a ridiculous idea. Why? Because insurance built a nuanced system where they allowed healthcare to charge them enough, and thus allowed prices to rise, until the point that it's unaffordable unless one has insurance.

That's without mentioning issues with lobbying, legally forcing insurance to be bought, tying insurance to employment in order to further exploit workers. All of which compound the issue and are the tip of the iceberg. This is not an isolated incident, and each incident contributes to others creating a vast network of issues.

Another example is hoarding by the wealthy. Take the entire concept of a landlord. Somebody who wants to own property in order to rent it creates an artificial demand on the real estate market, one that is not fulfilled by work but is instead used as leverage against those who produce work. It inflates prices, but creates less stability than a fully decentralized market. Because one person going bankrupt loses five homes, instead of a ratio closer to 1:1, which would be more stable and less exploitative.

This issue has far reaching consequences.

A quick hit list of other examples that might resonate with you more:

Unsold cars being parked in mass in abandoned airports when newer models come out. In order to keep demand high, selling the vehicles at a discount would be counterproductive for the sale of new models, creating waste.

Engineered obsolescence, did you know we can make lightbulbs that last for over 100 years? We did this in the early 1900's, and it wasn't expensive. Why don't we? Because demand would have fallen to almost zero. Engineered obsolescence is in almost every non-disposable item we buy.

Education, a healthy system should want an educated population. It increases their capabilities in a direct way. We clearly don't, with half of our politicians advocating against an informed populace. Why? Many reasons, none of them good, but it boils down to us being exploited and the less we know about it the better.

Politics, does a two party system make sense? Why not implement ranked choice voting? If a two-party system is a natural occurrence then ranked choice will not harm it. But we don't have a choice, we have an illusion of choice. More exploitation.

Media, why are most major media corporations owned by the 1%? Is it just the correlation because obviously the rich are those who can afford to own large companies. Maybe it is, it would require experiments to prove otherwise, but it's pretty obvious that they use it for their own agendas. One part of that agenda is more exploitation.

Unions, anti-union? Anti-standing and working together? The whole benefit of society is the strengths of working together. It is antithetical to live within a system that suppresses our greatest benefit.

I could go for a while, but I hope this expresses where I'm coming from at least.

AnyAppearance3827 t1_j822orh wrote on February 11, 2023 at 1:24 AM

I'm willing to play here. I'm phoneposting though

medical lodges existed until mid 1900s that had retiree and young doctors that did basic medicine for very cheap but doctors at hospitals lobbied and form the AMA to squash competition, and the insurance agencies moved in to a niche that was exploitable because of the narrow doctor labor resources and the associated liability for the hospitals. This is an example of regulation distorting the market rather than an example of private insurance creating a bad system.
yeah landlord's are shit. That's basic.
unsold cars- if the companies die from lack of sales in the short term, they can't create more cars later once the current models run out in the long term. They are under no obligation to sell, so this system seems reasonable to sustain life of the company and employees.

Same reason, everyone buys a 30 year light bulb, all the light bulbs run out, where are you gonna buy a new one in 30 years? It's a necessary feature to allow companies to exist, to allow the market to be served.
Education is great for increased value, but it's causative for low birthrates, the single highest factor. It's controls half of the birthrate if you look up the stats, based on international numbers. Countries need to strike a balance of enough education.
Yeah that's accurate.
Yeah that's accurate, the media is a mouthpiece of interests with power and always has been. You would be a fool to trust any media to be nonbiased at any point.
Yes people should work together, but if everybody in a country is focused on the benefit for their lowest caste, they will inevitably attempt to extract resources from neighbour's in the form of slavery or war.

JoeKingQueen OP t1_j82iw06 wrote on February 11, 2023 at 3:36 AM

The reason I won't believe some odd nuance somehow explains how healthcare actually works is because it's obvious healthcare isn't working. We can see this. Look at insulin, which can be produced for a fraction of what it's sold. Not a fair markup, exploitation. A life saving medication for many, held as some kind of carrot to exploit those people. This issue permeates the system almost completely. Look at people who won't get preventative care while it would save them and the system work in the long run, because of the extreme expense. Anywhere we look we can see it not working.

Caused by greed and ignorance, exploitation inevitably leads to waste. Because this all centers on money, a lot of that waste takes the form of inflation. Which amplifies the whole problem for the people being exploited in the first place. Increasing the burden yet again. It's wild.

Anyway even if you don't agree on that, the things that you did agree on are the things I'm talking about and the way our system could be better. Possibly with the help of artificial intelligence.