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Mr Luxury Yacht posted:I mean, a business where all employees are equal, voting shareholders (and only employees can be/employees become shareholders by joining the company) seems simple and scalable enough. You can still have multiple businesses in a field competing and innovating and whatnot, but the profits stay within the company and the employees through their equal shares own their own means of production. So, first things first, I'm a big fan of mandatory employee ownership of otherwise traditional-ish market corporations, as an element of a socialist solution. As you say, it retains a lot of the existing advantages - but by the same token, it doesn't address all the problems and, depending on implementation, can have some weird side effects that should at least be considered. Worker ownership only directly disincentivizes corporate behavior that harms *the workers*; to use an example that's pretty proximate these days, if you wave a magic wand in 1980 and replace the Exxon Mobil corporate board with an employee trust, it does not necessarily follow that they will then seek to reduce emissions and announce to the world that their scientists think they're destroying the planet. Steve the refinery technician is probably going to vote to keep his secure, specialized job until the seas boil. The weirder impacts have more to do with the exact fiddly details, but let's take your simple proposal: 100% employee ownership, divided exactly equally, reapportioned at the moment of hiring or firing. As is traditional with simple democracies, there's a strong incentive to, say, automate away exactly 49% of the jobs and divide the spoils among the survivors. It's a great idea but if we ever get to the point where we can actually implement it, it isn't quite as simple as it sounds, and there'll still be a significant need for state involvement in externalities and such.
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Oct 26, 2019 23:06
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Falstaff posted:The accepted descriptor for the Nordic model (other than "the Nordic model") is "social democracy." You may feel that I'm arguing over semantics, and I am, but that's because words - the language we use to communicate ideas - are important. Precision is a good thing, and if there's already terms for what you're talking about, better to use those than to continue muddying up a term as oft-abused as socialism. Fair. I'm trying to interpret an existing, functioning model of social democracy as per the Marx's original, theoretical definition of socialism and communism. It's quite a bit of a stretch to do so for some aspects (the examples I gave of government owned enterprise and investment), let alone impossible to do for all of it. The reason I do this is I don't see how said theoretical definition of socialism could possibly be applied on a nation-wide scale. You could, as Luxury Yacht mentions, have company employees as equal shareholders, but if that only involves a single company, that's really just a cooperative. Extrapolating this to an entire state's economy is a feat in logistics. How do you allow every member of the working class to be a stakeholder and have a direct say in how the state's productivity is going to be invested and allocated? Lots of places have political parties that call themselves socialist, but none of them actually do fit the original definition. There's inevitably centralisation of power, and those in power end up consolidating their power, effectively becoming the new bourgeoisie and contradicting the original intent. Is this something that Marx ventured a solution for in the original Manifesto? It's hard to offer up a working model of socialism if it doesn't actually exist. Social democracy seems as close to it as we'll ever get without some sci-fi level of community. It might not mean I can retcon the definition of socialism to fit that model, but it does tick many of the boxes behind its ideal. Lassitude posted:tldw: The state owning an enterprise that still excludes workers from the decision-making isn't socialism, it's state capitalism. But although it's a very slow, tedious process involving elections or direct democracy through referendums, workers can influence how a state-owned enterprise conducts its business. Compare to an unregulated multinational corporation where you don't even have that much influence. e: Lassitude posted:I would be cool with either more socialism or more state capitalism as a response to Alberta acting out. Actually, in the interest of keeping this discussion more CanPol oriented, how about a quick thought experiment? How would a hypothetical Socialist Republic of Canada handle the case of Alberta? It's easy to imagine that non-Albertan workers would have attributed themselves a greater share of the windfalls, and hopefully this prosperity would have allowed other industry to thrive. And now that oil is a bust again, possibly for good, the pendulum would swing the other way, allowing Alberta to benefit from non-oil industry until it can transition out of it. There'd probably be no reason to throw a hissy fit about transfers. Of course, this is presuming that the average Joe McProletarian would have actually opted to save the windfalls of the oil boom. Most likely what would really have happened is Canadians would collectively have attributed themselves and promptly pissed away their Socialist Ralph bucks, and all of Canada would be throwing a mad hissy fit instead of just Alberta. 
