"Deep" thoughts on Socialism and Capitalism... (Split from retux thread)

[comradekingu]

Caine:

How does social democracy equate land-tax, flat tax, or no threshold of entry? You imply a combination thereof as a predicament for all, when it is in practice, not so.

Bartering is usually legal unless you make it into a territory where it would hide taxation.

Unless you miscalculate, we can assume in the case of Holland, it doesn't muck about, that it cannot afford or isn't allowed to.

We, in harsh and arid Norway, have a system where prices of farms that contain farm-land requires you to farm said land, in turn keeping prices quite low. Before just about everything was regulated because there was an alternative for offer. Take a look at this series before you give up on what is possible.

Much like the requirement to live in what would otherwise be summer-houses for the rich.

Collective right to the fishery commons is a practised right that gives everyone the right to fish for themselves from the sea.

Increased consumption doesn't make a country better, and it isn't sustainable.

The old-scandinavian laws and legal system, and this business we got now, is the best we or anyone else ever had at the time.

Watch it get ruined again. At least we are done with Christianity.

Klapse: Soviet communism wasn't good in 1950, it wasn't even sustainable. Soviet communism existed by virtue of being functional, as in soviet, in the earlier years.

Private schools have private funding. You can build a castle if you only do it once over, sourcing the money far and wide, that doesnt work for the common man.

The US legal system is a joke, and its being forfeited over to people who can afford to shed what is to them peanuts out of courts.

Germany is also another country. If you listen to the people providing the service, in either country, rather than the people wanting to make money from it, they will tell you medical coverage shouldn't be a business opportunity.

In the US, a system to grade doctors by their success-rate was just cancelled. Because when payment follows performance in a competitive system, nobody wants a patient that might die and look bad on the records.

I don't know if this is a joke, but it gets out of hand quick.

Private enterprises want to provide easy services, shifting out the truly ill people that are costly and need to be figured out, in turn requiring expensive treatment.

Its absurd to point to private-health enterprises in a otherwise functional health-service as examples of good free-market functionality. They are effectively subsidized.

 

[Haraldur]

Interestingly, I have never -- NEVER -- heard a self-proclaimed "socialist" say that they define "socialism" as state control of the economy. The less educated types may say something weak, along the lines of "equality" or "fairness", but the serious ones tend to say something like common ownership or, more likely, workers' control of the means of production. That latter one is probably closest to the true definition. From that, there are some that argue for state control, as a proxy for true workers' control, and, even then, usually for sectors that may be considered public infrastructure and/or natural monopolies (commanding heights etc.): health, education, roads, railways, banking, telecommunications, water, energy etc..

Classically, a more direct approach is advocated, including worker democracy (from employees determining the CEO to more radical, council-based, options, including the original soviets, before they were tainted by Leninism), worker co-operatives (even today, the Labour Party in the UK has a sub-grouping called the Co-Operative Party, with links to the The Co-Operative groceries shop, The Co-Operative Bank etc.; more topically, this is the approach being favoured by the dominant Kurdish groups in northern Syria at the moment: they (claim to) fight against the Islamic State to secure a system of (multi-ethnic) direct democracy, worker co-operatives everywhere and female liberation) and union control/takeover (this is known as Syndicalism, which probably had is most prominent expressions in 1930s Spain as Anarchist Syndicalism (they made a good attempt at winning), with other examples including the Industrial Workers of the World in the 1920s USA and brief attempts at a more bureaucratic form in the 1970s UK).

The main exception to all this is Leninism/Stalinism, which, still, claimed that state control was a temporary measure, that the state would "wither away" as the USSR neared the end of "the road to socialism" or "the road to communism" (communism-proper, as agreed by pretty-much everybody that aims for it, is defined as "stateless" -- what differs is the definition of "the state"). Before 1917, the most common revolutionary Socialist forms (in the West, at least) were highly skeptical of the state: anarchism (of various kinds), classical Marxism, classical Syndicalism (in that order, roughly descending). The reformist currents, the Social Democratic parties of the time (including the Russian one from which we got the Bolsheviks) tended to argue for greater democracy within the state, extending the right to vote to working men, campaigning for union rights and workplace democracy etc..

 

[bzar]

Libraries offer their books for free though they are not free to run.

