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Beefeater1980 posted:Ok so there are two wealth gaps: The big issue here is that you've created numbers that are divorced from reality. Most of the wealth of millionaires isn't in food and houses that you can ship off to Nepal, it's ownership in corporations. If a village in Kenya gets their 100 shares of Amazon stock from Bezos, does that actually help them? Is there a market to sell the stock anymore? Do they start taking an active part in the management of the company (and if they do, do they have any ability there)? What about land wealth, how do you transfer that to another continent? A lot of these problems do have solutions and the problem isn't completely intractable but this sort of analysis doesn't really tell you what the next steps are.
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Dec 27, 2019 08:30
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OwlFancier posted:I mean again I don't think any western socialist government is about major wealth transfer into the global south or anything, even if it would be the right thing to do, precisely because it's entirely unelectable. They tend to focus instead on stopping wealth transfer up the economic strata. If you stop that it's quite possible people might become more open to international transfers because a lot of the hostility to that is because the right like to pretend that the reason a lot of people are struggling is because of that. If people aren't struggling any more then it's far easier to make the case that we have enough to help others. I think that you’re right that the conclusion is: let some places get rich first (as Deng Xiaoping put it). So level up inside a country first. But I do believe that the likely result of socialism in one country is to stop mass scale wealth transfers from rich to poor countries, because those are a side-product of capitalism as currently practised. And will remain so until something becomes more expensive than labour costs.
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Dec 27, 2019 08:35
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I don't even think we need to get rich, I think the wealth currently in the country needs to be redistributed so that everyone can see how rich the country already is, and whose fault it really is that they spend so much of their time without access to it.
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Dec 27, 2019 08:38
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NovemberMike posted:The big issue here is that you've created numbers that are divorced from reality. Most of the wealth of millionaires isn't in food and houses that you can ship off to Nepal, it's ownership in corporations. If a village in Kenya gets their 100 shares of Amazon stock from Bezos, does that actually help them? Is there a market to sell the stock anymore? Do they start taking an active part in the management of the company (and if they do, do they have any ability there)? What about land wealth, how do you transfer that to another continent? Sure, it’s very artificial, although unless anyone has any better numbers then it’s the best way we can understand the rough levels of wealth in different places. I mention it only to illustrate the point that there is some truth behind the instinctive feeling that all the western working class voting fash have that socialism isn’t all upside for them immediately. I believe the UK experience shows us that to beat the right, we need an alliance between the working class who are still leftist, the working class who have defected to fascism but aren’t true believers, and a chunk of the petit-bourgeois. If we’re lucky we can get a few class traitors from the bourgeois as well - there’s always the odd Tony Benn or Zhou Enlai. I agree that realistically we have to do this a country at a time, and gamble that once people’s conditions improve, they will develop empathy for others faster than they get so used to their improved conditions that they take them for granted.
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Dec 27, 2019 09:43
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OwlFancier posted:I don't even think we need to get rich, I think the wealth currently in the country needs to be redistributed so that everyone can see how rich the country already is, and whose fault it really is that they spend so much of their time without access to it. This is crucial. You straight up can't tell the average Britisher or American or <insert rich western nation here> that their country as a whole is actually ludicrously rich. Like people will not believe you or take you seriously. And it's because of that oligarchs vs everyone else wealth gap. People on average are not capable of conceiving just how loving wealthy the top few bastards are. I think an important hurdle we need to clear is a revelatory one. That is, we need to make it undeniable and unignorable just how much wealth these fuckers have squirreled away for themselves. I'm speaking from experience here, I've taken shits in a bathroom where the tiles on the walls alone cost more than my parents' entire house. It's ridiculous.
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Dec 27, 2019 15:35
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Also there's the fact that a very large portion of Americans (to use the US as an example) literally have negative net wealth. Maybe they managed to acquire some personal items that would be impossible to acquire in a poorer country, but it's not that clear that they're overall better off, especially if you're comparing them with a country with some sort of functional healthcare system.
