@freemo
Which Communism are you talking about? The one where everybody shares everything or the one where there's a dictator making them share nothing?
The root error comes from the assumption people will cooperate with the principle willingly. Once you assume most people will exploit any system for personal gain when they can it becomes evident communism is not a workable system without a totalitarian government. Even then people will generally do the bare minimum so you get poverty.
Capitalism exploits the inherent selfishness of individuals for the greater good of society.
Oh we absolutely can, but that is just capitalism with compassion at that point. It isnt communism if people do it willingly rather than a totalitarian government.
We have it in capitalism all the tine, its called a commune.
@freemo
Altruistic Capitalism seems to be an oxymoron.. but I suppose that's the point. That it can't exist. That we are in fact doomed and destined to deal with the greed of humanity... Which is another unfortunate but realistic view.
@avlcharlie How is it a oxymoron. All capitalism is is any system which includes free market trade, that is, trade in which natural supply-demand pressures dominate the markets pricing.
Nothing about that implies greed or altruism, it only implies everyone is trying to maximize their own fitness function (get the most utility for their resources). Its about effiency not greed.
@freemo@avlcharlie well, unless people attempt to develop some level of sophistication, efficiency turns into greed, because thoughtless accumulation is the easiest thing to do. This is reinforced by a social environment where chronic accumulators are considered successful by chronically accumulating media.
Bow ya figure that makes no sense. Accumulating resources in a vault untouched is the least effecient form, you literally have negative effiency as inflation devalues assets. A person would achieve effiency by investing thrir mo ey wisely and ensuring other people are using those resources to effectively increase the total resources in the market.
You are getting stuck in the fallacy that someone havibg authority (ownership) over those resources means that other people cant use it for their own gains as well which is entierly contrary to the reality. Those resources will be in others hands and used by them in some agreement to use them for mutual gain (investment in others).
@freemo@avlcharlie maximisers would invest for profitability and not for sustainability. Clearly this conversation is way too abstract and way too generalising, but rich people investing in cheap resources is a real problem in times of pressing change.
Optimising is by definition deprived of vision, ask effective altruists ;)
Who said anything about sustainability. We said utility, that may or may not line up with sustainability. They will pick sustai able when it has the most utility.
Similarly thry dont buy cheap if cheap is less utility. Somethi g at half the price that breaks in 1/10th the time is a bad investment, so no thry dont just go with what is cheapest. Rich people dont invest in cheap resource they invest in what gets them the most utility, which is what prfitability is.
Optimising has vision, for the thing you are optimising for.
And of course the conversatio is abstract, it has to be,
You are making assertions about an abstraction (capitalism) that can not and does not exist in a concrete and pure form. So abstract conversation is the only one we can have.
@freemo@avlcharlie the problem is that environmental cost are not part of the final price. Instead they are internalised by those with weaker negotiation power.
Examples:
miners from poor countries pay with their lives to extract resources that unaccountable mine owners then can sell at competitive prices
wildlife gets pushed away from investment-grade land
I can go on with Amazonian rainforest, Russian taiga, Australian Coral reefs, African rhinos, l Mediterranean fish, orangutans, polar bears,...
They are part of thr final cost when they are part of the utility of the investment. If they are part of the utility or not depends largely on the laws.
For example if there is a huge fine for enviromental damage then causing such damage has significantly decreased utility and as such the market will price itself to avoid enviromental damage.
@mapto I think what you're illustrating is NOT that the costs aren't included, but that you personally don't agree with the costs.
You want those people to place higher value on their resources than they do. Their valuation doesn't match your own, and you're insisting that you're right, wanting to impose your personal values on them.
Let's be clear about what you're doing here, including the way it has associations with colonialism.
The people in those poor countries need to be fixed in their valuation of their resources?
My diagreement is not with the current calculation of the costs. I claim that any explicit calculation by default (due to the complexity of the real world) excludes some implicit aspect that optimisers then readily ignore.
Also, utility is not only contextual, but subjective. To someone a million dollars might be enough to secure a lifetime, to someone else it could be enough to buy a house, to a third person, it might mean buying some nice nice stuff to show off.
Also, utility is not only contextual, but subjective.
Half-true.. the utility of a single transaction is subjective. But you are maximizing for the aggregate utility, that is objective.
