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Putting aside that all the problems with market and reflecting value from Marx, the idea that markets are efficient falls flat when you realise every time a crisis/resource bottleneck happens the planned economy works better, whether it be centrally planned (ussr) or cooperatively planned (zapatistas). USSR led the space race despite having a fraction of the resources, and they lost just barely after the americans pumped a thousandfold resources into a centrally planned project. Markets are actually piss poor at innovation because it is more profitable to continue pumping out the same poo poo instead of spending rnd money. All the actual innovation of the last decades originated in a classroom, not from market forces. We just think markets are efficient because the preeminent market economy is literally an enormous country with an abundance of resources that didn't live through world war 2 on it's territories.
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May 1, 2020 09:11
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NotNut posted:can someone redpill me on what's bad about markets imo #1 is that they're going to heat our asses up and cook us well done
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May 1, 2020 09:15
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Homeless Friend posted:imo #1 is that they're going to heat our asses up and cook us well done lol It's true
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May 1, 2020 09:16
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Markets are good at approximating value, I mutter, as all life on earth goes extinct.
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May 1, 2020 09:25
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also weird euphemism in using the word market as stand in for capitalism lol
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May 1, 2020 09:31
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NotNut posted:can someone redpill me on what's bad about markets Efficiency: It is well known among professional economists that markets allocate resources inefficiently when they are out of equilibrium, when they are non-competitive, and when there are external effects. When the fundamental theorem of welfare economics is read critically, it says as much: Only if there are no external effects, only if all markets are competitive, and only when all markets are in equilibrium is it true that a market economy will yield a Pareto optimal outcome. But despite these clear warnings, market enthusiasts insist that if left alone markets generally allocate resources very efficiently. This can only be true if: (1) disequilibrating forces are weak, (2) noncompetitive market structures are uncommon, and (3) externalities are the exception, rather than the rule. There are good theoretical and empirical reasons to believe exactly the opposite in all three cases. A second line of defense holds that while free markets may be plagued by inefficiencies, it is possible to correct market failures through a variety of policies and thereby render them “reasonably” efficient. However, there are good practical reasons to believe it is unrealistic to expect such policies could ever render market systems even “reasonably” efficient. Equity: Not only do markets for natural, produced, and financial capital distribute income unfairly to their owners who expend no effort whatsoever, but also labor markets distribute income unfairly to people with different amounts of human capital. If the last hour of welding labor hired raises output and therefore revenue by more than the last hour of floor sweeping does, when employers compete with one another in labor markets for welders and sweepers they will bid the wage rate for welders up higher than the wage rate for sweepers—whether or not they are capitalist employers trying to maximize enterprise profits, or worker-owned enterprises trying to maximize profits per member. This means that when labor is hired in labor markets, those who have more human capital, and therefore contribute more to enterprise output and revenues, will receive higher wages than those with less human capital. This is problematic because it means that a welder and sweeper who work equally hard in equally unpleasant circumstances will not be rewarded equally even though they make what we might call equal “sacrifices.” In a market economy those with more human capital will receive more, even if they make no greater sacrifices, and those with less human capital will receive less, even if they sacrifice just as much or more. Moreover, there is no way to fix this problem in a market system without creating a great deal of inefficiency. If we intervene in the labor market and legislate wage rates we consider to be fair, but allow markets to determine how resources are allocated, not only will different kinds of labor be allocated inefficiently, but also the entire price structure of the economy will fail to reflect the opportunity costs of producing different goods and services leading to further inefficiencies. There is no getting around the dilemma: in a market economy we must either allow the market system to reward people unfairly, or, if we try to correct for inequities, we must tolerate even greater inefficiencies. Democracy: When all else fails—when they can no longer claim that markets lead to efficient or equitable outcomes— enthusiasts fall back on the claim that free markets promote economic and political democracy. But this defense of markets does not stand up under analysis any better than the others. Once we realize that economic freedom—the freedom to do as you wish with your person and property—is quite different from economic democracy—decision-making power in proportion to the degree one is affected—the case that markets promote economic democracy quickly unravels. Markets disenfranchise “third parties” affected by decisions a buyer and seller agree on. In a market “election” to decide what goods to produce, a wealthy person gets to vote thousands of times more than a poor person. Pretending that when market exchanges are voluntary there can be no coercion ignores the fact that a buyer or seller is often in a position to impose his will on the other who may have severely limited “outside” options. Finally, as every child knows, unequal economic power breeds unequal political power, so Milton Friedman’s defense of markets, on grounds that the economic inequality markets generate is a virtue because any political cause can appeal for support from a wealthy benefactor, is patently absurd.
