Society without property?

From topic:
Right wing conservatives are evil? Well, I have evidence that they are.Chiroptera responded to me: My response and the basis of this topic is:What kind of society do you envision that we could move on to and how could it work if people didn't own things?

This is a reply to Chiroptera for a post in the other thread.Chiroptera response to my question was Only in extremely small groups of people, maybe not much larger than 40 or 50 people, possibly smaller. And it was not a very high standard of living by modern standards and life was brutally short. Do you think it possible, short of some sort of huge human die off, that we would ever again have people living in small communes of related people, isolated from most everyone else?

Supply of what? Demand for what?
For food? It hasn't been til modern times that we have had more than spotty excesses of food.
Supply exceeding demand usually causes price drops and reductions in production until things balence out and prices can stabalize. But without property/money ( money is a sort of property ) that's kind of a moot point.

No, it was a "that's all the land would support without technology and/or farming" problem. Early societies were always scrambling around for food and lived nomadically. It wasn't until they started farming that they stayed in one spot and started creating civilizations.I'm not sure what you mean when you talk about communism and what you define as property under communism.

What I meant by standard of living wasn't about property, but about availability of food, water, shelter, medical care and lifespan, though modern life can be less than ideal in other ways like crime, pollution, politicians and stress from being packed in too tight together. I wasn't automatically saying that the western lifestyle is superior in any way (in fact I never even mentioned it), I was saying that true communism hasn't been practiced by societies that began farming.I agree with you that less people would be better for everyone except for those that would be leaving! Again I have never said that the US has the best society. I do think capitalism (being reinbursed for what you do according to your contribution) works better than communism ( get what you need (maybe) no matter what your contribution is to society) as long as capitalism is regulated so that it doesn't trod too heavily on the working class. Capitalism is not perfect by any means and it can get quite ugly, but the alternative doesn't seem very attractive either.

Well one BIG problem with trying to take care of the whole world is the existing countries and nationalism, regionalism, competing religions, etc. It's very hard to deliver needed items into many countries because local warlords or the current government want the goods for themselves. You would have to almost have one world government staffed only with altruistic people to truly provide for everyone. Not sure this is possible.That said, if those problems were dealt with, we still have to figure out how to motivate people without giving them anything in return except for the basics. This would work for some truly altruistic people, but the majority would want an extra chicken in the pot, or even better another big SUV in the driveway if they toil harder than their neighbor.In the not too distant future though I see some big problems. Our population is already straining our abilities to provide food and water for everyone. If we double our population we may not even with technology be able to provide for everyone even if we tried. I feel that we might see more resource wars in the future (not just about oil, but water, fishing rights and fertile land).This message has been edited by kjsimons, 04-12-2005 11:48 AM

Well that would take me more than an afternoon to properly peruse that site! It might take me a couple of months of afternoons to properly digest it. So as to narrow down the task, was there any of his writings in particular that think would be the best for me to review?As far as this: I suppose it wouldn't have to stop at the basics, but where do you stop? Does everyone get a Maybach or a Ferrari, or do we all take the bus? Does everyone get a four bedroom 2400sqft detached house or do we all live in 900sqft apartments? Do we all get to eat fillet mignon or do we eat soylent green? I don't think we can give everything to everyone, there are limits.This message has been edited by kjsimons, 04-12-2005 01:08 PM

While the US does have a surplus capacity, it is not enough to feed the entire planet, certainly not "several times over". Unless of course we started farming all our golf courses and lawns and every square inch of greanspace and put at least half our work force back into farming. Regardless, unless we start seriously thinking of population control and possibly even reduction, we are going to see serious food shortages in our lifetimes I'm afraid.

Thanks for the links Jar! I'll read them and get back with you tomorrow on this. Some may be violently opposed to limitations, at least for them and their own (that is my experience anyways)! This is really the crux of the whole thing, will enough people be willing to do with less so that all can enought to eat and have adequate shelter and medical care?

I agree that there is currently enough food to feed everyone in the world. Troy had stated that the US alone could feed the entire planet several times over, which is not true. I would not blame capitalism as the chief cause of hunger though. A lot of starving people are living under despots and totarian governments who may sell off a countries assets for their own personal gain. I think a change would have to be made in the political sphere to really make any change.

There have in the past been plenty of despost bankrolled by communist countries. Capitalists are not the only people or countries on the planet who buy things, to blame them alone is over simplifying the problem. You seem intent an blaming all the worlds ills on only one cause, and that is those evil capitalists. The world and it's problems are not that simple.

I agree that some capitalistic nations (including the US) have few safety nets for those who find themselves on the lower rungs. I feel that the US should have better social programs so that everyone would be guarantied the necessities. I too was unemployed for almost two years when the job market tanked and the place I was working outsourced the job I was doing to India. Fortunately I had enough savings to not lose my house, but it was a very trying time. I'm not convinced communism or some other ism out there would be any better though. I'm open to serious suggestions on what systems would be better, why they would be better, and how they could be implemented.

Let me guess, this is a company town's money that can only be spent in the company store! Those were definitely bad times for workers when this sort of stuff was going on. Unbridled capitalism can get very ugly.

Wow there was a lot of action on this thread overnight!I've read all the responses to my posts and I've did a little research into communism via Jar's links and others and have come to believe that even if it were possible to implement a communist culture on a large scale (which I don't believe is possible), that it would collapse upon itself in short order as it doesn't take into account human nature.To implement communism on a global scale one would have to erase cultural, national, and religious boundries. This is just, at this moment, not possible. If you think it is, then please suggest how cause I don't see even a remote possibility of this coming to pass.Just for grins let's say we have a global communist state. In the industrialized world we currently have an over capacity in our factories and in this way capitalism is wasteful. I mean I can get twelve different kinds of mustards by as many brands. I have available for purchase over a 100 different trucks and cars. In a communist state what and who would determine what and how much is produced? If labor was needed in India and not in Indiana, would the workers be forced to move where the work was or forfeit the basic necessities? If you were trained as an engineer but there was an oversupply of them and an undersupply of janitors, would you be forced to be a janitor? I just don't understand how this would all work.Furthermore, there would have to be people in charge overseeing and running things. These would be high status jobs and probably highly reinbursed(?), given better housing maybe or better access to highly prized items. It would seem that one would be throwing off the capitalism masters only to be working for the communism masters. True you may have at least be guarantied the necessities but I feel it will be at the cost of certain freedoms.Not to pick on you Jar, but you were so against the company towns with their company script and their company stores, but if communism were implemented wouldn't be in the same boat, only the company is the communistic government?

Troy/Lam/alias of the week!,Why does everyone think that I think they are lying or that somebody lied to them? I merely think many people are misinformed, misunderstood what they were told, or simply don't accurately remember what they were told. That said, I couldn't find any data on what the max capacity of the US to product food is but I did find data on grain production. According to one source the US produces ~60-70 Millions Tons (MT) of grain annually. The world consumption of grain in 2003 was 1914 MT (with a 92 MT deficit). That means that the US would have to be able to produce 30 times it's normal amount of grain to meet the worlds annual demand for grain once, forget about multiple times over. Technically it may be possible (not sure we have enough water to do so, it takes a lot of water to grow grain), but it would be at the expense of everything else and would probably not be sustainable.