Socialism

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deathflower wrote:

How much are people's lives worth?

What's funny about this question is that people normally mean "how much money do deaths cost?" But I'll answer the question you actually asked.

The vast majority of people in Western countries die at a relatively late age and spend their entire adult lives as a willing wage slave. By their own accord and own admission, their life is worth less money that the total sum of the income they receive over their lifetime; otherwise, they wouldn't have traded it away.

Because putting a dollar value on (their own) lives is something which happens all the time, it's not that difficult to estimate the monetary value of many millions of lives, as random variance starts to taper off due to sample size. It's similar to estimating the value of lottery tickets.

The true nature of money is that it represents the quality and quantity of human effort; after you spend all of your life, what is left is all of your effort. The economy is, first and foremost, the trade of lives' works.

Maximizing the economy, therefore, isn't about raw greed. It's about increasing the quantity and quality of human time - living longer and doing more per unit time. I care about totals, and optimized totals can't be achieved unless everyone is fully optimized, excluding niche situations where a loss for one person leads to more benefit systemwide.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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deathflower wrote:

How much are people's lives worth?

What's funny about this question is that people normally mean "how much money do deaths cost?" But I'll answer the question you actually asked.

The vast majority of people in Western countries die at a relatively late age and spend their entire adult lives as a willing wage slave. By their own accord and own admission, their life is worth less money that the total sum of the income they receive over their lifetime; otherwise, they wouldn't have traded it away.

Because putting a dollar value on (their own) lives is something which happens all the time, it's not that difficult to estimate the monetary value of many millions of lives, as random variance starts to taper off due to sample size. It's similar to estimating the value of lottery tickets.

The true nature of money is that it represents the quality and quantity of human effort; after you spend all of your life, what is left is all of your effort. The economy is, first and foremost, the trade of lives' works.

Maximizing the economy, therefore, isn't about raw greed. It's about increasing the quantity and quality of human time - living longer and doing more per unit time. I care about totals, and optimized totals can't be achieved unless everyone is fully optimized, excluding niche situations where a loss for one person leads to more benefit systemwide.

I think it is kinda callous to place a monetary value on human lives but I wouldn't be impractical to think it is infinitely valuable. I would place it many times above the total sum of income they receive over their lifetime, just because I believe human lives are much more valuable.

It might not be economically justifiable but plausibly socially acceptable and morally desirable. It would put a strain on the country's treasury, but what is the value of money if it is not meant to be spent on something meaningful.

Placing a higher value on human lives would avoid the pitfall of making human lives expendable and require politicians or decision makers to be prudent while making these policies concerning human lives.

Politicians or Corporations often undervalue people's lives and make terrible decisions that is more of a tragedy than something necessary.

I think the major misconception is focusing on death instead of life. Death is but one instant at the end of a life; life is a span of time, from birth until death. Life is the primary here. You are spending your life right now reading these words; your life slips from you every second of every day. You are making an economic decision reading this, as opposed to doing something else; you are choosing how to spend your life. (You cannot escape economics so long as you have freedom of action.)

The thing I'm trying to get across is: the basis of any economy is the evaluation of the product of a portion of people's lives, relative to other products of portions of people's lives. They say time is money; time is life; by that logic, money is life. Every monetary valuation - every single one, every price tag in a store - is (indirectly) placing a numeric value on human life; somebody spent some of theirs getting it onto the shelf.

Of course human life is expendable; you're spending yours. "On what?" is probably a good question to ask yourself.

The cost of an untimely death is based on the time between that moment and when death would have otherwise occurred. If I was alone and far from help and saw a wounded man on an abandoned battlefield, clearly beyond saving but still conscious and begging me to kill him, I'd shoot him without hesitation; the life that remains isn't worth anything.

You might think this is callous. If so, reality is callous. The people in power are stripping us of our lives one day at a time, and they're doing it with complex economic systems. When we fail to see the relationship between money and life, then it's no wonder they've been so successful at it.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I think the major misconception is focusing on death instead of life. Death is but one instant at the end of a life; life is a span of time, from birth until death. Life is the primary here. You are spending your life right now reading these words; your life slips from you every second of every day. You are making an economic decision reading this, as opposed to doing something else; you are choosing how to spend your life. (You cannot escape economics so long as you have freedom of action.)

The thing I'm trying to get across is: the basis of any economy is the evaluation of the product of a portion of people's lives, relative to other products of portions of people's lives. They say time is money; time is life; by that logic, money is life. Every monetary valuation - every single one, every price tag in a store - is (indirectly) placing a numeric value on human life; somebody spent some of theirs getting it onto the shelf.

The cost of an untimely death is based on the time between that moment and when death would have otherwise occurred. If I was alone and far from help and saw a wounded man on an abandoned battlefield, clearly beyond saving but still conscious and begging me to kill him, I'd shoot him without hesitation; the life that remains isn't worth anything.

