Because you are essentially taxing the replacement of humans by machines. Not all companies will have the same labour-capital balance and personally I prefer to see it represented instead of simply taxing everyone the same way as if they were in the same context. What you are suggesting would be an incitation to add machines, you would have no reasons to even make an effort to introduce humans. I basically see the addition of machines as a negative externality.
“Socialism” vs. “Capitalism” debate
- Thread starter Kinsella
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Because you are essentially taxing the replacement of humans by machines. Not all companies will have the same labour-capital balance and personally I prefer to see it represented instead of simply taxing everyone the same way as if they were in the same context. What you are suggesting would be an incitation to add machines, you would have no reasons to even make an effort to introduce humans. I basically see the addition of machines as a negative externality.
@Fiskey
Your long list above does not come without a cost.
The Nazis pretended to give all that in exchange for surrendering power to Hitler himself.
The Nazi party controlled everything.
Your long list above does not come without a cost.
The Nazis pretended to give all that in exchange for surrendering power to Hitler himself.
The Nazi party controlled everything.
But he is right that the difference between Socialism and full Marxist communism is the abolition of private property? That is what had happened in Russia in the early 20s, and I imagine he's reacting against that although I don't know when the quote you posted was from.
I know he rails against Marx, but I imagine most people who rail against Marx (Marxism) haven't read him.
But then we get back to the original contention, that you cannot have socialism without democracy. That's fine, but what do you call the people who have a left wing agenda but also want to be dictators? You can call them facists, but they probably saw themselves as socialists, and their original supporters probably saw them as socialists. I also imagine that was a genuinely held belief rather than a wholly cynical attempt to gain power, although naturally any politician has an eye on power.
Ok, I see your point, you want to tax the machines to encourage use of humans.
I was looking at this from a point of view that the use of humans was long gone.
I don't think in a world where only 10% of the population works, taxing machinery heavily would have much point.
It would be too late.
That could be a way to stop this said future from happening though.
But then you have to question why?
Unless you believe humans live to work? I believe work is currently a necessity in order for us to live.
If we had a future where work was done by machines, the companies (or machines) taxed heavily to fund ubi for the populace, then people could truly live their lives.
Obviously that all depends heavily on the level of ubi, and the control / power those companies have. Too much control and it could be a dire situation indeed.
All countries have such incentives, but with the Germans there was a strong narrative of responsibility of having kids in order to stave off the wave of the unwashed hordes from other cultures. Not too unfamiliar to modern discourse, sadly. I can’t seem to read anything in that link, but I’m just putting this out there in case this is different to the policies in Soviet. Do you need to register to read? Is it free?
Sorry, yeah it’s only really available with an academic login. Main reason for such incentives as far as I’ve read so far was the pretty drastic demographic crisis the Soviet Union faced by the 70s and 80s. There was also an issue with Muslim birth rates being higher than Slavic, which seems to have guided the debate to some extent.
It’s an interview from 1923.
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2007/sep/17/greatinterviews1
Anyway, the socialist movement is one of solidarity between the workers. If anybody non-Aryan is excluded, how the feck is that inclusive enough to be called socialism?
Ah. Thanks for the summary!
Then we get back to deciding on definitions outside of the use of words in the real world, which is fine but less interesting I think. A more interesting question would be why did Hitler see himself as a socialist, and why did many people in Germany at the time accept him as a socialist.
I think this argument is analogous to those who say Islamic fundamentalist terrorists aren't real Muslims or football hooligans aren't real fans. Sure, you can dismiss a problem like that, but I think you miss the complexity of the problem.
So if I tell you that I am a bear then I am a bear? I become part of the definition of a bear?
There's a huge difference between a "Sozialist" and a "Nationalsozialist". National Socialist might be the best available translation, but it doesn't mean the exact same thing. "Nationalsozialist" is it's own noun, and with the Nazi's being the only ones to call themselves so it is pretty much defined by their existence.
The majority of muslims aren’t terrorist, the majority of football fans aren’t hooligans. To make them representative is definitely way more off the mark than saying they’ve missed the point.
Textbook Socialism and Capitalism does not exist in the modern era.
There is only different variants of Democratic Socialism. Best example being Denmark/Sweden and among the worst, what we have here in the US.
We simply need to move as close to the Denmark/Sweden model is all.
The common factor between Socialism and a dictatorship is power being exerted from the top.
Even if you have elections in a Socialist government your candidates are pretty much vetted to ensure they do not go against the government agenda.
The so called Leftist movements like what is happening here in the US is nothing more than the modern version of what FDR did and tried to accomplish.
