It's a meme
this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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I’ve debated people at length on this topic and have concluded that this is a half-baked idea that is impossible to implement without destroying society in any form that has been presented to date.
You can't call an idea with 200 years of history and hundreds of books on the subject "half-baked" without explaining what about it you think is unfeasible. Either you have never actually talked to a socialist, or you've simply never listened.
So, a few questions:
The factory has owners. It would be unfair to not compensate them for their capital investment. You are describing a situation where you disallow private enterprise, but all systems describing this type of agreement to date have resulted in terrible outcomes. It will destroy competition. I am reminded of hearing about my brother’s visit to the Soviet Union when he was younger. He went with his group to an ice cream shop and asked what flavors they have and they said vanilla. As in, this limits options and provides a shitty quality of life. It also leads to issues where people who are able to provide a high value to society are not rewarded at a higher rate than a lazy or dumb person. The incentive is gone. These are issues that no text has reconciled. Even Plato’s dreamed Utopia, he knew that such a thing only would work if you brainwashed people generationally to value the idea of communal ownership. He basically left it at the leaders not being able to own things, but having all that they need while other classes under them could still own things. In essence, his utopian society was totally unrealistic in any meaningful timeline and still formed different classes of people.
It destroys society to take away people’s possessions because we built a system where property ownership is a central component. Having possessions is such a basic human construct that your are living in a pipe dream if you feel that you can remove that. The idea that people would share with one another and not get what they are worth to society is salient in describing why socialism as a whole crumbles. You can have socialized policies, but destroying the whole economic system doesn’t work. See my reply later in this thread for examples of real incremental changes.
Fuck the owners.
Prove it.
What competition?
What value does Donald Trump bring to society?
Prove it.
Prove it.
You mean completely unlike people brainwashed into believiing "capitalism gud?"
Stop conflating simple possessions with private property, genius.
Socialism seems perfectly alive and kicking to me - despite the uncountable amounts of treasure spent violently crushing it.
FTFY.
Fine
The USSR, Cuba, PRC is better but for some reason they are very authoritarian.
Granted there are many industries that don't have good competition, but the vast majority do. Look at clothes makers, construction, pharma.
He bought real estate where there was more demand than people expected, and took advantage of that. There was no apartments in the empty plot before Trump Tower, now there is and people want them.
The USSR did have great amounts of innovation in the beginning, but once you get to a certain point, it just gets pretty much impossible. Look at the second person's answer.
While it is dumb to say that there are no texts to reconcile these issues. It is crazy how the USSR didn't implement any solution except rewarding innovation to drive innovation. I'd say that is enough evidence to say with confidence that there are no existing solutions to the mentioned issues.
Sure there is some brainwashing in the right where they think capitalism is great in and of itself. I think that people also recognize that capitalism needs some good amount of regulation that would curb the failures there. It's not perfect as it exists now, but it sure as shit better than any socialist or communist nation.
If you're gonna make enemies with the most powerful nation in the world, that usually happens. The USA saw a threat to their influence and took action.
Anti-capitalism is not necessarily socialism or communism. Anti-capitalism does not necessarily imply supporting the USSR's particular policies. The mistake that the USSR and others made was not using market mechanisms when they make sense.
Trump participates in the systematic denial of people's equal claim to land and natural resources with his real estate empire. Land and natural resources should be commonly-owned.
There is no reason innovation can't be rewarded under postcapitalism
You're going to have to name examples where the working class actually controls the means of production - it can't actually be socialism otherwise, can it?
Funny... it's almost as if capitalists talk about "competition" a lot to justify their parasitic existence - but in reality they absolutely seem to hate the idea of competition. Must be purely my imagination, though.
In other words... nothing. Do you have any real examples of capitalists being anything other than parasites?
The USSR allowed the innovation that suited the CPSU's interests. In the exact same way, the US only allows innovation that suits the interests of the ruling elites - that's why you can buy an expensive new smartphone every month but you can't buy a cheap lightbulb that will last you thirty years that is based on hundred-year-old technology. Humans do not require "incentivization* to innovate - in fact, capitalism's need to repress innovation that doesn't suit the interests of a capitalist elite is thoroughly understood.
