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Communism vs Capitalism does anyone actually think we'd be better off in a Communist society?


Darzin

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2 hours ago, Jo498 said:

Let's be very generous and assume that on average the reduction in lifestyle/consumerist goods would only be half of that percentage (although it is not clear how the other half could somehow be made up easily by technology etc.). So people would face downsizing (income, living space, luxuries) of 25-33%. Maybe inconvenient but possible for the richer third of the population of the "West" but hardly feasible for the lower 50% without social unrest of a scale noone in the West has witnessed in their lifetimes. So regardless of details and niceties as who controls the means of production this would only be feasible in a totalitarian system anyway.

I broadly share your conclusions. This is actually why we should get rid of the current socio-economic order, and fast (before we fall into authoritarianism). Because we need to reduce production (to fight climate change), income must be decoupled from production. And that's very easy to do through universal basic income.

But the problem here is essentially ideological. Myths like that of the "risk-taking entrepreneur" are, at their heart, linked to the gospel of growth. In order to justify inequality, the dominant ideology currently teaches us that growth is fundamentally good, and that a person's worth is tied to their participation in the common growth.
We are in fact valuing sustainable development more, but we also need to stop valuing unsustainable development at the same time to speed everything up. So taxes, regulations, or worse in some specific cases (no, you shouldn't have the right to take a plane to "nowhere" *). And we need to recognize that humans all deserve a decent life, regardless of what they do with it.

*https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/flights-to-nowhere-qantas/index.html

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2 hours ago, felice said:

There's no guarantee it will do better, but it has the potential to do better, while capitalism does not (or at the very least will fight regulation and monitoring every step of the way). Socialism is necessary but not sufficient.

How?

The one thing that makes sense in this vein is that taking pricing out of the hands of “the market” and placing it in the hands of committees allows for the committees to properly price externalities as “the market” does not.  Is that what you are suggesting?

If so, isn’t that contrary to democratic principles and rife for abuse by those few entrusted with such power?

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17 hours ago, Rippounet said:

This is basically a variation of the myth of the risk-taking entrepreneur, i.e. the idea that innovation comes from a few individual geniuses who will only help the community if we provide them with incentives, i.e. shittons of money.

No, you are either completely missing my point, or you are deliberatly making up arguments that I never made.

Just to be clear: your argument, as I understood it, is that innovation will come from analyzing all the possible data and we therefore need no markets. My argument is that innovation (creative destruction as Schumpeter calls it) comes from thinking outside the box and overcoming adversity, but this is not necessarily tied to individual genius. As such, its not inconceivable that the state or big corporations are creating a lot of innvations, and in fact they do!, but - and this is what I mean by risk-taking - not through complete analysis of any given data. But by putting out something new, i.e. something that is not "hidden" in the data of the existing status quo and thereby risking failure. And when you want to see wether something new will work, markets are really, really useful because they aggregate not only quantifiable data about a product but also non-quatifiable data about social norms, expectations, aspirations etc, i.e. not only the value that an individual perceives in the product for itself, but also how it affects his/her relations to others. So for example when you buy a very expensive electric car, that in almost every aspect performs worse than a conventional car, then clearly the value that's expressed in the price you're willing to pay, is not only in the "transportation value" but also in other things, maybe status, maybe you want to set an example. But to find that out, you actually have to take the risk that people will not buy it and the only way to find that out is a market. The state can do that, corporations can do that, individuals can do that.

So if the state or big corporations can lead innovation, then why would I think that collective oversight would be detrimental then?

For one thing, collective oversight means finding consensus and majorities. Disruptive, game-changing innovation however is the exact opposite, because is usually goes against what a majority would consider reasonable or doable. In terms of social change Lenin argued that you need a well organized and disciplined party to lead the revolution (professional revolutionaries) and drag the majority along with them. It's basically the same argument why some people on the left deride "incrementalism", if, at every moment you wait for democratic majorities, your pace of innovation will be glacial. The same goes for organizational, processual or product innovation.