I tend to think of this question in terms of a core and periphery. So with any -ism, ideology or religious doctrine, there are a number of core beliefs and assumptions about the world which define its orthodoxy, deviations from which push adherents to the periphery, and in some cases beyond the pale. I think it’s fair to say that several major, well-known core features of Nazism push it well beyond the periphery of serious debates concerning the nature of socialism. Socialism as I understand it is not confined to an assumption regarding the desirability of state control over the economy, but also includes among its core doctrines an internationalist outlook on the world and a belief in the essential equality of mankind.
(Edit): should also add it’s my understanding that socialist thinkers believe these qualities of socialism to be inextricably linked.
(Edit again): to put it another way, it’s not socialism if your planned, ‘socialist’ economy is designed to empower and enrich one select race and condemn the rest to slavery and death. It’s something quite different.
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Bernie's platform is but there's an increasingly vocal movement of socialists, communists and anarchists as well that whilst they support Sanders do not believe social democracy should be the end goal.
(i agree about nuclear.)
i think the combination of free markets, private ownership, nation-states, and democracy combine to make climate action very difficult.
competition (both between companies and also between nations) will mean that even as renewables get cheaper, so do fossil fuels with new methods of finding/extracting them and established ways of using them, and not using them puts you at a disadvantage. if you consider market actors to be looking for their own interests, it doesn't make sense for them to sacrifice profits for benefits that they won't see for another few decades (by which time they might be dead).
private ownership means that the very wealthy owners of fossil fuel companies can continue to influence both government policies and public opinion via private media.
democracy means that people can choose not to take temporary pain and there will always be someone promising that path.
i know the EU gets cited a lot as a climate success tory and in some ways it is, but a lot of its manufacturing is outsourced and those emissions continue. ii not sure what the total will look like if that is accounted for. this basically leaves early 90s russia (largest drop in living standards in modern history) and late 90s/early 00s cuba (dying because of embargo) as the only places with sustained emission reductions.
...
On Nazis -
while they did raise social spending, they also re-privatised many state-owned enterprises. i can't say this for sure but multiple articles i've read have said that the word privatisation itself became popular as a way to describe their policy.* even during the war, the industries essential to the war effort continued under roughly the same management, and with the non-jewish owners compensated, there was no large-scale confiscation of non-jewish businesses.
speaking strictly of their economic policies, they would be not be recognisable as socialist. and there is a reason for that. nazi ideology is based on competition and a war of wills/races/nations. while they disliked the international nature of the market, the fact that companies could go beyond and become more poweful than nation-states, they did like the market as a sphere of competition to separate the worthy from the rest. things that form the basis of socialism, like equal human worth, would not be meaningful to them.
*quick google found this - http://www.ub.edu/graap/nazi.pdf and https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/04/capitalism-and-nazism/
You will always have these fringe groups that try and take over any movement.
Once the basic needs are satisfied these groups have nowhere to go.
In the right, fringe groups have pretty much taken over, not just because of Trump but also because the Democratic Party has not offered realistic solutions. Just look the candidates they are promoting. Hint: Sanders is not one of them.
Darwinian has to do with natural selection so it’s not applicable to this context of a capitalist superpower purposely trying to undercut other nations.
If you tell me you are a bear, you look like what a bear is commonly perceived to look like and a majority of people believe you to be a bear then you are a bear. Whether there is a relation between the bear in this strange fantasy world and the real world I cannot say.
So you agree that there are attributes that defines things and that these attributes needs to be recognized by a substantial amount of people which goes against what you wrote in the post that I quoted. Claiming that you are something doesn't make you that thing.
Also to go back to one of your previous questions, they didn't see him as a socialist but as a Nazi which is a separated ideology with its own attributes.
Free markets can exist in socialism — just that a business isn’t owned privately by an individual or shareholders. Just wanted to point that out.
Exactly. The state controlled, heavily regulated economy has definitely socialist virtues.
Again, I never said that they were socialists, but I said that they had a high dosage of socialism (mostly on their economy).
No. But if you use a Koala Bear as an example and treat all uses of the word ‘Bear’ as meaning Koala Bear.... People are going to get eaten alive by something 8ft tall that can run 25mph that they can’t call a Bear anymore.
You mean if there are state companies that co-exist with private companies, or if there are exclusively state companies? Because if the latter then I'd argue that once you don't have a market for labor and you don't have a market for capital itself, it's hard to say that the economy as whole is still market-based just because there's some sort of market for goods and services.
I’ve said essentially the same thing earlier
You should see the post by the Ted Nugent fan where he seriously argues that Saudi Arabia, a monarchy, has a socialist government. His reasoning: definitions can mean whatever a person wants them to mean. It’s a good laugh.
Isn't the fact that "Koala bear" is an inaccurate term and is known as inaccurate, kind of the point? If you call it a Koala bear then you deserve to be eaten alive.
Being the ultimate twat and quoting myself....
But why are people allowing this to be Capitalism vs Socialism?
People to the left of Centre are not Socialist. They’re pragmatic.
