Utopia is impossible but...

[SinbadEV]

... we're gonna work this out anyways.

Here's the questions I think we need to answer (please help me with more if you think they are needed):

"What do you want out of life?"
"Who's going to make dinner?"
"How do we make sure nobody screws it up?"



My answers are:
"What do you want out of life?" - Sit on my but playing video games, hang out with friends playing board games, and sing with my band
"Who's going to make dinner?" - Someone who enjoys making dinner.
"How do we make sure nobody screws it up?" - Improved Educational system with an additional enforced continuing education programs for all citizens for their entire life... not sure how to enforce it without suppressing freedom, perhaps limit access to government provided non-essential services for not completing the educational courses... things like television and food with flavor.

[pintle]

Imo overeducation can be a bad thing: make it available but do not enforce it.

edit: having read your post in t'other thread: have you read any Iain M Banks? Specifically Consider Phlebas springs to mind, he has a really cool perception of a futuristic AI-led robots-do-all-the-labour society (and the books are awsomecaeks too).

You mention a Marxist leaning in my thoughts: I think a major change in the way we perceive of and distribute information will occur either as a direct result of, or be the catalyst for, a massive change in global society (blah blah methods of production .

I simply dont think proprietary rights towards information are compatible with a logical evolution of our information networks. As i alluded to in the other thread, the information wants to be free. It may be incredibly naive to think that humanity may acquiesce to this ideal of collaborative, global, learning, but however infeasible, i would argue that it is possible.

[Machiosabre]

Your plan has one fatal flaw; I don't think any amount of forced education will stop people being jerks.

[SinbadEV]

Your plan has one fatal flaw; I don't think any amount of forced education will stop people being jerks.

Ah, the real reason a socialistic democratic capitalism works so well, people benefit from peoples nihilism and greed thanks to taxes... so people who are jerks can use their jerkiness to produce profit which indirectly benefits the economy as a whole... it why capitalism works so well, people want to stand on peoples necks to get the high fruit but they can only hold so much before they start dropping it.

[Comp1337]

as long as i get the power to shoot dumbass jocks on sight im good
I think this would benefit the world more than any laws or regulations

[SinbadEV]

as long as i get the power to shoot dumbass jocks on sight im good
I think this would benefit the world more than any laws or regulations

A surprisingly common sentiment... perhaps I should add the:

"What do we do about jerks and jocks?" question, it was implied with the "How do we make sure nobody screws it up?" one but perhaps an explicit answer to this question is needed... education can't fix morons, jerks and jocks... Close personal friendship with nerds tends to make jocks slightly less painful... perhaps we could have those "group meetings" like in Utopia to force people to get along with diverse personality types... or we could just kill them but I'm pretty sure that would set a negative president, cause the jocks to feel marginalized and since they are bigger then us they might rebel against the Utopia before we get a chance to kill them all.

edit: or we could just not let them into the City of Citizens... but that causes another whole heap of issues.

[Comp1337]

making them a bit better by befriending them is treating the symptoms, not the problem.
If you use my method, they wont be the money sucking black holes they are atm living off welfare

[SinbadEV]

making them a bit better by befriending them is treating the symptoms, not the problem.
If you use my method, they wont be the money sucking black holes they are atm living off welfare

Ah, but I don't intend to work myself and I'm not a jock, if you don't think that a person has the right to a comfortable life unless they contribute to society I don't want YOU in my City... let the jocks come in and mooch if they want... I just don't want those cocky jerks who make you feel like your crap, watch sports, drink beer and treat women like kleenex to ruin my ability to sit around and watch anime, drink mountain dew and have a meaningful relationship with my wife.

[Comp1337]

If everyone just slacked off you wouldnt have any computer/tv to watch anime on
You wouldnt have any mountian dew

On the other hand you would have all the time in the world to sex up your wife if youre prepared to deal with either intestines or kids

[SinbadEV]

If everyone just slacked off you wouldnt have any computer/tv to watch anime on
You wouldnt have any mountian dew

On the other hand you would have all the time in the world to sex up your wife if your prepared to deal with either intestines or kids

I don't expect everyone to just slack off... I expect that there are some people who actually enjoy producing and acting in television, and writing books... and computers and mountain dew can be made by robots... in the mean time I understand that I will have to do a job in order to gain money to exchange for luxury goods and services.

edit: sorry, that seemed combative... how would you suggest we ensure that people don't mooch off the system without providing meaningless make work projects?

edit2: and how do you suggest we encourage invention and content creation in a situation where the living comfortable is considered a basic human need and provided regardless of what a person contributes to society.

