The Communication Cube

[pyrat]

The necessity of the regulator was always clear. The US has a long history of trust-busting, which is never easy. This means telling rich & powerful people they can't be as rich and powerful anymore. It means hurting very profitable businesses, hurting profits in the short term to benefit profits (stability, competition, etc) in the medium term. The Activision case is a very good example. The regulator is pissing off M$, who are major political backers no doubt. I think it's the right choice but maybe xbox gamers don't.

Are you sure you quoted the right part ?
Should it be the piece about monkeys overthrowing the leader ?
Antitrust is just warlord infighting. It'll never solve capitalism problems, just like duels won't solve feudalism.
Poor people are told every minute they can't be as rich and powerful as others. No problem at all.

Exactly. But dollars are now funneled through institutions & mega asset managers so things have changed. Capitalism is rather centralized.

Sure, which means the former middle class starts understanding they're poor, without necessarily understanding they already were.
But what has this to do with votes ?

Actually the criteria is hard work. And I think it's true, if you work harder you will probably have more wealth. That's quite fair isn't it?

I don't think it's fair but I don't think it's true either. I think most of the poor people work much harder than powerpoint CEOs and they earn much less. I think it's more the more dishonest you are the more you earn. (and even then you need some art and some luck too).
It's not fair because working very hard to become the best possible football player is absolutely useless and should be paid less than cleaning streets or selling letuce, even if you do it lazily.
Working hard to cure cancer or putting out fires is useful and should be paid, but in general working hard should be disincentivised.
Working requires resources, not only efforts. And wasting resources is bad. So it depends on the results, not on the amount of work.
Did I just accidentally agree with @TeDaDeS ??

Yes. The US ceded control to the markets, put things in place to stimulate growth and invention. Contrast this with Russia & China, who both have tremendous natural resources, highly educated populations, massive industrial capacity & huge internal markets. But instead of the market choosing which companies exist it's mandated from Beijing, and they invariably get it wrong and you end up with inefficient companies that lose money but continue to operate, and everyone suffers except the shitty companies and the dictators continue to pretend that they can effectively steer an economy.

Russia and China are capitalistic, in a slightly more advanced way than the USA. In china and Russia the rich people have bought the government and put up authoritarian systems without artistic pretentions of freedom. In the USA artistic pretensions remain.
If the USA doesn't collapse further it may reach those levels sometime. If it doesn't it'll be because of the American taste for artistic pretensions.
Growth is cancer.
What we need is the opposite of that growth.
If you consider growth whatever makes us better, then you'll just disagree that what we have is growth. But I think the growth we have is quite semantically proper growth, and is not what we need. So I find de-growth just fine, @ElPoco. I kind of prefer "decroissance" but that may just be the first literally reference, not semantical.
Of course there are lots of USA or other places companies loosing money and continuing to operate. Twitter did it forever, and most start ups do (I'm not sure they all continue operating, many are bought off and shut down, but then theoretically they continue operating because the buyers operate further, it's likely meaningless).

Yep. I'm poor.

I'm poor too, so both our cases together shows that being poor says nothing about being smart.
But being smart also says nothing about being poor or rich.

Capitalism is simply how companies get funded. Capital is used to grow companies. Literally.

company growth is not economic growth, unless your economy intuition is thwarted.

I don't where you got this information. I don't believe it's true. Again, compare the US to Russia & China who have a fake private sector. They don't innovate they just benefit by plagiarizing the West.

Of course they innovate. I think the CCCP innovated more than Russia, but it was also larger.
China does innovate, it just doesn't reinvent the wheel. It thinks it's ok to steal immaterial made up property from other places, because other places have stolen everything from the rest of the world.
But they do innovate. Basically the west invented a set of abstractions it thought worked for them and got angered than the rest of the world didn't agree. Intellectual property is vaporware.
I'm western and I'd love Chinese and worldwide companies abode by free software licenses, but it's still make believe.

