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I immediately dislike calling it commerce for 3 reasons:
- Most people will not know what I mean so I will have to explain every time
- Commerce is an existing word that means something different so it will still be confusing in a different direction
- I, on principle, don’t like abandoning words because some dumb group(s) appropriate them and try to change their meaning
I think I will try saying “regulated capitalism” from now on and see if it works better.
Yeah, the terminology around this kinda sucks. I always have an issue with whether I should call it capitalism or not when I mean a heavily regulated version of it, including some social policies.
I just don’t know a better word for it and it is difficult to concisely express what I mean without saying capitalism and hoping people figure out what I mean from context.
Sorry if it is unclear, I am saying CGB Gray explains how corruption happens in leadership structures and why it is so difficult to prevent.
The opinion that this is why capitalism can work better than communism is entirely my own logical conclusion. I am not trying to claim CGP Gray said so.
Again sorry for the confusion.
CGP gray very specifically refers to democracies as well and explains how things like farm subsidies are used to buy votes. Maybe re-watch the videos.
And yes, CGP gray also indirectly explains why Marxists kept pumping resources into the government, police and bureaucracy. (Clarification: CGP Gray never mentions Marxists specifically, he just explains why leaders have to funnel resources to areas that help them stay in power.) It is inevitable in a system where you concentrate power in a limited group of people.
That is why distributing power between large number of independent capitalists and voters is the system that so far worked best, although still very far from perfect.
As long as humans behave like humans and are in charge, the utopian communism is as realistic as wizards in flying castles.
It is the opposite. In capitalism, there is at least a chance a good person has some power because power is distributed, not only held by governments. There are multiple examples in the main post. Even better examples are European countries where the government and businesses hold each other in check instead of govt being bought off legally like in the US.
In communism, the way power is distributed ensures corrupt people raise to the top. See an amazing video “rule for rulers” by CGP gray for a simplified explanation how that corruption works and why a good person can’t hold power.
How we organize, and interact as a society is completely and totally alien to those who lived but three generations before us, to claim it is a natural constant on the level of radioactive decay or exothermic reactions is beyond delusional.
It is your reading comprehension that is woefully lacking I am afraid. Repeatedly refusing to understand what I am saying in favor of your own interpretation. Let me try one last time to explain.
Imagine you have two particles interacting with each other through a collision. This is governed by Newtons laws. Add one more particle and it is the same. However, add 10^24 more particles and we are no longer talking about Newtons laws, but about laws of thermodynamics. In a sense, the laws of thermodynamics are not real, the particles are still governed by Newtons laws. They are just a result of statistical approximations, a human construct if you will. But you cannot change these laws, because they are the results of said Newtons laws.
In the same way, it is possible to change a Persons behavior, by modifying the environment the live in. This can include laws, law enforcement, taxes and many other things.
However, the behavior of a corporation is a statistical result of Persons comprising it. You can not change it in any other way than to change behavior of People. The (statistical) laws of how behavior of many individuals combine into a complex system, such as a corporation is what is unchangeable. These are the laws of nature.
Let us take your example of an army. What is an army? In a simplified view, it is an organization where individuals are armed, trained, organized into units with hierarchical structure in order to execute combat and other operations as ordered by national leadership. As a concept, the US army and the German army of said era have no meaningful difference in the form of organization they are.
The two meaningful differences are:
- The orders the armies received
- The individuals they were comprised of. Of course, some individuals such as high ranking officers have greater impact on the organization than foot soldiers, but they all do have impact. Their willingness to follow orders is what comprises the morality of the army.
So you can’t turn the evil army of Germany into the righteous army of the Allies by changing what an army is. You have to either replace the orders it follows or the individuals that comprise it or both.
You can also stop the German army from being evil by having it not arm its members with weapons and instead train with musical instruments, but what you have then is not an army, but a marching band.
Equally, a corporations behavior is partly dictated by the laws it operates under and whether and how the People comprising it follow said laws.
unless of course you think the German army of 1933-1945 isn’t evil
You do realize you are the one implying the Nazi soldiers aren’t evil, because the individual soldiers were threatened into serving:
if you don’t dump this toxic sludge in the middle of this town, your children will starve (yes, this is a thing that really happened), material circumstances exist,
So are people who are threatened into evil evil themselves? Make up your mind.
Either way, it is not relevant for my argument.
The way a group of individuals pursuing their goals interact with each other is a law of nature just as much as radiation. We just call a specific type of such group a corporation, just like we call a specific arrangement of fissile material a nuclear fuel rod.