To someone a million dollars might be enough to secure a lifetime, to someone else it could be enough to buy a house, to a third person, it might mean buying some nice nice stuff to show off
On a re read i think i see now where you got it all wrong. You are assuming, incorrectly, that money and utility mean the same thing. They dont. Moneybis the resource, not the utility. Utility only exists when money is in motion. Utility is how much you can accomplish with the money, not the money itself.
Okay so I'm not so self-absorbed that I can't say I guess I was wrong and I misunderstood what capitalism was. This has been relatively enlightening.
My question then is what's the one where greedy people hoard up all of the money and resources, abuse the working class and create a system of poverty?
Now that is a complicated question. But usually the main way its accomplished with what we call antitrust laws. When enforced (and the usa has enforced thrm but not as strongly as it should) they effectively make monopolies illegal.
Of course the other key is keeping corruption in check and money out of politics, which isnlikewise a difficult task to do, but critical to a healthy capitalism
@freemo@avlcharlie@mapto@volkris american enforcement of antitrust is something of a joke. its one of the few times the law is extremely broad but because it affects rich government contractors they cut it full of exceptions that don't exist.
@freemo@avlcharlie@mapto@volkris very interesting discussion. Just thought I'd like to point out that comparisons between Communism and capitalism are tricky because while capitalism is viewed primarily as an economic system (and democracy as a political system that everyone assumes underpins it), Communism is a political, philosophical and economic system.
The problem is that there have been no real life examples of "pure" Communism ever existing, except perhaps
Communism, like capitalism, is often abused as a word. On its own it has nothing to do with marx. It simply means any system where the means and distribution of production are controlled by the government, and socialism is where onky the means of production is owned.
Marx just had a very specific view of a system of government which he felt included communism with other supporting principles to make it work. Its more appropriate to call his system marxism
@freemo@avlcharlie@mapto@volkris I beg to differ. Marxism is a philosophy (with his species-being and alienation concepts), Communism is an ideology that the workers are exploited by those who control the means of production, and thus the only way to stop being exploited is to seize the means of production.
@freemo@avlcharlie@mapto@volkris my response was to your statement that Communism has nothing to do with Marx. Marx was the founder of Communism, it kind of implies it when he wrote the Communist Manifesto. Saying communism has nothing to do with Marx is like saying Higgs has nothing to do with the Higgs-Boson. Marxism is a way of thinking, Communism is a way of looking at the world and living life. You can be Marxist, but not Communist. You however, cannot be Communist but not Marxist.
@freemo@avlcharlie@mapto@volkris I tried a quick Google search to confirm what you've said but I've been unable to find any articles about Jewish Communism in ancient Israel. Wikipedia seems to indicate that Israel and it's surrounding area has always been a monarchy which would imply the non-existence of Communism. Could you provide me some articles or books to read up about this?
Biblical scholars have argued that the mode of production seen in early Hebrew society was a communitarian domestic one that was akin to primitive communism.[26][27]
@freemo@avlcharlie@mapto@volkris very early social Russia under Lenin. All real life examples of Communism have had either authoritarian or totalitarian rule, often dictatorships.
The reason for this is that while Marx did define what Communism should have been, he (perhaps intentionally) never defined how it should have been run. With centralized and planned production, it should have been foreseen that a permanent centralized government should have been established to oversee
No marx was right, capitalism and communism arent systems of governments, they are properties of a government. He didnt address those things because he wasnt creating a government he was defining a principle he felt governments should have.
Not all communist coubtries were totalitarian or dictatorships. Its just the ones that were elected in place by the people were always dismantled by those same people years later when everyone started starving. See bulgaria as an example of that.
@volkris@avlcharlie@mapto it isn't. It's a property of the economy. I guess what @freemo may be alluding to is that government influences whether or not capitalism exists. It will definitely exist in a democratic system but may also exist in a totalitarian/authoritarian system (e.g. China).
Capitalism will exist regardless of government. Government has no say over whether capitalism exists.
Capitalism is such a natural human institution that it has the same status as, say, language.
People will talk to each other regardless of what government thinks about it. Capitalism is such a fundamental element of life that we neither need government permission nor care what government thinks about it.
Humans do capitalism because capitalism is in our incentives. We don’t ask permission from government to do capitalism.
Capitalism will exist regardless of government. Government has no say over whether capitalism exists.
