Albert Einstein in 1939 composed a message for the people of AD 6939
futilitycloset.com
futilitycloset.com
> the intelligence & character of the masses are incomparably lower than the intelligence and character of the few...
I don't think Einstein is comparing the most intelligent individuals to the least (or average) here. Certainly there are individuals who are more intelligent than the average, but I would argue not incomparably so.
I believe he's speaking about the tendency of large groups of people to act more like cattle than people. The intelligence of the mob (and the character, represented by the actions of the mob) are what I see as incomparably lower than that of an individual.
And I think this is indicated by the other shortcomings of 20th century humanity that he passes along. War isn't waged by individuals (or even groups of exclusively idiots and villains). There are a bunch of physiological and sociological variables introduced that make the output of the group stupider and less caring than the output of the individual.
There is a tendency to modernize or whitewash the views of heroes of the past so they pass muster today.
A generation ago we had far less reticence to categorize and rank people, for better and for worse.
I don’t know enough about Einstein to have a strong opinion here so this is a question more than rebuttal.
Does he normally write in loose metaphor or is he generally straight to the point?
Did he mean valuable things like bread, or only extreme value like electrodynamics? Well he didn’t say “extreme value” and it’s easy to argue the character of productive members of society is above that of pickpockets so that fits.
So IMO a straightforward interpretation would be calling the great masses of humanity dumb rather than extolling the virtues of bakers.
There is really only one way to read his message. Which is a good thing, given that it is intended to be transmitted across 5000 years.
“everybody must live in fear of being eliminated from the economic cycle” not fear of failing to create the next wonder.
Thus emphasizing the critical nature of workers. It’s easy to read as pro social safety net or event collectivist terms. But stating a problem alone doesn’t suggest a solution.
This thread is a clear indicator that ther are multiple ways to read it. One may seem more valid than others but it's not at all unambiguous.
I'd love to know what the people in 5000 years, if there are any, project onto this. Maybe they'll refer back to this thread and fall into two major camps.
The intelligent few will produce more novel ideas, combined or individually, than the masses.
Whom by definition produce nothing (at least nothing novel).
I'm not saying mine is the right answer, but I definitely think it is an answer.
Also, why do the Nazis have "Socialist" in their moniker if they were fascist? Can a society/political movement be socialist and fascist simultaneously?
> Also, why do the Nazis have "Socialist" in their moniker if they were fascist? Can a society/political movement be socialist and fascist simultaneously?
They're both high authoritarian societies. Nazis were just for murder along geographic and racial boundaries rather than class boundaries.
Sure, nothing really excludes one from the other I think. You can take all of Europe now, give them a superiority complex, and you’d have a fantastic facist socialist republic.
Even though they have a long history of it, Europe still has a ways to go to get back there :P
Cool take tho
China is a communist state but wants and enforces uniform ciltural norms. The most oppressive regimes of today are communist regimes.
Because a fundamental principle underlying fascism is that words don’t have any inherent or collective meaning, beyond how they’re used in the moment by “the strong” to dominate “the weak.” It’s an irrational ideology.
Why did East Germany call itself the "German Democratic Republic"?
The best way to capture that opposition was to get the Socialists on his side so that's what he went for by calling his party Socialist and setting them in direct opposition to the Communists.
(Why Hitler?: The Genesis of the Nazi Reich, Mitcham, 1996)
I can't tell if you're being serious
Liberal used to mean libertarian prior to the 60s.
I think this misses the forest for the trees. IMO, even if the GPs interpretation is wrong, it's still a far more interesting and insightful observation (that groups so often behave so much worse than individuals) than the alternative (some people are a lot smarter than others).
As far as absolute comparisons of intelligence goes, we don't yet have a way to measure it and may never have. The best we can do are relative comparisons like IQ. So he may well be spot-on in his assessment, and we should respect his point of view, because he was clearly very close to the top of the mountain in his (and every) time.
He revolutionized classical physics, made huge advancements in the brand new field of quantum mechanics (unwillingly at first) and made tons of very interesting philosophical works.
I don't know enough about Einstein to say whether or not he was also an S-tier, but I have often heard it said that someone would have figured out the stuff he is most famous for if he hadn't been there. Because others were working on similar math. And I've also read about Von Neumann just solving unsolvable things on whim, inventing new concepts whole cloth that weren't even the focus of his work, etc.