See the answer above.
The myth that you can "fix" capitalism through regulation is pure propaganda.
Nope. There are lots of people in the US that sure wishes they could have Cuba's healthcare system - and Cuba's healthcare system isn't even socialist nor communist.
The US is "most" at a lot of things - none of them are worth bragging about. And it has utterly failed to crush socialism even within it's own borders, never mind anywhere else in the world.
What if I refuse to work?
Then... nothing.
Let's start with your first assumption. Why must a factory have individual owners? Why not instead have it owned by the workers who are the ones actually producing?
Also, don't conflate private and personal property. If you are indeed talking about private property, it is very unlikely you have any to begin with. The vast majority of private property is owned by a few billionaires.
Lastly, people do not need money to incentivise work. Boredom, creativity and the desire to help and or contribute to society does that well enough. Given a stable level of comfort, people will seek work that matters to them.
Because the workers didn’t find the money to buy a whole factory..
And what system do you think is keeping the workers too poor to do that?
What system makes it so that work must involve the buying of private property in the first place?
Also, here's a perspective you might not hear often: why should the owner bear that burden and risk alone? That seems like too much pressure for one person. Poor capitalist. Doesn't he realise he needs help?
Even if we ignore the artificially increased transaction costs and hold out problems associated with private ownership that make acquiring means of production more expensive, this point only justifies some sort of compensation from the workers as part of the negative fruits of their labor in production. It does not justify the capitalist appropriating 100% of the positive (legal right to produced outputs) and negative (legal liability for the used-up inputs) fruits of the workers' joint labor
The workers get money for their labor..
Property's moral basis is getting the positive and negative fruits of your labor. Capitalism denies the workers this as the employer solely appropriates the positive and negative fruits of their labor. The core of property's moral basis is the principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match. Receiving wages is not sufficient because the workers remain de facto responsible for the whole (positive and negative) product of the enterprise and are entitled to it on that basis
I own private property and am not a billionaire, so not sure what you are on about with that statement. I got educated and have a decent living situation with a nice corporate remote job. I’ll have my student loan paid off around 40. These things were all easy to do. The people with issues do this to themselves. Sorry you are lazy and want to leach off my success.
It's like you're ignoring everything I say. Unless you're a landlord or the owner of some business, you probably don't own private property. If you can sit back and let other people make money for you without your input, you own private property.
Your comment reads like a copypasta. Why are you callibg me lazy? Did I say I don't want to work? Of course I want to work. You're not paying attention. There are huge barriers to people being able to succeed, and getting past thrm requires immense effort, luck or privilege. And the last one is the only guaranteed win.
I learned ro code from handmedown computers at a young age and worked my way up the corporate ladder. I own a nice big home and am a millennial. I completed a part time MBA while working and am able to take vacation every three months or so. Nothing is stopping you all from being successful, but yourselves. I agree that the system has massive flaws, but destroying capitalism isn’t the answer. The risk-reward system works.
Sounds like you don't own any private property, then.
I own an acre AMA.
Oh? You rent it out, do you?
No. I live in it, but I could because it is a free country. Unlike the “people-owned” regime that you are proposing.
You don't deserve to own land you don't use. Sorry :)
What do you mean. I live on my land. Also, if I wanted to buy other land, I can because the system works.
This reads like dialogue from a satirical sketch about an out of touch wannabe landlord
Under postcapitalism, the factory would be commonly-owned. The company that operates the factory would worker-controlled. That being said, there is nothing wrong with the holder of the building even in common ownership setup being compensated. What is unfair is to demand control rights over the firm for this capital and make the workers at the company your employees. Not everyone against capitalism is a communist. There can still be economic incentives for productive activity
That’s kind of how a business works though. People show up at the entity that you’ve orchestrated, work via your guidelines, and get paid.
It doesn't have to work like that. Instead of capital hiring labor, labor can jointly hire capital and structure the firm as a worker coop. There are good ethical reasons for organizing production in a worker coop as well