I have half baked theory that the (private) video game industry pushed digital technology the most. Possibly more than defense, academia, private research. The video game industry just has so much capital funneled into it.

And they pushed it in a way that you can't have decent graphics without proprietary shit. Thanks but no thanks. I'd rather have a slower freer progress.

(I’m not too fussed about “equality”)

Oh, that's easy. Just think as yourself as the looser, not the winner. With the winner takes it all, there are so many losers you're likely to be one.

The logical endpoint of (unfettered) capitalism is complete exploitation of everything of value, total decimation of all natural resources. And we’re plowing ahead …. Regulation is perennially playing catch up….

ACK

You need to provide an alternative you can’t just be negative.

LOL.
Just stop working and starve. Everyone. Or collective suicide. Anything.
Immediate full extinction of the human species is a better alternative than the current situation, which has this as a consequence together with many other species. I'm not sure if all of them, meaning the extinction of all known (to us) life in the universe.
We're far beyond the point where you can ask for better alternatives. Almost anything is better than what we're doing.
The problem is finding a solution where we survive. The optimization is getting as many as possible to survive.
A better solution than business as usual is trivial. Business as usual guarantees extinction. Business as usual will stop itself. Business as usual IS negative.
That's the point of "extinction rebellion". Their tactical goals and procedures I don't understand, but the basic idea is clear.

Full on capitalist America is doing much better than its peers, Russia, China, Brazil and India by most metrics. Maybe a revolution and complete overhaul of the system are appealing but I’d rather see the system evolve.

Funny metrics.

My view is countries should focus on creating jobs. This would mean a lot. All sorts of jobs because people are different. Getting a job that suits your inclinations and allows you a decent standard of living should be a basic human right. It’s possible today, there are a few obstacles, we want stuff as cheap as possible so have to import and thereby limiting local industry and opportunities. We are shooting ourselves in the foot, egged on by politicians (and cheap stuff).

As long as the job is not marketing... Creating needs for things we were not needing is absolutely the opposite of what we need...
We should guarantee (not sure it's possible) that everyone survives. Not that everyone has a job. Jobs should be means to an end, not the end itself. Just as money is a mean and not an end.

So since we live in democratic societies we choose our leaders who in turn drive policies that are popular, including (excluding) regulation. Capitalism is the people’s choice.

No. Remember:

Democracy is one person one vote.
Capitalism is one dollar one vote.

Capitalism is capitalism's choice.
We don't have fully democratic systems anywhere. Because we haven't equally powerful people. Because we don't have equality, whether you care or not.

 

[Djoga'Ro]

I wonder what triggered that question

You claim the people/consumers were at the helm and get what they truly want. I'd claim you neglect that human beings can be manipulated, that big capital with profit as their prime directive has become very good at manipulation of the consumers' perspectives. Or to what degree governmental decissions are informed by those that have the monetary means to drive lobbyism on a big scale. Rarely do they push for a betterment of education - one could speculate that doesn't help the former point.

I rather get the feeling we live in profit-driven lobbycracies dressed up as democracies, the latters not being able to heal themselves, since the supposed regents (peoples) being underqualified.

Actually the criteria is hard work. And I think it's true, if you work harder you will probably have more wealth. That's quite fair isn't it?

Hard work (most) often creates more wealth, but rarely the wealth grown is the hard workers wealth. If you want to grow your wealth disproportionately, you don't do it off your own hard work. Given capitalism, that would just be dumb and in most cases plainly not work out.

My view is countries should focus on creating jobs.

Why?

 

[TeDaDeS]

Hard work (most) often creates more wealth, but rarely the wealth grown is the hard workers wealth. If you want to grow your wealth disproportionately, you don't do it off your own hard work. Given capitalism, that would just be dumb and in most cases plainly not work out.

In what way is employing a person to work for you wrong? Is it the idea that the generated wealth isn't distributed fairly or the whole idea of employing people?