Nobody could say Einstein wasn't brilliant, but his being famous doesn't mean he was the most brilliant. For that matter, we should acknowledge that the smartest person to have ever lived might have died without ever touching a pencil, because we still use "being born in the right place" as a proxy for greatness. Should we ever meet the basics needs of everyone and to allow every mind to flourish, we might find our greats are less rare than we thought.
Are you intending to come across as so rude? Because I'd say this sounds like your problem. Perhaps English isn't your first language, so I'll forgive your tone.
Anyway, it seems apparent to me that an academic who struggles to land a job researching or teaching after graduation is not "top tier", but as a non-academic, perhaps I misunderstand.
Famously, the man didn't fully understand the mathematics (tensor calculus and differential geometry) required to flesh out his obviously profound ideas about general relativity, so he learned them, and then proceeded to change how we think about the universe. It's completely fascinating the drive and effort required for such a thing.
I realize the profundity of the photoelectric effect, but I've read that had Einstein not figured out relativity that Poincaré wasn't far behind. Also, Einstein commented that he felt von Neumann was the "cleverest man" that he had ever known so curious what these guys thought of Einstein? I like to imagine it rather like the tensions between impressionist musicians where Einstein is the scrappy Satie and the establishment try-hards like Ravel are smugly casting judgment on his lofty ambitions, but this may not be correct.
I maintain that I am asking a fair question about how he compared to his contemporaries.
That's just relativity, but he also did groundbreaking work on atoms and light, and he even designed an interesting new refrigeration cycle.
It's not really possible to say how much raw intellectual power goes into solving a problem (yet), so it's hard to compare giants like Poincare, von Neumann, and Einstein.
Still, Einstein's mind was clearly first-rate.
I think you are cleaning up his values. He clearly seems to be pointing to a few people who produce novel ideas and creations as opposed to the mass of people who never create much of value globally out of their lives.
And actually, this statement used to be uncontroversial. Social media and the death of journalism means that our best thinkers no longer have much of a platform. It may be easy to forget and unpopular to remember, but there are some exceptional and brilliant people out there.
Indeed. The social value and inherent virtue of kings, high-priests, and robber-barons used to be beyond reproach.
Today, the gap between scholars and the public is probably much narrower. This is certainly the case in physics, and I would think in biology and chemistry as well. I believe the only fields where the gap has significantly grown are computer science and pure mathematics, simply due to rapid progress in those fields.
I would argue the opposite. Each field of study has so much more depth now that on any given topic there is more that a layperson has to learn to be on par.
Lay people do tend to be much broader generalists (at least in terms of scientific understanding) than they were in 1939 but they are further behind the specialists.
But broadly the gap between scholars and "the public" is as massive at it's ever been. Meet a few members of "the public" socially, outside of tech or academic circles or however you usually meet people. Go to some random bar or club or whatever and make some friends. I think you'll find, like I do, that most people basically don't know anything. They can sort of do 3rd grade arithmetic, but struggle to apply it, and don't know anything else about mathematics - most people don't understand how to use negative numbers or what they're for, for instance. They don't know anything about history - they don't really know what the Renaissance was, or when the Roman Empire was, or when and where human civilization began, or anything else. They absolutely know nothing about physics - they are completely unaware of the idea that acceleration due to gravity is not dependent on mass, which I see as the starting point of teaching physics.
Swap the places though and send someone who's held various mechanic, repair, manufacturing roles to a high end cocktail bar full of academics and let them ask questions on topics they know, and they'll be shocked (or maybe not) at how most of these academics basically don't know anything about how the nuts and bolts machinery that keeps the world running actually functions in real life, and certainly couldn't do most of the work themselves. They'd probably also come away thinking they'd rather have a random person from their dive bar in Nebraska help them for a day at work on a hard project than one of the people in the fancy bar.
Without being able to rely on these masses of the un-academic "public" to run the world they live in, the academics would largely be helpless and their knowledge useless as they starved to death as the world crumbled around them.
Specialized knowledge and training is amazing, and it allows us to advance as a civilization, but I don't think the average "academic" is much more intelligent or capable in the raw sense than the average person in "the public". Both are needed for society to function and progress. Without the academics there will be no progress, and without the public it will all break down.
Of course, there are also people who have little useful knowledge / skills / motivation either practical or academic. These people can however just as easily exist in the social / family circles of the elite, as in those of the public, so I don't think it's fair to throw them in either group for judgment.