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Dec 28, 2019 00:09
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In the UK we have an estimated total wealth of £14.6 trillion , with a population of around 63 million people. That means equally distributed, each person in the UK would have £230,000 of wealth - enough for every single person in Britain to own a house (outside a city) and live comfortably. At historic rates of stock market growth (8%) that would give each person in the UK an income of £18,000 a year - enough to live on, even in big cities. In the US you have a total wealth of $93tn. Distributed evenly between your population of 330m people each person in the US would have a net worth of $280,000 - about the same as the UK. Because cost of living is lower in the US than the UK, this would go a bit further and you could eradicate poverty through wealth redistribution alone. Note that this is only private wealth and doesn't touch on infrastructure or other communal sources of wealth. Communist redistribution alone would eliminate virtually all social problems in the anglosphere and create a utopian post work society.
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Dec 28, 2019 13:05
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I sort of want to ask who's going to be keeping society going if everyone's living entirely off investment payments and not working 
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Dec 28, 2019 13:39
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OwlFancier posted:I sort of want to ask who's going to be keeping society going if everyone's living entirely off investment payments and not working Presumably fully automated luxury gay space communism is in full effect here. Or nobody works and we rely on imperialist outsourcing
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Dec 28, 2019 13:53
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OwlFancier posted:I sort of want to ask who's going to be keeping society going if everyone's living entirely off investment payments and not working Have you not seen Wall-E?
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Dec 28, 2019 15:44
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asdf32 posted:All actually functioning societies have people “in charge” of government and institutions and they will always be a form of elite. Nice that you add "actually functioning societies" so that you don't have to think about non-white people in your human nature argument edit: To clarify, I'm assuming that basically just means "has a state" unwantedplatypus fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Dec 28, 2019 |
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Dec 28, 2019 19:16
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Helsing posted:"Elites" are difficult to avoid altogether because there are built in hierarchies of skill and experience that seem to be more or less necessary for an industrial or agricultural society. However, there's a tendency to conflate "elites" with the holders of extreme wealth who are better termed oligarchs. I think the thing that people care about when they use the term "elites" is a (perceived) lack of accountability to "non-elites." Einstein was undoubtedly an intellectual elite, and had far more sway in the scientific community than most others, but that didn't translate into political power or dominion over other people's lives.
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Dec 28, 2019 19:20
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You can't look at the current way society is structured and make an argument that it is the natural way humans have and will always organize themselves. We are ultimately limited by the laws of nature. An agricultural mode of production only creates a small surplus, such that the vast majority of people must work as farmers to feed themselves. There are two options, either evenly distribute the surplus, or set aside a group of people who will not work to feed themselves, but instead dedicate their time and energy on some other, specialized task. It does not matter what our "nature" is. If 99 cultures choose the former option, and 1 culture chooses the latter option; and the latter option makes a culture more likely to survive, over time the world will fill with hierarchies as a product of necessity. But when the mode of production changes, so too do the restrictions we operate under.
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Dec 28, 2019 19:27
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unwantedplatypus posted:I think the thing that people care about when they use the term "elites" is a (perceived) lack of accountability to "non-elites." Einstein was undoubtedly an intellectual elite, and had far more sway in the scientific community than most others, but that didn't translate into political power or dominion over other people's lives. Einstein's not a great example. President of Marxist Boeing Corp is. You can't build a jumbo jet without a hierarchical structure of thousands of people regardless of 'mode of production'. The person leading that organization and their counterparts across the economy hold economic power basically identical to capitalists. Does your system keep their power in check or not. That's the entire trick. And lol no - socialism doesn't guarantee they're suddenly accountable (real life socialism has failed miserably at this).
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Dec 28, 2019 20:53
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unwantedplatypus posted:Nice that you add "actually functioning societies" so that you don't have to think about non-white people in your human nature argument Marxism is a human nature argument.
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Dec 28, 2019 20:57
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And god knows that jumbo jets are a thing we definitely want to have in the future.