You claim the people/consumers were at the helm and get what they truly want.

I probably didn't state this, a lot of individuals usually just buy things they like. A community usually does know what it want which should result in governments and policy.
Capitalism is just an efficient way to generate value. A government/community must steer this process to meet their goals.
There will always be individuals, groups and businesses trying to get their way thru policy. That's why governments must be transparent, accountable and the people should be educated and informed.
Staying informed has been somewhat of an issue as corporations inform consumers via media, which is usually biased.
I would think any system would run into these issues, that's why we probably shouldn't rely on centralizing everything as it invites abuse.

 

[Djoga'Ro]

In what way is employing a person to work for you wrong?

It ain't.

Is it the idea that the generated wealth isn't distributed fairly or the whole idea of employing people?

It's when the employees of a business work their asses off to maybe make ends meet, but the bulk of the profits going to investors that do fuck all.
Or when CEOs "earn" 200 times as much (or more) as the average employee of the same business without working 200 times as much. Maybe pay them proportionate to their successes (which shouldn't include the workers contributions), but only iff they also get to pay for their failings.

I probably didn't state this, a lot of individuals usually just buy things they like.

You didn't say it like that, but drew this picture in my head.

A community usually does know what it want which should result in governments and policy.
Capitalism is just an efficient way to generate value. A government/community must steer this process to meet their goals.
There will always be individuals, groups and businesses trying to get their way thru policy. That's why governments must be transparent, accountable and the people should be educated and informed.
Staying informed has been somewhat of an issue as corporations inform consumers via media, which is usually biased.
I would think any system would run into these issues, that's why we probably shouldn't rely on centralizing everything as it invites abuse.

Capitalism foremostly encourages maximizing profits, not at all improving the wellbeing of every human being or improving society. To me that means capitalism already fails at setting the goals.
Plus, I don't want an economic system, against which the government needs to protect everyone constantly. Governments don't even manage to protect themselves against it.

Not that I'm able to provide a concrete - let alone detailed - suggestion, but wouldn't an economic system that naturally synergized with humanitarian (and ecological) government rather be something to wish for? And is it really that disputable that capitalism is very much not it?

I guess, a lot of co-ops give a good hint on what else there is other than blindly incrementing profit or feeding investors magnitudes beyond a healthy BMI.

 

[pyrat]

I'm not sure if I'm replying to @Djoga'Ro or @TeDaDeS here, sorry:

It ain't.

It may be or may not be. It depends on how much resources are dedicated to what goal.
Employment is not evil or good in itself.

It's when the employees of a business work their asses off to maybe make ends meet, but the bulk of the profits going to investors that do fuck all.
Or when CEOs "earn" 200 times as much (or more) as the average employee of the same business without working 200 times as much. Maybe pay them proportionate to their successes (which shouldn't include the workers contributions), but only iff they also get to pay for their failings.

So the idea of wealth unevenly distributed. Right. But there's a further problem with resources allocated to useless or counterproductive goals.
Shell would still be shit if the CEO would be payed the same as everyone else.
The counterargument is who's going to decide what's worthwhile. But it's obvious individual choice has no reason to lead to a survivable outcome.
So we can only have freedom with much more wisdom than we have for everyone. But we can only have lack of freedom with much more wisdom that we have for the one deciding.
We need to agree on a set of rules that basically say I don't care how rich you are you can't use finite resources for what you want. And you can't pollute the commons.
Stealing is forbidden. It's not just taxed. It's forbidden. But suddenly you can steal anything that isn't assigned an owner. That's wrong.
Destroying someone else property is forbidden. But polluting the air is allowed. It's just when you pollute too much without colluding with government that it's problematic.
That's because property is sacred but environment is not. It has to change.
And that quickly leads to let's lower standards of living, while staying survivable. So what?

You didn't say it like that, but drew this picture in my head.

