What can we do to re-shape society for the better?
If top of the society is immoral psychopaths with power, and most of the society is composed of people with good intentions, then there is not much hope for "beta uprising" until things go way beyond point of recovery, because powerful psychopaths will not let their power get taken away.
Not sure if this is just evolutionary biology, but this cycle of psychopaths at the top has been going on since when, at least ancient Egypt. And in all these thousands of years, the system that enables this cycle got way more reinforced than it got dismantled.
So is it maybe better idea to put benevolent people's energy towards designing and preparing a new societal system that will have built-in mechanisms for preventing corruption and malevolence?
"prepare" as in get ready to implement for when the current messed up system is about to grind to a halt and collapse?
Well, it would be best to figure out how to go full Benevolent Theseus™ by replacing parts of currently failing system with the corruption-proof ones.
What are some resources related to this topic?
Recearch on societal dynamics, designing political systems, examples of similar revolutions that already happened, etc.
Post any links that you consider relevant
Holy shit, I wish I could upvote this more than once.
In the US we live in a participatory democracy. If the citizens of this country don't actively participate in how the government functions, then all is lost.
One of the biggest tools that fascists use to subvert the will of the people is turn off various groups from caring about what is going on. They spread misinformation about this and lies about that. They act like things can get fixed with a snap of a leader's fingers, but that's not how reality works, so they complain about why we still have problems.
With that comes endless conspiracies and in general a mistrust and break down of government. And it all kind of steamrolls because the fewer people who follow the news and politics closely, the easier to let corruption go unchallenged.
I have to say, I'm pretty sure the US approach of seeming hyper democracy (voting for the local garbage men boss, sheriffs, etc) is actually detrimental to democracy in practice. You're flooded with choices that you can't reasonably be expected to be able to actually make an informed decision about. Simply because of time constraints, you can't study garbage policy issues 4h a day, every day, after work.
I can respect that y'all kind of hate my kind here and I'm going to use this comment to share only the most unobjectionable works that even the most anticommunist liberal should find completely and utterly appealing
Fully Automated Luxury Communism is a book about how we have all of the tools at our disposal right now to automate at least 50% of the work that we have to do to stay alive, and thus get rid of that work as a tool of coercion and exertion of power.
How Capitalism Ends is about how the power got to the concentrations it has today, where we can expect it to go by extrapolating that tendency, why there was no other way it could have gone, and what we can do now to start building the next thing.
These are two very good and easy starts to starting to think about this problem. I'm happy to field questions about the works or anything else related.
It's a fascinating read. I very much recommend the chapter covering the Black Plague. Seems rather relevant nowadays.
Employers lost no time pressuring the authorities to curb the rising cost of labor. Less than a year after the arrival of the Black Death in England, in June 1349, the crown passed the Ordinance of Laborers:
Since a great part of the population, and especially workers and employees (“servants”), has now died in this pestilence many people, observing the needs of masters and the shortage of employees, are refusing to work unless they are paid an excessive salary. . . . We have ordained that every man or woman in our realm of England, whether free or unfree, who is physically fit and below the age of sixty, not living by trade and exercising a particular craft, and not having private means of land of their own upon which they need to work, and not working for someone else, shall, if offered employment consonant with their status, be obliged to accept the employment offered, and they should be paid only the fees, liveries, payments or salaries which were usually paid in the part of the country where they are working in the twentieth year of our reign [1346] or in some other appropriate year five or six years ago. . . . No one should pay or promise wages, liveries, payments or salaries greater than those defined above under pain of paying twice whatever he paid or promised to anyone who feels himself harmed by it. . . . Artisans and labourers ought not to receive for their labour and craft more money than they could have expected to receive in the said twentieth year or other appropriate year, in the place where they happen to be working; and if anyone takes more, let him be committed to gaol.
The actual effect of these ordinances appears to have been modest. Just two years later, another decree, the Statute of Labourers of 1351, complained that said employees, having no regard to the said ordinance but rather to their own ease and exceptional greed, withdraw themselves to work for great men and others, unless they are paid livery and wages double or treble what they were accustomed to receive in the said twentieth year and earlier, to the great damage of the great men and the impoverishing of all the Commons and sought to remedy this failure with ever more detailed restrictions and penalties. Within a generation, however, these measures had failed.
Liquid democracy is a proposed way to do a direct democracy in a large country. It's only been tried on very small scales (Google used it to decide which food to get for their cafeterias), so we don't really know if it would work, but I like the idea.
I'd point out that there are countries which don't have much corruption or governmental malfeasance. Nordic countries tend to score very well on the Corruption Perception Index, and also have good social safety nets and governments that (generally, for the most part) serve the people. They're all small countries, though -- I suspect that politics becomes an increasingly dirty business the more power a country has.
