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@freemo
Which Communism are you talking about? The one where everybody shares everything or the one where there's a dictator making them share nothing?
Maybe, but if communism converges to these two cases with the same result, it seems to be from the same error in thinking.
The root error comes from the assumption people will cooperate with the principle willingly. Once you assume most people will exploit any system for personal gain when they can it becomes evident communism is not a workable system without a totalitarian government. Even then people will generally do the bare minimum so you get poverty.
Capitalism exploits the inherent selfishness of individuals for the greater good of society.
@freemo
I wondered if that was the angle. It is an unfortunate but realistic view.
While not probable I still hold out that there is a possibility, however minuscule, that we can break that cycle.
Oh we absolutely can, but that is just capitalism with compassion at that point. It isnt communism if people do it willingly rather than a totalitarian government.
We have it in capitalism all the tine, its called a commune.
Right but what im sayi g is,john lenon was describing capitalism, a capitalism filled with altruistic people.
@freemo
Altruistic Capitalism seems to be an oxymoron.. but I suppose that's the point. That it can't exist. That we are in fact doomed and destined to deal with the greed of humanity... Which is another unfortunate but realistic view.
@avlcharlie How is it a oxymoron. All capitalism is is any system which includes free market trade, that is, trade in which natural supply-demand pressures dominate the markets pricing.
Nothing about that implies greed or altruism, it only implies everyone is trying to maximize their own fitness function (get the most utility for their resources). Its about effiency not greed.
@freemo
It really feels like the implementation is always predatory for capitalism.
Everybody's looking for the best deal and when somebody gets the best deal it necessitates somebody getting the crappy deal.
You end up with greed and you kill altruism. At least that's what it feels like on its face maybe I'm just looking at it wrong.
@freemo @avlcharlie well, unless people attempt to develop some level of sophistication, efficiency turns into greed, because thoughtless accumulation is the easiest thing to do. This is reinforced by a social environment where chronic accumulators are considered successful by chronically accumulating media.
Bow ya figure that makes no sense. Accumulating resources in a vault untouched is the least effecient form, you literally have negative effiency as inflation devalues assets. A person would achieve effiency by investing thrir mo ey wisely and ensuring other people are using those resources to effectively increase the total resources in the market.
You are getting stuck in the fallacy that someone havibg authority (ownership) over those resources means that other people cant use it for their own gains as well which is entierly contrary to the reality. Those resources will be in others hands and used by them in some agreement to use them for mutual gain (investment in others).
@freemo @avlcharlie maximisers would invest for profitability and not for sustainability. Clearly this conversation is way too abstract and way too generalising, but rich people investing in cheap resources is a real problem in times of pressing change.
Optimising is by definition deprived of vision, ask effective altruists ;)
Who said anything about sustainability. We said utility, that may or may not line up with sustainability. They will pick sustai able when it has the most utility.
Similarly thry dont buy cheap if cheap is less utility. Somethi g at half the price that breaks in 1/10th the time is a bad investment, so no thry dont just go with what is cheapest. Rich people dont invest in cheap resource they invest in what gets them the most utility, which is what prfitability is.
Optimising has vision, for the thing you are optimising for.
And of course the conversatio is abstract, it has to be,
You are making assertions about an abstraction (capitalism) that can not and does not exist in a concrete and pure form. So abstract conversation is the only one we can have.
@freemo @avlcharlie the problem is that environmental cost are not part of the final price. Instead they are internalised by those with weaker negotiation power.
Examples:
- miners from poor countries pay with their lives to extract resources that unaccountable mine owners then can sell at competitive prices
- wildlife gets pushed away from investment-grade land
I can go on with Amazonian rainforest, Russian taiga, Australian Coral reefs, African rhinos, l Mediterranean fish, orangutans, polar bears,...
They are part of thr final cost when they are part of the utility of the investment. If they are part of the utility or not depends largely on the laws.
For example if there is a huge fine for enviromental damage then causing such damage has significantly decreased utility and as such the market will price itself to avoid enviromental damage.
@mapto I think what you're illustrating is NOT that the costs aren't included, but that you personally don't agree with the costs.