But once a person's intelligence gets too low, they can't figure out anything. But, they can still learn. They don't see anything wrong with them, they think it's how the world works, people know and can do things that somebody taught them. When they see somebody figure something out, they think it's something they learned in the past, but are dumb and evil people who laugh at them for not knowing. Stupid and evil peoppe who refuse to pass on what they were taught. And they never figure out that they aren't normal, or even think that they're brilliant, because they remember more than others.
The reason why it is clear that this is not what he is doing is the rest of the text. He starts by saying that his time is rich in inventive minds. It doesn't really make sense to assert that a couple of sentences later he is arguing that the reason we have war and poverty is a lack of more inventive minds.
For context, remember this statement comes from a time when his homeland is in the grip of the Nazis and WW2 was just beginning. Why would he tell the future that there a smart people and stupid people and the problems are the fault of stupid people?
Especially given the ending I read this note with a tone of hopeful despair about our ability to overcome the emergent failings of large groups. So far I'd say he'd probably be disappointed, but we still have 4916 years to figure it out.
I believe I fall into the latter of the two, but also know folks who fall into the former. I would say pretty bluntly that they are definitely more intelligent and have better character than I do. Probably by an order of magnitude, were it something quantifiable.
This is the Jungian concept individuation.
Can you recommend any brilliant exceptions that come to mind? Especially in journalism.
This would’ve been quite obvious to someone fleeing Germany in the 1930’s after seeing what happens when the people are panicked and afraid and a charismatic leader says “I know whose fault this is and I can fix it!”
A group of people functioning with a sense of group identity behaves very very differently from what each individual member of the group may say or do on their own. Peer pressure and groupthink are powerful phenomena that can override individual character and intelligence.
Considering these circumstances, I think his assessment is spot on, and the fact that we look down on this idea nowadays (judging from the fact that this is the top-voted comment at the time of writing) may be evidence of the kind of progress he was hoping for in the last paragraph.
It's not always true of course; just a colloquialism.
> the intelligence & character of the masses are incomparably lower than the intelligence and character of the few who produce some thing valuable for the community.
It doesn't strike me as crazy that a guy who was hanging out with Gödel and von Neumann all day [0] might think this way.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Resident_schol...
Back in reality, Einstein likely had an ego the size of a large galaxy, like all the rest. I don't know that I've ever read about someone being similarly famous and them not having an unhealthy outsized ego. The fame always wins.
The masses are very commonly wrong about their adored historical figures though. Gandhi was exceptionally vile in his beliefs. Mother Teresa was a sadist that clearly enjoyed torturing people that had AIDS. FDR was a racist that put Japanese Americans in camps. Che was a sociopathic extreme homophobe and mass murderer. Napoleon was one of the great genocidal maniacs of history, almost on par with Hitler in the death and destruction he caused in attempted conquering. Bill Cosby, well, you know. And on it goes forever.
I’ve never heard of this, and the only sources I can find for the claim you made about mother Teresa make claims that the organization that mother Teresa started would refuse patients pain medication out of misguided notions. I’m curious what specifically you’re referring to here.
And as for:
> FDR was a racist that put Japanese Americans in camps
I wouldn’t go so far to say that FDR was racist for doing this. America was literally bombed and dragged into a war, and other countries were also placing civilians in internment camps. From Wikipedia:
>> Japan interned 130,000 Dutch, British, and American civilians in Asia during World War II.
Does this mean the Japanese were racist? No. This was world war, and countries were doing this as a source of leverage.
I don’t know about the rest of your examples, but I feel like you may be being a bit uncharitable in your characterization of these circumstances.
> Only hours after the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7. 1941, Austin E. Anson, managing secretary of California's powerful Salinas Valley Vegetable Grower-Shipper Association, was dispatched to Washington to urge federal authorities to remove all individuals of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. In an interview for the May 1942 Saturday Evening Post, Anson told how he drew a frightful scenario for the War and Navy departments, the attorney general and every congressman he could get to listen to him: an invading army coming ashore in Monterey Bay and advancing into the Salinas Valley while Japanese residents blew up bridges, disrupting traffic and sabotaging local defenses.
> By the end of the war, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, "farm ownership by Japanese amounted to about 30 percent of their total pre-war farm operations {and} ownership transfers to non-evacuees during and after evacuation has probably reduced these farm ownerships to less than a fourth of the total pre-war Japanese land holdings, including leaseholds . . . ." Few of the internees ever received full payment for their land.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1992/02/02/b...
