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
Wouldn't there be law in any case? If so, someone would need to decide what goes in it, and they can be influenced with enough material resources. Surely you are not arguing there shouldn't be law?
Power in any form needs oversight, preferably from those influenced by it. Public power has oversight built in. Private power not so much.
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.
1) The benefits of small, local goverment are well documented on mises.org. The german city states (before unification) were an example of this. None of them could impose onerous taxes without producers fleeing to a more liberal (in the classical sense) state. This kept the government burden on producers small. German unification made this much more difficult for companies to do.
2) Your point that large corporations act like a state is partly true. Within the structure of a classical hierarchical company, a command-economy can emerge. - But: that is why companies frequently implement internal markets (i saw this even in 30-person company), divest production to outsourcing, or go bankrupt (absent bailouts from the state). On the other hand all corporations need to buy factors of production on the market, and offer something people voluntary buy and generate a profit, which is not how a state operates, so the analogy is really not that good.
3) "the only real benefit of having lots of "attempts" at things is that there are more opportunities for "winners" to "survive"" Yes this is absolutely crucial to the process of discovering which production processes and managers etc are actually making more valuable outputs out of less valuable inputs (profit). It is very difficult to produce net-value, which is why you can't have a bureaucracy fulfil that function - because failure does not lead to them going out of business. Failure in a bureaucracy leads to a bigger budget next year.
4) The Socialist Calculation Problem was not refuted, as anyone can see who thinks the issue through. There is no way for a central planner to aggregate the preferences of thousands or millions of people to find out what their real choices would be. The only way to find out how much someone values a good or service is to let them spend their own money on it. That's the only way realistic prices can be determined.
4) The Socialist Calculation Problem was not refuted, as anyone can see who thinks the issue through. There is no way for a central planner to aggregate the preferences of thousands or millions of people to find out what their real choices would be. The only way to find out how much someone values a good or service is to let them spend their own money on it. That's the only way realistic prices can be determined.
Try telling people living in areas where the water supply has been privatized, that they now have to pay "realistic" prices.
I'm completely against a "free market" when it comes to basic needs like small living space (that many working people can't really afford anymore) and water.
4) The Socialist Calculation Problem was not refuted, as anyone can see who thinks the issue through. There is no way for a central planner to aggregate the preferences of thousands or millions of people to find out what their real choices would be. The only way to find out how much someone values a good or service is to let them spend their own money on it. That's the only way realistic prices can be determined.
Try telling people living in areas where the water supply has been privatized, that they now have to pay "realistic" prices.
I'm completely against a "free market" when it comes to basic needs like small living space (that many working people can't really afford anymore) and water.
You're against a free market in shoes? People need shoes. You're against a free market in food? People need food.
And no, privatized water doesn't necessarily mean it gets more expensive. In Slovenia for example, privatized water has delivered better quality for less money. See: https://www.rtvslo.si/okolje/voda-v-sloveniji-je-ze-sprivatizirana/302338. Germany for e.g. has a mix of private and communal water providers.
A state with 100% government providers of services don't have competition which forces them to be efficient. In Germany there's always the possibility of privatizing the water supply, which creates a de-facto competition.
I'm not against free market in shoes, but from what I've seen, free market in shoes tends to lead to shoes of dubious quality that last far less longer than shoes of the same brand used to, for more or less the same price.
It might seem to make sense: people needing to buy shoes more often means more money, and fashion dresses this up as innovation/evolution, but in the end it means that more resources are spent to fulfill a need, which is economically bad (as far as micro-economy is concerned).
In France, privatized water led to two companies forming an oligopoly (and probably using corruption to get contracts) with prices going up while quality went down. Since then many cities have started taking back control of their water, with much better results.
The problem was probably not the free market concept in itself. It was more corruption and the behavior of the water companies. But sadly, capitalism and free market don't have efficient built-in measures to prevent this.
This seems logical but it is false. All you need is the possibility that the contract for water supply be given to another firm. This alone will limit how much profit or ineficiency the extant provider can allow itself. If it gets too expensive, the community will say "but the neighboring town pays 50% less! And they will give the contract to a competing supplier.
That's the theory. Has it happened? In a significant scale? Like something like New York suddenly deciding to change suppliers of critical infrastructure. Requiring new infrastructure be built?
EDIT: Consider something like London subways being private. The owner would for some reason start charging an arm and a leg for their use. Would the city just go "Nope! We'll let someone else rip up the city to build a competing network of subway tunnels!"? How about after those two merge and repeat the same thing?
That's the theory. Has it happened? In a significant scale? Like something like New York suddenly deciding to change suppliers of critical infrastructure. Requiring new infrastructure be built?
EDIT: Consider something like London subways being private. The owner would for some reason start charging an arm and a leg for their use. Would the city just go "Nope! We'll let someone else rip up the city to build a competing network of subway tunnels!"? How about after those two merge and repeat the same thing?
It happens all the time. Just an example from my extended family: My cousin works for a bus company. They provide transportation services for the local town. Every few years they need to submit a bid to the town to keep the franchise. With the opening of European borders, they suddenly had to compete with Polish etc bussing companies, and lower their operating costs.