[Comp1337]

back to my first idea
kill them

On a serious note though, i have no idea, and ill guess quite a few presidents/primeministers/main men ahve been trying to figure that out too

also
"but I don't intend to work myself"
"I don't expect everyone to just slack off."
Im sorry to say it but you are not the only one who would like to slack off, why should you have the right to and not everyone else

I do not want to fund slackers through taxes with my well earned money. Most people wouldnt

EDIT:

edit2: and how do you suggest we encourage invention and content creation in a situation where the living comfortable is considered a basic human need and provided regardless of what a person contributes to society.

Enter one of the big problems of communism

[jcnossen]

Ah, but I don't intend to work myself and I'm not a jock, if you don't think that a person has the right to a comfortable life unless they contribute to society I don't want YOU in my City...

Then who is going to do the actual work and generate income if the city is full of lazy people?

[SinbadEV]

Ah, but I don't intend to work myself and I'm not a jock, if you don't think that a person has the right to a comfortable life unless they contribute to society I don't want YOU in my City...

Then who is going to do the actual work and generate income if the city is full of lazy people?

Well... ideally robots... but for a while we would need an alternative solution.

Admittedly that is one of the chief failings of socialism and communism and even communal living in general. Quite often people will do things just to support the community in real communities.

[FLOZi]

making them a bit better by befriending them is treating the symptoms, not the problem.
If you use my method, they wont be the money sucking black holes they are atm living off welfare

Have you ever had to live off welfare?

No?

Then piss off.

[rattle]

There are two kind of people, those who have to live off the welfare and those who sit on their ass and do nothing or actually enjoy exploiting the state.

I have to live off the welfare atm. until I get a job and I had to for three months last year.

"Who's going to make dinner?"

The woman of course!

[SwiftSpear]

The problem with social welfare is everyone assumes the latter is massive and the former is tiny. Reality couldn't be more far from the truth.

[HeavyLancer]

The problem with utopia is that if you have a community, all it takes is one person to screw it all up. and then you need to stop people form screwing it up. As far as I know the only effective ways of ensuring that people do not screw up are either to brainwash/ruthlessly indoctrinate them or to use the threat of causing grievous bodily harm to their person or just outright killing offenders.
But then you have a dictatorship. But it is a benevolent dictatorship. Everyone is living in harmony, and anyone who doesn't want to has been eliminated by killing them or been indoctrinated.

Or, the other utopia is where everyone has the means and freedom to do whatever they like. Ruling organisations are not needed, because they will inevitably curtail people's freedom.
Enter the Internet
Why? Well, the Internet is the ultimate anarchic entity that we humans have created thus far. You cannot physically harm someone through the internet (well maybe you can, but the method of doing it requires them to have access to something like a robot arm). We have gone past the stage of being able to properly rigorously controlling the Internet (I think once most of post-bloc eastern Europe and Russia got their hands on it it fell out of that), so that checks another box.
Oh, and thanks to client-end content creation and hosting capabilities, we have the freedom and the means. But, currently thanks to capitalism you have to pay for that.
Don't forget that the Internet is constantly being developed technology-wise, so I think that it will inevitably gain the capabilities to sustain this sort of idea.
All that the Internet needs to be the ultimate anarchic entity for humans is to make sure that we have the tools, food and physical isolation required in the physical world. I will leave it to the rest of you to think of how to do that.

TL;DR Version: Internet FTW.

[SwiftSpear]

The problem, Heavy lancer, is that inevitably "ruling organizations" are needed to enforce social contract, and you need social contract to economically support population...

Sociaty as we know it cannot run if I do not know explicately that the majority of random people I meet will neither screw me nor kill me. I can trust my cooworkers to some degree, because if they didn't do thier jobs honestly, they would be fired, I can trust the shipping guy because once again, if he didn't ship the computer I sent from my store to the other store it was supposed to go to, I know his name and I can prove his illegal action. There are rules that need to be explicately followed for a mass economic sociaty to work, and since we need a mass economic sociaty to make the cost of living low enough to support our population, we just can't really do anything about it, anarchism is neither feasible nor possible, it requires smaller people groups.

Ultimately the internet is just another tool. That you "can't hurt someone over the internet" is foolish, that only holds true if they remain anonymous, and the internet for an anonymous body is little more than an entertainment tool, no one will take anything anon says seriously. It's easier than ever before to steal someone's identity, or commit character assassination. The internet promotes certain ideals that weren't previously as possible to prove/promote... freedom of speech, freedom of information, freedom of thought, but it doesn't really do anything in terms of changing the fundamental conflict of power holders vs victims of power.

[Comp1337]

making them a bit better by befriending them is treating the symptoms, not the problem.
If you use my method, they wont be the money sucking black holes they are atm living off welfare

Have you ever had to live off welfare?

No?

Then piss off.

You dont live in sweden. There is alot of money to get if you are unemployed or just slacking, you just need to word it right
I know plenty of people living well off the system. Oddly enough almost all of them play eve online..

[rattle]

Or WoW.