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May 1, 2020 09:43
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:What is the point of a market? If people need more widgets, produce more widgets. If anything, the computers and massive logistical network we have today would make a planned econoky even easier imo. well that is the point of a market. it automatically incentivizes producing more widgets when people want more widgets. and the economy is already planned. all economies are. market ones are just done so non-centrally Sheng-Ji Yang posted:do you believe markets as they exist now are rational because of computers? Are bubbles not a thing anymore? Why did the recession happen in 2008? slow down there. I don't believe markets are perfectly rational by any means but neither would any alternative I've heard of, because it's all based on human wants and needs that are nonlinear and can't be perfectly predicted. bubbles are a thing. why the 2008 recession happened is something you could write a book on but it mainly makes sense in the context of neoliberal finance and can't be generalized to all capitalist markets, much less non-capitalist markets dex_sda posted:Putting aside that all the problems with market and reflecting value from Marx, the idea that markets are efficient falls flat when you realise every time a crisis/resource bottleneck happens the planned economy works better, whether it be centrally planned (ussr) or cooperatively planned (zapatistas). you're definitely right about command economies working better in crises but that's more of an argument to have mechanisms in place to gear an economy in that direction instead of keeping it that way all that time. your last paragraph though doesn't seem to be based on anything real. firms in markets do RND all the time Homeless Friend posted:also weird euphemism in using the word market as stand in for capitalism lol I'm specifically not doing that. I'm anti-capital but pro-market. into stuff like mutualism, market socialism and co-ops uncop posted:Empirical failure at allocating resources efficiently: you only need to ask corporations like Walmart why they don't run internal markets. The only good part about markets is that they enable pretty complex economic operations to happen without any form of organization or even actual trust between the economic actors. Organizing production is hard, takes time to master for each kind of enterprise, and requires a lot of trust on part of relative equals and a strict and powerful hierarchy for the rest, so markets in general still can't be immediately abolished by decree, only to the extent the requisite organization already exists. thanks this is the only actually interesting response I've got so far
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May 1, 2020 09:58
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gradenko_2000 posted:Efficiency: It is well known among professional economists that markets allocate resources inefficiently when they are out of equilibrium, when they are non-competitive, and when there are external effects. When the fundamental theorem of welfare economics is read critically, it says as much: Only if there are no external effects, only if all markets are competitive, and only when all markets are in equilibrium is it true that a market economy will yield a Pareto optimal outcome. But despite these clear warnings, market enthusiasts insist that if left alone markets generally allocate resources very efficiently. This can only be true if: (1) disequilibrating forces are weak, (2) noncompetitive market structures are uncommon, and (3) externalities are the exception, rather than the rule. There are good theoretical and empirical reasons to believe exactly the opposite in all three cases. A second line of defense holds that while free markets may be plagued by inefficiencies, it is possible to correct market failures through a variety of policies and thereby render them “reasonably” efficient. However, there are good practical reasons to believe it is unrealistic to expect such policies could ever render market systems even “reasonably” efficient. thanks I've got to get to bed but I'll read this later
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May 1, 2020 09:58
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NotNut posted:I'm specifically not doing that. I'm anti-capital but pro-market. into stuff like mutualism, market socialism and co-ops ah alright, was wondering since it was oddly specific but also possibly non-specific
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May 1, 2020 09:59
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Markets are inefficient full stop, megacorporations could create perfect internal markets if they weren't. Econ performs a sleight of hand when it defines efficiency: efficiency is efficiency in satisfying demand, and demand is presented in terms of money advanced. But efficiency defined those terms has little to do with the efficiency the megacorps need to compete on the world market. They don't want to satisfy the demand of all the facilities that they're composed of, they want to satisfy demand for the end product. There is zero utility for them to serve any of the facilities in proportion to what they can buy (the intermediate product can often be used for other production processes), only in proportion to the need the other facilities have for the intermediate product to get closer to producing their end-product. Anything else is waste that makes production of the end-product less efficient from the perspective of the market of that product. Corporations actually produce based on use, and the contradiction is the contradiction between value and use value. The use they produce for is selling the end-product for as much profit they can get. The only way not to see that contradiction is to assume that there is equal profit to producing any commodity, so the competitiveness of an enterprise as a whole is not affected by what demand it ends up serving. We aren't any different from corporations, we would also like to produce based on some concrete use, and efficiency as we see it similarly contradicts efficiency as economists define it. Market optimization has nothing at all to do with optimization as we see it! No matter how perfect markets you build, it's garbage in, garbage out. The optimization function does not recognize, and cannot be made to recognize, our actual goal as anything but suboptimal, to be optimized out as a waste.
