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Whales in 19th century shared information about ship attacks

theguardian.com

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Re: Whales in 19th century shared information about ship attacks

#81

Post by leto_ii »

WalterBright wrote: post #79
leto_ii wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems I didn't get my point across, so here's an explicit statement: The fact that certain human institutions or behaviors face strong opposition in certain contexts doesn't say much about human nature. w.r.t. your example, this would mean that the failure of communes in the US doesn't say much about the failure/success of communes in other places/times. Nor does it say much about human nature in general.

Why wouldn't a diverse society that allows people to freely join and leave communes, and those communes are not successful, say a lot about human nature?

Setting the US aside for a bit, how do you explain the success of the kibbutzim movement [1]?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz

Re: Whales in 19th century shared information about ship attacks

#82

Post by WalterBright »

leto_ii wrote: post #81
WalterBright wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't a diverse society that allows people to freely join and leave communes, and those communes are not successful, say a lot about human nature?

Setting the US aside for a bit, how do you explain the success of the kibbutzim movement [1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz

Simple. The Israeli government gives them money to make up for their failure to be self-sustaining. Money they tax from the capitalists.

Re: Whales in 19th century shared information about ship attacks

#83

Post by WalterBright »

leto_ii wrote: post #69
WalterBright wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the Native American tribes did not operate as communes. > we lived in small bands of hunter-gatherers where selfishness could lead to ostracization. Are you sure they were communes? Slavery goes as far back as we can tell. The head of the band didn't get the best food? Nobody owned their horse, weapons, etc.? They certainly traded. Why wouldn't they trade amongst themselves?

I recommend Jared Diamond's 'The World Until Yesterday' ('Guns, Germs and Steel' also covers some related topics), or Frans de Waal's 'The Bonobo and the Atheist'. In general I think there's broad agreement that in bands and small tribes of up to a few hundred people there's basically no hierarchy. Even when a chief emerges, he/she doesn't have a lot of power over others - they're more like mediators, they alleviate…

Diamond is more of a political hack with an agenda than a serious historian.

That aside, the most obvious evidence that the Native American communities were not collectives is they practiced slavery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_among_Native_Americans...

which also states "property and hereditary leadership passed through the maternal line." Valuable property is not a sign of a commune.

> basically no hierarchy

That doesn't imply they shared everything equally. If I own more horses than you, it doesn't mean I control you.

> Individualism however is not the same as selfishness, collaboration is not the same as collectivism).

I say that over and over again in this thread, including in my opening post.

Re: Whales in 19th century shared information about ship attacks

#84

Post by WalterBright »

TFYS wrote: post #77
nickpp wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> incompatible with human nature A commune will inevitably fail if its members are allowed to leave at will. Because individual productivity of people varies, in time the most productive members will grow dissatisfied with the way the rewards are distributed and quit, the commune remaining stuck with the moochers. It is human nature, just like in another great example, the Tragedy of Commons.

Why are the most productive members dissatisfied with the distribution of rewards, though? Is some kind of an ideal distribution part of human nature, or is it maybe learned from the environment you grow up in? If a more equal distribution was the norm in our culture, they might not get dissatisfied.

People have tried to indoctrinate children with equal distribution. It doesn't work. It doesn't work no matter what the person believes.

A simple gedanken experiment will illustrate. You and Bob are stranded on an island. You and Bob agree to form a commune, and share equally in all the food gathered.

Bob figures, why work, when TFYS is working hard and will split what he gathers with Bob.

Is TFYS going to be dissatisfied that he does all the work and Bob does nothing?

Re: Whales in 19th century shared information about ship attacks

#85

Post by ganafagol »

WalterBright wrote: post #55
ganafagol wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's you that has a too narrow definition of "collective". It's a cooperative organization. Nothing in that definition demands self-sacrifice.

> Nothing in that definition demands self-sacrifice. Sure it does. In a commune, everything produced is shared equally. That's self-sacrifice, as in if you produce more than the mean, that is taken from you.

You realize that "collective" and "commune" are different words right?
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