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Dec 28, 2019 20:59
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asdf32 posted:Einstein's not a great example. President of Marxist Boeing Corp is. You can't build a jumbo jet without a hierarchical structure of thousands of people regardless of 'mode of production'. The person leading that organization and their counterparts across the economy hold economic power basically identical to capitalists. Does your system keep their power in check or not. That's the entire trick. That is a lot of words you are putting in my mouth. What system are you describing? Because the power that the coordinator of jumbo jet production has depends entirely on the system he or she is operating within. Is money a thing? How much do they have? Is it possible to use this money to gain an advantage in the justice system? Were they appointed to their position by a "higher" authority or were they elected by the workers of that organization? What is the process for removal of someone in their position? How much unilateral power do they have? Of course someone who is baiscally comrade CEO will have the same power as a CEO, but it is incredibly uncharitable of you to assume that is what I'm talking about. edit: If one were to make a human nature argument, I would look at the mode of production that has been unanimous amongst humanity for most of our species' history, and therefore is the only mode of production that could really affect or be affected by evolution; that is, hunter-gatherer societies. People don't do this, because then our own society would seem like a massive abberation of human nature, which it is. unwantedplatypus fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Dec 28, 2019 |
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Dec 28, 2019 21:04
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I think it's slightly funny that you'd view the idea that non-hierarchical modes of organization can't do some things as well as hierarchical ones can, as a bad thing. Because as I already pointed out, what hierarchies are particularly good at is murder, direct, systemic, or via externalities. Aviation is a good example of all three of those So I'm not personally too bothered by the suggestion that non hierarchical structures would be worse at some things because I think most of the things they'd be worse at are things we shouldn't be doing anyway. Not that I actually think aviation is one of those things alas, while generally bad I don't really see it as a thing that couldn't be done collectively. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Dec 28, 2019 |
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Dec 28, 2019 21:09
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asdf32 posted:Einstein's not a great example. President of Marxist Boeing Corp is. You can't build a jumbo jet without a hierarchical structure of thousands of people regardless of 'mode of production'. The person leading that organization and their counterparts across the economy hold economic power basically identical to capitalists. Does your system keep their power in check or not. That's the entire trick. Ok, let's see: https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/what-will-it-be-boeing-great-airplanes-that-generate-cash-flow-or-great-cash-flow-period/ quote:In the ’90s, Boeing business culture turned to employee engagement, process improvement and productivity — adopting the “quality” business culture that made Japanese manufacturers formidable competitors. quote:Success or failure of an airplane program turns on productivity. The first airplanes off the production line sell at a loss. Costs come down over time, the quicker the better. If your business model emphasizes productivity, employee engagement and process improvement, costs go down faster. This was the essence of the “quality” business model Boeing followed in the mid-’90s. The 777 had the best “learning curve” in the business. quote:This cost-cutting culture is the opposite of a culture built on productivity, innovation, safety, or quality. A high-performance work culture requires trust, coordination, strong problem-solving, open flow of information and commitment to the overall success of the program. In a high-performance culture, stakeholders may sacrifice for the good of the program, understanding that their interests are served in the long run. So it seems like Boeing used to be a company where employee engagement was paramount. Something which is entirely possible to do in a worker-managed (and worker-owned) structure as well. They could elect their own managers insofar as they actually need them, and presumably would do so in no small part based on knowledge, experience and competence at building safe airplanes. Those at the top of this hierachy would be directly accountable to their fellow workers who elected them to this position, and who could recall them when required. Instead, Boeing shifted to cost-cutting because the people at the top of the hierarchy (who are virtually unaccountable) wanted more for themselves. The result is the 737 MAX. Hundreds of people are dead due to easily preventable causes which ultimately boiled down to decisions based on greed. It is nearly impossible to imagine that the people responsible for those decisions will be held accountable commensurate to the harm they have caused. You appear to be defending this as a good thing because ???
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Dec 28, 2019 22:25
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I'm not going to belabour the idea of "elite" in the sense of "someone who is very good at something" versus "oligarch" as in "someone who is very wealthy and powerful and will use same to infinitely get more wealth and power" (Michael Jordan would be an ideal example of first one, then the other), but I've been reading this thread recently and there's something that's been sort of itching the back of my brain... and I think that I've finally figured out what it is. I am utterly perplexed by "market liberals" who think that the world absolutely requires that there be a small group of phenomenally wealthy people who make everything go. All I can imagine is that these are the same people who believed that kings and emperors in times gone by were chosen by the gods or the like and had some inherent right to rule over mankind. I don't remember precisely where I heard this term, but the one that leaps to mind is "starfucker": people who for whatever reason think that the wealthy, famous and powerful are just fantastic, deserve all that they have and need to be allowed to do their miracles because the world would collapse without them. Jrod in the libertarian thread was this to the last molecule, but it's here as well. It comes back to "who owns the means of production?", but anyone who thinks that society can "hold accountable" those who have the power & money (which are synonymous) to write their own rules is utterly daft. That's why we bloody socialists believe so strongly in as much material equality as possible... some people will always be more motivated/intelligent/clever than others, but that doesn't mean that they get to have all the pies and leave the crumbs for the 99%. If you give someone too much power/wealth (again, synonymous) they will inevitably abuse it and, in the case of capitalism, withhold the necessities of life from people unless those people help them make more profit all while giving them as little as possible for their time. No great human feat is accomplished without a huge collective effort - full stop. The "great man" theory of history, just like the prosperity gospel, is an absolute myth and we need to stop clinging to this illusion and realise that team effort makes the world turn and that the benefits of that collective effort should be shared equally, not only for reasons of utility and morality but also to avoid the concentration of wealth & power that inevitably leads to misery.