And the way the state innovates today (at least here in Germany), for example through universities and research institutes, reflects this: it works largely without the electorade dictating the research projects, which professors get hired or what kind of equipment a lab buys. It works largely because parliament recognizes the need for public funded research - but independent from parliamentary oversight or public referndums about their projects. The only power they have is budgetary. It's like public funding or theatres and operas - the necessity for public funding is there, but the public doesn't get to decide what plays are allowed or which artists should be allowed to perform (at least not in the strict sense of voting on it, of course public debate will always echo back to budgetary discussions in parliament).

Second: the rewards, now you've automatically equated this with "shittons of money", and that probably because "rewards" today are measured in shittons of money because today, having shittons of money is basically a measure of social success. Of course we can think of a society where social success can be expressed differently. But if your contribution - either as an individual or a group - doesn't get recognized as something distinct, something beyond the ordinary, you'll quickly lose your enthusiasm.

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As people have shown, these things are more independent of the overall system than one might think. Just as bureaucracy and bullshit jobs grow both in public admin (the "state") and in large corporations, there can also be innovation or "safe stagnation" in both. Like mp3 from a publicly funded German institution (Fraunhofer). Most "innovations" of the last 20 years have basically been "toys" and were heavily dependent on earlier stuff (electronic gadgets and internet based social media). Partly probably because some saturation points have been reached, partly because these are low hanging fruit with high monetary rewards. Partly because some things were good enough already several decades ago and the possible marginal returns upon innovation very low (e.g. fast trains like TGV that were already so good with basically 1970s tech, that the monorail magnet trains simply don't improve enough on them, especially considering the huge infrastructural investments). We are also notoriously bad in that we reward non-innovative jobs (Finance, Real Estate, Law, Tax evasion, Consulting, etc. many of which actually hurt the economy and society as a whole)  with disproportionate incomes, so that many smart people are seduced to be rather a tax lawyer or stock trader instead of a research chemist or engineer (of course, this is also a question of ability and personality, but still, I think it is a bad allocation of talent and funds and seems also very different compared to technologically innovative times like the 50-70s).

And there are also options of recognizing genius/innovation with rewards beyond capitalism. Like a knighthood, a Stalin medal, or some nice house with a garden the administration can assign to you when everyone else lives in tiny flats.

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19 minutes ago, Jo498 said:

Most "innovations" of the last 20 years have basically been "toys" and were heavily dependent on earlier stuff (electronic gadgets and internet based social media).

Perhaps in quantity but not in quality. Take for example CRISPR/Cas9, the researchers of which just got the Nobel price in chemistry. This is huge, an absolute quantum leap in genetic engineering. Invented not even 10 years ago and already considered NP worthy and my guess is that by the end of this century it will probably be considered as one of the most important and literally life-changing inventions of this century. Also, social media is IMO far from being a toy and much, much closer to the invention of the printing press; Sometimes we take these things so much for granted already that we totally forget how fundamentally things like social media have changed the way we (as citizens) look at society, politics etc. Quantum computing has this year seen it's first (admittedly very limited) use. Solar energy has seen a massive breakthrough both in efficiency of the solar panels and production thereof. So I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the still young 21st century and its innovations.

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2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

How?

The one thing that makes sense in this vein is that taking pricing out of the hands of “the market” and placing it in the hands of committees allows for the committees to properly price externalities as “the market” does not.  Is that what you are suggesting?

If so, isn’t that contrary to democratic principles and rife for abuse by those few entrusted with such power?

How on Earth would that be any more "abusive" than the current situation, in which market forces are controled by a small global elite that is hellbent on refusing to internalize externalities, because of what it entails for their own interests and power? With the consequence being, quite obviously, the destruction of our environment and, potentially at least, a risk for human civilization as a whole?