This was further exposed in Korematsu vs. the US, where it was revealed that the Office of Naval Intelligence had prepared reports showing there was no actual threat, which they then hid from the courts when Japanese-American citizens sought redress through the justice system. Likewise, the FBI had already locked up or was monitoring anyone they thought was dangerous and had discredited all of the key justifications for internment:
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/blog/confession-error-s... https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese-Mexican_Labor_Assoc...
There's a fair bit of evidence that Mother Theresa had a religious appreciation for suffering that is presumably the basis for the 'sadist' assertion. That does seem like hyperbole but explaining the complicated ways that she or any of the referenced individuals far fall short of their reputations in an accurate and susinct way is hard.
https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/gcxpr5/saint_mo...
A man who brought independence to 400 million people with non-violent means was a vile man? A man who’s the “father of the nation” to 1.3 billion people was a vile man?
Are you making up your own history here?
Also: "In 1903, when Gandhi was in South Africa, he wrote that white people there should be "the predominating race." He also said black people "are troublesome, very dirty and live like animals.""
So maybe read up a little?
So what? You say that like it is some huge loss! I think the correct choice is to abscond from this culture of hero worship you're advocating for and see people for their good and bad qualities, and be ready to criticize them without hesitation. Is it so important to you to put someone on a pedestal? I find that activity morally nauseating.
> we cannot and should not hold an individual responsible for the mores of their time
That's the weakest argument. "Of their time"? Last week? Last month? 1,000 years ago? You can pick whatever date you want to justify your hero worship. Personally I don't see accepting the Neuremberg defense as an ethical (or sophisticated) position, but you do you.
If your argument is "your shirt with a picture of Lincoln on it offends me - he was a racist!", then I guess you can just kick rocks or whatever.
P.S. "racist" is lately feeling really close to "communist" of the 50s as far as how effectual it is in describing a person's character. A witch hunt, in other words.
The homophobic claim is patently false. He had no involvement in Cuba's treatment of gay people, and the only quote in which he even mentions gay people is about how he was bothered when a guy he liked was beat up. The homophobia accusation is mostly just peddled as a gotcha question. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5eFPgvhS60
Our 21st century version, at least to me, is even harder to phrase... at least currently.
I thought connecting everyone, all opinions, minds, ideas... I thought it would be good. It was, at first. There were ways for the better ideas to float. Ways for ideas to cross-pollinate.
The "society" seemed like a greater intelligence, one that I got a lot from.
Now... It's worse than I could have ever imagined. It's like every person makes the whole a little meaner, dumber, weaker of heart... The whole makes the individual a little worse.
The strategy that you can isolate one person from the herd with your online gang is deeply concerning for the future of reasonable discourse.
All the problems of politics, now permeating all of society.
We think, often, how and as we speak.. as we debate. Now that the conversation, the debate has become.. what it is, I think it really does affect how and what we think. That (garbage) mode of debating is now a major mode of thinking.
It's a mess.
> However, the production and distribution of commodities is entirely unorganized so that everybody must live in fear of being eliminated from the economic cycle
It is possible to give both an Ayn Randian interpretation.
But then: Why Socialism? by Albert Einstein: https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/
I doubt Einstein would accept an invitation to Galt's Gulch.
High school education was not at all common until the 20th century.
That means most of Einstein’s contemporaries, the masses, would have had between a 50-80% chance of a haphazard middle school level education. [0]
Contrast this with his peers in the sciences who were extremely well educated and an early generation if not the first generation of globally-connected world-class minds and there is no ambiguity about what he is saying.
> Further more, people living in different countries kill each other at irregular time intervals, so that also for this reason any one who thinks about the future must live in fear and terror.
It sounds like he's speaking to the common intervals of war during his lifetime. From 1879-1955 Einstein would have been alive for roughly 27 wars that involved the US and there's probably a multiplicative factor there for international conflicts and wars.
> This is due to the fact that the intelligence and character of the masses are incomparably lower than the intelligence and character of the few who produce some thing valuable for the community. I trust that posterity will read these statements with a feeling of proud and justified superiority.
The way I read this is that people are inevitably who vote for war. It's similar to the attitude prevalent in the song "Forever Young" by Alphaville:
Can you imagine how we won the war?
Little fascist lady she loves you so
Following her leader, she's getting in tune
The music's played by the madmen
Can you imagine when this race is won
Turn our golden faces into the sun
Praising our leaders we're getting in tune
The music's played by the madmen
> “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would never have lifted a finger.” (1947)
Although it is usually individuals who decide whether to start a war or not.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."
http://www.exponentialimprovement.com/cms/uploads/Einstein%2...
