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How to Start a Utopia; Purely Hypothetical


The Dryad

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The closest you will ever get to a utopia is to design a system that prohibits the accumulation or centralization of wealth/power. Every societal system humans have ever created has always done this and the end result is always the same. The eventual collapse of those civilizations and diaspora or extinction of their people. Their traditions largely erased or forgotten. To be read about in history books, the wrong lessons learned from their collapses. Even if you were to create such a system there would be forces seeking to condense power from within it. Worse yet there would be other civilizations that would seek to subjugate yours regardless of how peaceful and productive you fancy yourselves. 

 

It is a problem the Mk I. Model I. Homo sapiens is ill equipped to deal with. "At the very least a large portion of homo sapiens." Our species would have to evolve at a fairly fundamental level for what most people consider a "utopia" to be possible. Such a leap of evolution would not come without a cataclysm that we haven't seen since the last great extinction. With no guarantee that natural selection would afford for the traits you would need the successors of homo sapiens to have, in order to survive let alone create a utopia. 

 

We would have to become something far more ghastly than you'd dare imagine. An extraordinary dark chapter of biological history before the light would eventually come....if it ever does. Utopia does not work because even if one were to be established, there would be individuals and groups that seek to subjugate others from within and outside said society. Coupled with the Pareto Principle it would be next to near impossible to maintain it unless our species "as it exists now" does one simple thing.

 

Acknowledge that while inequality is built into our very existence, we do not have to squabble over the scraps. Not when there is so much more out there in our nearly incomprehensibly large and expanding universe.

 

And when entropy does come for us, as it must, we can stand together to face the darkness, and maybe even escape it. 

 

Or we can do what we're used to. Argue over what's the best way to exist and kill each other when we don't agree.

 

Which path do you think we will take?

 

 

 

 

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Calligraphette_Coe
18 hours ago, lapat67 said:

Indeed, @Woodworker1968, if people talk about a global society, I imagine this impersonal juggernaut. I think a lot of what is wrong with the USA simply comes from it being too big. I'm a believer in the subsidiary principle, where decisions get made at the smallest level possible. I think it's not a coincidence that countries that I really think are worth emulating are small, like Bhutan and Denmark, or are regions or cities, like Catalunya and Curitiba.

 

@Ardoise, somewhat related to that, I think a big part of why we so often make a mess is, if you will, our good intentions, i.e. that we jump in and want to improve things. If I may be so minimalist, I would suggest in the first instance to do no harm.

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-09-28/can-new-energy-technologies-save-the-planet-ask-the-sperm-whale/

 

@Calligraphette_Coe, a vicious cycle and a virtuous cycle are both due to positive feedback, it's just that what gets amplified in the former case is the problems and in the latter the rewards.

That's true in an ideal system, but there's always a rub. Along Comes A Spider/Trees never grow into heaven and all of sudden, that infinite gain amplifier turns into a oscillator, turning the Virtuous Circle into a Vicious cyle.  I think it was Carl Jung who said " For a tree to grow into heaven, its roots must reach to hell."

 

The true genius of a Utopia would be it's ability to keep delivering rewards while keeping an eye on stability. To do that, it might sometimes need to moderate the system with negative feedback. Whether it be taxes or higher interest rates, such devices keep the system from tearing itself apart. The Utopian Engineer realizes that Trees Never Grow Into Heaven, and tries mostly to keep the forst from burning down and keeping the inhabitants safe. She is undaunted by the problems, knowing that they can often be solved by applying sometimes unorthodox methods, and that the system only works when there are  Win/Win scenarios that dominate. NOT the zero sum games often touted as Utopian, when really they are only Duck Blinds (such as Trickle Down Ecomomics that only benefit the Spiders).

 

I think we are already on that road. Look back hundreds of years-- even the poorest of people now often live better than the Kings of medieval times. We still have to solve the Tragedy of the Commons, but if we don't give up and sucumb to quick fix measures like tax cuts, we can do the work that will yield the rewards and keep a stable society.