You might think this is callous. If so, reality is callous. The people in power are stripping us of our lives one day at a time, and they're doing it with complex economic systems. When we fail to see the relationship between money and life, then it's no wonder they've been so successful at it.

Depend on what you believe. You can't take your money with you when you die. You only have time to lose really. You can't buy back time. Time is what is more valuable, not the money.

Corporations usually try to pay you as little as possible. That is how they profit. People aren't savvy with what they do with their life. Many people get stuck with jobs that they don't like and pay peanuts. It is a matter of what you do with your life. They could lead a vastly different life if they are willing to proactively take charge of their life and embrace certain changes. Unfortunately, they usually don't.

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deathflower wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Spoiler

I think the major misconception is focusing on death instead of life. Death is but one instant at the end of a life; life is a span of time, from birth until death. Life is the primary here. You are spending your life right now reading these words; your life slips from you every second of every day. You are making an economic decision reading this, as opposed to doing something else; you are choosing how to spend your life. (You cannot escape economics so long as you have freedom of action.)

The thing I'm trying to get across is: the basis of any economy is the evaluation of the product of a portion of people's lives, relative to other products of portions of people's lives. They say time is money; time is life; by that logic, money is life. Every monetary valuation - every single one, every price tag in a store - is (indirectly) placing a numeric value on human life; somebody spent some of theirs getting it onto the shelf.

The cost of an untimely death is based on the time between that moment and when death would have otherwise occurred. If I was alone and far from help and saw a wounded man on an abandoned battlefield, clearly beyond saving but still conscious and begging me to kill him, I'd shoot him without hesitation; the life that remains isn't worth anything.

You might think this is callous. If so, reality is callous. The people in power are stripping us of our lives one day at a time, and they're doing it with complex economic systems. When we fail to see the relationship between money and life, then it's no wonder they've been so successful at it.

Depend on what you believe. You can't take your money with you when you die.

There is no afterlife, only legacy. What we create can continue past our lifetimes. Most notably children.

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deathflower wrote:

You only have time to lose really. You can't buy back time. Time is what is more valuable, not the money.

The answer to "why money?" is economic specialization. If a society has each person focus their time on the things they're good at, they produce more than if everyone is a jack-of-all-trades. That's why people are glad to trade some of their time for money and then their money for another person's time; you actually can buy time, that's the whole point, just that it's someone else's time you're buying. The goal of prosperity centrism is to maximize this effect; the goal of corporate consumerism is to tax this effect to basically the maximum extent that individuals just barely prefer economic specialization over economic independence (take = rake * transactions), such that the vast majority of benefit from economic specialization is concentrated in the hands of a few.

You can debate that question in a philosophycal manner, but in absolute manner´s each live is a negative. Determining a humans live based on there income is very lously, because they spent there generated wealth on themself´s, which doesn´t make there live´s more valuable for other´s.

More People/lives doesn´t make anyone richer but rather poorer, they have to share more.
Afrika for example, will have serious issuse in the future, if they keep on growing.
Quality comes at the expanse of quantity.

Again the economy and company´s are not inherent bad, it´s a form of convusion and hysteria.
Company´s have to compete with each other, they want to sell there stuff and if nobody want´s to buy there stuff because somebody else is cheaper or better, they have to dumb the prize and our the wages. Yes, it´s also part the consumer´s fault. Normal healthy,wealthy people can not compete with slave like labour, unless they would also work exactly the same way, so it´s those peoples fault to dumb the prize so much.
If i were a head of a Company, knowing that the world is retarded and unimprovable, i would exactly act the same way, to at least secure the work for some of my employees.

It´s more complicated than to call taxes theft. Of course there are bad politician´s and bankstars, but none the less it´s important to sometimes get Money into and out of the moneymarket. Money is Motivation, people are motivated to earn it, but not always motivated to spent all, and the cycle end´s there. Dead money is bad, thats why investment´s are important for the Society. By geting money in the market, it devalues all the dead money, because evryone has more money and in a sense force investment. Of course that could lead to hyperinflation, get the money out again. Rising taxes get´s the money out, if the goverment doesn´t spent it.

I think i got evrything right, and again coruption exist´s like the fed stole 500billion our something. I hope one day that highly advanced algorythmen will take care of this.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

There is no afterlife, only legacy. What we create can continue past our lifetimes. Most notably children.

Love, memories and value is what I think is more important to leave to your children.

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The answer to "why money?" is economic specialization. If a society has each person focus their time on the things they're good at, they produce more than if everyone is a jack-of-all-trades. That's why people are glad to trade some of their time for money and then their money for another person's time; you actually can buy time, that's the whole point, just that it's someone else's time you're buying. The goal of prosperity centrism is to maximize this effect; the goal of corporate consumerism is to tax this effect to basically the maximum extent that individuals just barely prefer economic specialization over economic independence (take = rake * transactions), such that the vast majority of benefit from economic specialization is concentrated in the hands of a few.