There is such straightforward simplicity to his writing that it is over-interpreted today. Chiefly, Einstein's writing is compassionate, often comparable to Erich Fromm. Here we take him as an "elitist" insulting "the masses", who are by our definition today "poor".
He often calls people idiots and is scathing about the uses to which we put technology;
" I fear the day that technology will surpass our human
interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots."
"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a
pathological criminal"
Yet my favourite, which I'd hope people of the 7th Millennium will read and nod at:
"In any conflict between humanity and technology, humanity will win."Yes, because there is always hope ;)
it's still humans v humans at the end of the day
ChatGPT would like to have a word with you.
If humanity loses even once it's Game Over.
He predicted the effect of mobile phones.
" I fear the day that technology will surpass our human
interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots."
He couldn't even make it in academia back then though, no? He failed to get a teaching position so he became a patent clerk, which is where he published his theories of relativity. One would expect that even today, papers of that magnitude would secure you a top professorship, even if you barely publish anything else.
If he wrote this again today, I wonder what he would think about the relative "character" of those who produce things of value to the community. It's a mixed bag, from my point of view -- much like the rest of society.
Modern society largely labels the financing and management arms of innovation as the producers.
Perhaps Einstein envisioned the researchers and scientists as the producers.
Thus it would not be Elon who was indicated as the intelligent producer, but rather the nameless researcher tied to a desk at one of his companies doing the work of producing.
And that the "less intelligent masses" includes the management who take that production and mismanage its distribution in maximizing short term gains in exchange for long term losses.
So the interpretation of his sentiment here would really depend on whether he'd buy into the self-branding of the rich and powerful as producers or not.
Anybody who spent any time in Academia knows that "researchers and scientists" can be as flawed as any other person, personality wise, and when it comes to professional conduct, jealousy, greed, backstabbing, etc. they're hardly better. They're also quite spineless, given all their privileges.
Holds even at PhD student level. Just because you studied at PhD level and can "produce stuff" and invent, doesn't make you a better person.
If you're a shitty person, you're now a shitty person in academia or research, whereas before you'd just be a shitty truck driver or secretary.
>Thus it would not be Elon who was indicated as the intelligent producer
Musk is hardly just "financing and management." In contrast with ~all other CEOs, Musk actually spends most of his time (and IMO contributes most of his value) on engineering, despite the ongoing propaganda to the contrary.
In short, the dude is a serious individual contributor. He may be the CEO, but he does a lot of groundwork that you would not expect, and has some serious expertise.
If I were to rephrase it, I would say society works democratically, but unfortunately the masses are much dumber than the real contributors to our society, but because their votes count the same as anyone else, the choices of the masses win elections and make bad choices. This is why there is such food and shelter insecurity.
Their "political votes" appear to count the same but if society rewards them then their economic power gives them outsized "economic votes". Every dollar spent is a vote for the service or product it is spent on.
The quote, as I interpret it, is about Price's law. Not about professions, social or economical classes.
On HN, the option to read it as an Ayn Rand style attack on the poor is likely to have more salience.
But I think, given the preceding paragraphs about having lots of goods that are poorly distributed, and having technology that "could" improve human lives, he meant it as "humanity in general are pretty shitty to each other, but there's a few people trying to do better, which is both smart and morally correct, and he hopes they win out".
This is in the context of 1939 when Adolph Hitler had wide appeal.
Your point about putting the quote in the context of the times is well made.
In those paragraphs, within context, it just meant "some have achieved much for the benefit of the population, but the population as an aggregate does not show the same spirit and ability".
To define the sets of the "well natured" vs "larvatic", the suggestive discriminator of being "benefactors to the whole" was picked.
So,
> It's a mixed bag... much like the rest of society
Yes, the point was that some strive and achieve some progressive "status", "being", "nature", and many do not: it is a wish that such good condition will be largely shared in a future society.
It is a wish that Paretian distribution is transformed into a widespread distribution of desirable «intelligence and character», as a condition for «pr[ide] and justified superiority».
"Intelligence & character of the masses are incomparably lower than the intelligence and character of the individuals."
During the lifetime of Einstein, successful and educated mimicked the values of upper classes, even if they just pretended. After the WWII the middle class values took over. Today even upper class pretends to be middle class. Try to appear busy and productive. The "character" and intelligence have little to do with each another.