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Dec 28, 2019 23:02
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unwantedplatypus posted:That is a lot of words you are putting in my mouth. What system are you describing? Because the power that the coordinator of jumbo jet production has depends entirely on the system he or she is operating within. Is money a thing? How much do they have? Is it possible to use this money to gain an advantage in the justice system? Were they appointed to their position by a "higher" authority or were they elected by the workers of that organization? What is the process for removal of someone in their position? How much unilateral power do they have? You posed the right questions but somehow didn't realize none of them are answered by the mode production. The CEO of Boeing just got fired. The rest sounds like it might be good business strategy for any large organization. JustJeff88 posted:It comes back to "who owns the means of production?", but anyone who thinks that society can "hold accountable" those who have the power & money (which are synonymous) to write their own rules is utterly daft. Right money and power are synonymous so when you eliminate personal wealth what have you done to eliminate or check power? An extra important question considering the history of socialism and authoritarianism. The rest is also mostly irrelevant but its funny you brought libertarians up since libertarians and marxists (some socialists) tend to be mirror images. JROD: Eliminating government will eliminate elites, aggression and exploitation You: What about other forms of elites, aggression and exploitation that have nothing to do with government? JROD: Eliminating government will eliminate elites, aggression and exploitation You: What about real life examples where this hasn't worked at all? JROD: Eliminating government will eliminate elites, aggression and exploitation A Marxist replaces the word government with capitalists and goes in circles with the same conversation.
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Dec 29, 2019 01:57
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asdf32 posted:The CEO of Boeing just got fired. The rest sounds like it might be good business strategy for any large organization. This isn't the first and won't be the last time that good business strategy has gotten people killed in preventable ways. What does that tell you about the compatibility of business strategies that optimize for a capitalist mode of production and general human wellbeing?
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Dec 29, 2019 02:00
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I'm not sure from the ant-level worker view that their day to day job would change that much under socialism. They would still have a boss, whether it be an elected boss (like in a Czechoslovakian cooperative) or someone appointed to oversee their work. Even Aeroflot had lavishly appointed first class cabins on their aircraft. There will still be difference, distinction, and hierarchies in a socialist country.
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Dec 29, 2019 02:29
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Orange Devil posted:This isn't the first and won't be the last time that good business strategy has gotten people killed in preventable ways. What does that tell you about the compatibility of business strategies that optimize for a capitalist mode of production and general human wellbeing? No I meant the opposite. Killing people, tanking the stock and getting fired is bad business (well in a market economy anyway). It's not clear a popular employee elected socialist CEO would be fired after an indecent like this.
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Dec 29, 2019 02:30
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asdf32 posted:You posed the right questions but somehow didn't realize none of them are answered by the mode production. Then you don't understand the point I was trying to make by talking about food surpluses
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Dec 29, 2019 02:41
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asdf32 posted:No I meant the opposite. Killing people, tanking the stock and getting fired is bad business (well in a market economy anyway). It's not clear a popular employee elected socialist CEO would be fired after an indecent like this. why were those people killed again
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Dec 29, 2019 02:43
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unwantedplatypus posted:You can't look at the current way society is structured and make an argument that it is the natural way humans have and will always organize themselves. We are ultimately limited by the laws of nature. An agricultural mode of production only creates a small surplus, such that the vast majority of people must work as farmers to feed themselves. There are two options, either evenly distribute the surplus, or set aside a group of people who will not work to feed themselves, but instead dedicate their time and energy on some other, specialized task. It does not matter what our "nature" is. If 99 cultures choose the former option, and 1 culture chooses the latter option; and the latter option makes a culture more likely to survive, over time the world will fill with hierarchies as a product of necessity. Do you have an example that bears this out? This mostly sounds like a just-so story than an actual explanation. My understanding is that you see hierarchies come up in any organization that hits the size where everyone can't communicate with each other effectively, not because of organizational specialization.
