[FoRK] Special Circumstances

[Stephen Williams]

Luis Villa wrote:
> Fun. Too short. :)
>   
Very cool.  My reading list is a lot longer now.
>
> On Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 3:36 PM, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org> wrote:
>   
>>  Iain M. Banks fans might want to check out this paper:
>>
>>    http://mil.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/30/3/625.pdf
>>
>>
>>  jb
>>
>>
>>  PS - aside - I often struggle with whether the end of scarcity implies
>>  "communism" or some form of collectivism as Banks envisions...
>>     
I don't see how the end of scarcity could possibly mean communism.  I 
believe Communism was mainly motivated by the belief, or at least the 
advertised belief, that no one should have too much lest they take away 
"unfairly" from someone else.  I think they believed that anyone that 
got ahead would automatically have an unfair "network effect" to the 
disadvantage of others.  As we have noted, Communism seemed to assume a 
zero-sum game with plenty of scarcity.  Perhaps true of Russia for a 
while, but not the modern world.  When everyone has "too much", 
Communism becomes a nullity.

I'm not sure that I agree with plentiful utopias being considered 
collectivisms.  In interpersonal boundaries and the commons there is a 
need to cooperate in sophisticated ways, however when those concerns 
aren't an issue, the operating mode can be pretty much king-like 
individualism.  More god-like at some point.

sdw