Sure, you can “make” a corporation not be greedy by for example turning it into a non-profit. But you can’t do it without making unintentional undesirable changes, namely stopping them from being efficient in creating value. Just like you can “make” a nuclear fuel rod less radioactive, but not without damaging its usefulness as fuel. Because you can’t change the laws of how individual actions in a group create a complex system.
Omg, you are so hung up on fire being natural phenomena. Fine, replace fire with nuclear rods. They are man made, they are dangerous. You can make them not radioactive but then they are useless and arguably no longer nuclear rods.
And who said the individuals in a corporation should enjoy some sort of immunity for following orders (or even giving them)? If employees break the law, prosecute them. Stop injecting nonsense into the conversation.
You can redefine the word corporation just as you can redefine the word fire.
But corporations are groups of people (and some other stuff). They way they behave is not governed by what is written in a law-book or dictionary, but by the complex interactions of people and environments.
You can try to regulate them with laws like you can try regulate a fire by building a fireplace, but that control is always going to be far from perfect.
Of course, that certainly does not mean you shouldn’t try, you must try just like with fire. But you need to be smart about it. It becomes more difficult as the corporations and the economy becomes larger.
There are ways to control forest fires, but the most effective is often a counterintuitive one. Control burns. You set even more stuff on fire. Capitalism is in a way a similar technique. You allow some resources to be wasted by the wealthy but the result of complex interactions between people is economic growth and better living standards even for the common people. Or you mess it up and the fire gets bigger, its not easy to regulate corporations.
Communism is in my opinion like a fireplace. It may work really well if you keep the system small and simple. But it falls apart as you add scale and complexity.
So there is a statistic with a larger sample size and more rigorous methodology and oversight than the official election?
PS: IMO either the poll took a biased sample, or it fell prey to standard Czech trolling. In the latest official census, in the religion field, Jedi was 4 times more common than Islam.
PS2: Do you have the poll methodology? Sample size, where it was taken, etc?
I would wager to argue that one being, entirely a concept only existing in human thinking. The other being an exothermic reaction following the laws of nature is quite a distinction here.
unless you are going to concede that we could just trust bust fire, can i sue fire for the damages on my house? what exactly is the fiscal return on the primary product of fire?
What are you even talking about?
You confuse the achievements of modernism with capitalism
You confuse using a hands crank with operating a nuclear powerplant. It is not about what created the modern industrial society. It is about whether an elected committee would be able to run it and average people be able to oversee it. Which they wouldn’t. People that dedicate their entire lives to studying management and economics are barely able to.
Ok, now I know you are making shit up. Czechoslovakia had to be bloody invaded after the people rebelled against communism. Almost no one here wanted communism and there is still plenty people from that time alive to call you on your bullshit.
The USSR had to put a wall through Berlin and shoot people climbing it to keep people from running away and some still did.
Sorry, but if these were not the two options then why did the USSR collapse? This seems to not line up at all, though I don’t have time to look into the numbers right now. I will later.
Edit: Also technically, even if it was true, it would confirm my point about democratically run industries.
The USSR is making heavy investments in industry to improve its economy. It causes so much unrest USSR falls apart -> people will not voluntarily choose short term sacrifice for long term gains.
The income statistic in the soviet block was greatly misleading due to simple unavailability of goods. The issue often was not not enough money but nothing worthwhile on the shelves. At least as my parents described it.
The people had income, but it was just paper without value behind it. And yes, the motive of the government was weapons and vanity projects like the space race, so those did happed.
In capitalism, the “capitalist class” is accountable to the elected government. The profit motive is separated from the legislature (except when you legalize bribery like in the US, every good idea can be implemented badly).
If the same government has a profit interest in increasing output, then worker protection, safety, environment etc goes out the window far more drastically then in capitalism.
And if the government does not have a profit interest or a weak one, other interests are prioritized. You get Soviet style economy where nothing really gets done and the whole society is poorer. Or do you deny the fact that the “oppressed capitalist worker” is better of financially than the Soviet Union one was?
Again, distinction without a difference.
And you may want a refresher on your ancient democracies ;) Which one did not have a separate class of landowners (owning the only relevant means of production back then)? Also, just comparing agrarian societies to modern economic systems is childish. I am much better of living under “tyrannical capitalists” today than in any of those societies.
No, don’t change the topic to the same vague straw-man nonsense.
How are you socializing the investments and gains in a way that would allow investment into new industries? Or just how do you incentivise people to invest in general if they can’t collect dividends? Because that is the biggest issue capitalism solves, that communism can’t (not nearly as efficiently at least). The less than ~25% of output (GDP) capitalists get for directing investment and all the other management roles they serve is the inefficiency of capitalism.