I always had to pay membership fees for the library (though they were still subsidized). There was nothing free about it. That said, they are disappearing at a rapid rate as they have proven to be unwilling to follow into the digital age. The typical lack of innovation that I've grown to expect from non-commercial parties.

I've never paid a membership fee for a library. Also the libraries here offer ebooks to borrow online. Also classic video games . They're alive and well here.

If, for example, there was a bill to offer basic level tax-payed broadband internet for every finnish home with a reasonable cost, like 20€ or 50€/year/person, I'd gladly pay that even though I'd probably still use a commercial service to get a better one.

If there was a tax-payed broadband internet for every home, then there would not exist a better one through commercial service. There would simply be no rational economic argument to start offering one. Since there would be no faster internet there also would not be any services which require the faster internet and so forth... This way the entire economy spirals downwards.

Oh? Then why does there exist commercial medical services in addition to the pretty much entirely tax-subsidized ones here? If you can offer better service than the cheaper, even free (at least from direct fees), state-provided one then you have a market. That's like saying if white bread was given for free, nobody would eat anything else.

 

[comradekingu]

I think people driven by idealistic purposes are rare at either end of the spectrum, but that both will be countered by the same means and methods by the current powers to be.
 

Spoiler

It is a matter of philosophy rather than politics, not that the two should be separate, but that this is at worst unproductive quarrelling without premise for the latter. In that same scope it is at best irrelevant unless it can be understood to be better by a greater mass of people. Observing here the distinction that it is in fact so, and that it works (in an ecological perspective for example).

 
You are down to sociology having a preference for the collective, as we are a self-sufficient herd-animal. However there are people who don't belong to this group, which in a chaos-theory perspective stand to benefit from exploiting their system. Right now that is the system to bigger or lesser degree, and the reason more or better alternatives don't exist, is they didn't account for this.
 
Humans are egoistic, and that isn't bad. Egocentricsm is, because it is less effective. It is the less clever option. It also has only direct or ethnocentric preference for the survival of the group as a whole.

The latter is a natural bias/instinct, of quite severe implication.

 
Ideally we should be led by the smartest individuals, but those are often altruistic, which is bad. Not as a system onto itself, but as something that also accommodates others. The premise necessitates everyone be on the same level, on some level.
 
The best solutions are often self-serving and elitistic. Which is how good ideas turn into working-practice. Which is also true for the worst solutions.
 
I don't have the answer, but I think I understand some parts of the problem to those that do.

 

[klapse]

Interestingly, I have never -- NEVER -- heard a self-proclaimed "socialist" say that they define "socialism" as state control of the economy.

It has become less popular to directly advocate totalitarian state control (partly thanks to Mises but mostly thanks to the abject historical failures of it), but in fact the socialists and socialist-leaning people active in politics today do advocate some degree of state control of the economy.

I agree that it is important to distinguish between (totalitarian) state socialism, which was what was being debated in economic circles when Mises refutation appeared in 1920, and various forms of partial socialism, which Mises termed "interventionism".  Whether the Socialist Calculation Problem comes into effect depends on whether or not the regime (of any sort) allows anarchic, enterpreneurial discovery of what is to be produced and market-determined prices for factors of production and consumer goods.

An economy of competing co-op run businesses with unregulated production, markets and prices would not suffer the Calculation Problem, but that's not socialist by any common understanding of the term.

If your preferred flavor of "socialism" does feature government-planned production, government interference in production or intervention into market-based prices, the Calculation Problem applies, and the degree of interference determines the depths of inefficiency into which the economy will descend.

 

[Binky]

Sectors that have high setup costs (e.g. railways, telephones) rarely have enough competition for market forces work effectively. Private monopolies can be at least as (if not more) abusive and unsustainable as state-owned ones.

As such, I think they should be run either by the goverment, or with heavy government supervision.

This, of course relies on a government composed of politicians that care about public opinion...

 

[Haraldur]

There are differences between central government control and local government control. If there are hundreds of local governments, then there is little chance of stagnation. Keep in mind, too, that a company, a firm, is essentially a planned economy within itself, with variations of central and local planning depending on corporate structure (just like the state, but, in the West, less democratic, as a rule). Why should Microsoft (say) do better for its "citizens" (workers, maybe shareholders) than (say) the Netherlands? They both have (elements of) planning, and both (probably) have internal markets (formal and informal). Even within individuals there is planning -- the only real benefit of having lots of "attempts" at things is that there are more opportunities for "winners" to "survive" than if a very few entities try mainly similar things, in a (practically) non-deterministic world (ours).