If you haven't already, you might want to look into selectorate theory. It essentially shows not only how the psychopaths at the top stay in power, but also why attempts to reform the system often result in a new crop of rulers who are just as bad or worse than those they replaced. (c.f. Cromwell's revolt, French Revolution, Russian Revolution). A proponent of selectorate theory would argue that the solution is not to remove the psychopaths -- it's to create a system where things in a politician's selfish interest happen to line up with things that benefit the people. It's excellently summed up by this video.
One reform method that has worked before is unionization. The vast majority of worker protections came about because of labour action. Unions are a lot weaker than they used to be, but it doesn't have to stay that way. If you can, unionizing your workplace is probably the most impactful action you could take to improve the existing system.
If your tastes are more radical, you could also consider mutual aid societies. A robust one could conceivably Theseus its way into failing institutions, or evolve into a provisional government if everything collapses.
I don't see it as obvious. If anything it makes it harder for vested interests to have an outsized influence, since there are no traditional politicians to bribe. What flaws do you see that I'm missing?
"Alpha psychopaths in power", as you describe them, have always, and still, understand that their power exists entirely at the whim of the masses.
And so conjuring an excuse has preoccupied them since at least the dawn of history. "Ordained by god" was the go-to for several mellenia.
Now, it seems the tactic is just to manufacture division within the working class. Racism, ideological boogeymen (SOCIALISTS!!), xenophobia, rural/urban friction, and increasingly gender/sexuality, sexism... ANY way you can slice the common man into two segments and convince them that the OTHER side is bent on their destruction.
It's great because it's a machine that feeds itself. You see the two lines of people screaming at eachother, they manifest through their hatred the threat the other side fears.
As soon as the "betas", as you put it, stop fighting themselves, it's game over.
The solution is probably the least likely thing, though. People, even a small dedicated number of them, who can resist the urge to dunk on their ethically inferior "opponents", and instead treat their "enemies" with dignity... who can view "the other" as a valuable human temporarily on the wrong side of an issue, then things can change. Daryl Davis (the black dude who keeps flipping KKK members) has it figured out.
It sucks because we have an example of how to do it (Daryl), but it's hard. It's slow. It isn't funny, and it isn't sexy. It demands so much more from you than taking a quick snipe and returning to your own echo chamber for accolades.
So yeah. The answer is plain, but our society does not actually value the efforts or skills that permit it. Possibly also by design of the ruling class.
Who decides what is stupid and what isn't? There better be a good, clear, obvious, and universal objective method of identifying stupidity if you're going to treat it as malicious.
That's part of the deal: you don't need to. Once stupidity and malice are taken as morally equivalent, it becomes morally irrelevant to decide if someone's actions are motivated by one or another.
My point is that people give a free pass to actions harming the others, as long as they're seen as "unintentional"; for example, the "powerful psychopaths" OP talks about often rely on it. And yet nobody knows someone else's intentions, we know at most what others do and what they say.
So for example. Your business relies on blood diamonds? You're financing terrorism and should be treated as such, regardless of your intentions. Your corporation employs slave work? You shall be treated as a slaver, committing crimes against humankind.
You do need to take into account if someone is able to be held responsible for one's own actions. But we already do this anyway, so no change.
I tend to agree with him and I think that the society where he lived is a great example of what happens when we let stupidity go rampant: Nazi Germany was a stupidocracy.
Stupid people will treat that as hostility and shut off their reasoning. That's unfortunately how humans work - question their beliefs, and they will believe even harder and attack you for even hinting that their beliefs are wrong.
Sects are the obvious example of that behavior, but on smaller scales, we are all a bit like that.
The stupid already treat random shit as hostility, and they already shut off their reasoning (otherwise they wouldn't be stupid). So there's no change in that.
I believe that you're right, when you say that we [humans in general] are all a bit like that. Even then, we're fairly flexible - we only behave like morons when we get away with it.
Read the rest of the comment chain. As I already said, you don't need to decide which sort of behaviour is stupidity or not; you just stop trying to decide what's "intentional".
In no moment I said or even implied that I shall be "the one to judge". So stop making shit up.
And no, I am not fascist. Again, stop making shit up.
Also, you're being a great example of what I'm talking about, because odds are that you're full of "good intentions" behind your little witch hunt, but you're effectively contributing with fascists by giving them a reasonable cover and desensitising people towards the word. Just like the boy who cried wolf contributed with the wolves.
That's like cutting off the top layer of the skin cancer without addressing the underlying causes.
It's a fun "fuck the man" statement that's worse than worthless because it makes solutions seem like they need to be radical without actually proposing a real solution.
It's been done before. How did that work out for Russia? Or China? Or anywhere else that the rich died at the hands of the poor?