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May 1, 2020 10:13
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The argument for markets is probably going to be at a small scale where either state planning or sometime of cooperative organization may not make sense. Farmers selling their goods at the side of the road shouldn't be an issue or small family-sized businesses. It is when you get into the "commanding heights" it becomes a much larger issue.
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May 1, 2020 10:28
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NotNut posted:you're definitely right about command economies working better in crises but that's more of an argument to have mechanisms in place to gear an economy in that direction instead of keeping it that way all that time. your last paragraph though doesn't seem to be based on anything real. firms in markets do RND all the time first off, as rightly pointed out by homeless friend, we are in crisis. we will be for the considerable future. even if we weren't, the fact that it works great in a crisis should be a good indication that it works great outside one. most rnd in the free market is piss poor, it's an open secret in astrophysics academia (my area of expertise) that financial firms mostly just try to poach astrophysicists to do analysis because their in-house is really terrible at it. if you don't care you can make a pretty penny doing data analysis grants for companies. a lot of market rnd is focused on stuff like presentability or (in medicine) circumventing patent laws without real innovation. stuff that doesn't actually address needs as well as it could - which goes back to the inherent profit motive. NotNut posted:I'm specifically not doing that. I'm anti-capital but pro-market. into stuff like mutualism, market socialism and co-ops that makes a bit more sense, but gradenko's post is actually very good at showing why retaining the free market at some level is a problem. Further, if you want a more decentralised system that actually addresses these problems there are various modern schools of socialist anarchism, mostly based on a cooperative economy which explicitly rejects markets as we understand them, in the context of large organizations
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May 1, 2020 10:30
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Ardennes posted:The argument for markets is probably going to be at a small scale where either state planning or sometime of cooperative organization may not make sense. Farmers selling their goods at the side of the road shouldn't be an issue or small family-sized businesses. It is when you get into the "commanding heights" it becomes a much larger issue. I think localized barter-like 'markets' will always be a thing, especially with goods that are surplus to the planned need-meeting production, but that's not what I think when I hear the word 'market' tbh.
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May 1, 2020 10:32
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Jewel Repetition posted:Right. That's why comedyblissoption's definition of the ultimate economy is incomplete
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May 1, 2020 10:38
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NotNut posted:can someone redpill me on what's bad about markets
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May 1, 2020 10:44
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dex_sda posted:I think localized barter-like 'markets' will always be a thing, especially with goods that are surplus to the planned need-meeting production, but that's not what I think when I hear the word 'market' tbh. yeah i was considering the question and concluded that insofar as i could imagine “markets” that were benign or even useful i was really thinking of “stores”
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May 1, 2020 10:54
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we really should have a different word, this discussion made me keenly aware how it encompasses like multiple completely different concepts at different scale and it's confusing
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May 1, 2020 11:00
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yeah, agreed, there's like, "the international stock market" which is as abstract and far removed from like a regional livestock and feed market as you can get the latter would even be a pretty big affair compared to something like a farmer's market, or other place where small time producers and artisans can ply their wares it's interesting to think about what a market could/would look like in a classless/moneyless society and the closest approximation i can think of is something like a fair expo, where people who make poo poo could meet up with others who make poo poo and the rest of the population to distribute goods, everything from food items to furniture and art, except you'd just kind of leave what you brought and take what you need/want and eliminate transaction value/money from the equation, and maybe solicit feedback about what people need/want, design trends, etc. sounds nice 
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May 1, 2020 11:12
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smarxist posted:yeah, agreed, there's like, "the international stock market" which is as abstract and far removed from like a regional livestock and feed market as you can get that's basically the idea of what you'd do with surplus time in a commune, yeah. the problem is to find a way to make that utopia possible, and I guess this is why we're terminally angry in cspam trying to figure out the path to do it. Happy Labour Day, everyone.
