I love it when a real, analytical post gets shoved to the bottom of the last page by some third-grade level drivel.

Did you expect anything less?

Capitalism hasn't killed a hundred million people?

Ogion, as long as James takes the time to read it, I'll be fine. It really is something that bugs me to no end because Marxism is not at all the only communism out there - far from it.

Nor is Sovietism the only derivative of Marxism.

Communism is a state sanctioned institutional system that murdered millions of people. Capitalism is an economic policy and no barely anyone has died because of capitalism.

"barely anyone has died because of capitalism"

Also... are you seriously implying that capitalism isn't an institutional system supported by the state?

What are corporations? What are police forces?

I'm going to take a bare bones look at some basic necessary tenets of most forms of marxism, socialism, and communism:

***i'll make one caveat here; if there is corporatism, some liberal programs such as the minimum wage and welfare nets can have good short term effects, but as long as corruption and degradation of market forces is in effect, there will be an overall deadweight loss on the economy

1. high degree of, if not total, redistribution of wealth

this does not work in any recorded economic system. the idea of recirculating wealth to increase the amount people have to spend on goods and services was formalized into an economic theory in the first round of Keynesian economics (not new keynesians, they make some good points). However, the redistribution of wealth in a free market has a bad effect: amassed capital is no longer available for job creation. businesses need mass amounts of capital for investments, and in a redistributive economy this several limits the capability of new job creation. by shifting to more demand and less supply, where the demand curve has an excess of income, you get shortages and inflation. the basic redistributive mechanisms also have moral problems, as they at some point must be enforced. If this is "voluntary" redistribution, then wha toys are essentially proposing is a very generous libertarian society (oh which i don't entirely disagree)

2. basic minimum income

i will admit, the prospect of a time 50-100 years from now where we can systemically eliminate the one problem of economics: scarcity, and provide a basic level of food, fresh water, housing and healthcare for all is quite an appealing prospect. i'm a bit concerned about lessening advancements in healthcare, but hopefully our theoretical future can sort this out. still, i maintain that there is no economic system alive today that can perpetually maintain the BMI framework right now. we need MUCH higher economic activity and development of technology, and the most innovative products are, i'd contend, selected for by public will. it's a nice future plan, but not applicable today. i could actually see an argument for Basic Minimum food production, but that's only because our glutted system the government props up in agriculture has a 40% waste rate. Healthcare is still a problem europe hasn't solved, by creating price caps in single payer systems, they've decimated their production of drugs, and we now control 95% of drug creation. destroying quality drugs, in the face of a rising tide of drug resistant bacteria, could be specifically harmful to the lower classes, who cannot afford supplemental insurance. definitely a problem we need intense technological innovation to fix

3. social equality through destroying classes

impossible. it simply is. to have a purely classless society destroys all forms of basic efficiency, and human nature. almost all human social experiments by evolutionary psychologists show instinctual group behavior that forms hierarchies. this is not simply a social issue, there are genetic links. furthermore, there will always be an underclass of those with disabilities. not demeaning them at all, but in pure terms of working vs non working, there will be division. in terms of economics, destroying compartmentalization and specialization are at many times necessary for their not to be dominant-submissive bonds forming in groups of people.

4. dialectical materialism and the idea of intrinsic value of labor

the idea that items have intrinsic worth, is both wrong and correct. items can make performing a certain task objectively easier to do, although the task itself is of purely subjective value. Marx changed this, and said that the value of labor was constant among items, and that all items derived their value from the labor put in them. The value of items and things by others is seen as inconsequential, although this is applied on an arbitrary standard. the free market demands both be true: the labor put into the creation of an object demands a minimum price, the amount of utility the object provides determines the maximum bound. this is a great optimization structure, that is usually destroyed in most anti-materialist, and generally quasi-marxist, societies.

5. inefficiency or immorality

the last problem is the problem of human nature. either you let people be free and ask them to work as a part of a commune, or you force them to under threat of the society. to run a commune, these must be the two choices. the first is inefficient and often results in failings of human nature, and the second is immoral, as it is coopting labor under threat of force. in some cultures, a commune could work. I personally believe a country like Germany will never be able to fail, as long as the culture doesn't massively shift. I also believe a country like Greece will never succeed again, if the culture does not change. The problem arises when you attempt cultural change. If you succeed, all the more on you, but if you fail, then freedom of choice has occurred. in most communist societies that have survived for a short while, individual choice must be stifled for the will of the whole.


any disagreements on the 5 points? I feel like I used to have a 6th but it might come to me later. let me know though

@ND, your ignorance of the history of Capitalism astounds.