The vast majority of people don't buy what they like simply because they can't afford it. Buying freedom is fiction.
In the USA (not only there) people buy junk food because it is cheap and healthy food is expensive. People are theoretically choosing to kill themselves, and junk food sellers are rewarded because they give people what they want. Bullshit.
So capitalism is going to let them choose to save the planet when it has already failed to let them choose to save themselves. Unbelievable.

Capitalism foremostly encourages maximizing profits, not at all improving the wellbeing of every human being or improving society. To me that means capitalism already fails at setting the goals.

Exactly.

Plus, I don't want an economic system, against which the government needs to protect everyone constantly. Governments don't even manage to protect themselves against it.

Yeah.

Not that I'm able to provide a concrete - let alone detailed - suggestion, but wouldn't an economic system that naturally synergized with humanitarian (and ecological) government rather be something to wish for? And is it really that disputable that capitalism is very much not it?

Yes.

I guess, a lot of co-ops give a good hint on what else there is other than blindly incrementing profit or feeding investors magnitudes beyond a healthy BMI.

Depends on the co-ops. But at least there's nothing intrinsically wrong in the concept of coops. Or there is but then it's a consequence of fitting them in a capitalistic system, not so much intrinsic.

 

[TeDaDeS]

It's when the employees of a business work their asses off to maybe make ends meet, but the bulk of the profits going to investors that do fuck all.
Or when CEOs "earn" 200 times as much (or more) as the average employee of the same business without working 200 times as much. Maybe pay them proportionate to their successes (which shouldn't include the workers contributions), but only iff they also get to pay for their failings.

I agree, CEO's don't 'own' the company. They are usually employees, just like all others. They do have a larger impact on the company obviously, so any good decision can increase profitability more compared to actions by a line-worker for example. But that shouldn't be 200x more valued.

Shell would still be shit if the CEO would be payed the same as everyone else.

I honestly think many people think negatively regarding Shell or any fossil fuel company. But the same people (indirectly) also buy their products. Oil is used for many products, not only gasoline but also plastics.
The wider community appear to not have stated they don't want to have anything to do with fossil fuels or plastics else they wouldn't exist. Even now it's not easy to not use any fossil fuels as everything is build upon transportation and the use of plastics.

Stealing is forbidden. It's not just taxed. It's forbidden. But suddenly you can steal anything that isn't assigned an owner. That's wrong.
Destroying someone else property is forbidden. But polluting the air is allowed. It's just when you pollute too much without colluding with government that it's problematic.
That's because property is sacred but environment is not. It has to change.

Which part do you mean is stolen? Resources in the ground for example, like oil and gas? Usually companies have to purchase or license those things from the government, indirectly compensating the community for gathering those resources.
Most countries you have to do the same for a house, you purchase the land to place a house / farm / business.
I totally agree on the pollution part, no one should be allowed to pollute the environment. There is some indication where that line would be, but what is the line between just existing and polluting? Usually it's scale, but usually many people just existing in a specific area is polluting also.

Capitalism fore mostly encourages maximizing profits, not at all improving the well being of every human being or improving society. To me that means capitalism already fails at setting the goals.
Plus, I don't want an economic system, against which the government needs to protect everyone constantly. Governments don't even manage to protect themselves against it.

Capitalism is like an engine of an economy. It doesn't determine a goal, it can only drive. If you decide to drive recklessly killing people that's usually the fault of the user.
It allows individuals to trade their own goods and services, which can improve a persons situation. On average countries raised their living standards due to this, causing people to pay more attention to problems like pollution. If you struggle to survive a clean environment is usually not your top priority. Having a poor economic system wouldn't help there either. Better systems probably exist, but until now I've not seen them work in practice.

In the USA (not only there) people buy junk food because it is cheap and healthy food is expensive.