So yes, there is only one supplier of the service, but they have to compete with other companies to get the contract.
@B-ZaR: the change of company doesn't mean that all the infrastructure is torn down. In most cases, the infrastructure belongs to the city (or another private company in charge of taking care of it) and the company is just using it (sometimes paying for this). There are some exceptions like mobile networks where each company will have its own infrastructure but for stuff like railways, water or roads, it's not the case.
@klapse: in France in most cases you'll get two big companies led by CEO who are good friends with leaders of political parties and very good at corrupting people. Besides the corruption part, there's also often the fact that they're big enough that they can offer a very cheap bid (for which they actually lose money). They'll quickly rack up all the contracts (if they can they'll have laws passed that make it harder for their competitors to get into the market) and then, once the competitors are out, they'll fix prices the way oligopoly usually do.
@klapse: in France in most cases you'll get two big companies led by CEO who are good friends with leaders of political parties and very good at corrupting people. Besides the corruption part, there's also often the fact that they're big enough that they can offer a very cheap bid (for which they actually lose money). They'll quickly rack up all the contracts (if they can they'll have laws passed that make it harder for their competitors to get into the market) and then, once the competitors are out, they'll fix prices the way oligopoly usually do.
Having the state (or local government) own the physical assets, and choose which companies operate them is, in my opinion, a reasonable way to do things. It is not, however, anywhere close to a free market.
A truly free setup would require that every railway company build their own railway and buy their own rolling stock before competing. For various reasons both obvious and mentioned previously, this would be a very bad arrangement for the consumer.
That's the theory. Has it happened? In a significant scale? Like something like New York suddenly deciding to change suppliers of critical infrastructure. Requiring new infrastructure be built?
EDIT: Consider something like London subways being private. The owner would for some reason start charging an arm and a leg for their use. Would the city just go "Nope! We'll let someone else rip up the city to build a competing network of subway tunnels!"? How about after those two merge and repeat the same thing?
It happens all the time. Just an example from my extended family: My cousin works for a bus company. They provide transportation services for the local town. Every few years they need to submit a bid to the town to keep the franchise. With the opening of European borders, they suddenly had to compete with Polish etc bussing companies, and lower their operating costs.
So yes, there is only one supplier of the service, but they have to compete with other companies to get the contract.
No, something that requires actual infrastructure being built like power lines or water pipes or railways or subway tunnels or something. Something that having to have two of requires significant rebuilding of infrastructure. If you want to go the bus route, assume the roads were owned by the bus company. They wouldn't let the other companies drive on them. How do you compete out of that? Build new roads next to the current ones?
@B-ZaR: the change of company doesn't mean that all the infrastructure is torn down. In most cases, the infrastructure belongs to the city (or another private company in charge of taking care of it) and the company is just using it (sometimes paying for this). There are some exceptions like mobile networks where each company will have its own infrastructure but for stuff like railways, water or roads, it's not the case.
Yes, that's what I'm saying here. Except for the part where it's another private company. Because that just makes the same problem exist on another level.
A truly free setup would require that every railway company build their own railway and buy their own rolling stock before competing. For various reasons both obvious and mentioned previously, this would be a very bad arrangement for the consumer.
This sounds plausible, but a look at American history provides an interesting counterexample. With railroads there was a complex corporatist situation. There the US government stepped in very heavily, subsidizing (private) railroad companies. (Abraham Lincoln was a famous lobbyist/lawyer for this)
One of the first things they were commited-to was a huge subsidization program of the "Trans-Continental Railroad". There was a homesteading system whereby the government would provide, for free, the property to build the railroad lines, stations, terminals, including miles of property on each side of the track (around 220 million acres). The federal government also paid a cash subsidy per-mile of track built, which led them to build very circuitous routes. For the railroads, this land was tax-exempt. Settlers who wanted to locate on lands near the track had to buy it from the railroads, yielding huge profits for the railroad companies. There were 4 big transcontinental railroads who got the bulk of the gifts. Furthermore in the post-Civil War era, the US government used the army to kill all the Native Americans living along the routes of the Union Pacific and other railroads. The senators and the congressmen who voted for these crooked policies got free shares of the railroad construction companies.
The construction was followed by a government supported cartel system - the largest called the Iowa Pool - raising prices and limiting supply. I won't go into the details here. The crony corporatism and graft was documented in a book by Gabriel Kolko (forgot the title) and by Richard White's book Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America.
Into this situation burst James Hill who founded the Great Northern Railroad. He built it with purely private funding - no federal grants. He bought lands from the Native Americans instead of genocidally killing them. And his railroad out-competed the expensive, inefficient, state-subsidized railroads, providing alternate routes to transport goods and people.
Examples like that tend to always be historical, because the bar to entry has been raised by several orders of magnitude since then. There's a LOT more railroads to replace, they need to be built from better materials because of higher speeds, there's less slave-level workforce to do it with and building the last dozen miles to the railway stations of cities requires a whole new level of work.
Its the same thing. Where there was no pathway to lay tracks on, it took a lot of work to make it so. Drilling tunnels etc. When the speed goes up, you need straighter lines, iterating and repeating the process as you go along.