Note, also, that all "mainstream" (for lack of a better word) anti-capitalist socialisms advocate a "stateless" end-state, and so, therefore, a decentralized and/or democratic economy at some point. Many advocate immediate decentralization.

The Economic Calculation Problem is by no means proven, there are several arguments against it visible on the Wikipedia page. Not least, the argument of Turing Equivalence.

 

[ekianjo]

Sectors that have high setup costs (e.g. railways, telephones) rarely have enough competition for market forces work effectively. 

That is a myth. In the US, the railroads first started with private entrepreneurs, not State ones. And that was a work of massive infrastructure. That's why you even have games like Railroad Tycoon in the first place, describing the economics of private rail and how they make ROI.

It's not because we live in times where States are so powerful that everything in your life around you has happened thanks to the States, despite what they want you to believe.

Private monopolies can be at least as (if not more) abusive and unsustainable as state-owned ones.

Yeah, but private companies have to face competition sooner or later.

Governments have the monopoly of Force and can kill their way to stay in power. And they do, we have so many examples of that in recent History.

Note, also, that all "mainstream" (for lack of a better word) anti-capitalist socialisms advocate a "stateless" end-state, and so, therefore, a decentralized and/or democratic economy at some point. Many advocate immediate decentralization.

LOL how does that work then? How do they push their agenda if they don't have State power? Do they assume that once decentralized everyone in the population will suddenly turn socialist? Socialism is fundamentally against the notion of Private Property, and to enforce that way of thinking, you effectively need to FORCE people to abandon their rights to owning things. That cannot go without State Power or Community Power of any kind.

 

[hitbyambulance]

I always had to pay membership fees for the library (though they were still subsidized). There was nothing free about it. That said, they are disappearing at a rapid rate as they have proven to be unwilling to follow into the digital age. The typical lack of innovation that I've grown to expect from non-commercial parties.

and an anecdote to counter your anecdote - public libraries where i live are doing quite well, and transitioning to 'digital age' media. they are also non-commercial parties.

A US-American might say, "There's no substitute for government courts" -- but in fact an increasing number of legal disputes are being settled by private arbitration.

an increasing number of companies in the US specify in the EULA (or equivalent) that any issues you have with them must not be handled through the traditional court system, but through private arbitration in order to block class-action lawsuits - and an arbitrator that's selected by the company with which one is in dispute, in fact. the results of these arbitrations seem to disproportionately favor the corporation...

one recent article:

http://www.cleveland.com/consumeraffairs/index.ssf/2015/03/cfpb_finds_arbitration_used_to.html

 

[comradekingu]

The first rail, in Britain, operated a mine, and passengers as a curiosity. I think the funding was mixed, but rail from this era is not in any way shape or form a decent example for today, nor is computer-games. Private or public mining where trains are involved is to great extent an early example of trains that nobody in or around a train want to return to.

Is everything private in your thought-experiement, and do no international convetions and treaties exist?

Rail and Telecom are perfect examples of things that need public regulation, otherwise it proves inoperable. The US has car-manufacturers buying trams to shut them down, too big to fail, and cartels operating the telecom, with incompatible networks.

The all free traffic of India isn't a problem you get around by having a car you cant get killed in. Its clear you started with the ideology first and dealt with the reasoning later. That isn't interesting, but how you arrived at the former, and what that is, can be.

Land cannot be expropriated by just anyone, and frequencies are a limited resource. Also there are human factors in play.

To what degree governments can assert power is the question. The balance between what citizens can operate at mass, and what exists as mass-destructive entities, has shifted. I don't know what age you have in mind here, but they certainly are not interchangeable, where you bring examples of one, over to the reality of another.

Governments not having monopoly of force is recent history, pre-dated by feudalism. Is that what you had in mind? Neo-feudalism is still the same thing even if you give it a modern spin. There is no connection to be drawn between socialism and abolishment of private property. Communism and materialism go hand in hand.