Lassie faire capitalistic policies killed over 1 million people in Ireland during the great famine, that is 1 in 8 of the population, or the equivalent of 40 million americans today.

You can directly blame the potato blight for those deaths if you want, by ignoring the fact that in other countries with differet economics you didn'tsee millions die. And you ignore the exploitation and oppression which forced millions of Irish to rely on a single crop in the first place. Subsistance style farming of potatos had been the result of freemarket capitalism, exploitation of tenant farmers, and protection of the 'property rights' of powerul (mostly english) landowners.

All this was based on Capitalistic ideas.

There's nothing wrong with social hierarchies. There's something wrong with *inherited* social hierarchy. We're basically no different than feudal society, just with more rungs in the middle and more wealth at the top.

@Ogion

monopolization is more an aspect of a corporatist state, not a purely free market system. in fact, i've never witnessed a purely free market monopoly, other than the small-town economics where a single convenience store has a monopoly on groceries.

anything larger, and only suppression of competition enshrines monopolies. if monopolies offer an optimal product or service and beat out competition (in theory) than the monopoly is the best thing for the consumer, unless it changes it's ways (in which case competitors step in)


@bo

i do not follow your logic of increased productivity. i have never seen a socialized model of any sort lead to increased productivity... what rationale do you have behind this? competition has multiple studies where productivity is increased, and prices lowered

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002205318371001X

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230102231_10


here are two great Economist articles, the first talks on a more broad level, but the second talks about airlines (an example i love to use because, hey, airlines suck.) even Marx understood that his theory needed to occur in a heavily industrialized country to work: he knew the creation of wealth was too difficult and slow with socialism.

https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21695385-profits-are-too-high-america-needs-giant-dose-competition-too-much-good-thing

https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21721201-americans-are-treated-abysmally-their-airlines-they-should-look-europe-lessons-lack

@orathaic

"And you ignore the exploitation and oppression which forced millions of Irish to rely on a single crop in the first place."

THAT IS THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF LAISSEZ AFFAIR

@orathaic

the thing is, the problem with the potato bight was not just the fact that the staple crop suddenly was destroyed, it's that other industries had been hurt by tariffs and control that forced the culture into either agriculture sustenance, or into the hands of near-fascistic corporations with state tires. trade restrictions also made it difficult to have a greater factor endowment that would have produced more wealth for the everyday man.

the potato bight was not a failure of free market capitalism. government interference and archaic corporatism were rampant back then. the basic idea behind "free markets" is "free interaction"

"Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself."
- Milton Friedman

@JY on point 2. BMI (or Universal Basic Income, as it is being called these days).

There is evidence from small scale trials that in particular poverty stricken areas (ie ones where there was very little economic activity and very little capital accumulated to things off), a guarenteed basic income allows people take risks, try experimenting with new business arrangements and frees them from subsistance living.

So it is entirely clear that on some scale and in some situations, it can do a huge good both economically and morally.

That said these small scale trials don't provide any evidence of what would happen on a national scale.

3. Class is some formal system of status. Traditional class divisions meant the aristocratic classes couldn't marry outside of their class (presumably to preserve property, titles, and some kind of respectability) which the nobles felt they needed to protect.

Getting rid of that kind of class is entirely possible. Getting rid of the status which it is built on is not. So we hold men who perfom impressive physical feats (Olympic athletes) and women who perform sexual / object like feats (celebrity sex tapes and Miss Universe contestants/beauty pageants generally) in high regard - those intrinsic status competitions will continue regardless of economics.

Status is also currently tied to academic performance or income, in different ways. And while income-related status is an effect of power, academics (professors, scientists, philosophers and pulic intellectuals) tend to derive their status from the respect of their peers and the public.

It is entirely possible to remove this income-related power dynamic and imgine a society where status is a major driver of people's motivation. With influence (of being listened to) being the main power derived from status, and not money.

I don't know whether you would consider this a 'classless' society, but it is the closest thing we can achieve without changing the biological basis of humans...

@4. I don't know, i think markets *can* be a useful tool with which to solve the coordination problem. And should be ised appropriately, the downside is when people not being able to afford a product results in millions of deaths.

Food stamps may allow some kind of basic income to avoid the worst results. Though they are not universal (and thus create class/status differences), and currency seems like a much simpler payment system.

5. It depends on what your communes look like, you can be part of multiple communes, you can have large multi-nationals which franchise out their businesses and thus have local (not faceless) owners who are part of local communities, you can have lots of voluntary arrangements without necessarily forcing people to gain the benefits of commune membership.