Blaming masses for being not that clever is just arrogance and ignorance of the fact that intelligence is NOT required to live happily and be good to others.
And while scientists will continue this very stupid narrative of high intelligence necessity rulers and ultra-rich will continue to exploit it.
Take, for example, a hypothetical workers union in a coal mining town. Those people probably have union lawyers and decision makers staffed with the smarter people who make the decisions. It's literally a media trope: old, salty coal miner encourages his son to get educated and leave coal mining. Son gets educated, comes back, contributes to the miners in his own way.
This seems like a dangerously bad idea.
Isn't it intuitive that, for every one-in-a-billion genius with a heart of gold, there will be numerous people who only think that they know vastly better than most others?
And we can see examples of people with much more than their share of influence or resources, who seem to see themselves as historical great figures, who will do what others don't have the mind/will/strength to do. With nary a hint of gold in them thar hearts.
How about, instead, we elevate the masses, and embrace more egalitarian models, like democracy?
That elevating was an early promise/hope of things like the Internet. Now we have to smack down a bunch of people who sabotaged that, with greed and dimwittedness, dragging down the intellect and character of the masses, while presumably fancying themselves great figures.
Genuine democracy, or the theatrical impersonations we have that citizens are brainwashed into believing are genuine democracies?
But if it wasn't, recent history shows that someone with bad ideas that starts out with a heart of gold is far more dangerous than an evil genius, so I'd take my chances.
Haven't fixed that yet :)
Last discussed a couple of months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37407331
Of course there's a sizeable chunk of people who want to live plush upper middle class lives without contributing a drop of sweat into the economy.
Socialism involves heavy government intervention into the markets which includes regulatory capabilities.
Do you have a counterargument or are you going to leave it at ad hominems?
Not ad hominem: "Your statement is stupid" because it goes against what is said (however poor the statement may otherwise be).
Ad hominem: "You are stupid" because it goes against who says the statement.
GP's comment is an example of the former.
Monopolies drive the cost of items and services up. (besides having all the other negative effects that are always caused by a huge concentration of power in the hands a non-democratic institution).
And as we see and know very well, e.g. by looking around us, monopolies or (at best) duopolies are always the outcome of unregulated markets.
More or less in all sectors, and especially in this very globalised world, where economies of scale drive profits up for those who put them to effect. This of course includes the Financial sector.
So, I'd say the exact opposite of you statement is true.
I'm replying to your comment because you statement is kind of the prototypical statement of free-market champions. I'm sure this conversation has already happened tens of thousands of times.
Still, do you think you can share any more insights about how can you possibly think regulations are the reason of a higher cost of living?
Free markets do not exist. Capitalism does not exist. Socialism does not exist. Communism does not exist. Humans seem to be completely incapable of implementing any such systems. Human systems invariably seem to become oligarchies and/or fascism.
As regards your assertions of monopoly, a monopoly is essentially impossible without either a state apparatus to exploit. Otherwise, the moment money were made in any given industry, competition would result. Only via regulatory barriers to entry or via corporate welfare can a monopoly be built and maintained for any serious amount of time.
That's what I'm saying.. We seem to agree here :)
> Only via regulatory barriers (..) can a monopoly be built.
This is, to me, an absurd idea. There are a lot of other very common, real-world barriers that exist...
I don't know what you mean by corporate welfare exactly, but yes, large established capitals are a barrier.
Physical assets are a barrier. Think factories, etc. A new entry cannot just "acquire" a production plant or a datacenter or an oil pipeline. Hence having worse economies of scale, etc.
Network effects are a barrier, especially in tech. Think social networks, etc.
Control over Media channels is a barrier that huge corporations in various sectors employ very effectively.
Established guilds and cartels are a barrier. Nothing socialist about those.
Knowledge itself is a barrier, and in my opinion an underestimated one. If a firm recruits lots of very technical, hard to find knowledge on how to do a process, they'll become the best at it. Well, nothing wrong with that if they are useful. But if they congregate too much knowledge in disparate domains, without sharing it, and have the capital to defend it, they become basically unbeatable. This brings more capital, and that is how a monopoly is formed.
If anything, you should regulate that knowledge should be shared. Because that's definitely not what happens with the knowledge that actually matters.
> Only via regulatory barriers (..) can a monopoly be built.
Honestly, this is such a weird option to me, that I wonder if there are people out there who gain from intentionally pushing this propaganda.. (probably yes)
At the cost of those who die in far away countries who work to keep our progress moving on.