Capitalism, being a free market, may not exist if governments pass laws which force the market to be non-free. For example price fixing of goods by definition makes for a non-free market. As long as that is actually enforced, even if enforced poorly, you no longer have a free market, at best you will have a black market, which again by definition is not a free market (free as in freedom).
People will talk to each other regardless of what government thinks about it.
People talking to eachother isnt what makes a market free. Regardless, no, governments can and will stifle communication. Sure some will still happen but to say the government cant influence that is just plain wrong. Just look at North Korea the government very clearly has a large influence on what people say to eachother and how.
Humans do capitalism because capitalism is in our incentives. We don’t ask permission from government to do capitalism.
I do of course agree, that capitalism is more or less the default. We will do it automatically. But only when we can, governments can and do prevent it all the time.
@freemo you talk about governments passing laws, and that’s exactly it: governments are extremely limited in what they can do in reality. Yeah they can pass laws all day long, and they can devote more and more resources into trying to execute those laws, and yet governments cannot in reality perfectly implement law.
A government can outlaw anything, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to stop.
How’s that war on drugs going?
And so capitalism will remain no matter what government thinks of it, just like drug use.
Government can try to suppress it if it wants, but capitalism is so natural, so tied into the human experience, it will exist regardless of what a government official signs into law.
And really that emphasizes my point. That a government might choose to oppose and crack down on capitalism just highlights that capitalism exists outside of government. For government to have to oppose it means that it must exist without government in the first place, separate from government.
Yea governments can perfectly execute a law… so what? Their execution doesnt need to be perfect for the market to be nonfree. In fact any degree of influence woukd make a market that is to some extent nonfree.
@freemo but that there would indeed be a market proves my point.
You say the market may not exist if if governments pass laws, and yet, there it is.
The rest gets into rabbitholes of what constitutes market freedom. I’d say that markets always react to influences, and government influence is not particularly different from any other.
A market will react to the influences of weather or tech advancement or government dictat or a viral video. No market is free from influence; that’s in fact the value of markets, the ability to respond to those influences.
I’d say the critical freedom is the ability of the participant to choose whether or not to accept a transaction, no matter the source of influences going into the transaction.
But at the end of the day, capitalism exists regardless of governments, requiring neither support nor sanction from government.
The free market wont exist. The fact that some limited non-free market would exist is rather irrelevant, the point is still that governments determine whether free market exists or not and can trivially ensure that the market is not free and has pretty good control in preventing the free aspect of the market.
@freemo if you go with the definition that a free market must be devoid of influence then there cannot be any market, ever, regardless of government since all markets function in the context of influence.
If you go with your definition, then markets cannot ever exist regardless of government.
if you go with the definition that a free market must be devoid of influence
No, in fat i specifically made it clear this is NOT what a free-market is. A free market is a market in which healthy supply-demand pressures dominate. That is similar but not the same as saying devoid of influence. In order to have a free market you must
have laws that prevent monopolies from controlling the market and manipulating prices contrary to supply demand
Ensure all parties have equal access and representation on the market (aka no slavery)
Minimal regulations beyond ensuring the above from the government.
@volkris@freemo@avlcharlie@mapto That assumes that capitalism is default human behaviour. That simply isn't true. There is already sufficient evidence that this assumption isn't true. Even in times when capitalism can be chosen, sometimes altruism is chosen instead and things are given away for free.
Secondly, I dislike the capitalism vs communism framing when it comes to human economic decisions because that's a false dichotomy.
@volkris@freemo@avlcharlie@mapto furthermore, pointing to the drug market analogy as evidence of capitalism being default human behaviour is a terrible example because the drug market in that example exists within a context of a capitalist system. Maybe you should be asking "How do illicit drug markets look under communist economy? Do they exist at all and how are transactions conducted?"
I find the assumption/opinion that capitalism is default human behaviour flimsy at best.
The market for prescription medications (or anything healthcare) related is never a free market, and never can be. Not fully. It doesnt have a balanced supply-demand curve. Demand is infinite since people will always give everything they own to live even one more day suffer free. So I'd argue markets around healthcare products are one of few areas where we cant apply free market mentality.
@freemo it's not factually true that people will always give everything they own to live even one more day suffer free.
I know plenty of counter examples personally, and they show up everywhere from politicians engaging in rhetoric about people choosing to forego prescription refills through public policy complaints about folks taking risks with regard to mask mandates.