Jan fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Oct 26, 2019 |
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Oct 26, 2019 23:12
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The amount of interest being generated by this topic makes me think it might be worth starting a new thread. D&D doesn't have a lot of big concept threads for debating or arguing about these kinds of topics like planning vs markets, what constitutes "ownership" and other related 'big picture' questions about political economy.
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Oct 27, 2019 00:50
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Helsing posted:The amount of interest being generated by this topic makes me think it might be worth starting a new thread. D&D doesn't have a lot of big concept threads for debating or arguing about these kinds of topics like planning vs markets, what constitutes "ownership" and other related 'big picture' questions about political economy. Yeah I mean though, how much of this is up for debate? The categories are policy: Planned Economies vs Market Economies Then there's governmental logic: Liberalism rationality vs Communist Rationality Those are two different axis in sort of Foucault terms. Comparing Planned Economies to Communist Rationality is kind of muddling the definitions in a way that isn't useful right?
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Oct 27, 2019 02:33
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Its interesting but I'm here to read about how conservatives are just living poop monsters.
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Oct 27, 2019 02:55
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and further downstream from political science categorization of government policy, economic production, and social relations you have a melange of things that could be classified as "socialism" and "capitalism." All of these things emerged out of their own particular contexts -- if you look at the history of universal healthcare in the west you'll find every system emerged in response to its country's own needs and politics. The reason why more and more people are interested in an actual attempt at socialism and not just more social democracy is that the history of social democracy so far is achieving incredible standards of living through transformational policies at the back end of two catastrophic wars and then almost universally deteriorating over time due to a combination of economic repriortization and the interests of capital seeking to plunder social welfare institutions. Basically, the politics of social democracy and the parties that represent don't appear to be strong enough to back the extremely beneficial institutions they created.
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Oct 27, 2019 03:10
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Charles Bukowski posted:Its interesting but I'm here to read about how conservatives are just living poop monsters. I see you've met Patrick Brown.
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Oct 27, 2019 03:44
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https://twitter.com/MsAmyMacPherson/status/1188270295020212224?s=20 Looniest journo feud in a while
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Oct 27, 2019 03:47
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ok boomer  https://twitter.com/MsAmyMacPherson/status/1188271511242756096?s=20 https://twitter.com/sadsmcgee/status/1188287770512580610?s=20 Juul-Whip fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Oct 27, 2019 |
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Oct 27, 2019 04:14
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Looks like Amy has some kind of spyware infecting her whole computer that injects custom ads into websites that then try to launch more exploits. She said she is getting the same webcam requests when she visits online banking websites.
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Oct 27, 2019 04:22
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vincentpricesboner posted:Looks like Amy has some kind of spyware infecting her whole computer that injects custom ads into websites that then try to launch more exploits. She said she is getting the same webcam requests when she visits online banking websites. excuse me she has more tech cred than you, incel (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 27, 2019 05:54
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Arivia posted:excuse me she has more tech cred than you, incel classic tech misogyny 
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Oct 27, 2019 07:15
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I have no idea what that poo poo is about but canadaland is real, real bad. 40 minute podcasts in which there's literally 15-20 minutes of shilling, AND they have a patreon. just shameful
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Oct 27, 2019 07:43
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Dreylad posted:and further downstream from political science categorization of government policy, economic production, and social relations you have a melange of things that could be classified as "socialism" and "capitalism." All of these things emerged out of their own particular contexts -- if you look at the history of universal healthcare in the west you'll find every system emerged in response to its country's own needs and politics. The reason why more and more people are interested in an actual attempt at socialism and not just more social democracy is that the history of social democracy so far is achieving incredible standards of living through transformational policies at the back end of two catastrophic wars and then almost universally deteriorating over time due to a combination of economic repriortization and the interests of capital seeking to plunder social welfare institutions. Basically, the politics of social democracy and the parties that represent don't appear to be strong enough to back the extremely beneficial institutions they created. imo this is really one of the big arguments in favour of transitioning from a capitalist or social-democratic society to an actual socialist one, whatever that looks like (socialism with Canadian characteristics lmao), because even in a social democracy capital remains and capital wants its neverending profits, and that means there's a constant struggle to keep what you've won as the people. In the wake of a giant catastrophe like WW2 a social