Bar is on the ground, here. Added parenthesis mine.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo...
I specifically focus on the U.S. because we're perceived to be one of the most affluent countries in the world. Given that we throw away a third of our food, how is it that 12.8% of us are experiencing food insecurity? Are people just too lazy to eat?
The whole reason "food insecurity" topics like unhealthy diets, skipped meals, relying on food assistance, etc, are even a cause for concern is because starvation really isn't anymore.
Our knowlegde and technology are being underutilized, thus obstructing access to modern quality of life to the majority of the people on earth who, by the way, do not live in the western countries
I'm afraid many will simply be lost to time.
- That movie is pretty good.
- Meh, the book was better.
In short for those who missed it, proud and justified superiority is a key reason why we still have economic classes which cause disparity and wars (particularly ethnic cleansing and WW2 which would have been in Einstein's mind when this letter was penned as it was just starting).
Or maybe he was just humourously illustrating his predisposition to it too (i.e. call people stupid, illustrate you make the same mistakes).
One rejects "incomparably".
Sure, there is a distribution if intelligence and character.
But one suspects that the variance isn't as pronounced (or important) as A.E. might suppose.
As evidence, note the general rarity of a Newton or Einstein.
At the other end of the distribution, note the elderly couple who have been happily married for most of their lives and have begotten a clan.
History will remember The Names, but if we integrate joy over time, I'd contend that the anonymous couple may be more enviable.
You can read about the time and circumstances that Einstein grew up in, but you didn't experience it, so you will always be missing some essential context.
Trying to parse this without more background is foolishness. This was written at the beginning of WWII. What stage exactly, who had just been invaded or annexed is not really important. Every observant person in Germany saw something terrible coming since before Hitler came to power. Most were in denial until it was much too late to do anything, but it was definitely something people were talking about.
[0]> The first major law to curtail the rights of Jewish citizens was the "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service" of April 7, 1933'
Einstein saw well qualified people kicked out of their positions for being of the wrong racial background. I think you would call out low intelligence and character if you lived through this era.
In 100 years, the most of today's references, euphemisms, and dog whistles will not be understood either.
0. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/anti-jewis...
https://metro.co.uk/2018/04/02/einsteins-misogynist-manifest...
He just wanted her to treat him as if they were seperated, but still living in the same house. I’m really not sure about all the washing and cleaning stuff, but it seems sort of regular if one brings in the money and the other stays at home (presumably taking care of the children). The only exciting thing there is that he wants to eat in his room. If you stay together for the children then why discard the one moment you share with them?
Had this list been written in 2014 then yes, I'd be more than shocked. But for the time, I read it as a pretty standard thing.
You would be surprised by how many "heroes" in the early 20th century were onboard with e.g. eugenics. You know, one of the key points of the third reich.
We could have a world without cashiers, you just take what you need from the shelves and throw the correct amount of money into a box. We could have a world without locks on houses, cars, and bikes. We could have a world with no trash on the ground. A world without police. I wonder what percentage of the masses prevents such a world.
I don't remember who of the philosophers wrote about this, but they cautioned against being delusional about infallibility of ones own moral compass. At least that's my lossy reproduction of the thought.
(I promise I'm not a cynic.)
How many tiny villages exist on the fringes of capitalism, and operate primarily on the basis of trust?
All of them if you apply strong enough moral values. Nobody can earn a billion by his own work, you can only become a billionaire by getting into a position where you can take a share of the work from many people.
also in order to avoid those consequences creating the collective condition of «liv[ing] in fear and terror» - which is the point.
I think the persons who pick up our shit and clean our offices and make food for us and stuff do have a lot of excuses of not having the time and energy for "cultivation"at the level of people whose job is to read and study.
Nobody produces independently of others in a modern society, and any libertarian type that pretends otherwise needs a reality check.
Cultivation which remains mandated, because those people in topic have a job by definition and they have to perform it well, which implies some intellectual proficiency (moreover, they will be partially socially active, they will often be neighbours and in general meet people, and they will often be actors in democracies). Instead, reality is that a large number of those agents will be liabilities instead of assets, in the very performance of their jobs. So, «intelligence and character» remains more than a goal, a necessity.
Well, lots of that going on at the top levels of academy and educated people too. In fact, usually it's them that "inspire" the masses to violent hatred. So it's not like some unique deficiency that the masses have.
People who apply themselves in thought, and humbled by hard facts.