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May 1, 2020 11:18
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other issues with markets: the eponymous grapes of wrath quote in which farmers are paid to destroy food while millions are hungry, because food is too cheap the irish famine in which mass amounts of food was shipped for export out of ireland as the masses literally starved to death because they could not afford this food, justified under markets super markets and clothing retailers mass destroy food and clothing, because to periodically give it away would undermine their profits under the market the foreclosure crisis in which homelessness massively spiked and in which you had millions of homeless and millions of empty homes markets are a paperclip maximizer that maximizes for profit. if labor does not contribute to profit, it is deprioritized. for example, minds are not allowed to work on climate change because it is not profitable. instead, the minds are employed to push ads on search engines, figure out how to extract more fossil fuels, and propagandize people that climate change is not real. during time of crisis and mass unemployment, masses of labor and tools are not permitted to be used under the logic of the markets. this imposition is often a purely social construct and is not because of natural disaster, war, or aliens from outer space. even during the corona crisis, masses of people that could be employed to deal with the crisis are not permitted to do this.
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May 1, 2020 11:26
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*pours bleach on lettuce*
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May 1, 2020 12:00
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i say swears online posted:*pours bleach on lettuce* it goes in your rear end in a top hat, idiot
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May 1, 2020 13:18
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Goast posted:it goes in your rear end in a top hat, idiot lettuce or bleach?
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May 1, 2020 13:34
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dex_sda posted:lettuce or bleach? dont force me to decide, this is the coercion of the markets
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May 1, 2020 15:02
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dex_sda posted:lettuce or bleach? Por que no los dos?
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May 1, 2020 15:31
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I posted this in the periodicals thread too but Geoff Mann has an essay in Viewpoint on what the crisis and response reveals about the "Rational Expectations" assumption undergirding orthodox economic ideology, and touches on the insufficiency of Keynesianism to meet the moment as well ~ Irrational Expectations. Pretty good imo.
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May 1, 2020 15:40
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comedyblissoption posted:what does that democratic allocation exactly look like? it's whatever the USSR did, so... tons of heavy industry
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May 1, 2020 16:03
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Karl Barks posted:it's whatever the USSR did, so... tons of heavy industry The people have spoken and the party has provided, twenty million bulldozers for recreational use
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May 1, 2020 19:03
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Dreddout posted:The people have spoken and the party has provided, twenty million bulldozers for recreational use https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZyCk-hNjtE
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May 1, 2020 19:19
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NotNut posted:I'm specifically not doing that. I'm anti-capital but pro-market. into stuff like mutualism, market socialism and co-ops One problem with the market socialist school of thought is that capital has a tendency to centralize over time. Bigger firms buy out smaller firms until eventually you end up with the behemoths like google walmart and johnson and johnson. The end state being what amounts to a privatized planned economy. Assuming state power isn't used to break up monopolies. Incidentally we are gonna see a lot of this in the coming months due to upwards of 80% of small businesses being economically insolvent in the face of a pandemic and depression. The other problem with co-ops, speaking as a former co-op worker is that market forces demand that co-op workers compete with other firms. Meaning you'll bust your rear end just as hard in a worker owned grocer as walmart, to do otherwise will result in your co-op going bust. Essentially the co-op workers are forced to exploit themselves in order to stay in the rat race demanded by the market.
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May 1, 2020 19:22
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The imperialist powers can only salivate at the marvel of soviet civilization
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May 1, 2020 19:24
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Dreddout posted:The other problem with co-ops, speaking as a former co-op worker is that market forces demand that co-op workers compete with other firms. Meaning you'll bust your rear end just as hard in a worker owned grocer as walmart, to do otherwise will result in your co-op going bust. Essentially the co-op workers are forced to exploit themselves in order to stay in the rat race demanded by the market. Curious if this is any easier psychologically. Like, I'm not afraid of hard work but I have no interest in putting more money in my boss' pocket.
