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Capitalism is just as bad as Statism.

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kylio27 posted on Tue, Sep 4 2012 7:27 PM

 

What we need are institutions that are neither statist nor capitalist. Both of these involve hierarchy, subordination, and the centralization of power and decision-making authority in the hands of a small few; which is then wielded against the many.

We need institutions that are entirely 1) voluntary, 2) cooperative, and 3) participatory

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I wanted to also mention that there are thoughts and processes designed around the ideas of less direct workflows.  In fact on a higher level the economy can be thought of in this way.

Stigmergy is the idea of indirect coordination of active agents in a complex process.  The idea is that one of the side effects of a specific action by an agent is to leave a trace of information that stimulates other agents when they see it.  Humans seem to be the only creatures that actively exploit this natural process and adapt it to meeting our specific needs.  We actively manipulate each other, in symbiotic ways, and in parasitic ways.  The problem in modern societies is that government is parasitic, market is symbiotic.

But evolution takes millions and billions of years to create hive like behaviors using these principles in insects.  On the other hand perhaps, we just think we know what we're doing, and all of our interactions are stigmergy :).  

Be that as it may, the creative (technology creation/modification) and the executive functions are just as important as the raw labor function in modern human social interaction, both within the individual's behavior itself, and as you expand to social group interdependence.  They probably have been all the way back.  Communication and feedback, active learning and sharing is a huge step up from iterating through billions of lifeforms in order to achieve ant, bee, and termite hive behaviors.  Those insect groups are the only animal kingdom analogs, in sheer scope, to human society. The tribal group function is seen in some mammals, but not the larger "city" style community.

Just some additional thoughts.

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