So no, in reality we see that people DO make exactly those choices in very capitalistic ways.
Not every single person follows that paradigm. But the overwhelming majority would.
As for taking risks about masks or drugs. that is still them paying to extend their lives, they just happen to be morons and are doing things they think will extend their life that wont.
My question then is what’s the one where greedy people hoard up all of the money and resources
I just want to point out how unrealistic this is in today’s world, despite how frequently it’s mythologized and theorized and used to promote political interests.
For someone to hoard up all of the money and resources is for that person to voluntarily accept a lower standard of living for themself, to act against their own interests, quite irrationally.
It’s to say, Sure I could buy these things and contract for that service, which would make my life better, but nah, I’ll just warehouse away my wealth instead of actually using it to make my own life better.
Modern society has built plenty of mechanisms to avoid getting stuck in such opportunity costs to the wealthy.
Scrooge McDuck and his swimming in his money vault was not a real option.
@volkris@freemo@mapto
Sorry for the double post on this reply but this was the next thing in my news feed.. and you know damn right this doesn't even nudge his money meter. Imho, this is what Scrooge McDuck money looks like.
Bezos could have hoarded that money, but then he’d have lost out on the benefits of buying this property, which is exactly how our society gives very enticing alternatives to hoarding.
Bezos will never fill his moneypit because he has so much benefit in actually spending the money instead.
@volkris@freemo@mapto
If you can't find the ridiculousness in 600 million being spent for a house then we have a difference in opinion of what is ridiculous money.
The example isn't even about the house it's that he could do this and not even notice it.
Personally in the big picture for me it's this.. you focus your society on people or you focus your society on things/money. We've decided to do the latter and screw the other one.
What does rediculousness matter? Its not like burn gets consumed when you buy something rediculous (what we call a luxury formally). It just moves the money aroubd, usually no harm done.
@freemo@volkris@mapto
I suppose you're right technically. Ridiculousness doesn't factor into systemic processes I suppose.. and it doesn't calculate into starvation, unaffordable housing, unaffordable healthcare, or any of those things. But maybe it should.
No it doesnt, because a person using wealth thry creat and thryo destroy a portion doesnt effect anything because if thry couldnt own the money thry never woukd have made the wealth in the first place.
@freemo@volkris@mapto
You say that like it's a bad thing LOL I totally just remembered you're a financial consultant if I remember right. You've held a very civil discussion on this matter if so.
No, but i have run quiye a few companies and even helped bring one public. So i do deal in a lot of this stuff. I also have written a few economic equations used in models, so i have some formal training in economics too
@freemo@mapto@avlcharlie "Lay not up for yourselves treasure on earth - where moth and rust doth corrupt, and thieves break through and steal, [and inflation doth devalue]."
Investing in people is also a thing:
For the sons of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the sons of light. I tell you, use worldly wealth to make friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, they will welcome you into eternal dwellings. Whoever is faithful with very little will also be faithful with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.
I agree with that definition, but when you combine it with State powers/violence, the crapitalism that we have today rears its ugly head. And even that is better than Socialistic Totalitarianism that arises from the mainstream "alternative". Again, State power is the root of the problems no matter how we organize the economics.
That isnt c"capitalism we have today".. thats like sayi g " your steak here sucks because when im eating it the waitor keeps punching me in the face".. has nothing to do with the steak.
Capitalism isnt a government, it is one amo g thousands of qualities governments have. The capitalism aspect is not the problem at all or related much to the proble. The problem is the state has ple ty of pri ciples unrelated to capitalism that make thr system fucked. But lets not pretend that is capitalism
All capitalism is is any system which includes free market trade
That’s just incorrect. Capitalism is about the model of ownership, not markets, being able to privately own means of production to be precise. You could have a system in which the only allowed form of ownership of means of production would essentially be a worker cooperative, but these cooperatives sell stuff within a market economy. This would be a form of market socialism, not capitalism.
Just to be clear, I’m not a market socialist myself. Nor do I agree with the premise of this thread, but I’m not in the mood of arguing about that, just correcting a common misconception. Especially since it’s an especially pervasive part of capitalist propaganda – you don’t actually need coercion to have markets, while you need coercion to enforce private ownership, so associating capitalism with the former makes it seem freer than it is.
