The Communism Paradox: Why A Classless Society is Impossible Even in a Post-Scarcity World

In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm and Simone Collins explore the fundamental flaws in communist ideology, even in a hypothetical post-scarcity world. They delve into the nature of scarcity, class structures, and the evolution of influence in the digital age. This video challenges common misconceptions about communism and offers insights into how modern society and economics are shaped by attention, competence, and disintermediated communities.

Key topics covered:

* The impossibility of a truly classless society

* Scarcity and status in post-scarcity environments

* The evolution of influencer culture and digital communities

* The role of competence and attention in modern economies

* Critiques of communist ideology and its practical applications

* The future of urban centers and distributed networks

* The importance of family and cultural identity in society

Whether you're interested in political theory, futurism, or the dynamics of online influence, this video offers a fresh perspective on age-old questions and contemporary challenges.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] communism doesn't work even in a post scarcity world. Yes. I, I, I believe UBI might work in a post scarcity world, but even in a world where you have people's universal basic income, where you have people's basic needs taken care of, like you do food drop offs, you do medicine is handled by the state, you do like all of that.

You still have the class structure we have in our existing society, and you will still have some resource which represents some form of scarcity, because there is always scarcity in any system and what people choose to value is always the thing that is scarce, even if that thing is pointless. And what I find really interesting is it's actually the communists themselves in our current society that are most drawn to artificial scarcity.

It is much more the communists who get drawn to brand name recognition, like the Starbucks and the iPads and the et cetera.

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: And there is no such thing as a classist society. [00:01:00] It's not possible. No. Um, Do the intro.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Hello, everyone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today is going to be, I hope, a Simone Abigail episode because she was the one who made this point to me while we were walking around a Target. What a fitting place.

It's what we do.

Simone Collins: It's what we do. We

Malcolm Collins: were talking about communism and the cliche. Real communism has never been tried, which we will also get to in this video. But one of the things that you turned and said to me while we were walking was, There

Simone Collins: is no such thing as a classless society. It is absolutely impossible.

Go into your argument because I found it very powerful. Yeah. So no matter what happens in a society, there will always be scarce goods. As soon as you make one good, not so good, People will then sort into classes based on what is scarce. And this shows up in various sci fi novels that anyone can read.

I really like stuff by Cory Doctorow. He wrote this one book called Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, which really [00:02:00] influenced the way that I saw the world in the future. It's, it takes place in a post scarcity environment. You know, post singularity, you can live forever, you have backups of yourself that you can just restore if you accidentally die or are murdered and in this world, you know, you don't need food, you don't need shelter, but There is still a class system and there's still a currency that is, that is limited and finite.

And it's called Woofie. Woofie is social capital in this world. And so people form themselves into what are called adhocracies in this world. Which I love that word. Also. I want, I want a world of adhocracies instead of bureaucracies. Adhocracies are basically short lived collections of people who get together to Do cool stuff to get social credit.

And the discovering system wouldn't be stable and I'll get to why in just a second, but continue. Yeah, I really like it. Nevertheless. This book is about adhocracies that form and compete in Disney's magic kingdom in Florida, in this [00:03:00] post singularity world. Cause some things never go away. Thank God. And what they do is they'll like, they take over the rides.

So, Two rival groups in Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom are, are kind of competing for more woofy. One is, is redoing the Hall of Presidents and the other one is doing the Haunted Mansion. And you know, it's all about like, who can, you know, impress the world the most with their really cool updates to these rides slash attractions.

And it's, it totally makes sense to me that that would be the case. And, you know, and when you, when you, when you say something, it's unpopular when you do something that really pisses people off. If you go viral for something bad. You know, that's it. You're sort of destitute, but being destitute doesn't mean you're starving or homeless.

It just means you don't really get the cool stuff. You don't get the cool stuff. Let's, let's,

Malcolm Collins: let's talk about, I want to break down a few aspects of this. So, because I think it's a very good description and it does a very good job of showing what's going on. Why you can't really have classlessness because [00:04:00] even in an environment where all our needs are met, there are still some things that are intrinsically of limited value, i.

e. Disney world. There is only one Disney world. You can create other Disney worlds, but they won't have the same cultural cliche as the first or the main Disney world. And I, oh, sorry. What was the point? And so. Who gets to work on that Disney World, that special thing, and who gets access to that special thing?

You would still need some metric for deciding these two things. In this, the metric that they choose is attention. The reason the Disney World has more value than another random thing or random park is because it is a thing that collects attention. And so the very attention you collect is what gives you access.

to it. Very interesting that he, one of the things I think he predicted so wrong in that [00:05:00] Disney world would always be a thing of value. Little did he know the wokes would completely destroy the brand so much that nobody even wants to go anymore.

Simone Collins: Oh, I mean, I think it's more, it was more an issue of, of poor planning and price gouging.

It's hard to, we can, we can get in. I mean, we love watching Disney analysts on YouTube for some reason. I also want to talk about why adhocracies

Malcolm Collins: can't form.

Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So suppose the world does work the way it does in that world and we'll be, or we'll feed or the amount of attention that you have access to is the core thing of value in that society. There would be it'd be really dangerous to break up with other groups and form new groups all the time because that would lower the efficiency at the production of this that you would have access to and therefore outcompeted by the groups that mostly stayed together and where it's fairly

discerning into who they work with. . So if you're discerning and who you work with, you [00:06:00] know, you work with people you have experience with and stuff like that. And you're not just working with random new people who might have high woofy, but it might be towards a different community.

It might be toward the different, whatever. You're just going to get out competed by the groups that are more successful. And so tha