Yes, okay.
Although I would bear in mind that many entrepreneurs don't really love and esteem their products either. They are primarily motivated by getting rich, and starting a business with other skills they have is a convenient way to do it.
After Gamestonk will hedge funds now threaten U.S. solvency itself?
- Thread starter stroopwafel
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Although I would bear in mind that many entrepreneurs don't really love and esteem their products either. They are primarily motivated by getting rich, and starting a business with other skills they have is a convenient way to do it.
My case here wasn't about communism. It was about "long term independence" can also lead to very crappy outcomes.
My case about alternative system was made in the beginning by listing all the anti-capitalist attempts which all devolved into oppressive dictatorships.
But you aren't even proposing an actual form of Socialism.
I have never advocated for unfettered capitalism nor said you were in favor of that. The capitalism to which Social Liberal countries adhere to is neither unfettered capitalism nor socialism. It is more of a Social Capitalist system.
The moment you accept the concept of private (capital) ownership and free enterprise/market it is Capitalism and not Socialism. And your system is still pretty much based on that; "Private ownership is fine but the state needs to regulate it (more)". It's pretty much the same system as european countries (or even the US) but with (much) more regulation, wealth redisitribution and more sectors considered too strategic for private hands. But the economy will still mostly be privately owned and market based. That's not Socialism, that's more like social capitalism. You can't just strip social ownership from Socialism and claim it's socialism.
And there is nothing wrong with not being a socialist... You can be a Capitalist reformist.
PS: Lenin himself said his "NEP" was not socialism but temporary "Capitalism".
Nah, it's just typical far left doctrine to consistently treat some people as endless victims of a system, almost like children actually... Responsibility does not exist except for "the system" and "the elites".
Off course plenty of them are after big bucks. But as this motive is obviously destroyed by the system proposed it seemed rather useless to mention he effectively removed that one as well. (And I would have assumed getting rid of the pure profit based motivation is part of the goal)
I wanted to point out he would not only affect that important motivator but others on top of that.
Do also note that an entrepreneur doesn't necessarily need to love their products to love the fact of having their own company that they can grow and be the owner-manager of.
Of course it can, that's not really a point worth making. But if a nation has only held self-determination for a few decades, you can hardly say its success/ failure on a grand scale is entirely attributable to its economic ideals.
I take it you're one of those who believes if any form of capitalism/ free enterprise exists, then the system cannot be socialist in any form, then. Suffice it to say that's ahistorical nonsense.
This is just entirely at odds with the historical roots and philosophical underpinnings of socialism.
Only a few forms of socialism-- communism and anarcho-syndacalism, for example-- have advocated the complete dismantling of all private ownership. These were not the first, and nor are they definitive, forms of socialism.
I'm not "stripping social ownership". My preferred model has extensive social ownership, including all utilities publicly owned and mandatory worker involvement in company management. As I'm sure you can see, these do not necessitate the complete destruction of all private enterprise.
They were poor before the corporations were there.
There is no objective value of work. There is no objective value of anything. There is, at best, agreed upon value. What is "commensurate with their work"?
How does one measure the value of another's efforts? You can't. People can only decide for themselves if the value gained from their efforts is worth it, and you deny they even have that agency.
It's not the difference between choosing to be a miner or being a slave in the mine. It's the difference between choosing to be a miner and owning the mine. The communist here doesn't allow for people to choose to be a miner and work for a mine. You have to own the mine to be a miner.
Whatever their motivations might be, they still create value for some otherwise it wouldn't be able to exist in a capitalist market. Though I'd say the best(and eventually richest) entrepeneurs are those that can anticipate on the needs of tomorrow and invest heavily in it today. Sort of like Bezos and how he saw internet shopping way ahead of it's time. I doubt anyone is able to invest so much time, effort and often (their own) money if they only care about getting rich. Working in banking or finance would be much easier.
Anyways the thread devolved into ''capitalism vs socialism'' debate but want to circle back to inflation real quick. The price of raw materials have also really started to balloon this year. Last year there was such an overproduction of crude oil you could receive an additional 40 euros per drum because no one wanted to have it out of fear they couldn't store the stinking gold anywhere. Now the demand is so gigantic that the biggest oil reservoirs are almost empty. If you bought crude oil last year you would now have 100 dollar profit per drum(!)
The price of copper also went above 10k dollar per ton which is the highest price in more than ten years.
That is not all though, prices of steel, plastics, chips, coffee, wood, soy and grain have also reached record highs. It could be that it has to do with ''brightening economic prospects''(and also stimulus plans and logistical problems) like the video mentions but it still might be the highest percentual increase in raw materials ever. Ofcourse these high prices will be passed on to the end product: smartphones, cappucino at starbucks, furniture, meat, bread etc will all become more expensive. Now this in itself doesn't have to lead to inflation because all these increases aren't necessarily structural. Oil might come down due to sustainability(ie electric cars). But copper might only increase in price. If 95% of cars would become electric it would require 20 million tons of copper which is twice as much as the current yearly production. The last years they also discovered barely any new major copper reserves. With Biden wanting to invest 2300 billion dollar in infrastucture this would put even more pressure on the price of raw materials(steel, gigantic amounts of aluminium and also copper).
