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

[RhaenysBee]

Sure, I’d guess about everybody over 70 here [think we’d be better off in a communist society]. Those were the ‘good old days’. Although my great grandmother used to think we’d be best off in a post WW1 governmental presidency. Because those were her good old days. 

Seriously though, no system is without fault. Capitalist or communist, we’ve got to believe that we live in the best of all possible of worlds. Which doesn’t mean it can’t benefit from minor adjustments here and there, but I’m sure it’s easier to wake up every day and believe you live in a good world rather than in one on the brink of collapse. 

[Clueless Northman]

Yes.

 

(that was a reply to the thread's title, obviously )

[Galactus]

More than "communism", however defined being a viable alternative (certainly there have been attempts at communism that have uh... not worked very well, to put it mildly) it's that capitalism has shown itself to be decidedly *un*viable. And Something needs to be done about that. 

[straits]

On 9/25/2020 at 12:14 AM, RhaenysBee said:

Capitalist or communist, we’ve got to believe that we live in the best of all possible of worlds. Which doesn’t mean it can’t benefit from minor adjustments here and there, but I’m sure it’s easier to wake up every day and believe you live in a good world rather than in one on the brink of collapse. 

I think that's unnecessary, and an increasingly dangerous belief to hold. We should rather accept that we have only the world we're in, and that it is ours to keep or lose. There is a temptation to extrapolate a gradual improvement to living standards from the past century into the future, out of an ideological commitment to optimism. We're facing disasters on environmental, political and economic fronts, and a bit of humility could help us loosen our assumptions and design radical changes to our behaviour.

[RhaenysBee]

12 hours ago, straits said:

I think that's unnecessary, and an increasingly dangerous belief to hold. We should rather accept that we have only the world we're in, and that it is ours to keep or lose. There is a temptation to extrapolate a gradual improvement to living standards from the past century into the future, out of an ideological commitment to optimism. We're facing disasters on environmental, political and economic fronts, and a bit of humility could help us loosen our assumptions and design radical changes to our behaviour.

I’m not sure my point came across the way I intended, or that I understand yours clearly.

Are you saying it is increasingly dangerous to believe that the world we live in is generally a good place with problems we should aim to fix as opposed to seeing it as a ticking time bomb waiting to explode and unleash a chain of disasters? If I understand that correctly than I respectfully disagree. No, thank you, I would rather not go to sleep and wake up with that thought every day. Seeing and appreciating the good in the world and the progress it has made over the centuries and millennia doesn’t predispose an expectation of exponential welfare and growth or an unawareness of the cost of aforementioned progress. It’s simply an attitude of focusing on the positive, not to ignore what’s problematic, but to stay sane to be able to cope with it as it comes. 

If one wants an accurate assessment of the state of the world (if such is possible, mostly through a simplified modeling of economic, environmental and social factors), that requires not (only) the predicted future (which is unreliable at best) as a point of reference, but also a historical comparison for a full picture. It’s difficult enough to measure, compare and conclude in retrospect, it’s quite impossible to do so in advance and in reference to the ever changing unknown about which we can only theorize. Maybe humility is important to keep our confidence in check not only about our assumptions of the world’s ever prosperous nature but also about the extent of our knowledge about and control over it. As for radical changes, they inevitably come with radical consequences and that’s something to consider for those in position to introduce them, so it’s clear what must be sacrificed for the expected outcome before we dedicate ourselves to them. That is not to say we do not need change or will not inevitably get change whether we need and want it or not. Change is constant and powerful and we kid ourselves if we think we are in control of it. That is not to say humanity should sit idly and do nothing about problems they (often unwittingly) caused and experience, I merely mean to reinforce your point about humility. 

That’s just a boarder elaboration of my perception, understanding and opinion (as unreliable and subjective all personal views are), and I’m certain all 7 billion of us see it differently. An ironic yet essential part of the problem. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Can we agree, as a starting point that no “utopian” ideal society will ever actually exist be it libertarian or communist?  

People are people and at the end of the day groups of people will not conform to “ideals”.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

On 8/6/2020 at 11:35 PM, Targknight said:

The Soviet Union didn't withstood the invasions. The Soviet Union troops retreated like cowards because they were afraid to die. It was the Ingush and the Chechens that helped USSR win the war. 

 

What the hell?  Using the terrain and fighting smart is not “cowardly”.  Standing up and dieing by fighting a losing battle is hardly “cowardly”.