What happened was that corruption was always the underlying cancer and it never actually went away, it just changed around what organ it infected as one was cut out and replaced by another.
Want to see billionaires lose all their wealth? Create a labor backed "proof of work" currency system they can't buy into and stop considering their money to have value. No blades required. Just pay taxes on estimated profits so you play by the rules. What happens to a billionaire when the dollar value of a gallon of milk goes through the roof but the labor value for it remains constant?
Corruption loves to live among middlemen. And we live in an age where most middlemen can be cut out of transactions. And within the decade that's going to be even easier.
What do you think is going to happen when open sourced AI lawyers can generate legal paperwork for cents on a dollar? How much does that benefit Walmart, who already have teams of lawyers on retainer? How does that help the people who work at Walmart? Or the local grocer they are trying to put out of business with unfair competition practices?
Transactional costs are about to go to shit. And with that in mind, I would encourage anyone here to read the economic paper from a century ago "the nature of the firm" positioning the entire existence of the mega corporation as worthwhile based on the existence of high transactional costs.
Corporations and billionaires are already screwed beyond measure. It's just no one's realized it yet because the Jenga tower still has pieces left so everyone points at the monolith and exclaims how it's going to still be around for as long as it's been standing.
Violent revolution is pointless and just going to set back the conditions for their own demise that the capitalist prisoner's dilemma of competition is about to deliver.
Don't sharpen a guillotine. Become better friends with your neighbors and network online with labor in the same sector to prepare for what's ahead.
The chips are falling into place. I just hope people at large aren't so caught up in their own BS that they pass up the opportunity that's going to present, as I'm not sure there will ever be another like it.
I believe that the massive scale of corruption that exists within the capitalist system necessitates rebuilding from the ground up. Part of the solution is going to be intentional communities (I hope anyway) where we’re building communities with the intention of solving some of these large scale problems (scarcity, pollution, racial injustice, etc) in the community. There’s a collection of already existing communities on ic.org where you can find resources on how to build a community or where to find them. There’s every flavor of community whether you’re looking for a commune, a spiritual community, an eco-friendly community, permaculture, etc.
This is called "technocracy", and while it's cool on paper, it leads to a disconnect between the people in charge and the actual problems of the people.
And GIEC/IPCC is a consensus body that is consistently behind the curve on the science.
Imagine if we’d just listened to scientists directly. We could have gotten started on tackling climate change before the Rio conference in 1992 even took place.
Uh, the Clintons weren’t the smartest amongst us. Smarter than some sure, and that’s a pretty low bar these days, but I lived through that era. We were not governed by our smartest, by any stretch.
If CBT and DBT were taught to kids in school... man, what a change that would make. To be taught at a young age how to control thoughts, cope with stress, face emotions, communicate effectively.
Evolve labor strikes from the dark ages with guerilla tactics.
In every company I've ever consulted for, there were bottlenecks where a handful of people in key roles not showing up to work would tank the entire operation.
Why the hell are we still striking with everyone walking out instead of everyone clocking in and getting paid and funneling money to keep key roles empty as the coffers burn while revenue drops and payroll still runs?
Why are strikes so often per-company (or worst per-store) instead of per-industry?
In the digital age organization is theoretically much easier than it has ever been.
And yet labor is still playing with the 1920s playbook while corporate is hiring specialized modern talent to combat it.
What about seizing the means of production?
Look at the actors strike, whining about studios using AI to replace them.
Why the hell aren't the actor unions building their own AI platform for generative performances? It'd unquestionably be a better product working with talent than competitors ostracized by talent. Reminds me of when the MPAA fought against Napster instead of embracing the tides of change and as a result missed the boat on owning digital distribution platforms to Apple and others.
But no. People are scared of change and cling to the status quo even when that isn't working very well for them.
Embrace change. Focus on progress. Evolve.
If the masses can do that faster and better than the boardroom (which really shouldn't be that hard as those guys suck at embracing progress and abandoning status quo), then the masses are going to be holding the bag at the end of the changes coming.
If the masses can't organize enough to stay ahead...
Well, we should probably all learn to enjoy eating cardboard and watching the world burn around us.
This is a question too complex for a Lemmy thread, here are some thoughts.
Being a net positive will make things better, per difinition. That's what everyone of us can do, regardless of what you are doing. Of course this requires a reasonable process of deciding what's right, so take a look at the next point.
Think. To think is naturally the greatest skill of any human. Our intelligence has been key since we started civilisation. Think about everything, be critical about any ideas. Only ideas supported by facts can be good ideas. This is how you find the stuff that makes your life worse. Does your city need to be designed like this? Does a omnipotent being make sense? Do I need to slack off today?