I prefer your first case, where after a basic income, people have the choice of working in communes for specific benefits which communal membership provides. I for one volunteer in my local scout group, not for any monetary benefit, or status it affords me (though it does help my status a little bit), i do so because it is fun and i believe the kind of informal education which scouting provides is important...

That give me the ability to exert an influence on my community by being oart of a collection of like-minded individuals. A community based organisation.

I don't know if you'd even consider this a commune. Or if you would consider a co-op to be a commune (community owned bread making co-op, where memberhip gives you access to cheap bread, large community ovens, etc.) seems like a perfectly valid business, while also being able to operate as a non-profit service for co-op members to access the collective capital put into the ovens...

I can see many varied alternative structures which don't require compulsory membership to be efficient.

So yeah, any authoritarian communism is doomed to forge massive class differences between the tuling class and the proles. But condemning those does not mean local voluntary commune/co-ops and franchises can't be efficient and health for a society.

@"the potato bight was not a failure of free market capitalism. government interference and archaic corporatism were rampant back then. the basic idea behind "free markets" is "free interaction""

Ok, that is fair, there was at least a century of intentional governmental action to prevent the Irish economy from developing (and being competition for the English economy), but is was then popular government policy during the famine to use 'laisse faire' ideas to justify doing nothing and letting people die.

Now you can fairly claim, it was 'no true free market', and the correct responce would be that Soviet communism wasn't a 'true socialist/classless' society.

I firmly believe that there will never be any 'true'/pure socialist or free market society. We all currently live in hybrids of some form. With education being socialised at the very least (and we're both happy to discuss critically the current education system).

And as i think we both agreed a classless society isn't really something we can hve without altering human nature. Where class is just formal status possibly inherited.

You could get rid of inherited wealth, and try to build a meritocracy, but not without destroying the family... Which is one of our most prevalent communal structures.

@ora

re:

2. can you link me the studies of small scale success with BMI? I want to see how it was implemented from a policy perspective

3. i suppose the first problem is agreeing on a universal definition of "class." half of philosophy is defining your terms. the other half is arguing about the definitions.

4. the *problem* with free market capitalism is people get lazy in their independence. we are almost all dependent on a small number of people worldwide creating our food for us. just because we personally chose not to be farmers, does not mean we get to demand recompense.

this does however bring an interesting question of geographical scarcity into question. i've actually been thinking a tax model could be put into place directly proportional to not income, but total assets or total land owned. i've been running some regressions and the models seem to come out well, but there's a problem with outsourcing and other macro factors. still, it's an idea i'm open to

5. if we could get the BMI scarcity solved, i'm all with you brother. there's a conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, VERY right wing and pro-free markets, and even he's come around to the idea of BMI given the technology picks up. it's an area where libertarians can actually agree, as it gives without taking. i'm talking about synthetic food and desalinated water all powered by a fully automated machine system (DO NOT MAKE IT SELF AWARE THOUGH THAT'S A DEAL BREAKER) powered by renewables, and universal housing...

there's a problem with healthcare, and drug resistance in bacteria being a problem, but if you eliminate hunger and housing, eliminating poverty will be right around the corner, and that solves easily 30%+ of all healthcare expenditures, if not much more for people not in poverty but close to it.

the problem is, we'll have to artificially control the S curve oscillation. the S curve is a population model, and we have to set an artificial upper bound, and make sure human population growth doesn't exceed it. this has to be done through limiting supply... but nobody will like it when people die off and meet the S curve maximum. i've been thinking about this for a while, and i haven't come up with an effective buffer zone solution.

i'd love to get your opinion on how with BMI via tech we'd respond to population growth, it's a fascinating topic

Some of those are interesting tenets of communism, but they really aren’t that all-encompassing. The fact that you think that those make up such monumental pieces of communism shows just how slim (and/or Eurocentric) your breadth of communist philosophy is. As you read this, please understand that I’m not endorsing any of these ideas but that I am simply saying that they are out there.

“high degree of, if not total, redistribution of wealth”

This is pretty well recognized, but I reject it on account that communism in nations like the USSR and China under their respective communist parties had little to do with redistribution. They operated a lot more under the guise of redistribution while they actually, and quite simply, took from the rich. The poor received very little - other than those who had basically nothing, the standard of life did not go up, and in the case of places like much of Ukraine in the USSR, there was no sign of redistribution to be found. In fact, they starved, as people are so happy to point out. The government simply took what they could and had a ball.