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Dec 29, 2019 06:58
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unwantedplatypus posted:Then you don't understand the point I was trying to make by talking about food surpluses You aren't following through on your own logic (which is really just to repeat Smith). Decision making (business/economic/political/whatever) at a certain level requires a person who can specialise into gathering the information necessary to make decisions, analysing it, and developing consequential courses of action - that's why hierarchical organisations exist, to channel information upwards from the shop floor to the person who specialises in making decisions. If you want a non-hierarchical structure then you either need everyone to be equally informed and invested in making decisions (possible if you are a ~10 person startup, which is why it happens there) or you have to stop caring about whether the decisions are informed.
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Dec 29, 2019 13:15
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I'm not talking about hierarchies within an organization. I'm talking about social and political hierarchies that reproduce themselves. You can have hierarchy within a specific organization without that hierarchy translating into disproportionate political or economic power outside of that organization. When transportation and communication are not particularly technologically developed, and when there is no formal schooling system, it makes sense that skills and knowledge would be passed down through families, and this system would calcify into a class system. You can have a factory "hierarchy" without the presence of a socio-economic class hierarchy surrounding it. I'm talking about the later more so than the former, because the latter is the actual reason hierarchies have such power in our society.
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Dec 29, 2019 14:24
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unwantedplatypus posted:Then you don't understand the point I was trying to make by talking about food surpluses Ok great, a world of amazing possibilities opens when we change the economic mode of production. Now how does that answer your questions: "Is money a thing? How much do they have? Is it possible to use this money to gain an advantage in the justice system? Were they appointed to their position by a "higher" authority or were they elected by the workers of that organization? What is the process for removal of someone in their position? How much unilateral power do they have?" Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:why were those people killed again Same reason people died in Chernobyl (cost cutting and institutional failure). OwlFancier posted:I think it's slightly funny that you'd view the idea that non-hierarchical modes of organization can't do some things as well as hierarchical ones can, as a bad thing. We got it. You're a left libertarian. I shouldn't need to say more but I'll point out that while you might arbitrarily decide the world doesn't need planes generally if we return to pre-industrial society (as if there was no hierarchy then lol) billions of people will die. To avoid that we need huge organizations maintaining heavy agricultural industry, transportation, advanced medical technology and large government bureaucracies and regulatory bodies to oversee it. Dealing with climate change also demands cooperation at a global level which means global institutions to oversee it.
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Dec 29, 2019 14:56
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unwantedplatypus posted:I'm not talking about hierarchies within an organization. I'm talking about social and political hierarchies that reproduce themselves. You can have hierarchy within a specific organization without that hierarchy translating into disproportionate political or economic power outside of that organization. When transportation and communication are not particularly technologically developed, and when there is no formal schooling system, it makes sense that skills and knowledge would be passed down through families, and this system would calcify into a class system. Oooh, I think I understand you now. In which case, the problem you have is that you need to find a more efficient way of allocating skills to jobs than the market, and it also can't be a person or group of people making those decisions because you've instantly created a socio-economic class hierarchy there. You can definitely fiddle with markets to change their outcomes, but I don't think you can successfully replace them (at least not under our current paradigm).
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Dec 29, 2019 14:59
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In theory at least allocating resources to problems in an objective way, without a central coordinating mind, ought to be the sort of job distributed computing is good at. However the problems with actually trusting AIs to do this are well documented. So I guess the question might be: how can we engineer an AI central planner to avoid both the failures of human socialist central planning and the systematic biases of a market system?