PS: The reason capitalism is more efficient is not necessarily because less is “stolen”, but because the “stealing” part is done in a controlled manner similar to tax. Normal “stealing” (corruption) causes far more damage then just the amount stolen because it is not stolen from areas where it is least needed.
Yeeees, there are magical ways to achieve that, but you will call me illiterate instead of giving a single example.
And if you think the post office or the education system works well, you are willfully blind.
Ok, I am a member of whatever group votes on investment in a new industry. If I approve the investment, the money can’t be used for my and my collectives wages. So what do I gain to offset the loss of wages? What makes me want to do the investment? Surely I can’t get a share of the profits, since those will belong to the workers in the new industry. I would be exploiting their work like a capitalist.
First, pick what you want to argue. If you think I am wrong in the other thread, reply there. The discussion there is ongoing anyway.
Second of all, everyone agrees it is best for capital to serve all of humanity. The disagreement is about how to best achieve that.
Third, cost cutting without affecting quality of goods is a good thing. If it does compromise quality, buying from companies that don’t is the point. You are describing the system working.
And finally, it is not vibe based. It is rough outlines of probably over a hundred hours of study and thinking crammed into a few paragraphs. If you want details, I recommend starting by reading up on Game Theory, which is a branch of mathematics that models optimal “play” (behavior) given some goals and rules. This will help you evaluate if the people in your system are really forced to work in the best interest of everyone or if they can game your system to enrich themselves. Then look into macroeconomics to get an idea of what the rules are. And remember, laws are not unbreakable rules. Laws work more like: “If you break this law and get caught, this is the penalty”.
If you can build a communist system (or any other really) that truly benefits the people without creating inequality, I see a Nobel price in your future.
Some areas to focus on:
- How do you make local decisions. Investment vs wages vs layoffs etc.
- How do you make investments, creating new companies, investing outside capital into existing ones etc.
- How do you make global decisions, like environmental protection, worker safety, etc.
- How do you enforce your decisions. Police, justice system, etc. Make sure these can’t take over in an authoritarian manner.
Share ownership of what? If you mean just the factory they work in or a small group, then you get most of the same issues you denounce in capitalism. Some factories will inevitably become rich and prosperous, some will go bankrupt. There will still be wealth inequality. You will also get various new issues such us how do you found new factories and industries without re-inventing capitalism or at least having the same consolidation issues.
If you are talking about all the capital in the nation/world, then the gains you can obtain from improving your own productivity is insignificant, evaporating the motivation. It is much easier to slack off and leach of others.
https://lemmy.world/comment/9597138
If the proletariat participates, the values are misaligned the other way. See thread above.
As for whether products need to be good, there are two caveats. In most cases of enshittification online, you are mistaking what is the product. The advertisers are the customers that pay, users are the product.
The other caveat is anti-competitive and anti-consumer practices which is one of the many reasons why you need independent government to regulate those.
It just can’t be at scale. Would be lovely if it could.
People who don’t own something have no incentive to improve it. A factory run by a collective will always prioritize wages over modernizing equipment etc.
People will not invest into new ventures if they don’t get profits, prioritizing luxuries/lifestyle instead.
The greedy motivations of decision makers being aligned with prosperity for the people and separated from lawmaking power.
How do you make a successful company? Sell good cheap things to the people. You get filthy rich, but people have good cheap products to buy that would not exist otherwise. And they get their share in form of wages.
Government needs to be separate to be able to legislate worker protections such as minimal wage, work safety, etc.
Corporations don’t do moral consideration by their nature, just like fire. You can say it was “by design” for corporations and coincidence for fire, but that is a distinction without difference. Irrelevant for the argument.
And funnily enough, having many authoritarians in a system surprisingly results in much less authoritarian system than having just one. That is why the 3 branches of government are split and it is why I don’t know of any true democracy that is not capitalistic. The authoritarians keep each other in check.
Let me tell you a little secret (that is a lie, it just basic logic). The reason every “communist country” is in name only is because a real one can’t exist. Not for any real length of time anyway. As long as the system requires humans to make decisions, they will make selfish decisions. And socialism just make it so much easier for few decision makers to take all the power.
Netherlands? Switzerland? Norway?
Like sure, there always is some corruption but relatively insignificant amount.
Honestly, I can’t think of an EU country that is anywhere near the US levels of “corrupted by capitalism”.
What? Top? What do you mean?