Unrelated, but working together with others is beneficial to everyone. Cooperation is what got us so fary and what will bring us beyond the stars. One thing I want to point out specifically is that world federalism, albeit hard to achieve, is a worthwhile end goal.
I think the best anyone can do is try to make life as good as possible in their mini sphere of influence, their personal bubble of friends and relationships. If everyone did that, society would be better. I'm not sure what to do about psychopaths in power. Maybe deal with the psychopaths in your personal world or aim to reduce your own personal behavior that's harmful to others?
Take good care of yourself and always claim the rest you need - don't let anyone call you lazy, disabled or mentally ill for working during as many hours of the day as you want. Being productive is not a virtue.
After you have spent enough time resting: support your local mutual aid circle, or (help) create one. Use your talents and skills to help and support others in your community as much as you can afford. Try and work without participation from the existing authorities (not always possible, but at least don't seek their support unless you have to), basically create your own self-government infrastructure within the crumbling ruins of the old society - like a new tree growing in a hollow stump.
Morality is shaped by your material conditions, that is, the society, culture, religion, thinkers etc. that comprise the place you were born and taught, calling the bourgeoisie immoral psychopaths doesn't really do anything. The way to deal with this is to toss morality aside and see the relations of power for what they are, exploitation of a class by another, as have happened for basically the entirety of human history.
This claims for a solution then, ending the exploitation which necessitates ending the division of classes by preventing that a ruling class comes to existence. This is basically the premise to communism.
The problem with waiting for the current system do collapse is that Capitalism has shown to be much more resilient than expected. The contradictions of capital are intensifying still to this day and more and more people are noticing it, but it is to be expected that the capitalists will do anything they can to keep the machine working.
Trying to change the system from within doesn't really work, like you said, the ruling class is not gonna let their power get taken way. One example of this is what happened on Chile with elected socialist president Salvador Allende 50 years ago.
A change this big in society doesn't happen peacefully, it will need a full out revolution that will lead to "injuries". It is unfortunate and me and, I think, everyone would like it to not be this way, but it is.
Here are some resources for anyone that wants to start learning:
I'm currently taking a class about this (kinda). The current system, which is, in the states, neoliberal capitalism (redundancy for clarity) encourages people to act immorally, or more accurately under a set of morals that justifies those actions. A different system can encourage a different set of actions to get success, and a different set of morals to justify those actions. This is a large part of politics. The other part is praxis, or getting that in place. I'm not going to share the set of theory I believe in, but rather common ways people try to impose their desired version of society.
One way is through the current system, even if you want to completely change it. This is what the class I am talking about. You identify who has power, why they act the way they do, and how you can get them to enact your policies, or at least gain power yourself. This method falls under a lot of criticism, as it stands to reason that a system built by those in power cannot overthrow them. You can't use the master's tools against him.
The other way is revolution, but that has its own problems. It is hard to convince people to completely change everything, and when it does happen, it often happens in the best way possible for those who have power. It also isn't any more moral than the other options, but that is the nature of changing an immoral system. Welcome to politics.
Disclaimer: I'm by no means an expert, as I am just getting into political theory, both in my own studies and formal education.
The problem is that the disenfranchised citizens don't believe they can make a change. Voting, ok but it's been shown that politicians do not make policy based on the will of the people. If ten million citizens showed up at the SCOTUS and said, motherfuckers you are out of line! and yeeted the fascists out of the country, it would circumvent the red tape, processes, and rules that the powerful have put in place to maintain minority rule. We've been indoctrinated into following rules and laws that serve the billionaire class.
It's too connected and secure. No pockets of diversity can form instead everything is going to merge into one large mass.Then within the large groups the successful and determined aren't rewarded enough as they are just apart of that mass.
Idiocracy is right. Idiots with no jobs will have loads of kids.
We need people to care about themselves and society again rather just caring about feelings. People don't even care about their country and countrymen and willing to drop it at the first hint of something better.
solves nothing. you eliminate a negligible amount of carbon emissions. focusing on our individual impact is a waste of time when there are companies and their leaders doing orders of magnitude more damage.
Companies and their leaders are paid by individuals, lol. Going vegan definitely does help.
Even still, why did you only mention carbon emissions? The question was about making a better society. Did you forget that veganism is about animal rights?
i think studying spirituality and doing meditation can bring us together, that is the only way we can understand all human and living being are same there is no difference between us (on spiritual level off course). There is too much discrimination in this world, rich vs poor, white people vs darker color people, america vs china vs russia, straight people vs LGBTQ+ community, communist vs capitalism vs socialism, vegan people vs meat lover, religion vs atheist.
spirituality can solve things which religion couldn't.
Get rid of extremists, both commies and nazis kind of extremists. Then make the Internet less connected so hive minds don't show up. Bully anyone who is making a fool of themselves