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from the Wait-long-enough-and-sc-fi-always-becomes-sci-fact dept.
In 1951 Isaac Asimov inflicted psychohistory on the world with the Foundation Trilogy. Now, thanks to data sets going back more than 2,500 years, scientists have discovered the rules underlying the rise and fall of civilizations, after examining more than 400 such historical societies crash and burn - or in some cases avoid crashing. More here:
Turchin's approach to history, which uses software to find patterns in massive amounts of historical data, has only become possible recently, thanks to the growth in cheap computing power and the development of large historical datasets. This "big data" approach is now becoming increasingly popular in historical disciplines. Tim Kohler, an archaeologist at Washington State University, believes we are living through "the glory days" of his field, because scholars can pool their research findings with unprecedented ease and extract real knowledge from them. In the future, Turchin believes, historical theories will be tested against large databases, and the ones that do not fit – many of them long-cherished – will be discarded. Our understanding of the past will converge on something approaching an objective truth.
Discuss. Or throw rocks.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday November 18 2019, @11:42PM
You are absolutely correct that "to each..." seems to remove the economic incentives to strive. There are other kinds of incentives but I won't argue that point, I have a feeling that, on the balance, you're correct, and society needs those material incentives to prosper.
But what you are imagining is communism, not socialism.
And since I suddenly saw your quote in a different light that's more interesting than what I was going to write about, let me offer a different take than yours (which may well have little to do with what Marx meant)
Take it the two partial statements as a skeleton:
From each according to their ability could be expressed as - "the system" should extract as much out of each individual as their reasonable amount of their effort can deliver
to each according to their need - nobody should ever need anything that "the system" can deliver.
Now, let me describe a system where the "To..." is true. Nobody *needs* anything - you have free access to medical care, simple robes, clean water, a 3'x7' sleeping cubicle, and all the nutritious ration-bars you can choke down. You can spend your days wandering the world in a health, comfort, and safety that our stone-age ancestors could only dream of. You need for nothing, but there's certainly a huge amount of room for improvement.
Now, myself? I think that world leaves a whole lot of room for economic incentives to secure the "From" part of the equation. Especially with automation rapidly reducing just how much "from" is really needed to deliver the "to".
Add in free education, transportation, and basic banking, so that those lacks don't hinder people from effectively working to better themselves and their position, and you've got a society in which any peasant with the potential and ambition can pursue whatever career path they wish, limited only by their own efforts and the competition. Without being chained back by the need to work 40+ hours a week just to keep themselves alive.
You also eliminate the element of coercion from employment negotiations. Without the fear of death or homelessness to motivate them, workers at the bottom of the ladder are free to pass up on any opportunity they don't deem equitable. I'm willing to bet that causes a substantial increase in the combination of money and respect paid to them for their services, with likely trickle-up effects for everybody above them on the ladder.