Where you do draw the line, depends on the individual, however if you want to make it a fundamental disconnect, its between liberty of people and land. Thats where mother nature just limits things if you want to or not.

Starting a rebuttal with "LOL" is...

You will find the GPLv3 license is a good example of a stateless, decentralized concept wherein citizens group together towards a higher aim, often with no other incentive than to scratch their own itch, or someone elses.

I don't know what you mean by community power, but that's the point, isn't it? The community amasses what the community produces. It would be contrary to the aim to hand over power to one entity.

Sharing it by copying, is fine. Some resources are not like that, but its hard to stake a claim when you don't explain the rules.

It is hard to grasp what kind of concept you are describing as an alternative, when you portray your own understanding of what you dislike so devoid of insight.

 

[bzar]

Sectors that have high setup costs (e.g. railways, telephones) rarely have enough competition for market forces work effectively.

That is a myth. In the US, the railroads first started with private entrepreneurs, not State ones. And that was a work of massive infrastructure. That's why you even have games like Railroad Tycoon in the first place, describing the economics of private rail and how they make ROI.

Yes, these projects can be started by private entrepreneurs, but the question was about the viability of competition. Since no railway company has economic incentive to let anyone else on their rails (to maintain competitive advantage), competition would mean more rails and everyone building their own network. This is wasteful and creates an increasingly high bar for entry to the competition due to available space for rails in cities. This leads to less competition, which is bad for free market.
Consider, on the other hand, the alternative of state-built rails with private transportation companies as clients. New routes can be built as long as the private companies share the costs for them (state provides land and city zoning in addition to stations and other similar stuff), which are then rented back to cover maintenance costs. No duplication, low bar of entry since any new transportation company can rent the rails same as the old ones, more competition.

 

[_wb_]

 

[thatgui]

..low bar of entry since any new transportation company can rent the rails same as the old ones, more competition.

Not quite, already established companies may have more resources at hand to be more competitive price wise.


But then again, its the free market after all - it will regulate itself for sure, its just a question to whoms advantage :rolleyes:

 

[ekianjo]

_wb_ if your graphic represents the growth of big government vs decentralization its perfectly accurate.

 

[bzar]

I'd say too much centralization is bad, no matter where it is. Too big companies and too big government are both bad. Maybe not equally, but that's details. Also how much is too big is debatable.

The ultimate goal of a state in my opinion is the betterment and happiness of all its citizens. Everything else should be considered relative to that goal, even "rights" considered natural. How this goal is best achieved is also debatable.

 

[_wb_]

(Democratic) Socialism means extending democracy to all important aspects of society, including big sectors of the economy like finance and industry.

In capitalism, democracy is only partially allowed, and only as long as politicians only spend time on matters that don't matter much -- i.e. as long as they don't threaten the 1%.

 

[ekianjo]

Lol dont make me laugh wb with the 1% buzzword. You should know better. Besides politicians even socialist ones also belong to the 1%. I have never ever seen a proletarian socialist leader. So your words are just wind.

 

[ekianjo]

BZAR even corporations as big as microsoft cannot threaten your freedom as an end user since there is always a choice. But when your government turns against its people there is no alternative.

 

[bzar]

BZAR even corporations as big as microsoft cannot threaten your freedom as an end user since there is always a choice. But when your government turns against its people there is no alternative.

Yes they can. By affecting legislation through lobbying and bribes in their advantage. See for example mickey mouse extensions to copyright.
EDIT: or TTIP as a more recent, global example or commercial interests threatning freedom

 

[ekianjo]

BZAR even corporations as big as microsoft cannot threaten your freedom as an end user since there is always a choice. But when your government turns against its people there is no alternative.

Yes they can. By affecting legislation through lobbying and bribes in their advantage. See for example mickey mouse extensions to copyright.EDIT: or TTIP as a more recent, global example or commercial interests threatning freedom

BZAR even corporations as big as microsoft cannot threaten your freedom as an end user since there is always a choice. But when your government turns against its people there is no alternative.

Yes they can. By affecting legislation through lobbying and bribes in their advantage. See for example mickey mouse extensions to copyright.EDIT: or TTIP as a more recent, global example or commercial interests threatning freedom

They can because we have a government with central powersin the firstplace.