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Dec 29, 2019 15:34
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asdf32 posted:We got it. You're a left libertarian. I might suggest that it's currently all of those things that are heading us towards lots of people dying so I am somewhat skeptical of their ability to solve it, and doubly so of people who are unwilling to entertain the possibility that perhaps their form inherently encourages behaviour which lead to mass death. It's somewhat like looking at monarchies and thinking "well yes they suck and keep starting wars and oppressing people but we just need the right kind of monarchy to solve those problems." OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Dec 29, 2019 |
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Dec 29, 2019 15:47
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unwantedplatypus posted:I'm not talking about hierarchies within an organization. I'm talking about social and political hierarchies that reproduce themselves. You can have hierarchy within a specific organization without that hierarchy translating into disproportionate political or economic power outside of that organization. When transportation and communication are not particularly technologically developed, and when there is no formal schooling system, it makes sense that skills and knowledge would be passed down through families, and this system would calcify into a class system. No you can't. An economy populated with hierarchical organizations has a class of leadership elites that run them. Lol. Your socialist appeal is "Well billions of people are probably going to die under capitalism too"
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Dec 29, 2019 15:53
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Purple Prince posted:In theory at least allocating resources to problems in an objective way, without a central coordinating mind, ought to be the sort of job distributed computing is good at. You don't and you don't try. You let humans decide what they want and automate the means of production. That's the big next paradigm shift in the means of production and the trap we need to avoid in future - we either go in a direction where everything is basically free and available to everyone, or everything is basically free but owned by an oligarchic elite that has no incentive to make it available to everyone.
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Dec 29, 2019 15:57
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Alchenar posted:You let humans decide what they want and automate the means of production. I mean this hasn't worked so far in history, so having robo-Stalin allocate resources as required might be an improvement.
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Dec 29, 2019 16:12
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asdf32 posted:No you can't. An economy populated with hierarchical organizations has a class of leadership elites that run them. that your defense of capitalism is "we will only kill you if it's short term profitable" renders it a pretty good one, not gonna lie the market says those people's deaths are profitable, asdf. what does your freshly-learned experience with Boeing tell you the market will do to them.
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Dec 29, 2019 16:15
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UnknownTarget posted:Dialectic != intellectual. Dude, Germany doesn't follow the US model of separation of powers. They have a parliamentary system, i.e. the executive is elected by the legislature and is dependent on the continuing support of the legislature to stay in power. This is the most basic of common knowledge. And the EU isn't even a loving country. Also, generally speaking, given the utter ignorance on display here you don't get to make demands on anyone.
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Dec 29, 2019 16:15
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asdf32 posted:Lol. Your socialist appeal is "Well billions of people are probably going to die under capitalism too" My appeal is that you're not even willing to consider the idea that the way of organizing society you're advocating for is responsible for the problems you're trying to solve with it. Like take climate change, why is that a problem? Is it because we live in a society that, in pursuit of productivity, has handed off its large scale control systems, such as they are, to people who are, by virtue of their position in the hierarchy, disincentivized to actually use those systems to plan ahead or even to provide people with the information that they might all loving die if someone doesn't start planning ahead? You're looking at the way things are and just saying "well we can't change the structure of any of this so we just need to make it work" which utterly refuses to consider that it is working exactly as you would expect something built the way it's built, to work. How do you make the society we have work? Because I do not see a way. I certainly don't think that the idea that it can just be managed better or whatever is remotely credible, again it's the philosopher king idea, that we just need the people in charge to be better without considering that the structure of hierarchy itself means they cannot be, consistently. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Dec 29, 2019 |
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Dec 29, 2019 16:18
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asdf32 posted:No you can't. An economy populated with hierarchical organizations has a class of leadership elites that run them. The reason that we currently and historically have a class of elites, and what makes this a socio-economic class, is that their position and power is reproduced across time and individuals; and their position in society gives them a shared interest. There is no intrinsic reason that the head factory coordinator has a shared interest with a residential building administrator. Their jobs have little to do with each other, and neither commands respect in the others line of work. However, if both of those positions personally profit from exploiting the labor and resources of others, suddenly they have a shared interest in keeping an underclass of people to exploit for their own benefit. A CEO's exploitation of workers is intrinsic to a model of social labor for personal profit, and thus is preserved across generations and persons. In addition, when the unequal distribution of resources and power is abstracted into the accumulation of money, it can be passed down via family inheritance. However, this perpetuation of class is only possible through the model of social labor for private profit.
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Dec 29, 2019 18:05
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