You want those people to place higher value on their resources than they do. Their valuation doesn't match your own, and you're insisting that you're right, wanting to impose your personal values on them.
Let's be clear about what you're doing here, including the way it has associations with colonialism.
The people in those poor countries need to be fixed in their valuation of their resources?
The issue is deeper than that. Utility is contextual. Utility means something different depending on the rules of the game AND the players. Capitalism only maximizes utility. Its all the other aspects of a government that ultimately have nothing to do with capitalism that define the rules of the game and ultimately define what has utility when playing within those rules.
The failing is what it always is when people talk about capitalism, its that thinknofnit as one big monolithic thing rather than just a single principle among thousands with nuanced interplay.
@volkris @freemo @avlcharlie I agree with your other comment.
My diagreement is not with the current calculation of the costs. I claim that any explicit calculation by default (due to the complexity of the real world) excludes some implicit aspect that optimisers then readily ignore.
Also, utility is not only contextual, but subjective. To someone a million dollars might be enough to secure a lifetime, to someone else it could be enough to buy a house, to a third person, it might mean buying some nice nice stuff to show off.
Also, utility is not only contextual, but subjective.
Half-true.. the utility of a single transaction is subjective. But you are maximizing for the aggregate utility, that is objective.
To someone a million dollars might be enough to secure a lifetime, to someone else it could be enough to buy a house, to a third person, it might mean buying some nice nice stuff to show off
That statement isnt describing utility.
On a re read i think i see now where you got it all wrong. You are assuming, incorrectly, that money and utility mean the same thing. They dont. Moneybis the resource, not the utility. Utility only exists when money is in motion. Utility is how much you can accomplish with the money, not the money itself.
Okay so I'm not so self-absorbed that I can't say I guess I was wrong and I misunderstood what capitalism was. This has been relatively enlightening.
My question then is what's the one where greedy people hoard up all of the money and resources, abuse the working class and create a system of poverty?
That woukd be an oligarchy. And any government can be an oligarchy, including a capitlist country.
Now that is a complicated question. But usually the main way its accomplished with what we call antitrust laws. When enforced (and the usa has enforced thrm but not as strongly as it should) they effectively make monopolies illegal.
Of course the other key is keeping corruption in check and money out of politics, which isnlikewise a difficult task to do, but critical to a healthy capitalism
@icedquinn @avlcharlie @mapto @volkris
I totally agree with you there. I woukd not describe the USA as an ideal capitalism, in part due to lack of enforcement on antitrust laws.
@icedquinn you’re misunderstanding how American antitrust functions, as you can see throughout court filings, legislative proceedings, legal behaviors, and on and on.
The problem with American antitrust is that, in part because it is so broad, it runs up against other legal principles of the US government. The history of US antitrust in one of trying to reconcile paradoxes in the law that make it really unwieldy.
We have a government that on one hand is fundamentally bound to respect private property, but on the other hand, is charged with imposing on that same property.
We don’t need any conspiracies from rich contractors to explain the issues with US antitrust law. The problem is with the US law itself being quite screwy, in its own right.
@freemo @avlcharlie @mapto @volkris very interesting discussion. Just thought I'd like to point out that comparisons between Communism and capitalism are tricky because while capitalism is viewed primarily as an economic system (and democracy as a political system that everyone assumes underpins it), Communism is a political, philosophical and economic system.
The problem is that there have been no real life examples of "pure" Communism ever existing, except perhaps
@freemo @avlcharlie @mapto @volkris very early social Russia under Lenin. All real life examples of Communism have had either authoritarian or totalitarian rule, often dictatorships.
The reason for this is that while Marx did define what Communism should have been, he (perhaps intentionally) never defined how it should have been run. With centralized and planned production, it should have been foreseen that a permanent centralized government should have been established to oversee
Communism, like capitalism, is often abused as a word. On its own it has nothing to do with marx. It simply means any system where the means and distribution of production are controlled by the government, and socialism is where onky the means of production is owned.