[Rippounet]

39 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Can we agree, as a starting point that no “utopian” ideal society will ever actually exist be it libertarian or communist?  

People are people and at the end of the day groups of people will not conform to “ideals”.

Ever?

Quite the contrary: the idea that there is a fixed form of human nature ("people are people") is rather debatable and even, given recent human history, dubious. Of course groups of people conform to ideals. Not only do we do it everywhere, all the time, humans are even able to accept (and sometimes support) ideals detrimental to their own self-interest.  In the past centuries, ideologies have gotten stronger, and with the possibilities of technology there's no telling what kind of society the humans of the far future will build.

So of course there will eventually be a "utopian" society (by our standards), and it will most likely be a form of communism. That humanity will reach that point seems to me rather uncontroversial, though the road to get there may be long and brutal given our current predicament. However, "communism" is so broad and vague that it's difficult to tell what ideals humanity will espouse in that far future. What's "utopian" by our standards may well be self-evident soon enough ; conversely what we deem oppressive today may quickly become ordinary ; finally, technology may open completely new concepts of "liberty" or "rights," that we can barely imagine today.

In short, we will move so far beyond the point we're at now, that debating "communism vs capitalism" won't make sense anymore. It might look like stoicism vs epicureanism today: while we can understand the terms of the debate, it's hard to see them as truly making sense in our world. It's not that the question is completely irrelevant, it's just that we tend to think and talk about public affairs differently. And things are moving so fast that by the end of our lives we will have all witnessed radical evolutions in thought - even if we will not see them bear fruit.

[felice]

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Can we agree, as a starting point that no “utopian” ideal society will ever actually exist be it libertarian or communist?  
People are people and at the end of the day groups of people will not conform to “ideals”.

Depends how you define "utopian". I would certainly hope a society vastly better than what we have now will actually exist in the future. Absolute perfection might be unobtainable, but a decent society could minimise the ability of bad actors to mess things up for everyone else without requiring everyone to actively believe in the society's ideals. Our current society has very weak protections against those who act against the common good, but even that is a great deal better than nothing.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

52 minutes ago, felice said:

Depends how you define "utopian". I would certainly hope a society vastly better than what we have now will actually exist in the future. Absolute perfection might be unobtainable, but a decent society could minimise the ability of bad actors to mess things up for everyone else without requiring everyone to actively believe in the society's ideals. Our current society has very weak protections against those who act against the common good, but even that is a great deal better than nothing.

You would need to have broad consensus as to what does and does not qualify as “the common good”.  I find that people who believe too hard in a given ideal, right or left, can get quite... disenchanted... when they discover many people disagree with their view of “common good”.  

Then they decide it’s just and proper to compel those who disagree.  

[Centrist Simon Steele]

3 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Can we agree, as a starting point that no “utopian” ideal society will ever actually exist be it libertarian or communist?  

People are people and at the end of the day groups of people will not conform to “ideals”.

Maybe not Libertarian or communist, but definitely socialist. 

[All Cats Are Bad]

AI will be able to do basic coding in ten years. We're just going to keep losing jobs to machines. IMO it's pretty vital that we transition to a system where the workers control the means of production, like, now, or we're just going to go become techno-feudalists. It's interesting how deep that Cold War propaganda goes. I've spent idk how many hours on twitter trying to explain to people that no, China isn't really communist and the only commie thing about the CCP is its name. They have the government control industry, which is a little different than what we do in the US where industry controls the government...but not by much. But yeah, communism is good actually and we should try a little.

I'm sorry neolibs, you are just going to have to suck it up and let the government give you free healthcare and college. It's a sacrifice you're going to have to make for the greater good.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

23 minutes ago, SaltyGnosis said:

AI will be able to do basic coding in ten years. We're just going to keep losing jobs to machines. IMO it's pretty vital that we transition to a system where the workers control the means of production, like, now, or we're just going to go become techno-feudalists. It's interesting how deep that Cold War propaganda goes. I've spent idk how many hours on twitter trying to explain to people that no, China isn't really communist and the only commie thing about the CCP is its name. They have the government control industry, which is a little different than what we do in the US where industry controls the government...but not by much. But yeah, communism is good actually and we should try a little.

I'm sorry neolibs, you are just going to have to suck it up and let the government give you free healthcare and college. It's a sacrifice you're going to have to make for the greater good.

People have been claiming we’re 10 years away from “real AI” for 30 years.