The obvious response to this is “well that’s corruption, not communism.” I vehemently disagree, though I have said the same myself a number of times. In the same sense that capitalism resulting in the deaths of thousands and the unjust treatment of those who don’t deserve it under the classical definitions of capitalism is still capitalism, communism gone wrong, or communism gone corrupt, is still communism. It happens to be the leading brand of communism among large governments in the world today.

“basic minimum income”

You make an assumption here that the vast majority of people make: everyone, and every system, revolves around income. You won’t find any large governments or governmental organizations operating without some sort of assumption of income, or money, or whatever, but there are plenty of small and rural communities throughout the world - particularly indigenous communities that haven’t yet been touched by more common breeds of civilization - that don’t have a practical source of income or wealth. Instead, they simply share. What one creates is for the use and consumption of all.

There are opportunities to exist without money or income, where one is independent enough to survive as an individual - grow one’s own food, build and sustain one’s own home, etc. - but also depend on a community for protection, for friendship, and for happiness. In return, they give something back, no questions asked. There is a community that is run this way in Ireland almost to a tee, though many communalist (differentiated from communist only for clarity) sects work this way. I visited two in Chicago as part of some research I did a few years ago and they were rather interesting, though I noticed in one of these communes that while their members did not take home an income, they did work and were paid but were asked (i.e. forced) to donate their income back to the home in order to pay their rent and stay in their location. I guess that’s one of the drawbacks of living without money in a place that costs money to live in.

“social equality through destroying classes”

This is Marxism. There are many socialist movements that don’t believe in destroying classes but using them as a means to achieve a better and more prosperous economic situation for those that need it. I would point you particularly toward African socialism, specifically that of Nyerere, while also pointing out that his policies brutally fucked Tanzania, albeit with a bit of help from outside forces as well as by his own hand.

“dialectical materialism and the idea of intrinsic value of labor”

This is also Marxism. I’m not sure that there is a great example of something that isn’t this specifically because it’s such a historically new idea, but I know that Michel Aflaq, one of the founders of Ba’athism, hated this idea as a leading tenet of society and actually supported the continuation of the Cold War so that Soviet socialism and American capitalism might be kept in check. They were, by broad definition, though, communists.

“inefficiency or immorality”

A gift economy is an easy counter to this one. Seems to me like the only reason you included it was to quite blatantly insert your own confirmation bias, but that’s none of my business.

of course the soviets weren't pure marxism. Stalin killed Trotsky who was closer... but even he wasn't perfect either

@bo

i still want a response on how you think the commune economy is more "efficient."

i mean, i'll stand by a BMI with food and water (food and water AS income) but that's only because our bodies don't radically develop quickly, whereas technology can. efficiency is not a problem in that scenario

no... you said "productive" not efficient. sorry

Because I've been to dozens of communes where people aren't starving? Because communes wouldn't exist if their members *were* starving? I didn't make a comparison; I simply said it exists and works on that scale. I didn't say it would work in the United States and I didn't say it wouldn't. You're taking my words far out of context and putting them in the context of the economic standards you know and live by, which is proving my point: you keep making these overarching, blanket statements that don't actually describe the people that live in communistic societies. They simply describe the people that live in communistic societies you might have studied and know a bit about. Do more research and stop thinking you know everything. It makes you look dumb.

Reductionism is a plague on free thought because it gives people the power of thinking they know so much when all it takes is a Google search to substantially broaden their horizons.

@bo

i'm sampling responding to this part of what you said

"Some of them are predicated on the idea that you work for the community and the community works for you, which in turn means that your increased productivity means increased productivity from your friends and neighbors, and thus you all receive better returns."

i have a problem with this. the small scale commune model cannot create the infrastructure of asset accumulation that could create an iPhone, or most high end technological devices... and many low end at that too. you cannot extend the economic potential of these communities greatly by using this model either, and can be far behind developed nations where standards of living are much better, even for the working poor.

most commune-like societal structures in africa are rightfully declared third world, whereas many communes in the united state are able to exist because of the prosperous country around it. even in isolation, these people have benefitted from technology being developed around them.

from Koinonia, Ganas, Halcyon, Kaliflower... there are very few communes that haven't benefited from our technological progress, but the basic idea of freedom i'm not against.


if people want to live in these communes: go for it! i have no problem with what they do, but i do have a problem with that claim you made.

these communes do not increase the productivity of people, especially compared to those outside of communes. basic human endowment means the larger population pool the more diverse skill sets, the more competition and more productivity there will be.

it's not making me look dumb here... you're the one obfuscating the issue now

@JY Rural India 2010 http://www.guystanding.com/files/documents/Basic_Income_Pilots_in_India_note_for_inaugural.pdf
(Note i qualified my original claim to talk explicitally about economically poor regions - and i fully admit talking about rural India is not the same as talking about, say, inner city detroit or flint michigan)

And Canada 1974-1979 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2535174?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

archive.irpp.org/po/archive/jan01/hum.pdf

I haven't read all of the stuff on this canadian study. And it is older but may still be relevant.