Now, the question is what would happen if employees start to demand pay raise as compensation for higher prices? If they start to protest it could lead to the infamous loan and price spiral. Sometimes governments manage to mitigate this with wage and price stops. But compare it to the situation in Turkey or Argentina where investors lost faith in the currency and only wanted to provide loans at sky high interest rates. The interest rate in Turkey is 19% if that would for example happen in the eurozone then countries would have to pay 4000 billion euros of interest to the collective deficit. All euro countries could become bankrupt over night.
Like the infamous Bundesbank president Karl Otto Pohl would say; ''inflation is like toothpaste, once out it's very difficult to get it back in''. Who knows when the governments and central banks are squeezing the tube too hard?
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Who said it cannot be socialist in any form? All our systems can be considered hybrids of some kind. But if it's a basis of Capitalism with some socialist sauce on top of it it's clearly a capitalist system and not a socialist one.
It's the conclusion that matters, not the roots.
Preferred, but you did not seem to consider as a condition sine qua non. Mandatory worker involvement in company management is actually a huge deal which changes everything about the concept of "ownership". Yet you said " and ideally to guarantee worker involvement in their running " as if it was more of a bonus. But still, what is "involvement"? Germany has a well known Union-Management cooperation model. But it hasn't prevented Germany to also have its fair share of underpaid workers. I am actually all in favor of worker involvement in company management. It's all a matter scale and how much power they are given and on which level. While I have no doubts workers are good at their job, I don't know how much many can be trusted to be competent at strategic decision making. (And while you can fire a CEO for poor strategic decisions can you fire say the 53% of workers who pushed for a certain bad decision?)
Do also mind that while utilities being publicly owned might sound like a big deal it actually isn't at all (unless you ask the very liberal right). Many capitalist countries had publicly owned utilities in the past and still partly do.
All in all depending on how much decision making power you believe has to be given to workers I would say your system is either a capitalist one with many socialist undertones or the opposite. You can't consider a policy which impacts ownership of the means of production that much (potentially) lightly.
According to you. I don't share your bizarre and restrictive definition of socialism, and neither do political theorists in general.
This is all minutiae of economic management, which isn't what we were talking about.
Its a pretty "big deal" whether or not your public services are run for profit or not. Plenty of countries have one or two; I'm not aware of any that have publicly owned utilities and public services across the board.
Yes, but prices crashed a year ago. Firstly, there's the recovery of prices due to economies coming out of recession. Secondly, there's likely to be a bounce back as economies don't just recover growth, but have a spurt to make up much of the lost territory (as is normal after recessions) before they settle back down again.
Yes, copper might be undergoing long-term growth for long-term reasons. If it is, it is. However, let's remember oil, which has long surpassed earlier availability of estimates because the human race just started looking harder and it became more economically viable to extract from more difficult sources. Thus heavy price increases are mostly likely to spur more prospecting and development. For instance, the USA actually has quite a lot of copper. It just doesn't mine it much because it's cheaper to get Chile and Peru's. If the prices rise enough, the USA will end up opening copper mines.
The difference between Eurozone and Turkey/Argentina is that the latter two are crappy middle-income economies that are frequently not well run.
It's a bit like a torpedo hitting a destroyer or a battleship. Probably curtains for the destroyer, but the battleship is much bigger and tougher, so it'll normally just flood a few compartments and require a few weeks in port to fix.
So what? One can't exploit someone who's already poor? On the contrary, they're the most vulnerable to abuse.
Something not being objective obviously doesn't mean that all measurements are exactly as reasonable. There's no objective value of of pint of milk, either, but someone charging 50p is obviously being more reasonable than someone charging £20.
I'm not arguing with "the communist", though, I'm arguing with the free-marketeer. The free marketeer sees no difference between a worker choosing something, and a worker having something chosen for them. Which is patronising nonsense, and flies in the face of the principle of self-determination.
What political theorists? I am searching and searching but can't find your definition of socialism... Social ownership seems to be a big deal for socialism
Considering the way you are going to dillute and impact capital ownership this shouldn't be considered "minutiae". It is extremely important and determines pretty much how your entire economic ecosystem operates. If anything it is probably the only aspect in which your proposed system will potentially significantly defer from the status quo for many social liberal countries.
Do not misunderstand me. It can have significant impact on how these "companies" are run. But in the grand scheme of capitalism it is not. The state already runs the fire department, education (in part/mostly), the military, public transportation, road infrastructure (sometimes in part), etc. And Belgium wasn't a socialist country just because the state owned Belgacom (Telecom) and Electrabel (Electricity production/distribution and gas distribution) on top of the water utilities, passenger railway, railway infrastructure it currently manages (and all the sectors I mentioned right before that). In the end these utilities do not represent that much in terms of economic output.