(This will be different from other profiles you may have initially guessed. You will notice that "ideologists" are right out.)
And yet ... his own main focus has inevitably fallen back to that same human behaviour pattern too! - the behaviour which underpins the very systems and conflicts he laments elsewhere - that is : an individual or group subjectively categorising other people into the Superior and the Inferior, then making a world view of it.
I must admit, I expected more.
Hopefully they will know who Einstein was!
For example Imhotep and Hesy-ra are both a doctor and dentist from over 4500 years ago
they might be aware of Dr Joe Bloggs in 6939, just because he carved his name in some rock, that doesn't imply they will have a deep knowledge of our famous scientists.
Are we? You can't beat pyramids and Rosetta stones for long term endurance AND easy access.
Surely not with any digital media we have now, and if there's something like "Fall of Rome" collapse and loss of techniques and high end manufacturing because of some global war, climate change, comet, or something like that in the 4000 years until then, we might not even be able to read the stuff that did survive.
Einstein: "We hope future societies will achieve widely distributed heightened intelligence. It is a quality we see today in inventive, active minds"...
Onestone's answer: What we need is communitarian technocracy!
Intellectuals were also murdered first / sent to hard labour to die, sent to political prisons, etc. (check out what Mao did or Stalin, khmer rouge, or any other communist regime)
They were replaced by random poeople off the street based on their perceived loyalty to communism.
In occupied countries russia basically put in russians at first to clean up everything / murder anyone they want.
So you are wrong here.
There are dictionaries online, you know? You could even type "define intelligentsia" into the Google search box, and get a decent answer.
> The largest genocides of that period have been orchestrated by communist countries, supported by a lot if not most of of the intelligentsia
First part is that Intelligentsia means intellectuals, which in russia after 1917 it did not. Google has issues with doublethink but you can find on wikiedia what they did to intellectuals and what they redefined the term to. It also does not cove the fact that it is equivalent to intelligence services but not the same.
Second part is that Intelligentsia made genocides, which is ambigous, which intelligentsia? (the KGB?, if so, yes but they were not intellectuals, or the intellectuals?, if so, how?, they were all dead or not in power)
Third part is that Einstein belonged to that which is even bolder illogical statement... He was not russian, not a part of the KGB, had no power or involvement.
Not me, sorry :-)
How did Einstein "support" those genocides?
Define the "Intelligentsia" that supported those genocides?
How did "Intelligentsia" support those genocides?
What happened to them afterwards?
That should be a cautionary tale.
Well, the segment of the intelligentsia that doesn’t support the regime are generally executed or sent to labor camps to die.
So yes, eventually “supported by a lot if not most of of the intelligentsia”.
The real problem driving genocide is a feeling of superiority of one group over another, whether it's a single leader or a particular ethnic group. In that sense it's sad to see Einstein talk down about the character of the masses vs the character of the few who provide value. That's the stuff Elon Musk would love.
Real? Where's the overall evidence for that? The capitalist system is inarguably superior to a command economy in terms of supplying what customers want. Does this therefore drive some urge towards genocide on the part of one or the other side?
'It was very much an American invention (the first supermarket in the world was opened in New York’s Queens borough in 1930 – The King Kullen supermarket, invention of former grocery clerk Michael Cullen). By the late 50s, what the women (and surely, even if unacknowledged by the New York Times, men) of Zagreb saw was a clear signal of capitalist superiority in something that mattered much more to them than the conquering of space or new ways to facilitate human extinction: Cheap and plentiful food.'.
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/cold-war-supermarket-yugosl...
When it sees them as resources to be exploited or wasted, as competitors holding resources you want, or as unproductive. Colonialism is probably the biggest driver of genocide in history. Look at the millions dead in Congo to urge them to produce more rubber. Look at the Native American genocide in the US to take their land.
Very few Western elites were pro-Mao. And general support for communism definitely had a class bias. (Any populism does, for very sympathetic and not-stupid reasons.)
But to generalize this to say that most of Europe's elite supported Mao, or even that American elites supported Mao, is simply unsupported.
We have achieved remarkable technological progress learning how to fly, crossing the oceans at will, and communicating across the continents via wireless means. Yet, we live in fear of being left out of the economic cycle and left to starve. Yet, we cannot plan for the future but in live in terror of the next war. This is due to the fact we only value people who produce something we value, the rest we throw away. I trust that future generations will view us with disdain and with moral superiority and rightfully so.