@"geographical scarcity into question. i've actually been thinking a tax model could be put into place directly proportional to... Land owned"

Yeah, that would be an interesting approach, because with a flat tax, you could charge people for owning the land, and if thry do nothing with it (leaving the land as waste land / disused) then they will be losing money - which would either force them to sell it, invest in it (to make it profitable) or find something more efficient/productive to do with the land (like renting it out)... Currently a problem in dublin is land owners waiting for property prices to recover so they can sell waste land to developers at a profit, and a tax like the one you consider would motivate them to do something more productive.

Whether that means giving the land back to the city because you can't pay your land tax... Or renting it out... It could help drive some economic activity.

@"5. " i'm all with you brother....as it gives without taking. i'm talking about synthetic food and desalinated water all powered by a fully automated machine system (DO NOT MAKE IT SELF AWARE THOUGH THAT'S A DEAL BREAKER) powered by renewables, and universal housing..."

Unfortunately that requires a huge capital investment (not impossible, as i believe the capital does exist). But what is the incentive for the holders of capital currently to invest in this kind of technology, if the ultimate conclusion will be that the state/community/whoever owns the produce of the investment?

And that is without me considering the R&D effort to get to the point...

Now if you have enough R&D to scale this down to individual machines (3d printers which make houses? For example) then sure the R&D investment goes to make products which are then sold with a service contract, and there is a constant flow of profit earned from maintaining this massive capital investment... Maybe.

Not sure i'm overly worried about population growth. The planet is currently set to see population hit 10 billion, with just a current young generation having their own families and nobody else dying (lower death rates due to improved access to healthcare and nutrition). At which point we almost have a stable population. Europe and Japan are fairly stable already, and if other countries follow the development curve we've seen here natural population growth will come close to a complete stop.

Except when healthcare improvements means that oeople are living longer, so there are more people in total alive at one time... Which could happen without any more than replacement level fertility.

But family size depends so much on economic conditions. So a massive shift away from our current 'developed' world economy will do something. I'm just not sure what.

@Bo, where are these communes in Ireland, the only ones i'm aware of seem to be Religious organisation running communities for people with learning disabilities.

“but i do have a problem with that claim you made.”

You mean the claim that people in many communities work for the community, and the community gives back to them off of the production of others? I’m sorry if you have a problem with that claim. You haven’t refuted it.

“these communes do not increase the productivity of people, especially compared to those outside of communes”

OH, THAT CLAIM! You mean the one I never made, right?

Yeah, that claim.

Ora, https://www.shareable.net/blog/happiness-without-money-this-irish-community-proves-its-possible

The article is bubbly bullshit, but it does in fact exist. There may be religious undertones; I have no idea.

Thanks, i'll take a look at that.

@existing without money.

Look i don't necessarily like money. To live in a communit without it, you need trust, you need to trust the community will do for you what you need and they need to trust that you will do your part.

And trust takes time to build, though once you have a strong community, new members slowly joining will quickly be able to adapt to the culture of your commine.

How and Ever building trust takes both time and energy. And it doesn't scale well, because trust is non-transferable. To live in city scale groups humans need money as an alternative to developing trust with everyone.

Maybe you can trust that the average person on the street will not actively harm you (tough given the place this thread started that isn't always clear), but you can't trust they will do labour for you on demand. Instead we place our trust in money (which van go wrong with things like hyper inflation) we trust that it holds value and will be useful for exchanging with others who are going to offer services (in cities money become more valuable the more services being offered in a close proximity to your vicinity).

There are of course downsides. You don't have to know anyone to survive, just hve money, so city living can be very lonely. You don't have to be a part of any community, and as social animals we need a certain level of socialisation to be healthy. That is why cities often have various community groups, which act more on trust, and voluntary contribution rather than just money. They might be churches, or scout groups, or community gardening projects... But they exist in all the varieties, and provide for a need which isn't well provided for by money alone.

Like the difference between prostitution and having a lover. Money extracts the trust from a relationship, by being the physical embodyment of trust. Massive efficiencies when it comes to building trust among strangers.