I'm baffled by the way this conversation is going at times because it completely ignores the current situation, politically, economically, and environmentally. To relentlessly criticize any communist-ic idea requires to act as if the current neo-liberal order was not an existential threat in the first place.
That's why I said some people here are stuck in the 1990s: they haven't registered yet that, absent a technological miracle, neo-liberalism is leading us to our collective doom. This changes things because I, for myself, would rather be "red than dead." And if some people feel differently, I'd very much like the option for them to die without taking me and my family with them.
It's cute to argue for a principled defense of individual freedom or entrepreneurship, or porn or whatever, but at some point there needs to be a realisation that humans as a whole are not that principled. Faced with the choice between life or liberty, the overwhelming majority of humans will choose life. We will choose communism, or China, or eco-fascism, or whatever and whoever the fuck promises a modicum of safety. In other words, the moment shit hits the fan, i.e. the moment developed countries face a major disaster attributable to climate change, the winds will turn, and all principles will be swept aside. The current crisis should be proof enough of that.
And that's what, I believe, we should truly be preparing for, at least if anyone is truly concerned about liberty. Now more than ever, because it's already started and it all looks really bad.
If there isn't any intellectual framework for what's coming next then there's little hope for our ability to dodge the coming bullet. And, sorry guys, but there isn't a ton of options for the basis of that framework. It's either left or right. The right took us where we are, and the middle will only work if we're lucky. So I predict it's going to be a hard left, and that's that.
I came back to this thread to state what, from my perspective, is obvious: in the long-run, absent what amounts to a political or technological miracle, humanity will end up communist.
One can always read Iain Banks to feel better about it, and bear in mind that this is really the best-case scenario for us, and I'm not sure we deserve that happy ending tbh.

2 hours ago, Alarich II said:

And the way the state innovates today (at least here in Germany), for example through universities and research institutes, reflects this: it works largely without the electorade dictating the research projects, which professors get hired or what kind of equipment a lab buys.

No shit, Sherlock.
Uh... when did I speak of oversight for research projects?

Seven hells, I'm advocating for very specific things. I wrote at least twice that I want limited markets. This doesnt mean I want a full-blown communist society tomorrow, merely that the most polluting (environmentally destructive) activities should definitely have a form of democratic oversight, and this is made possible by technology.
FFS I think I've been particularly clear about what it is that I'm defending, even going into the whys and the hows, with a handful of references for good measure.

To take such ideas, which are really rather small in scope, and to suddenly start opposing democratic oversight as a rule, taking porn or universities as examples...
From where I'm sitting this is insane.
Though internet being what it is, perhaps it is the most insane of us who write the loudest - yes, including myself.

2 hours ago, Alarich II said:

Second: the rewards, now you've automatically equated this with "shittons of money", and that probably because "rewards" today are measured in shittons of money because today, having shittons of money is basically a measure of social success. Of course we can think of a society where social success can be expressed differently. But if your contribution - either as an individual or a group - doesn't get recognized as something distinct, something beyond the ordinary, you'll quickly lose your enthusiasm.

If you re-read what I said you'll find that I did make this very point.

Neither of us is really reading what the other is writing, methinks, so I'll take a short break and be back after the commercials, for more insanity: perhaps next time we'll take a look at Kropotkin or Bookchin.

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1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

How on Earth would that be any more "abusive" than the current situation, in which market forces are controled by a small global elite that is hellbent on refusing to internalize externalities, because of what it entails for their own interests and power? With the consequence being, quite obviously, the destruction of our environment and, potentially at least, a risk for human civilization as a whole?

Because socialism without real Democratic controls is what existed under the Soviet Union and its satellite States.  And they had shitty records on the environment.

I’m asking what kinds of controls, if any, you would have to prevent these “committees” from just doing whatever the hell they want to empower themselves whether it helps the environment or not.

Socalism can and does exist within Democratic institutions.  Are you really advocating we drop democracy?

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9 hours ago, felice said:

Exactly the same people who make the decisions now? HR departments, managers, etc. Only the shareholders have changed, everything else continues as before. Employers would pay market rates just as they do now. Though I'd put a cap on pay rates where skill shortage is an issue - increasing pay rates to compensate for lack of people willing to do a job makes sense, but getting into bidding wars over a limited number of people able to do a job isn't in the public interest.

Interesting. But if only the shareholders change, the system would not actually be that different from what it is now. If the shares can be traded, you will very shortly end up with the usual level of inequality. If the shares are more like votes, you will wind up with a system controlled by a few parties much like the democratic governments of today and they will hand out rewards to their supporters in the same way. I don't know that this would be better for either people or the environment.

2 hours ago, Rippounet said:

How on Earth would that be any more "abusive" than the current situation, in which market forces are controled by a small global elite that is hellbent on refusing to internalize externalities, because of what it entails for their own interests and power? With the consequence being, quite obviously, the destruction of our environment and, potentially at least, a risk for human civilization as a whole?