I blame the government for subsidizing meat to the point it's cheaper compared to vegetables. Those are probably in place due to lobbyist. It's something they can change, but it still appears to be difficult to do.
If government would not have intervened in this case it would be impossible to provide animals eating food to be cheaper compared to the food the animals themselves eat.
Companies competing will drive food prices down, so the problem sounds like healthy options are made impossible due to government subsidies.

Depends on the co-ops. But at least there's nothing intrinsically wrong in the concept of coops. Or there is but then it's a consequence of fitting them in a capitalistic system, not so much intrinsic.

While I think we should have more local options, I also see that doing things in a larger scale can reduce the costs.
For example: The Netherlands, as small country, exports the following products: Ornamental plants and flowers, dairy products, eggs, meat, and vegetables. Making them the 2nd largest food exporter on the planet.
We could decide that each country produce their own products, but they might do it less efficient compared to Dutch farmers. Dutch farmers earn a lot of money making investing in more environmental solutions more plausible compared to smaller farms.
So I don't know which solution would be best. I feel like smaller is better, but I can imagine it would actually pollute more in total compared to one large efficient farm.


And since I didn't give any Covid-19 updates recently, there was some new research showing keeping your boosters up-to-date might not be effective.
Source: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.09.23290893v1
Quotes: "Background The CDC recently defined being “up-to-date” on COVID-19 vaccination as having received at least one dose of a COVID-19 bivalent vaccine. The purpose of this study was to compare the risk of COVID-19 among those “up-to-date” and “not up-to-date” on COVID-19 vaccination."
"Conclusions Since the XBB lineages became dominant, adults “not up-to-date” by the CDC definition have a lower risk of COVID-19 than those “up-to-date” on COVID-19 vaccination, bringing into question the value of this risk classification definition."

 

[netcat]

but in general working hard should be disincentivised

Now I understand your point of view. You don't want to work.
I suggest accepting relative poverty instead of blaming the system.

What we need is the opposite of that growth

We currently have a major war in Europe.

Reminds me of Malthus who (incorrectly) thought populate growth was the problem and would negate the benefits of technology gains. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism

I'm poor too

I hardly know anything about you but I'd guess you're a very pampered individual, just like most of us. We are all rich.

.....

I'm wondering when someone is going to state that property rights are the problem and private property should be abolished. That's where this thread is headed.

 

[pyrat]

Now I understand your point of view. You don't want to work.

I like to work hard when that helps other people work less hard (or even myself).
But I don't like to work hard just because. I need to understand what it brings. And money is no good reason to work hard. It may be part of the reason or a precondition, but not the reason.
I like to increase efficiency, so after any work there must be less work to do, not more.

I suggest accepting relative poverty instead of blaming the system.

Or both. It's not so much that I don't want to work hard. I don't want you to work hard either. Because that :
- is going to consume resources, and resources are scarce
- is likely (statistically) going to just produce effimeral goods or services that are not worth the resources.
- is going to promote the view that working hard is good in itself. So more waste of resources.
Did you catch me yet? Do you understand why I keep you all busy here in this thread? It's my hard work to distract you from your work

We currently have a major war in Europe.

I didn't mean that kind of de-growth. Not even sure it's de-growth. It's more like destruction.

Reminds me of Malthus who (incorrectly) thought populate growth was the problem and would negate the benefits of technology gains. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism

Yes, I don't know malthusianism well, and I remember even less than I once knew, but sounds more or less right.
But I think current predictions say the population would grow a little more and then get lower.
And the more technological countries seem to have lower natality. There's also some effect on fertility from pollution or so.
So not so simple and clear.

I hardly know anything about you but I'd guess you're a very pampered individual, just like most of us. We are all rich.

Well, yes, I guess you're right. You started the game by calling yourself poor.

.....

I'm wondering when someone is going to state that property rights are the problem and private property should be abolished. That's where this thread is headed.