AirBnB - Used to be a great way to recover your rent or mortgage while you travelled (often to peoples houses that were doing the same). Capitalism invaded. It’s now a business to benefit the rich.
Uber - Used to be a way to monetise your standard journey, cutting overall public journeys. It’s now a Taxi company that benefits shareholders and takes advantage of drivers.
Supermarket Self checkouts - Used to be a quick and easy way to buy 5-10 items and benefit the consumer. It’s now a way to benefit the company, leaving consumers waiting for the minimum wage worker to stop stacking shelves and approve your purchase of Cold medication or Red Bull.
The Centrist Left do not want all jobs to pay the same. We’re cool with difficult and high value work reaping greater rewards.
But FCUK! Look how wide the gap is. It’s insane. How the average Joe let’s anyone left of centre get painted as a Socialist is insane. Stop debating it! Stop engaging in it as if it’s real. It’s not!
The middle wants to be treated like a fcuking human. Centre right and centre left. We’re fcuking awesome. The far left is ridiculous. The far right equally so. 90% of people are in the middle. Letting ourselves be divided on issues like Bathrooms, Transgender folks and Pronouns fcuks us all.
Surely it’s up to socialist movements - who explicitly present themselves in opposition to the capitalist powers - to develop ways to successfully survive the inevitable assault of the capitalist superpower against them. Anything less and they’re basically sitting around waiting for the capitalist powers to behave in ways which run counter to their very nature.
A couple things out of your post I wanted to point out. First, human innovation has existed far far before capitalism was a thing. I’d even argue that innovation is a part of human nature itself.
Second is about how government is inefficient. While there are examples of that, it’s not inherently true. In the US alone, we have NASA, the CDC, the military to name a few being the pioneers of so many innovations. And it can attempt to do things a private company would never do. A private company would have never attempted to go to the moon before NASA did so. Chinese government also has many innovations too. On the other hand, you have many failures in private sector in addition to the successes. I think what this tells us is that efficiency is driven by good personnel and good planning which can occur in both public and private sectors.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=895247
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/04/capitalism-and-nazism/
collectivising the means of production in whatever form is part of the core of socialism. i've explained before how the core values don't match:
a reason to combat this messaging is because people like bolsonaro both equate the nazis with socialists while allying with fascists themselves:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...r-israel-holocaust-museum-visit-idUSKCN1RF1QD
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/0...l-latin-america-populism-argentina-venezuela/
In a similar way to how socialism is the next logical step to communism, social democracy is the next logical step to socialism in my opinion.
Before I try to answer this, could you elaborate more on what you mean by market-based?
I doubt anyone in those circumstances were just sitting and waiting around. If you get infiltrated and assassinated, then you simply got infiltrated and assassinated. That doesn’t invalidate the system — assuming that is what you’re getting at. As a counter example, the Russian Revolution was successful both initially and thereafter when the White Army tried to takeover later. Of course it helps when your Tzar is an absolute buffoon to the point where the majority of the military abandons you.
I guess I mean in a market-based economy is one where markets are still the primary, most prevalent way that prices are discovered and goods and services clear. As opposed to one where political decisions have more influence over pricing and allocation of goods and services.
My contention was that if an economy is exclusively/almost made up of state firms, similar to how the Soviet Union was, while there is still a market for goods (you can still choose what to purchase with your salary) the lack of a market for two of the most critical inputs in the economy (labor and capital) heavily distort all of the other markets still in existence and therefore make it hard to claim that there are markets in the form that we usually think of.
But as I said initially, I wasn't sure if you meant simply that the presence of some state firms doesn't mean there aren't markets (agree) or that there are still markets in an exclusively state firm economy (disagree about the nature of those markets).
Also, I'm totally open to arguments against my views on this. It's not like I spent more than a few minutes thinking about the implications. Realistic configurations of hypothetical alternative systems do interest me, they're just usually entirely absent from most fervent pro-socialist arguments.
Interesting. I thought that you were talking about market access, in an economy where only state owned companies are allowed, there is no free access to the market for producers which basically has the consequence that you mentioned, no atomicity which means that prices aren't really determined by the market but a monopoly or an oligopoly. Technically there is a market for buyers but it's highly flawed.
Private enterprise wouldn't exist in socialism in the first place so a mixture of private and state would be a mixed economy. In a socialist society, whether it's market socialism or nonmarket state socialism, the market still exists for goods/services and labor. Goods still have to be made to serve the needs of the community and the labor is provided by the community looking to fill that need. It's similar to how one would determine if there is a market for x or y but there would be no profit motive. It's not really a political decision.
I'm pro capitalism because I'd rather be buried in a gold coffin embroidered by 8 year olds, than dumped in a ditch with all the other plebs.
Not thinking big enough. Your gold coffin should be shot out of a cannon paid for by food stamps cuts and crash landing on an active public housing property.