--- /dev/null
+---
+postid: 017
+title: The mechanics of socialism
+excerpt: Socialism analyzed from the point of view of an engineer.
+author: Lucian Mogoșanu
+date: January 19, 2014
+tags: cogitatio
+---
+
+This is one of those posts where I talk about things which I understand more or
+less intuitively, in terms of things on which I have an educated view. To be
+more specific, I have no formal background in politics or economics, although I
+understand *agents* as well as your average computer scientist and *systems* at
+least as well as your average systems engineer.
+
+So, what is socialism? While I won't attempt to give a proper definition here,
+I can very well state that it must somehow relate to social welfare or social
+utility. In other words, we cannot speak of socialism unless we try to abstract
+society as a singular entity. In even more words, the idea of socialism bases
+itself upon the fact that a society is more than the sum of its parts, i.e.
+more than just a group of individuals, and that the well-being of the whole
+must be quantified one way or another.
+
+Of course, well-being is, generally speaking, a rather vague term, but it can
+be quantified using economics, which deals with resources; and resources can be
+reduced to money for the sake of simplicity. So if we were more naïve, we would
+say that social welfare can be represented as the sum of money owned by "the
+society", which is false, as some pigs are by definition more equal than
+others, and besides, there's that entity called "the state" which in the
+socialist view is more equal than individuals. Let alone the fact that "the
+state" is made up by individuals.
+
+The sudden insertion of the "state" variable in this model is not coincidental:
+some might say that socialism is founded on the belief that, at least in some
+cases, the state as a ruling body can make better decisions than the
+individuals it governs, which of course, may or may not be true, depending
+on the decisions to be made, or on the individuals governed, or finally, on the
+state itself, e.g. the way in which it is organized.
+
+So let's assume for now that the state can indeed make *some* proper decisions,
+such as for example those pertaining to individual property, safety, freedom of
+expression and so on. Also, let's assume that citizens are in some respects
+completely incompetent: for example most of them don't own weapons and can't
+establish education curricula individually. Finally, let's assume that the
+subset of citizens actively running the state are interested in maximizing
+social utility.
+
+As you might have already noticed, there are problems regarding **a.** the
+limitations of the model itself and **b.** the application of the model in real
+life scenarios, that is, its validity.
+
+Regarding its limitations, it's clear that we can't, for example, rigorously
+specify the set of decisions makeable by the state. A small or empty set would
+lead to something close to anarchism. A large set would lead to communism.
+Besides, there are still unsolved ethical problems such as drugs, genetically
+modified food or prostitution, which are considered horrendous in an Orthodox
+Christian society, while being perfectly fine from the point of view of
+atheists and/or rationalists. This is where the "quality" of individuals, i.e.
+of having certain values, certain education, certain income etc., clashes with
+the power of the state and this is how civil wars are started and so on and so
+forth.
+
+Besides all that, there is a hard limitation on the quantity of individuals a
+socialist state can manage. I'm no complexity theorist[^1], so I won't go into
+the mathematics, but I can use common sense as a basis when saying that this
+applies to each and every centralized system in nature. It's actually pretty
+simple: the overhead of (centrally) making decisions grows with the population;
+as that happens, the state grows and thus becomes an unmaintainable
+bureaucratic machine, leading to dysfunctions not dissimilar in nature to
+cancer. This problem is usually solved by changing the structure of the state
+to a multiple-level hierarchy, e.g. by adding so-called regions or smaller
+states, which brings about changes in the set of decisions made centrally. But
+again, there is no general rule as to what is the optimal implementation, let
+alone the best.
+
+Regarding the validity of the model, well, we have plenty of historical
+examples of socialist states that made really bad decisions. The classical
+example is that of attempting to raise budget income by increasing fiscality
+instead of reducing it, which may work on the short term, but is incredibly
+stupid on the long term, for various reasons in which I won't go here. Of
+course, the masses will easily yield to propaganda such as that involving
+raising the minimum salary, but they seldom think of how this will affect
+prices in six months or so, which is why people shouldn't be allowed to
+practice any profession involving thinking until they've studied basic
+mathematics[^2] and economics. Unless, of course, they live in North Korea,
+where being poor is the norm anyway. Besides, it's naïve to assume that most
+statemen will choose the good of the state over their own. Sure, it might
+happen, but then again, it often does not, and that's when the phenomenon known
+as corruption arises.
+
+There exists however an issue which underlies all of the aforementioned, and
+that is, as [Arrow's paradox][3] suggests, that there is in fact no general
+social welfare function. The concept itself is flawed, as societies themselves
+are built upon the common interests of their individuals. Trying to quantify
+exactly that would lead to a partial, and therefore unusable function[^3].
+Trying to quantify more than that would increase the gap between various groups
+of interest[^4], with the risk of alienation or even dissolution.
+
+Take from that what you will.
+
+[^1]: Smart guys such as [Barabási][1] are more involved in the field.
+
+[^2]: That, by the way, includes [integral calculus][2].
+
+[^3]: Maybe "unusable" is too harsh here. Its usability would be however very
+limited indeed.
+
+[^4]: Or "social classes", as social scientists like to call them.
+
+[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert-L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Barab%C3%A1si
+[2]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSGWoXDFM64
+[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow's_impossibility_theorem
--- /dev/null
+---
+postid: 018
+title: On post-religion
+excerpt: In which I coin a new term for popular culture.