Property is an artificial construct that needs to prove its worth. It's not something sacred. But I'm not sure complete abolition of private property is needed.
But if someone comes and says private property should be abolished I don't see where the scandal would be, frankly.
I think both capitalism and communism have a problem of excessive growth and that's suicidal. So we need something else.
But I don't believe in invisible hands that work magic from individual selfish decisions and cause collective good.
Maybe there's just no solution, and we're too clever for our own good, but too silly to survive.

 

[pyrat]

I honestly think many people think negatively regarding Shell or any fossil fuel company. But the same people (indirectly) also buy their products. Oil is used for many products, not only gasoline but also plastics.

I try not to consume fuels or plastics, but I don't succeed. I'm not all that free about it.
But if I didn't think negetively of Shell or the like, I would't even try, so it's good to think bad of bad companies, even when you don't achieve that they stop.

The wider community appear to not have stated they don't want to have anything to do with fossil fuels or plastics else they wouldn't exist. Even now it's not easy to not use any fossil fuels as everything is build upon transportation and the use of plastics.

That must be some belief of yours. There are lots of things that exist despite people stating they don't like them.
The fact that fuels and plastics are necessary currently does not mean they're good. It means we have a problem to solve.

Which part do you mean is stolen? Resources in the ground for example, like oil and gas? Usually companies have to purchase or license those things from the government, indirectly compensating the community for gathering those resources.

So stealing them is taxed, not forbidden. Natural resources don't belong to humanity. We should tend not to use them and rely only on circular economy. Not easy, but funny they try to approach it some day in Mars and not at home.

I totally agree on the pollution part, no one should be allowed to pollute the environment. There is some indication where that line would be, but what is the line between just existing and polluting? Usually it's scale, but usually many people just existing in a specific area is polluting also.

Should be like you can't pollute to produce anything that's not life or death needed, and you can't pollute if there're other less polluting ways to produce it or something like this.

Capitalism is like an engine of an economy. It doesn't determine a goal, it can only drive. If you decide to drive recklessly killing people that's usually the fault of the user.

No. The structure determines the outcome.

It allows individuals to trade their own goods and services, which can improve a persons situation. On average countries raised their living standards due to this, causing people to pay more attention to problems like pollution. If you struggle to survive a clean environment is usually not your top priority. Having a poor economic system wouldn't help there either. Better systems probably exist, but until now I've not seen them work in practice.

We are all struggling to survive. The planet is getting warm, the biodiversity is sinking. The conditions to survive are coming to an end.
That's precisely because once people had their survival they always wanted more and more. And raising living standards kills the planet, which lowers living standards.

I blame the government for subsidizing meat to the point it's cheaper compared to vegetables. Those are probably in place due to lobbyist. It's something they can change, but it still appears to be difficult to do.
If government would not have intervened in this case it would be impossible to provide animals eating food to be cheaper compared to the food the animals themselves eat.
Companies competing will drive food prices down, so the problem sounds like healthy options are made impossible due to government subsidies.

I don't care why. I was arguing the market is no indicator to people wishes. You can't just say this is good because people buy it. There are lots of reasons some shit is sold. Government intervention may or may not be one, but the point is that people are not free to buy what they want and spending is not voting, even if people should use reason with both.

While I think we should have more local options, I also see that doing things in a larger scale can reduce the costs.
For example: The Netherlands, as small country, exports the following products: Ornamental plants and flowers, dairy products, eggs, meat, and vegetables. Making them the 2nd largest food exporter on the planet.
We could decide that each country produce their own products, but they might do it less efficient compared to Dutch farmers. Dutch farmers earn a lot of money making investing in more environmental solutions more plausible compared to smaller farms.
So I don't know which solution would be best. I feel like smaller is better, but I can imagine it would actually pollute more in total compared to one large efficient farm.

I'm sure the Netherlands imports lots of shit produced with lousy environmental solutions.
Larger scale can reduce costs, but it prevents control of the externalities, so it brings existential threats.
The problem is precisely reducing all decisions to just the cost. Money can't convey ethical compromises.
Since individual decisions can't get a good enough system, we need (hopefully democratic) governments. A global government is so hard it's almost impossible, local governments are a little easier.
So trade should be local because the conditions determining trade should be decidable.