That isn't what I am talking about. People who are naturally talent in their jobs are the minority. What most people do is they spend so much time on their job or on what they do that they become good at it. What usually happen is people ended up with jobs corporations or other people want them to do. Jobs with a demand for them rather than doing something they would rather do.

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deathflower wrote:

That isn't what I am talking about. People who are naturally talent in their jobs are the minority. What most people do is they spend so much time on their job or on what they do that they become good at it. What usually happen is people ended up with jobs corporations or other people want them to do. Jobs with a demand for them rather than doing something they would rather do.

This reminds me of the whole "lab is mandatory" argument.

What's happening isn't people doing A when they'd rather do B; it's modifying the incentive structure such that, instead of a natural state of people doing A because they prefer it, people do B because they prefer it.

This is an important point because you're assuming incentive is always a negative. It can be; for example, imprisoning people who do A. But it can also come in the form of rewarding people who do B. This needn't require massive government cost, mind you; the idea of market forces, supply and demand, is largely a non-governmental automation of incentive systems, established by minimal infrastructure.

I think it's also important to question whether or not the disincentive for behavior is artificial or natural. For example, you might be naturally talented in X yet yourself doing Y to sustain yourself. If you peel back the layers of social systems, you may find that without them you may have incentive to do X... or you may find that you're still disincentived by a more natural system, or even nature itself, from doing X. If you add additional social systems, you may find new incentive to do X, or not; most likely, you find new incentive to do Z.

My point then, I guess, is that our current social system does not deserve evaluation in a vacuum. You need to compare to feasible alternatives. Evaluation is relative.

Googled a bit to know if the Earth can actually sustain human lives at a fundamental level:

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The earth receives about 8 million quadrillion BTUs of energy from the sun every year. The total annual energy usage of the human race is 400 quadrillion BTUs and this is projected to go up to 3000 quadrillion BTUs by the year 2075.


So, we just need to tap 0.005% (0.04% in the year 2075 and growing slowly thereafter) of the energy that the sun sends in our general direction... Once we do this, we can stop worrying for about 5 billion years. It is that simple.
Why aren't we doing it ? Because we lack the technology.

Now, technology is entirely a product of human ingenuity. Ergo, what we are lacking are (the right) human resources.

Source:
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-there-are-enough-resources-in-the-world-for-everyone-or-is-that-just-a-myth

This should be a good premise that human lives are more important and resources are not scarce. I do however acknowledge that technology is needed to support more lives. However, if you look very close, most of what we do now is just severely unnecessarily waste resources and destroying the planet.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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ManicCompression wrote:

All humans act according to what they believe is 'good'. I am writing replying to this forum as I believe it's good. Joe ate some steak because he believes that is good. A thief will unlawfully get food from the store because it's good for his survival. Hitler wanted to wipe out the jews because he believe he was doing a favor for our human race.

Some humans will kill others just for the 'glory' of it. Some want to 'power' or 'prestige'.

That's true. But the important thing to understand is that belief is one thing and action is another. If the thief believes getting food is good, but thinks punishment for shoplifting is bad, then a weighing will occur in their head: is it better to shoplift or not? This is dependent on several factors, based on real conditions - the item to be shoplifted, cameras, location of food, hunger, penalty if convicted - rather than abstract concepts. The goal of the legal system here is to modify variables such that theft is not chosen. One cannot legislate to prevent moral belief (although acts of communication can be), but one can legislate to prevent immoral action.

My choice of the word 'belief' is not the best here. But what I meant here is that the 'state of the brain on what is good' prior to the action. Same as what you said here:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

We act in an attempt to make something we see as good happen. EVERY action taken, on ANY basis, intends to serve a good. Feeling acknowledged in a forum is seen as good if one acts towards it. Surviving is good (although perhaps not always the greatest good).

We might do things we believe other people think are bad. But when we do, we believe we know better; we believe in an unpopular good.

If you believe the things you aim to achieve with your actions are not good, you have some severe cognitive dissonance.

My theory is that if human 'needs' are satisfied, then crime would cease to exist. There would be no need to enforce laws anymore.

One of those needs, one equally important is the 'ability to seek truth'.

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If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.
- Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister

We can see this clearly in the military where they are brainwashed into following orders without question; I do not blame these soldiers. But come the time when a soldier realize the truth by thought and reasoning - one should act according to what is morally right as Snowden did.

Anecdotally, I am convinced that over-accumulation of wealth is not one of those needs. Allowing such severe over-accumulation causes all kinds of problems we have today. over-accumulation or greediness is a symptom of lack of reasoning.

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Great conversation so far. Cheers!

By the way, in reply to those who do seem to be aware that there are different kinds of socialism. Most of what has been mentioned are state-run socialism that ended up in tyranny. The kind of socialism I currently support is Worker-Cooperatives which has proven to work in real life, small to large scale.

Here's a good quick video about it.