consensus may emerge, even among the capital class, that universal social programs and redistribution are needed. But as long as what you're redistributing is wealth generated by capitalism and enriching capital ahead of everyone else, you keep the enormous power differential between capital and labour. And so maybe twenty or thirty years down the road, when the generations that held that social consensus are out of power and a new one comes along, maybe they don't share those views and they start clawing back everything you've gained. The only way to keep a social democracy alive is to be constantly fighting capital politically and economically, because inevitably capital (especially in a global marketplace) will try to undo everything you've done to achieve the most profit. We're already seeing the same thing playing out with the climate crisis, too--capital only cares about profit, so even when mild environmental policies are achieved, capital tries to undo them because without them it could make more money. Even if we win that fight today and implement carbon taxes or ban pipelines or whatever, we have to keep having that fight every few years because capital will keep trying to undo those achievements because they stand in the way of maximal profit. And if we ever lose that fight, we lose really big. Just look at somewhere like Brazil, where 15 years of social democracy and minor progress on environmental protection gets undone in something like 6 months as soon as capital gets their guy in charge. The only actual permanent solution to that is to remove that power from capital's hands and put it somewhere else instead. I'm not a huge fan of the state-led model that confiscated that power in the USSR or China because of the great human cost that came with it, but it's also worth pointing out that those transitions happened in underdeveloped states without strong democratic traditions and with large populations that were constantly on the brink of famine anyway. I have no idea what a socialist transition would look like in a developed, wealthy country with strong democratic traditions like Canada. But it's also impossible to say, and kind of irrelevant, because the current capitalist hegemon would never, ever allow a country like Canada to make such a transition to an actual socialist economy where capital was abolished in favour of worker or state control of property and profits.
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Oct 27, 2019 14:16
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Instead we're diving head first into fascism because of the state and capitals refusal to correct the ills that plague our late stage capitalist society. Because third way liberalism is loving stupid and has been treated as the only viable alternative for most of our lives.
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Oct 27, 2019 14:25
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Stickarts posted:Toxxing now. Cons win popular vote, Libs win plurality of Seats. Payment for election toxx. Like I said before, I felt skuzzy not giving money to a food bank so. 
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Oct 27, 2019 19:03
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To add to the discussion, it scares the poo poo out of me that we're fighting off a techno-hyper-drived escalation of the age-old crisis between capital and labour with one hand and an ecological existential threat with the other. Like fighting off a gorilla with each hand. There are solutions that work for both, but, as has been said, that requires massive, global, planned reconstruction of our entire capitalistic economic system in a fashion that levels and obliterates to a large extent preexisting distribution of power and wealth, power and wealth which is currently held by people very eager to continue to hold it. I just don't see how free market economies will ever be able to adapt to provide the sort of united, proactive effort needed to make serious change until after it is far too late to avoid massive humanitarian catastrophe. Whatever that may look like (disrupted trade networks, collapsing insurance industries, widespread drought and famine that disables entire regions or even nations, displaced internal refugees, international refugee crises, collapsing water supply, diminishing agricultural returns, combinations of some-all-others, etc) by the time those start to consistently happen, because of the 10-20 year delay on carbon as a GHG, the canary is already dead (if it isn't dead/dying already) and action becomes purely reactive rather than preventative. And that's where fears of closed borders, militarised nations, rogue-evil-scientist-type global warming mitigation efforts, and the rise of what peeps call eco-fascism become pretty real. So yeah, I just don't see how there is a solution without massive, coordinated efforts from a multitude of nations around the world. This where I feel like our modern technological abilities to interlink, distribute, and analyse data instantaneously has a real potential to make our world meaningfully better, if we could just coordinate and push - hard - in the right direction. We have the tools, but we keep using them to build cheap plastic poo poo for profit rather than a new, sustainable, world where people can live lives of dignity to replace our old one. It's like we've finally reached the apex of our ability to transition from capitalism to something new and more humane, in the sense that Marx predicted, except this apex is also p much our last chance to avoid unimaginable humanitarian disaster. Stickarts fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Oct 27, 2019 |
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Oct 27, 2019 19:35
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Yeah all that and also remember capital is getting bigger and stronger and more entrenched through sheer inertia. They just sit in their fortresses and collect their rent and hide the interest from it overseas. Meanwhile the left is mostly fractured, ideologically incoherent, and as happy to turn our guns on each other as we are the people literally burning the world down for their own gain
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Oct 27, 2019 19:40
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https://twitter.com/OmarMosleh/status/1188568297748365312?s=19
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Oct 27, 2019 23:41
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The Left, now sponsored by Costco.