And since I didn't give any Covid-19 updates recently, there was some new research showing keeping your boosters up-to-date might not be effective.
Source: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.09.23290893v1
Quotes: "Background The CDC recently defined being “up-to-date” on COVID-19 vaccination as having received at least one dose of a COVID-19 bivalent vaccine. The purpose of this study was to compare the risk of COVID-19 among those “up-to-date” and “not up-to-date” on COVID-19 vaccination."
"Conclusions Since the XBB lineages became dominant, adults “not up-to-date” by the CDC definition have a lower risk of COVID-19 than those “up-to-date” on COVID-19 vaccination, bringing into question the value of this risk classification definition."

Interesting, thanks.

 

[netcat]

In a free market economy a farmer sells his grain for whatever others will pay. If the grain is particularly high quality or the farmer is exceptionally productive (due to eg hard work) he will earn more. Efficiency and quality are incentivized.

In a Soviet socialist economy following ww1 each farmer got an allotment of land and a fixed income, and were then expected to hand over whatever grain they produced. What happened? They hid the grain because there is no incentive to be productive and sold it on the black market - the only way to earn more. Now imagine this type of underhand behavior at all levels of a massive governing beaurocracy. Socialism incentivizes corruption and is grossly wasteful.

 

[Djoga'Ro]

Efficiency and quality are incentivized.

i happen to be arbeitslos atm

So, your last employer had become more efficient and had no more work for you?

 

[pyrat]

In a free market economy a farmer sells his grain for whatever others will pay. If the grain is particularly high quality or the farmer is exceptionally productive (due to eg hard work) he will earn more. Efficiency and quality are incentivized.

Theoretically. In practice Monsanto will blackmail and sue the farmer. If the farmer is European, then the EU will have him change what he produces three times in a row and end up paying him for not planting something. Oh, and the mafia, who is his landlord, will extort him to pretend he planted something else...

In a Soviet socialist economy following ww1 each farmer got an allotment of land and a fixed income, and were then expected to hand over whatever grain they produced. What happened? They hid the grain because there is no incentive to be productive and sold it on the black market - the only way to earn more. Now imagine this type of underhand behavior at all levels of a massive governing beaurocracy. Socialism incentivizes corruption and is grossly wasteful.

But the corrupt farmer still gave enough grain to the state for his doctor and his children teacher to feed on. In capitalism a farmer may not afford health or university.
And I don't know what capitalist countries you know but in the ones I know, the farmers sell their products in the black market to pay less taxes. So corruption is not a communist invention.

 

[netcat]

Ok fine. But I think it’s ridiculous (and folly) to want more state control.

 

[Null]

Due to it being International Peony Day or Sunday as us mere mortals call it, Peony gets free reign as to what we do. So far we've been watching some walking tour videos (examples below) and later on we're going to play Transmute.

Dovedale to Milldale 26th Best British Walk, English Countryside 4K

۞ https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Daveswalks All support is hugely appreciated and it helps me keep the channel going! No talking, just walking. Exploring the English Countryside. A nice gentle walk along the River Dove. Starting in Dovedale, crossing over the well known and popular Dovedale...

yewtu.be

Dockey Bluebell Woods Walk, English Countryside 4K

۞ https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Daveswalks All support is hugely appreciated and it helps me keep the channel going! No talking, just walking. Exploring the English Countryside. A nice gentle walk around the small woods known as Dockey Woods. A spectacular place where bluebells grow! Dockey...

yewtu.be

 

[netcat]

Yay! we've got subscription services!! Investors will be HAPPY!!!!

But Nintendo have Miyamoto-san.

 

[Null]

We're now onto other types of tours.