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On 9/9/2018 at 8:15 PM, MichaelTannock said:

Cakes are always fun, so here's a cake analogy to explain how this law works: Let's say you have a party, and you need someone to cut the cake. The problem is that anyone you choose to cut the cake will cut it unevenly, and get the larger slice. So, you give someone the knife, ask them to cut the cake, and tell them that they get the last pick. This guarantees that they will do their best to cut the cake evenly because there's a "veil of ignorance" over who will get the larger slice. And it won't be them.

This is just mathematical nitpicking but that isn’t the best way to cut a cake.  Sure, it starts similar with one person cutting it into n slices for n people. However then everyone evaluates ( excluding the cutter) to say if the cake is fairly cut. If all slices are cut fairly they are distributed then but if only one slice is cut smaller that is given to the cutter. Otherwise the smallest or one of the equal sized slices which are all smallest is given to them. Then the remaining cake will be reamassed and the 2nd last person will cut, with the same procedure applying, so on and so forth until the cake has been fully distributed.

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Utopia societies are impossible to maintain. You can, theoretically, create one but it will only last for so long (depending on the type of people you put into it). So, I personally will never attempt to make a Utopia simply because I know it will fail eventually. Either in a month, or a year. It will break and the people I put into this situation will only get hurt or possibly killed, which I rather not do.

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  • 3 weeks later...
SorryNotSorry

I think a more practical approach would be a two-state solution. Just run a border from one side of the desired country to the other. On one side, everything is totally legal, everyone is mellow, they live and let live. On the other side of the border, doing your own thing is BAD, everything is illegal as hell, and everyone is a killjoy asshole, like what a lot of people want the US to become. The key to the divided state's longevity is to maintain free exchange so all the assholes who are miserable in the mellow region can move to the unfree side of the border, and the mellow people who keep breaking the rules in the unfree side can move to the mellow side.

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22 hours ago, Woodworker1968 said:

I think a more practical approach would be a two-state solution. Just run a border from one side of the desired country to the other. On one side, everything is totally legal, everyone is mellow, they live and let live. On the other side of the border, doing your own thing is BAD, everything is illegal as hell, and everyone is a killjoy asshole, like what a lot of people want the US to become. The key to the divided state's longevity is to maintain free exchange so all the assholes who are miserable in the mellow region can move to the unfree side of the border, and the mellow people who keep breaking the rules in the unfree side can move to the mellow side.

Eventually each separate state would become "corrupt" though- wanting their own separate state, there's no guarantee that everyone completely agrees, even if they're "mellow".

 

A couple of years ago, one of my best friends and I were talking about this, and we thought that the sci-fi testing were the best solutions. Testing personalities, IQs, etc. sounds like the most sure-fire way to guarantee you get the people you want (like Divergent, the Uglies, etc. Basically any sci-fi dystopian Utopia) but it's still not guaranteed to last.

 

Even if you have the freedom to move societies based on personal preference, there's no guarantee that the society you move to will work for you.

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SorryNotSorry
10 hours ago, Vincent Van Schmo said:

Hire an idiot to start a dystopia.

Uhh, we did that here in the US in November of 2016.

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Joe the Stoic
5 hours ago, Woodworker1968 said:

Uhh, we did that here in the US in November of 2016.

We hired him to make America great, not to make a dystopia.  That's why it's not going well.

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SorryNotSorry
7 hours ago, Vincent Van Schmo said:

We hired him to make America great, not to make a dystopia.  That's why it's not going well.

Either way, we sure got stuck with a bill of goods.

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On 10/25/2018 at 11:22 PM, Vincent Van Schmo said:

Hire an idiot to start a dystopia.

It would be extremely scary to live in Donald Trump's "Utopia".

 

What if Utopia can't exist in the physical world? (Which we already know to be true) and we have to resort to virtual Utopias to keep the population sane and happy, especially the way the world is going... 

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7 hours ago, The Dryad said:

 and we have to resort to virtual Utopias to keep the population sane and happy

Bread (Panem) and circuses, television, internet, obsolescent clothes made in sweat-shops,. Yeah, our virtual utopias really keep us sane and happy.

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SorryNotSorry
On 10/28/2018 at 7:50 AM, The Dryad said:

It would be extremely scary to live in Donald Trump's "Utopia".

Unless of course you're Michael Corleone...

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