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Oct 28, 2019 00:19
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Time to mess with your heads. the university of alberta is on the cutting edge of Artificial Intelligence. considering the alberta mentality as it's parent, sleep well. :p
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Oct 28, 2019 01:50
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shades of eternity posted:Time to mess with your heads. lol if Alberta doesn’t destroy the world with climate change it’ll pick up the spare with gently caress You, Got Mine AI tech.
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Oct 28, 2019 02:03
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Stickarts posted:Payment for election toxx. Like I said before, I felt skuzzy not giving money to a food bank so. Respect, dude. When I saw your toxx victory post, I had the thought myself 'so...the food bank isn't getting any money then, huh? that kind of sucks'. Respect.
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Oct 28, 2019 02:04
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vyelkin posted:The only actual permanent solution to that is to remove that power from capital's hands and put it somewhere else instead. I'm not a huge fan of the state-led model that confiscated that power in the USSR or China because of the great human cost that came with it, but it's also worth pointing out that those transitions happened in underdeveloped states without strong democratic traditions and with large populations that were constantly on the brink of famine anyway. I have no idea what a socialist transition would look like in a developed, wealthy country with strong democratic traditions like Canada. But it's also impossible to say, and kind of irrelevant, because the current capitalist hegemon would never, ever allow a country like Canada to make such a transition to an actual socialist economy where capital was abolished in favour of worker or state control of property and profits. Also those states you mentioned industrialized with no external colonies to hoist the burden of industrialization on. Industrialization, especially rapid industrialization, is the reason why so many people die when the state puts the pedal to the metal, regardless of the ideology they claim to be pursuing. I think it's possible for any country to transition to a model where production is directed by workers, but it requires a level of violence very, very few people are actually willing to commit. Doing it peacefully is the long, grind hard of a multi-generational project that requires the dedication of likely hundreds of thousands of people. I imagine we'll also see the rise of state capitalism more and more as people get more desperate. People will cry and call it socialism but it'll follow the same form and function as most countries mobilized during the Second World War.
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Oct 28, 2019 02:27
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Arivia posted:excuse me she has more tech cred than you, incel I have no idea why I got probated for this post
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Oct 28, 2019 03:33
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Arivia posted:I have no idea why I got probated for this post This isn't C-SPAM, this is D&D, fun is not allowed here.
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Oct 28, 2019 04:39
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Arivia posted:I have no idea why I got probated for this post Gotta hit that daily quota of worthless sixers I guess
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Oct 28, 2019 05:43
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Maybe just don't call people incels
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Oct 28, 2019 07:03
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Reality Sinner posted:Maybe just don't call people incels It was what the stupid lady in the twitter thread was doing that I was parodying
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Oct 28, 2019 12:38
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shades of eternity posted:Time to mess with your heads. It has been for years. Lots of really interesting projects by staff and now with Deep Mind work and amii in Edmonton, it’s a happening place for it.
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Oct 28, 2019 12:49
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"Yeah , there was some election meddling [but either it helped the government or it hurt the cons so who cares?] but not enough to hit some arbitrary standard so we aren't releasing information on it" https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/election-misinformation-disinformation-interference-1.5336662
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Oct 28, 2019 13:00
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mediaphage posted:It has been for years. Lots of really interesting projects by staff and now with Deep Mind work and amii in Edmonton, it’s a happening place for it. Yup, but I was in a few presentations during startup week where I essentially heard, "Edmonton does great research, but cannot figure out how to capitalize it for the life of them oh and you need to fundraise using unconventional methods because the money isn't there." and this was happening during Kenny's assault on job creators (also known as cities) which wasn't even mentioned. This city will always be at a disadvantage even compared to Calgary because of our physical location, but we need to figure out a way to use our "gateway to the north" status and enthrall nearby regions so we at least have something to work with. We are, afterall, the orange dot on the prairie and we need to start figuring out ways to transplant it.