Meow Wolf - The Real Unreal - Private Pre-Opening Preview!!! ~SPOILERS~ Grapevine, TX

Intro by Cre80s https://linktr.ee/cre80s If you would like to make a contribution, my Patreon can be found here https://www.patreon.com/carpetbagger A Donation of at least 3 dollars and I will send you a postcard every month. I am now on Cameo! I can do custom messages for any occasion, check...

yewtu.be

 

[pyrat]

Ok fine. But I think it’s ridiculous (and folly) to want more state control.

Well, I can empathize. Thinking on more state control makes me nervous too. But I get more nervous thinking of corporate control. And the difference is bigger the more democratic the state is. And there aren't many truly democratic. I only visited Switzerland briefly, but that did look democratic, albeit capitalistic.
The problem is that the only way to have people more free is having people wiser, otherwise we're just giving ourselves more rope to hang ourselves with.
And people ain't getting any wiser. (English question: is "ain't" ok for plural subject?)
This shouldn't mean we need less freedom. We really need more wisdom.
But still, just as freedom does not mean you can kill whoever you want, freedom doesn't mean you can kill the planet, so we should outlaw private jets, etc.

 

[TeDaDeS]

Well, I can empathize. Thinking on more state control makes me nervous too. But I get more nervous thinking of corporate control. And the difference is bigger the more democratic the state is. And there aren't many truly democratic. I only visited Switzerland briefly, but that did look democratic, albeit capitalistic.
The problem is that the only way to have people more free is having people wiser, otherwise we're just giving ourselves more rope to hang ourselves with.
And people ain't getting any wiser. (English question: is "ain't" ok for plural subject?)
This shouldn't mean we need less freedom. We really need more wisdom.
But still, just as freedom does not mean you can kill whoever you want, freedom doesn't mean you can kill the planet, so we should outlaw private jets, etc.

While I can understand the sentiment I usually check what make the biggest impact. So if people would really care about CO2 reduction they would try to reduce the gasses from most impactful industries first. Private jets are unnecessary but they also contribute so little to the total CO2 output it wouldn't make any real impact except signaling we're doing stuff.
In 2008 there was a financial crisis and the place were I worked they stopped providing free fruit. We would have a bunch of apples and a couple of bananas at the start of the week. Sure they signaled they are implementing cost saving measures but I doubled a sack of apples and a couple of bananas each week is the biggest cost saver (52 * 10euro's is 520 euro's). Mind you this was a large company so 520 euro wouldn't make a real difference, I bet the impact on happiness was much more compared to the cost savings.

You can see in the graph below that the total aviation is 1,9% of CO2 emissions. From this 1.9% a tiny percentage is private jets (~0.2%). Sources: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector https://flybitlux.com/what-is-the-carbon-footprint-of-a-private-jet/
Crop burning, apparently a thing, accounts for 3.5% of CO2 emissions. If we would reduce that by 1,9% we could act like we offset flying to 0% emissions (we didn't, but sounds easier and more effective compared to reducing aviation emissions).
73.2% is related to generating energy to do stuff, like having factories run (24.2%), powering buildings (17.5%) and transporting things (16.2%). The other 26.8 of CO2 emissions is spend mostly on agriculture (18.4%), industry (5.2%) and waste (3.2%).

But I get more nervous thinking of corporate control.

Corporate control sounds really bad. Luckily there aren't any agreements that makes it so corporations can take over a country (at least if I have to believe the new changes to the WHO's policy, an organization which is mostly funded by companies/individuals).

 

[ElPoco]

In theory you can have a decentralized "communist" economy without a large state control. That's the approach of anarcho-syndicalism.
Any attempt to deploy it on larger scale was met with brutal repression so it's difficult to know how it works at a large scale on a long term but when it was shortly implemented in Spain after the 36 Revolution, there was an increase in productivity along with an improvement on the living conditions.

 

[netcat]

Lenin's approach was to install communist die-hards to pair with every government policy maker to ensure decisions were for the good of the party. Or else.