Marx just had a very specific view of a system of government which he felt included communism with other supporting principles to make it work. Its more appropriate to call his system marxism
My question then is what’s the one where greedy people hoard up all of the money and resources
I just want to point out how unrealistic this is in today’s world, despite how frequently it’s mythologized and theorized and used to promote political interests.
For someone to hoard up all of the money and resources is for that person to voluntarily accept a lower standard of living for themself, to act against their own interests, quite irrationally.
It’s to say, Sure I could buy these things and contract for that service, which would make my life better, but nah, I’ll just warehouse away my wealth instead of actually using it to make my own life better.
Modern society has built plenty of mechanisms to avoid getting stuck in such opportunity costs to the wealthy.
Scrooge McDuck and his swimming in his money vault was not a real option.
@avlcharlie please provide examples. @freemo @mapto
This is exactly my point!
Notice how he spent? Instead of hoarded?
Bezos could have hoarded that money, but then he’d have lost out on the benefits of buying this property, which is exactly how our society gives very enticing alternatives to hoarding.
Bezos will never fill his moneypit because he has so much benefit in actually spending the money instead.
@volkris @freemo @mapto
If you can't find the ridiculousness in 600 million being spent for a house then we have a difference in opinion of what is ridiculous money.
The example isn't even about the house it's that he could do this and not even notice it.
Personally in the big picture for me it's this.. you focus your society on people or you focus your society on things/money. We've decided to do the latter and screw the other one.
What does rediculousness matter? Its not like burn gets consumed when you buy something rediculous (what we call a luxury formally). It just moves the money aroubd, usually no harm done.
Who’s talking about ridiculousness? We’re talking about the lack of hoarding, so if he is spending ridiculously instead of hoarding, then he’s still not hoarding, which is the point.
You think it’s ridiculous that he’s not hoarding, well, sounds like that’s something you need to work out in your own head.
I would say that it’s a good thing such a ridiculous person just gave up a bunch of his money. Good thing that money is no longer sitting in the bank account of a ridiculous person.
So this is a sign that rich people don’t hoard their money. You seem to think that this is a particularly ridiculous rich person, so even better that he’s not hoarding his money.
@mapto but it is because utility is subjective that your complaints about costs not being included are on shaky ground.
It’s likely enough that the thing you personally consider important is being left out of the equation because others don’t consider it important.
So it is a disagreement with the calculation of costs.
@freemo @mapto @avlcharlie "Lay not up for yourselves treasure on earth - where moth and rust doth corrupt, and thieves break through and steal, [and inflation doth devalue]."
Investing in people is also a thing:
For the sons of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the sons of light. I tell you, use worldly wealth to make friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, they will welcome you into eternal dwellings. Whoever is faithful with very little will also be faithful with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.
I agree with that definition, but when you combine it with State powers/violence, the crapitalism that we have today rears its ugly head. And even that is better than Socialistic Totalitarianism that arises from the mainstream "alternative". Again, State power is the root of the problems no matter how we organize the economics.
That isnt c"capitalism we have today".. thats like sayi g " your steak here sucks because when im eating it the waitor keeps punching me in the face".. has nothing to do with the steak.
Capitalism isnt a government, it is one amo g thousands of qualities governments have. The capitalism aspect is not the problem at all or related much to the proble. The problem is the state has ple ty of pri ciples unrelated to capitalism that make thr system fucked. But lets not pretend that is capitalism
All capitalism is is any system which includes free market trade
That’s just incorrect. Capitalism is about the model of ownership, not markets, being able to privately own means of production to be precise. You could have a system in which the only allowed form of ownership of means of production would essentially be a worker cooperative, but these cooperatives sell stuff within a market economy. This would be a form of market socialism, not capitalism.
Just to be clear, I’m not a market socialist myself. Nor do I agree with the premise of this thread, but I’m not in the mood of arguing about that, just correcting a common misconception. Especially since it’s an especially pervasive part of capitalist propaganda – you don’t actually need coercion to have markets, while you need coercion to enforce private ownership, so associating capitalism with the former makes it seem freer than it is.
A market is never free if there isnt private ow ership. So while you are rigbt that private ownership is a required element of the definition it is also redundant. Market socialism is explicitly not a free market.