+author: Lucian Mogoșanu
+date: February 9, 2014
+tags: cogitatio
+---
+
+This article works under the assumption that religions in general have slowly
+evolved into mashups of ancient philosophical concepts and cultural habits that
+are presented as timeless but which are in fact terribly outdated. The
+relevance of the centerpiece of religion (i.e. the all-knowing God) will
+largely be ignored here, although I will not fully discard it. Thus we will
+take [Merriam-Webster][1] and use the definition of religion as a starting
+point:
+
+> re·li·gion
+>
+> - the belief in a god or in a group of gods
+> - an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to worship a god
+> or a group of gods
+> - an interest, a belief, or an activity that is very important to a person or
+> group
+
+Note that I lean more on the third definition than on the former two, since I
+believe that while a religion may be founded on the belief in a supernatural
+being, it is at least as important to consider the cultural and habitual
+aspects of religion. In other words, I can personally take the all-powerful and
+supernatural out of "God says that X" or "We do Y to please God" without
+depriving said sentences of meaning. I admit that I could be wrong in my
+assumption, but ignoring it would involve ignoring my own beliefs, something
+which no person of integrity would find acceptable. I shall thus proceed to the
+subject.
+
+My previous research on what I call "post-religion" has so far yielded nothing,
+or at least nothing that I would find interesting. In any case, I hope that I'm
+not reinventing the wheel, or that I'm doing it through an approach that people
+will find relevant, to say the least. Either way, my main challenge is to
+define post-religion and illustrate it with examples.
+
+I ended one of my previous posts called "[Religion and the closed world
+assumption][2]" on the following note:
+
+> Then again, in our mystical/spiritualistic conception of religion, we've
+> deprived the concept of God of its worship-related semantics, or it's just
+> that we're worshipping our own gods without calling them "God". But this is
+> another story.
+
+This idea stems from deep, philosophical questions such as "what is God?" or
+"what is it that we are worshipping?". If we consider for example Christianity,
+it is intuitively clear that it was the main focus of the cultural and social
+life during the fall of the Roman Empire(s) and later during the Dark Ages,
+though we might not be able to provide much historical backing on the latter.
+Thus books were mainly focused on telling tales of Christ and God and whatnot,
+while social activities, e.g. music, were focused on praising some form of God.
+I wouldn't go as far as to speculate that secular activities were rare, but
+once again, it's pretty clear that *religious* activities were commonplace.
+
+This is one aspect of religion that has changed during our modern and
+post-modern times. Activities are now equivalent to little boxes: when we
+pursue something, we take a box, open it, enjoy its contents, then put them
+back into the box for later consumption[^1]. Religion becomes thus but a box in
+this context, but a brick in the wall, but something people turn to in their
+time of need. This doesn't apply at all to fundamentalist religions, which are
+very much like Christianity was a millenium ago. It however applies fully to
+the Western civilization, the same civilization that in the 20th century
+embraced this "box-based" thinking along with something called the pop
+culture. This is essentially what I call *post-religion*.
+
+In other words I define *post-religion* as the worship or religious attachement
+to things other than an omniscient, supernatural God. Said things come to
+define our (sub-)culture and our habits, defining our selves as post-religious
+persons.
+
+The definition is as simple as it is outrageous. Let us then attempt to apply
+it to some real-life examples:
+
+**Hollywood, TV shows, books and the music industry**: The term "fan" has
+become widely used in the last few decades. It's somehow fairly normal to be "a
+fan of X", where X is a music band or an author, book, movie, genre or whatever
+other product of pop culture. Little do people realize, although they know it,
+that the word comes from "fanatic", which fanaticism can be indeed observed
+amongst admirers[^2].
+
+As an exception, some people have been known to die over their favourite X. As
+a common occurence, people gather in groups to worship their X, be it at
+conventions, concerts or in smaller gatherings. This is not dissimilar to
+Sunday masses, same as christening is not dissimilar to various rites happening
+in so-called "fraternities". I don't feel it necessary to expand the example
+further.
+
+**Sports**: Interestingly, what started out as a play on war now ends up as a
+kind of adoration. Seen from a distant perspective, it is a strange ritual
+where people lazily get fat by eating junk and watching the war instead of
+actively participating in it. In reality it's no big deal, as the vulgus were
+fed the same "bread and circus" shortly before the fall of the Roman Empire.
+
+On the opposite extreme, there are those who religiously practice otherwise
+innocent hobbies such as skiing, working out or running.
+
+**Eating habits**: It's one thing to struggle keeping oneself from the clutches
+of food corporations, i.e. the post-religion of McDonaldism, and another to be
+a "vegetarian", or better, a "raw vegan". Traditionally, people have consumed
+whatever food they could, given their geographical position. This would
+reinforce the idea that post-religions arise out of modern constructs such as
+the free market.
+
+Special mention: **pseudo-scientism**.
+
+I note here that the space of post-religions is too big to explore exhaustively
+and these examples fulfill their role of illustrative objects very well.
+Basically post-religions have become a cornerstone for our contemporary
+civilization. In fact we could argue that post-religion itself has become such
+a cornerstone. One might wonder whether or not this foundation is not too
+shallow and/or fragile to sustain it. Either way, it would seem that we all
+need our gods to worship.
+
+[^1]: This point on how people generally view "activities" could be argued. An
+example that stands out in its favour is Facebook, which organizes such
+concepts into "life events". Another trivial one is "work" versus "leisure".
+There are probably a million others. Either way, I am fully aware that
+"activities" might be an oversimplification.
+
+[^2]: Also called "beliebers" in one particular case.
+
+[1]: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/religion
+[2]: /posts/y00/008-religion-and-the-closed-world-assumption.html
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