[felice]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

You would need to have broad consensus as to what does and does not qualify as “the common good”.

Yep.

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Then they decide it’s just and proper to compel those who disagree.  

All societies compel people to abide by their rules; right now, we've got cops and prisons. Obviously it's best to minimise the need for enforcement, and eliminating poverty (which we certainly have the resources to do) would go a long way towards eliminating motivation for crime.

[All Cats Are Bad]

46 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

People have been claiming we’re 10 years away from “real AI” for 30 years.

"Real AI" is a vague phrase that could mean a lot of things. AI has been developing over the past 30 years, as has automation, and it will be doing basic coding work in 10. We produce more now than we did 20 years ago, but have fewer jobs in production. Where do you think they went?

[OldGimletEye]

3 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Ever?

Quite the contrary: the idea that there is a fixed form of human nature ("people are people") is rather debatable and even, given recent human history, dubious.

Capitalism may be a "social construction" in the same way that driving on on the right side of the road is a social construction. Both are solutions to real social problems that are based in the material world. In the case of road, driving, imagine the chaos that would result if there wasn't a social convention about which side of the road to drive one. The convention about which side of the road to drive on might be completely arbitrary (we could decide to drive on the left side of the road), but it does solve an actual problem.

In the case of the production of goods, there is a serious issue about what to produce and in what quantities to produce them in. I suppose you could theoretically build a super computer where everyone entered their consumption preferences and work preferences and have it solve the problem of what gets produced and who works what job. Of course, early societies didn't have that option. The informational requirements are enormous. Not even in the era of super computers and "big data" is the problem easy to solve. The only solution that early societies could come up with is basically decentralize the whole system.

I'm not a huge fan of Hayek. But, he argued rather powerfully that that price system, at least to a first approximation, transmits the knowledge that is needed for production decisions. Here is a copy of his essay. 

https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/hayek-use-knowledge-society.pdf

I recommend people read it.

People who wish to completely replace capitalism with something else, need to seriously contend with the issue of how we decide what gets made and who works what job etc. This is no small task and requires serious thought and not wishful thinking.

Of course, the price system is not perfect. And standard economics give plenty of examples where it fails to work perfectly, justifying to some extent government intervention.

Perhaps the biggest failure of the price system to work perfectly is in the labor market. In other words, a vector of prices don't clear labor markets, you can end up with high unemployment for a long time. Because the labor market is a "missing market" you can end up with multiple equilibrium (ie high unemployment and recessions aren't just because of "sticky prices") and the variable that selects the actual equilibrium is aggerate demand (which in turn depends on people's expectations about the future).

[Inkdaub]

When I read Rippounet's posts it cheers me up because I can almost believe we have a chance.

6 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

People are people and at the end of the day groups of people will not conform to “ideals”.

I hear what you're saying but we shouldn't forget that people...all of us...are under a constant barrage of manipulation.  We don't actually know what we could achieve without it.  I believe we could do much better than we are doing now.

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

requires serious thought

The answer might be here somewhere.

[OldGimletEye]

23 minutes ago, Inkdaub said:

The answer might be here somewhere.

There are some good ideas on the left, like universal healthcare, and co-determination on corporate boards and so forth.

Then there is part of the left that think that all this stuff is too "incrementalist", even going to point of calling this sort of incrementalism "reactionary" and want a new system, based on god knows what. I'm not really interested in designing a whole new system from the ground up as the people that advocate for this sort of thing, often just don't know what the hell they are doing or leave too many details unspecified.

Now if you want to talk about doing specific things for specific problems, then I'm cool with that. 

[All Cats Are Bad]

18 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Then there is part of the left that think that all this stuff is too "incrementalist", even going to point of calling this sort of incrementalism "reactionary" and want a new system, based on god knows what. I'm not really interested in designing a whole new system from the ground up as the people that advocate for this sort of thing, often just don't know what the hell they are doing or leave too many details unspecified.

There is this school of thought that says if you want to reform prisons in America, push for abolition. Same applies here. If you want that incremental change, you need the force on the extreme left that makes incrementalism a viable compromise.

[OldGimletEye]

1 minute ago, SaltyGnosis said:

There is this school of thought that says if you want to reform prisons in America, push for abolition. Same applies here. If you want that incremental change, you need the force on the extreme left that makes incrementalism a viable compromise.

Maybe. Or maybe people just say, "these people are effing crazy and I wouldn't let them run a lemonade stand, let alone a state or country."