@freemo @avlcharlie You were talking about capitalism, not just free markets. And I was talking about private ownership of means of production, not ownership in general. In particular, your argument was around the optimizing power of markets (“supply-demand pressures”), which do not require private ownership of means of production to work. It’s a bait-and-switch, which is why I referred to it as capitalist propaganda.
And, correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t think you mean (even though the post would kinda imply it) that free markets require the ability to own anything, right?
Almost. I am talking free market, and supply demand pressures. Supply and demmand pressures are not free without private ownership (at all levels). The moment you exclude any group from any form of private ownership you no longer have a free market and no longer have free supply-demand pressures.
Supply and demand exclusive to a privilaged group (worker cooperatives in this case) is not a free market with free supply demand pressures, it is a market that has, at least partly, fixed aspects of the market.
@freemo @avlcharlie It’s not really restricting it to a group of people, but rather to a form of ownership. Not all forms of ownership are permitted or respected under capitalism either, at least not consistently, except for private ownership of capital.
Could you be more precise what you want out of these market pressures? That is, what market pressure is in your opinion missing or not working in a system in which worker cooperatives are the only way of owning means of production? Because if you want enterprises thriving and falling due to them (the main benefit of a market economy, although I have to again stress that I personally do not think it’s worth the trouble), then this works with worker cooperatives. The only market pressure I can think of that is not present is valuing the company itself, but then the argument comes back to private ownership, because only under that assumption this question even makes sense, so the argument becomes circular
If you define free markets as only systems where you can privately own anything then that’s kinda beyond capitalism – under modern versions of capitalism you cannot privately own e.g. people or the right to use violence. If you define them as systems where specifically means of production have to be privately ownable, then I can agree they are equivalent to capitalism, but then talking about the benefits of free markets is a bait-and-switch.
If you are saying "only the people who work for this entity can own it" then you are restricting the market for the ownership and thus there is not a free market for the ownership of that resource.
What is wanted is to ensure whoever can bring the best utility to a resource ultimately gets access to that resource. You can only do that when those allowed to own the resource can be anyone, otherwise you are not allowing the best of the best.
@freemo @avlcharlie There is no reason why anyone couldn’t start a worker cooperative (perhaps a single-person one, if they are able to work by themselves) under that system, so I don’t think this objection quite works.
The one thing you don’t have is people who already have a lot of resources coming in and taking over a company to redirect its efforts, but then you are no longer making an argument in favour of markets, but in favour of exactly private ownership of capital, and how that is good directly (with many underlying assumptions, from the supposed meritocracy of capitalism, to the assumption that the best way of making money from an enterprise is to run it as well as possible). This does not require markets in general, but only the ability to buy an enterprise (not even necessarily at a market). As to how well it works in practice – see Twitter, Toys’R’Us, and the general problems stemming from private equity firms. But maybe I’m getting distracted, I’m mostly trying to point out that capitalism is mostly about this form of ownership and not about markets in general (which, while I don’t trust them, are much more defensible as a system imo).
Sure you can have a single person cooperative, but one cooperative cant own another, so there is no free market regarding the ownership over the resources.
@freemo @avlcharlie Well, if one person also cannot own another do we also not have a free market regarding the ownership of resources, and thus real capitalism requires literal slavery?
Or, to be less socratic and more precise about the argument, in the market worker cooperative system all resources (tools, raw materials, outputs) can still be traded between worker cooperatives. The only “resource” that is not tradeable is ownership over the enterprise itself, and if you want to make a case for why this is bad you would have to go beyond “markets allocate resources efficiently” and into why this specific thing should be treated as a tradeable resource (like e.g. people shouldn’t be, which is why the previous paragraph). That is, you have to argue for private ownership of means of production being important into itself, which is why I’m saying this, and not markets, is crucial for capitalism. (I’m not saying at this point there are no arguments you can make for that, just that this is a different thing than just arguing for markets.)
If one person owns another you are taking away that persons free will, and thus taking away free market (afterall free there is short for freewill). Since companies do not have a will of their own like people do it is a false equivelance.
@freemo
I had a long reply but I realized it was this..
John Lennon: Imagine