This is a rare question to which the answer is simply an example. The dominant manufacturing and resource extraction power today is undoubtedly China. It has a hybrid market economy, but is ultimately controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. There are a few reasons why it is dominant, but the main ones are that it lacks labor and environmental regulations which make mining and manufacturing much more costly in Western countries.

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7 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

The one thing that makes sense in this vein is that taking pricing out of the hands of “the market” and placing it in the hands of committees allows for the committees to properly price externalities as “the market” does not.  Is that what you are suggesting?

No, I'm suggesting that CEOs and managers and other decision-makers within companies can be directed to prioritise protecting the environment etc over profit, and seek to internalise costs rather than externalise them as much as possible. They can go with the best ways of minimising waste and pollution, rather than the cheapest. They can design for maximum possible product lifespan, even if that will hurt future sales. Under capitalism, that's not possible because companies that try will get out-competed by amoral competitors.

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1 hour ago, Altherion said:

Interesting. But if only the shareholders change, the system would not actually be that different from what it is now. If the shares can be traded, you will very shortly end up with the usual level of inequality. If the shares are more like votes, you will wind up with a system controlled by a few parties much like the democratic governments of today and they will hand out rewards to their supporters in the same way. I don't know that this would be better for either people or the environment.

No, shares aren't traded; they're all owned by the government. All dividends get paid into a single fund, exactly like tax. The big difference is what the shareholder(s) expect from the businesses they own; maximising profit is no longer the only priority. Oh, and we can probably abolish income tax, since the government now has an alternative income stream.

What sort of rewards do you mean?

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17 minutes ago, felice said:

No, I'm suggesting that CEOs and managers and other decision-makers within companies can be directed to prioritise protecting the environment etc over profit, and seek to internalise costs rather than externalise them as much as possible. They can go with the best ways of minimising waste and pollution, rather than the cheapest. They can design for maximum possible product lifespan, even if that will hurt future sales. Under capitalism, that's not possible because companies that try will get out-competed by amoral competitors.

We can do this right now using laws within the existing system and most countries actually already do it to some extent. Nearly every Western nation has environmental regulations and some European countries also require a minimum warranty times on electronic products and possibly mechanical ones too. The reason it's not done more widely is that it would introduce fairly large fluctuations in demand which creates problems for both producers and consumers.

5 minutes ago, felice said:

No, shares aren't traded; they're all owned by the government. All dividends get paid into a single fund, exactly like tax. The big difference is what the shareholder(s) expect from the businesses they own; maximising profit is no longer the only priority. Oh, and we can probably abolish income tax, since the government now has an alternative income stream.

What sort of rewards do you mean?

The rewards take various forms including rebate and loopholes in the tax code, government contracts for businesses and preferential placement in positions for which there is competition for members of various groups. Even if you get rid of the tax code, there are plenty of ways to reward supporters.

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1 hour ago, Altherion said:

This is a rare question to which the answer is simply an example. The dominant manufacturing and resource extraction power today is undoubtedly China. It has a hybrid market economy, but is ultimately controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. There are a few reasons why it is dominant, but the main ones are that it lacks labor and environmental regulations which make mining and manufacturing much more costly in Western countries.

Not really, since that's true of a whole bunch of countries (India, Brazil, Nigeria, etc) which are nowhere near China's level of success. The key thing which sets it apart from the rest of developing countries is its multi-generational investment in education and infrastructure, on a scale that's difficult to accomplish in a pure capitalistic society.

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18 hours ago, Rippounet said:

I'm baffled by the way this conversation is going at times because it completely ignores the current situation, politically, economically, and environmentally. To relentlessly criticize any communist-ic idea requires to act as if the current neo-liberal order was not an existential threat in the first place.
That's why I said some people here are stuck in the 1990s: they haven't registered yet that, absent a technological miracle, neo-liberalism is leading us to our collective doom. This changes things because I, for myself, would rather be "red than dead." And if some people feel differently, I'd very much like the option for them to die without taking me and my family with them.
It's cute to argue for a principled defense of individual freedom or entrepreneurship, or porn or whatever, but at some point there needs to be a realisation that humans as a whole are not that principled. Faced with the choice between life or liberty, the overwhelming majority of humans will choose life. We will choose communism, or China, or eco-fascism, or whatever and whoever the fuck promises a modicum of safety. In other words, the moment shit hits the fan, i.e. the moment developed countries face a major disaster attributable to climate change, the winds will turn, and all principles will be swept aside. The current crisis should be proof enough of that.
And that's what, I believe, we should truly be preparing for, at least if anyone is truly concerned about liberty. Now more than ever, because it's already started and it all looks really bad.
If there isn't any intellectual framework for what's coming next then there's little hope for our ability to dodge the coming bullet. And, sorry guys, but there isn't a ton of options for the basis of that framework. It's either left or right. The right took us where we are, and the middle will only work if we're lucky. So I predict it's going to be a hard left, and that's that.

 

I find your assertion that the growing gravity of the climate crisis will unequivocally lead to general political consensus on what caused the problem, what the solution to the problem is and how we should go around achieving it baffling. Is there anything supporting it?

 

Suffering and fear might lead to political polarization, exacerbated nationalism and xenophobia, extremism, etc. None of this is going to help, in fact it will only make solving the problem harder rather than easier as it gets worse. There is no solution to the climate crisis that doesn't require close international cooperation and broad consensus across different people and countries. Proposals on the far fringes of public opinion and the current political scene (however effective or desirable you might consider them) won't achieve this and are actually counter-productive if we agree that this is a time-sensitive issue and action is required now rather than 'the moment shit hits the fan' (whenever that is).

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On 10/8/2020 at 7:06 PM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I’m asking what kinds of controls, if any, you would have to prevent these “committees” from just doing whatever the hell they want to empower themselves whether it helps the environment or not.

What kinds of controls do we have now, on any democratic "committee," legislative body, institution, or organization?

Do you have an argument Scot, or are you just lawyering again? ;)

Because:

On 10/8/2020 at 8:48 PM, Altherion said:

This is a rare question to which the answer is simply an example. The dominant manufacturing and resource extraction power today is undoubtedly China. It has a hybrid market economy, but is ultimately controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. There are a few reasons why it is dominant, but the main ones are that it lacks labor and environmental regulations which make mining and manufacturing much more costly in Western countries.

Dat's actually a good point. Though as far as I'm concerned, this is precisely what I'd seek to avoid with democracy.

I guess a modicum of belief or trust is required for any ideology. Oddly enough, I don't think people lack trust in socialism so much as they lack belief in democracy.

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On 10/7/2020 at 3:20 PM, Rippounet said:

Depends what you call "serious." I would personally think about mixing Bernard Friot with Trebor Scholz. Not sure Friot's been translated, but some Scholz is easy to find:

https://eticasfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Scholz_Platform-Cooperativism.pdf

I have read most this paper and I'm not terribly opposed to its ideas. From my reading, it doesn't endorse the centralized control that I'm opposed to. I don't see anything in it suggesting the government heavily meddling in people's decisions to supply certain kinds of labor and other people's decision to buy it.

I have said time and time again, the stupidity of the competitive partial equilibrium model of labor that gets presented in basic economic text books, which gets presented time and time again to new economics students. Labor markets are shot through with informational problems. The usual labor model that gets presented in basic econ textbooks, reminds me of Orwell's quip, "that an idea is so dumb that only an academic could believe it." Anybody that has ever searched for a job, knows that time gathering information on different jobs can be quite time consuming. Or as Alan Manning put it, if the model were true, then a 1 dollar wage cut should immediately cause worker to quit his job and go work for a competitor, which we all know doesn't happen in the real world.

The upshot is that there is money to be made by a middle man who can match demanders of labor with suppliers of labor. Of course when there is only one middle man, he can charge a hefty fee for his services, which is what we would expect from the theory of monopolies. In competitive securities markets, the bid/ask price is usually quite small. 

I'm not particularly opposed to workers or independent contractors owning and operating these platforms. And I'm receptive to the government operating some of them, as there would likely be welfare improvements to reducing frictions in labor markets.

Also, I'm in agreement, that certain social insurance programs, healthcare insurance in particular should be detached from working from any particular employer.

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