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Oct 28, 2019 13:09
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Before we move on I want to make one final point to zapplez about socialism, which is that socialism has never actually been allowed to succeed or fail on its own merits, because capital and capitalism, usually in the form of the United States and its allies, have always, without fail, intervened wherever socialism even hinted at succeeding, democratically or undemocratically, in taking power anywhere, and have done their level best to destroy it by any means necessary, through economic, political, and military might. It is legitimately difficult to talk about socialism's success or failure because socialism has never been allowed to operate as a normal political ideology, because it so threatens the people in charge of the world that they go to any lengths to make it fail so that they can then point at it and call it a failure.William Blum, Killing Hope, p. 19 posted:The boys of Capital, they also chortle in their martinis about the death of socialism. The word has been banned from polite conversation. And they hope that no one will notice that every socialist experiment of any significance in the twentieth century—without exception—has either been crushed, overthrown, or invaded, or corrupted, perverted, subverted, or destabilized, or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States. Not one socialist government or movement—from the Russian Revolution to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, from Communist China to the FMLN in Salvador—not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home.
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Oct 28, 2019 14:01
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vyelkin posted:Before we move on I want to make one final point to zapplez about socialism, which is that socialism has never actually been allowed to succeed or fail on its own merits, because capital and capitalism, usually in the form of the United States and its allies, have always, without fail, intervened wherever socialism even hinted at succeeding, democratically or undemocratically, in taking power anywhere, and have done their level best to destroy it by any means necessary, through economic, political, and military might. It is legitimately difficult to talk about socialism's success or failure because socialism has never been allowed to operate as a normal political ideology, because it so threatens the people in charge of the world that they go to any lengths to make it fail so that they can then point at it and call it a failure. This is a fair point. I'd argue that even if it was given a chance to succeed its vulnerable to many of the same follies as capitalism, in that anytime you have humans being able to exert large scale decisions or power on the government or economy, you will have people trying their best to exploit it and corrupt it. If there is anything we can take away from the examples we have already seen of communism, its that its just as easy to be full of corruption as capitalism.
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Oct 28, 2019 16:30
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https://twitter.com/terry_truchan/status/1187789451415752704?s=19 This is my surprised face
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Oct 28, 2019 17:28
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Is zapplez actually Rocky Dong?
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Oct 28, 2019 17:29
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DariusLikewise posted:Is zapplez actually Rocky Dong? We all wish.
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Oct 28, 2019 17:36
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vyelkin posted:Before we move on I want to make one final point to zapplez about socialism, which is that socialism has never actually been allowed to succeed or fail on its own merits, because capital and capitalism, usually in the form of the United States and its allies, have always, without fail, intervened wherever socialism even hinted at succeeding, democratically or undemocratically, in taking power anywhere, and have done their level best to destroy it by any means necessary, through economic, political, and military might. It is legitimately difficult to talk about socialism's success or failure because socialism has never been allowed to operate as a normal political ideology, because it so threatens the people in charge of the world that they go to any lengths to make it fail so that they can then point at it and call it a failure. "If only Capital wouldn't protect its own interests, then socialism might work." just another fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Oct 28, 2019 |
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Oct 28, 2019 17:37
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Wistful of Dollars posted:https://twitter.com/terry_truchan/status/1187789451415752704?s=19
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Oct 28, 2019 17:53
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just another posted:There's something unremarkable and counterproductive about this apologia that I can't quite articulate, however accurate a history it is. According to this, then it is precisely because socialism cannot come into existence in the real world, without being subverted and corrupted, that it is dangerous. there should be a word that describes when someone responds to a statement about a thing with the thing the statement was about
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Oct 28, 2019 18:11
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