Its not like a age-old city just magically adapts all its ductwork just because you want to put the first subway in.
We have machines now that make pick-axes a thing of the past anyhow.
The major difference isn't that there isn't less slave-workforce to utilize. Its that early rail was a tool to enslave people, in every aspect. It cant and shouldn't happen again.
That type of politics, even to Europeans, is something best left behind. The part that was part of the absurdity, employing free-market ideology to limited-resource public space, is not viable, but possible when you start from scratch.
The elon musk rail checks all boxen. New technology, novelty, old money from other field, state-subsidized.
There is a old soviet 1-st of april joke that is something like "The cccp is no more, capitalist rule is now in power, we shall have two subway/train-systems"
Out of the many things that didnt work, and led to its demise, the rail was good.
Big things and tasks are better left to service collective benefit. The scope fits. I can respect the idea that the hidden hand of the market naturally cures problems in collapse, but then its always plan-economy to get the wheels turning again. That is how things are built. And centralized power, be it under one name or the other, is when it fails.
Its eaqually puzzling to me to argue no intervention as the best policy as it is to assume power governs itself if intervention is what you want.
What has changed in the world seems to be the collection of power. And the advent of wars that are mutually and exclusively destructive.
I wonder what happens after it accumulates absolutely, which considering the trend, is the likely outcome.
From the perspective of someone who wants to be up top, we have already in many places passed the point where the masses actually have tangible markets.
Accumulating debt stops being real after a point, unless your scope is nationwide or world-economy.
It enters into the "too big to fail", and even if you point out a whole country, its the same problem on the same cut, even if the numbers are bigger.
You cannot be slave+1. You can enslave future generations, but doing a whole country seems like a tough sell.
I'd like to think that the improved knowledge is what pushes us in the right direction, but even there it gets gray.
After reading this thread all I can say is after living in st.paul I have some opinions of the corrupt almost in many regards communistic government we have. Yes many europeans see the democrats as the "good" guys in the usa but in st.paul they're not. Our taxes were high. They didn't do what other places do and just take a direct chunk. Nope we got Alley tax, Boulevard Tax, Sidewalk Tax, Gutter Tax, Road Tax, Water tax, Garbage Tax (not including paying FOR the service), Alley parking tax they nickle and dimed you till the point of absurdity. My favorite was a roadwork tax that when you followed the paperwork never went to maintaining the roads( pot holes the size of a hood of a mini cooper proved that.) Instead it went to subsidize the housing, insurance and Direct TV (Cable tv) of imported in immigrants.
We live in a northern state which means lots of snow.. Well for those of you who know about roads compacting snow makes ice.. yeah when on average did we see a snow plow? Once a month. There'd be 3 inches of ice on the road at least before we saw what the tax went to.
People just group socialism into an economic thing but its a combination of government and economics which is even worse. Small scale works beautifully, or looks perfect on paper if you ignore the human variable. Just like Communism. Looks flawless on paper until human nature comes into play and you have a Stalin.
~ :Warning rant about MN political scene below:~
The Democratic party in MN is a joke, they've been in power for so long and the people are brain washed to just blindly follow them. (Political friends of ours put a dog up for election one year with just the name and a D for the party. No campaign no nothing. the dog in the first week was winning by 73%! They had to pull it out of the election out of fear of it actually winning!) They no longer listen to the politicians and just cheer. "Raising taxes up by 25% to help fund poor impoverished illegal aliens" *crowd applauds only to bitch a month later that their taxes sky rocketed. Political cut backs and just horrible actions are the flavours of the politicians here. They have killed people, taken away property from people using legal means only to sell it to buddies for a buck (Want to buy a victorian mansion for a 1$ that was taken from a 4th generation italian family? Then you should have been friends with Major Coleman's father!) MN is known for child sex rings which of course many of the boy toys some of the politicians adore come from. (the fbi just released the data publicly some time this month we knew about it for YEARS) The twin cities are a hell hole, lead by people whose philosophy is exactly communistic.They don't want people to own their own land, they don't want people to have any form of luxury. They want to have people enclosed in small apartments being monitored 24/7
We have people from Ukraine and Poland fleeing the country because they reliving what went on before communism took hold of those countries. They're fleeing back home, because they don't want to live through it again. a
I know that many of us are sick of "capitalism" but what you're sick of is crony capitalism. In the US this our system. The bank bail ins and the auto manufacturers prove it. We're leaning more towards a hidden corporatocracy.
And no I don't think making the USA socialist would help in this case because its what the loonies want. If you europeans don't believe me in what the democrats in power looks like over a period of time.. just look at Detroit.
I could blabber on for days about this crap. I use to be heavily involved, I used to protest. I've been to the capital. I've seen these people first hand I know people who stood up during the 70's only to be arrested locked up in jail for 20-30 years and the day before they are released the charges are dropped and they have no record. Our system is corrupt, but any other option would just give these maniacs more power.
if the admins want to give me a warning point for ranting or take down this post that's perfectly fine. I just had to voice my very heated personal opinion on the subject matter.
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