A market is never free if there isnt private ow ership. So while you are rigbt that private ownership is a required element of the definition it is also redundant. Market socialism is explicitly not a free market.
@freemo@avlcharlie You were talking about capitalism, not just free markets. And I was talking about private ownership of means of production, not ownership in general. In particular, your argument was around the optimizing power of markets (“supply-demand pressures”), which do not require private ownership of means of production to work. It’s a bait-and-switch, which is why I referred to it as capitalist propaganda.
And, correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t think you mean (even though the post would kinda imply it) that free markets require the ability to own anything, right?
Almost. I am talking free market, and supply demand pressures. Supply and demmand pressures are not free without private ownership (at all levels). The moment you exclude any group from any form of private ownership you no longer have a free market and no longer have free supply-demand pressures.
Supply and demand exclusive to a privilaged group (worker cooperatives in this case) is not a free market with free supply demand pressures, it is a market that has, at least partly, fixed aspects of the market.
@freemo@avlcharlie It’s not really restricting it to a group of people, but rather to a form of ownership. Not all forms of ownership are permitted or respected under capitalism either, at least not consistently, except for private ownership of capital.
Could you be more precise what you want out of these market pressures? That is, what market pressure is in your opinion missing or not working in a system in which worker cooperatives are the only way of owning means of production? Because if you want enterprises thriving and falling due to them (the main benefit of a market economy, although I have to again stress that I personally do not think it’s worth the trouble), then this works with worker cooperatives. The only market pressure I can think of that is not present is valuing the company itself, but then the argument comes back to private ownership, because only under that assumption this question even makes sense, so the argument becomes circular
If you define free markets as only systems where you can privately own anything then that’s kinda beyond capitalism – under modern versions of capitalism you cannot privately own e.g. people or the right to use violence. If you define them as systems where specifically means of production have to be privately ownable, then I can agree they are equivalent to capitalism, but then talking about the benefits of free markets is a bait-and-switch.
If you are saying "only the people who work for this entity can own it" then you are restricting the market for the ownership and thus there is not a free market for the ownership of that resource.
What is wanted is to ensure whoever can bring the best utility to a resource ultimately gets access to that resource. You can only do that when those allowed to own the resource can be anyone, otherwise you are not allowing the best of the best.
@freemo@avlcharlie There is no reason why anyone couldn’t start a worker cooperative (perhaps a single-person one, if they are able to work by themselves) under that system, so I don’t think this objection quite works.
The one thing you don’t have is people who already have a lot of resources coming in and taking over a company to redirect its efforts, but then you are no longer making an argument in favour of markets, but in favour of exactly private ownership of capital, and how that is good directly (with many underlying assumptions, from the supposed meritocracy of capitalism, to the assumption that the best way of making money from an enterprise is to run it as well as possible). This does not require markets in general, but only the ability to buy an enterprise (not even necessarily at a market). As to how well it works in practice – see Twitter, Toys’R’Us, and the general problems stemming from private equity firms. But maybe I’m getting distracted, I’m mostly trying to point out that capitalism is mostly about this form of ownership and not about markets in general (which, while I don’t trust them, are much more defensible as a system imo).
Sure you can have a single person cooperative, but one cooperative cant own another, so there is no free market regarding the ownership over the resources.
@freemo@avlcharlie Well, if one person also cannot own another do we also not have a free market regarding the ownership of resources, and thus real capitalism requires literal slavery?
Or, to be less socratic and more precise about the argument, in the market worker cooperative system all resources (tools, raw materials, outputs) can still be traded between worker cooperatives. The only “resource” that is not tradeable is ownership over the enterprise itself, and if you want to make a case for why this is bad you would have to go beyond “markets allocate resources efficiently” and into why this specific thing should be treated as a tradeable resource (like e.g. people shouldn’t be, which is why the previous paragraph). That is, you have to argue for private ownership of means of production being important into itself, which is why I’m saying this, and not markets, is crucial for capitalism. (I’m not saying at this point there are no arguments you can make for that, just that this is a different thing than just arguing for markets.)
If one person owns another you are taking away that persons free will, and thus taking away free market (afterall free there is short for freewill). Since companies do not have a will of their own like people do it is a false equivelance.
I cant reply there and im not really sure why my statement was posted there, especially without citi g me as the source. So notnsure what to do with this.
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