That was my response to " Yes, it *is* the corporation's fault that the people there are poor." I didn't say poor people can't be exploited. I'm not saying US corporations aren't exploiting anyone. All I'm saying is that the act of paying a lower wage in a labor market where all the wages are lower isn't itself exploitation. A corporation that can pay more than their competition working with a population that already works for and lives off less money than is being offered is a mutually beneficial relationship. Outside of that, I agree that poorer people are more vulnerable to exploitation. My disagreement is with the idea that paying different wages in different labor markets is inherently exploitative.
Then stop arguing for other people! If I present an argument against another person's worldview, and you don't agree with that worldview yourself, leave it be! You don't have to engage with every point by virtue of me having said it. If you're not a communist, my arguments against communism aren't going to apply to you. Duh.
You're ignoring an entire category of choice: a person can choose to have something chosen for them. A person choosing to do what they are told, likely because they believe it's to their benefit, is not relinquishing their freedom. A person choosing to be employed is not less free. A person deferring to their doctor's health suggestions is not less free. It is still a free choice to choose to enact someone else's decision.
Infamous loan and price spiral? I am not entirely sure what you are referring to.
In the end this will only matter wage-wise if it significantly affects the price of goods and services the poorer social classes need and spend the most on. Like housing, food, energy and transportation. I am unsure if price stops would be a good solution. Already today you have companies in EU companies which are running below capacity because they do not have access to the needed raw materials. And that is just because the much more industralised countries (like in Asia) have more bargaining power as they purchase a lot more. If price caps were to be introduced the countries which didn't will probably syphon all the materials to them. So it might be even worse than just a currency-confidence issue. I do however think the confidence in the Euro would not fall to the levels of Turkey or Argentina. You cannot compare the currency of a block which together represents the largest economy in the world with the one from developing countries.
I meant wage and price spiral. In my native language wage is ''loon'' so I was thinking about that when I made the typo. Countries like China could indeed syphon the materials to them but this negates the fact that most of their industrial production is intended for export and so is their economic growth dependent on it. To change this the country will most likely be old before it's rich. It's a lose/lose situation either way.
Yes. Which does not require the abolition of all private property. This is why the early socialist theorists did not call for it (Owen, Saint-Simon, Fourier).
Oh, it's of lots of import to my political philosophy. But I don't really see the relevance in my going into detail about my political philosophy when that's hugely tangential to our original topic.
State ownership is not the sole hallmark of socialism; that generally also involves the pursuit of equity through redistributive policies, workforce empowerment, etc. Belgium under various governments has been social-democratic, which is regarded as a mild form of socialism which can exist alongside capitalism.
If you do not see the conscious choice to place excess profit over a living wage for staff as exploitative, then there's not much I can tell you. Even most conservatives would agree with that in principle here in the UK.
They're paying more than the local companies. They also have far greater capacity to pay than most Mexican employers.
You're on a public forum. And your defences of unregulated, unrestrained capitalism aren't just anathema to communists; they'd be anathema to socialists and even moderate, compassionate capitalists. Adam Smith would find this shit despicable.
With a dearth of alternatives, and under threat of poverty and hunger, this choice is effectively coerced.
You're arguing that we should be praising the rich man who gives the starving man a crust of bread, though the rich man is towing a feast behind him. And furthermore opining that the starving man is just as empowered in this transaction because he takes it out of desperation.
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I agree in large part: companies investing to create jobs in poorer countries creates more work and often development in them. But there are caveats.
For instance, international businesses frequently involve the extraction of profits from countries where work is done to countries that invest, and thus it arguably would be better for workers to be exploited by their own elites, who will then likely pump more of the profits back into the same country.
Also, poorer countries frequently have weaker governance and less worker / poor empowerment. This means that large and wealthy corporations are more likely to be able to influence the state, officials, or maintain work condition in ways that increase exploitative practices. We all know corporations do this, and we resent it when they conspicuously do it in our own. It gets even more sinister when we consider that businesses almost certainly lobby our (Western) governments to apply pressure to poorer ones to make it easier for our (Western) businesses to operate there. One of the much-touted complaints about US activity in Latin America is that it facilitates wealth extraction for the Latin American elites and US businesses ahead of human and economic development for the Latin American general populace.
Countries always put their own interests before those of others. The E.U. heavily subsidizes it's own agriculture and export restrictions make it impossible for eg. Tunisian olive oil producers to compete with their Spanish counterparts. The result is that Spanish companies buy the superior Tunisian olive oil for chump change, mix it with their own cheap crap and sell it as ''pure Tunisian olive oil'' for record profit. The line between massive corporations and government is very thin since government creates the entire economic context for corporations to thrive(protectionism, trade legislation, patent rights, preferential treatment(ie direct access to government), favoritism and even large capital) and to top it off they provide a functioning law state where corporate lawyers can exploit their 'rights'(ie all the laws lobbied into their favor) to the fullest effect. Ultimately the socialism vs capitalism dichotomy is a purely theoretical one since we don't even have a capitalist system, but rather one of crony capitalists.
Yes.
If a group of people democratically decide to pool their resources and buy a car, you think that's great. If the exact same people do the exact same thing, but one person (without consulting the others, without any of their consent takes their resources and) makes that decision, you think that's "theft".
I don't know if this is mistaken or revealing, but it sure is something.
crony capitalism is just "ideal" capitalism + time.