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May 1, 2020 19:29
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NotNut posted:that seems more like an argument for socialism than an argument against markets ??? ???? NotNut posted:the main critique here seems to be that supply and demand don't respond quick enough to each other and it was written 200 years ago before there was computers or even cars true, nowadays planning would be much more efficient
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May 1, 2020 19:32
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Dreddout posted:One problem with the market socialist school of thought is that capital has a tendency to centralize over time. Bigger firms buy out smaller firms until eventually you end up with the behemoths like google walmart and johnson and johnson. The end state being what amounts to a privatized planned economy. Assuming state power isn't used to break up monopolies. indeed, which is why the idea of (non-local) markets needs to be rejected for a coop economy too
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May 1, 2020 19:36
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theoretically theirs no reason why you couldn't have a centralized state that coordinates between various independent anarchist factories/communities while maintaining it's own stuff as well. ultimately people kinda just want to do their own thing and stopping that costs a lot more than working with them on it (within reason of course). the central state could do things that individual anarchist/worker owned firms couldn't do themselves like pave roads. idk what this would be called, socialism with federal characteristics?
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May 1, 2020 19:46
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Lady Militant posted:theoretically theirs no reason why you couldn't have a centralized state that coordinates between various independent anarchist factories/communities while maintaining it's own stuff as well. ultimately people kinda just want to do their own thing and stopping that costs a lot more than working with them on it (within reason of course). the central state could do things that individual anarchist/worker owned firms couldn't do themselves like pave roads. that's kinda how it works in the zapatistas, except there is a crucial component of making sure the central part is not so powerful as to be able to dictate policy unilaterally. a federated bottom-up 'state' is one of the modern anarchist ideas. dex_sda fucked around with this message at 19:53 on May 1, 2020 |
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May 1, 2020 19:51
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dex_sda posted:that's kinda how it works in the zapatistas, except there is a crucial component of making sure the central part is not so powerful as to be able to dictate policy unilaterally. a federated bottom-up 'state' is one of the modern anarchist ideas. Of course, that seems like common sense. Part of what i think I'm trying to get at it is that peoples natural tendency to group based on beliefs combined with the fact there are two distinct schools of thought in leftism that have kinda "stood the test of time" so to speak means that clearly a strategy should be developed to bridge the two? That if for lack of a better term there is a certain symbiotic relationship could be developed between those who love bigly state projects like going to space/building the hoover dam/all that central planning stuff and those who like doing.....whatever anarchists do.
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May 1, 2020 19:59
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Lady Militant posted:Of course, that seems like common sense. Part of what i think I'm trying to get at it is that peoples natural tendency to group based on beliefs combined with the fact there are two distinct schools of thought in leftism that have kinda "stood the test of time" so to speak means that clearly a strategy should be developed to bridge the two? That if for lack of a better term there is a certain symbiotic relationship could be developed between those who love bigly state projects like going to space/building the hoover dam/all that central planning stuff and those who like doing.....whatever anarchists do. Yes, and neozapatismo defies classification because it takes lessons from both schools. It takes anarchocommunism and syndicalism to run a cooperative economy (coops and communes agreeing on production), and it takes lessons from ML to have a central crisis response and the ability to run bigger projects, as well. It then runs that using federated bottom up democracy, and uses surplus to grow stuff that is worth a lot on the international market to raise funds for imports (coffee). It's a real fascinating mishmash - staunchly socialist, against neoliberalism, and dedicated to the cause. dex_sda fucked around with this message at 20:14 on May 1, 2020 |
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May 1, 2020 20:10
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And yeah I agree, I think especially today we need to look at leftism as a whole and work together instead of sectarianism - history shows it always hurts the cause.
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May 1, 2020 20:17
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dex_sda posted:Yes, and neozapatismo defies classification because it takes lessons from both schools. It takes anarchocommunism and syndicalism to run a cooperative economy (coops and communes agreeing on production), and it takes lessons from ML to have a central crisis response and the ability to run bigger projects, as well. It then runs that using federated bottom up democracy, and uses surplus to grow stuff that is worth a lot on the international market to raise funds for imports (coffee). It's a real fascinating mishmash - staunchly socialist, against neoliberalism, and dedicated to the cause. Is there a good book or something on the Zapatistas because they're interesting but I don't know too much
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May 1, 2020 20:27
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