I refuse to participate in Capitalism and it's destroying me

[zurew]

8 hours ago, spiritual memes said:

How would regulations reduce artificial demand?

Comapanies want to make profit, if they have a hard time to do that because of higher tax, then they will eventually adapt. We can use empirical data to see what products and services are prone to produce addiction, and then we could attack those.

8 hours ago, spiritual memes said:

While artificial demand may exist in a socialist economy it would be significantly less than in capitalism.

Im not sure about that one, why would it be significantly less? The motive that creates atificial demand is the want for profit. That part would still exist in your system and I don't see how that would be mitigated just because people wouldn't own companies. You can be a worker at a company  and you and the other guys that work there would still collectively want to dominate the market with whatever means possible, because its their incentive to do so. 

If your system involves markets and if your socialist country have more than one company, then you will end up seeing the same dynamics you see now. The ability to vote in a workplace doesn't solve this problem, country owning all companies doesn't solve this problem either, so how would there be significantly less artificial demand?

8 hours ago, spiritual memes said:

In capitalism the 55 people don't get a choice.

Having a choice is not always good. This model can only function well, if most people there are knowledgeable and educated, but if they are not, they will make poor choices overall for the company, which would be bad for everyone working there.

Lets say there is a big company where there is 100 people. There are janitors and all the other workers have higher education and other qualifications. Why would the janitors have the same amount of say, when they have little to no contribution to the success of that company?

 

8 hours ago, spiritual memes said:

Negative income tax or universal basic income.

How would you reward people? Would you reward them based on how much they contribute to that particular company's success or other way?

Also I don't see how would your system solve inequality, when there is still a market. The same dynamic would go down just as in a capitalist society, which is that some people are exceptionally good at managing their finance and money, they know exactly where to invest and how much and when, and eventually they would dominate the workplace as well , because they could use their money to corrupt the workplace.

The difference would be that you can't own companies so people couldn't dominate the market that way, but my guess would be, that in that case, people would migrate to countries where they can actually create a private business , or if we assume that every country is socialist, then these people would still end up dominating the certain parts of the market just with a different strategy like owning houses and other properties.

9 hours ago, spiritual memes said:

but the problem would be who decides whether a product is 'consciously created'

There are ways to measure this, but it wouldn't be easy at all. We know mostly what we want (like more love, more healthy society where people are happy and more functioning etc) but the problem is that its impossible to do it in an isolated way, where we can confidently draw a causality line and we can exclude every outside effects.

But this is a problem, that isn't relevant to this discussion however its a good topic to explore, because collectively we should figure out how should we do it.

9 hours ago, spiritual memes said:

Since the businesses are collectively owned, why would the community decide on making 2 competing shoe businesses in the first place when 1 is sufficient?

Because of competition. Competition drives profit and quality. People don't want the same from everything, and since in your system there is a market, demand would eventually end up forcing the government to create more companies to satisfy the needs of the customers. People don't just want to buy adidas shoes, some people like nike others like vans etc and there is no way that a company can specialize in being good at producing all the quality services and items.

[spiritual memes]

4 hours ago, zurew said:

Im not sure about that one, why would it be significantly less? The motive that creates atificial demand is the want for profit. That part would still exist in your system and I don't see how that would be mitigated just because people wouldn't own companies. You can be a worker at a company  and you and the other guys that work there would still collectively want to dominate the market with whatever means possible, because its their incentive to do so. 

A socialist enterprise creates products for use rather than profit. Therefore the incentive of a company would be to meet demand of the community. remember that the community is also a shareholder. In capitalism, the goal is profit no matter what. That is the fundamental difference which I am trying to get across. Why would a socialist, company want to dominate the marker when it is owned collectively? 

if you want to take it even further, a true socialist economy would just be comprised of state owned corporations with no competition.

4 hours ago, zurew said:

Having a choice is not always good. This model can only function well, if most people there are knowledgeable and educated, but if they are not, they will make poor choices overall for the company, which would be bad for everyone working there.

Lets say there is a big company where there is 100 people. There are janitors and all the other workers have higher education and other qualifications. Why would the janitors have the same amount of say, when they have little to no contribution to the success of that company?

What you're criticizing is democracy. My response to that is why should we let people vote for a government instead of a just having a dictator make every decision?

Second of all, a janitor contributes to the success of a company because they keep the buildings clean. Try running a business with shit all over the floor. Y'all take cleaners and janitors for granted.

4 hours ago, zurew said:

How would you reward people? Would you reward them based on how much they contribute to that particular company's success or other way?

What I am arguing for is UBI in a capitalist economy. The rewards would be the same as they are now.

4 hours ago, zurew said:

Also I don't see how would your system solve inequality, when there is still a market. The same dynamic would go down just as in a capitalist society, which is that some people are exceptionally good at managing their finance and money, they know exactly where to invest and how much and when, and eventually they would dominate the workplace as well , because they could use their money to corrupt the workplace.

How would someone dominate the workplace if the workplace is collectively owned? Socialist societies would also have laws against corruption. Again your argument against socialism is that in the worst case scenario, it might have elements of capitalism... Can you not see the problem?

4 hours ago, zurew said:

Because of competition. Competition drives profit and quality. People don't want the same from everything, and since in your system there is a market, demand would eventually end up forcing the government to create more companies to satisfy the needs of the customers. People don't just want to buy adidas shoes, some people like nike others like vans etc and there is no way that a company can specialize in being good at producing all the quality services and items.

But in your previous argument, you were saying competition was bad???

 

[zurew]

1 hour ago, spiritual memes said:

A socialist enterprise creates products for use rather than profit. Therefore the incentive of a company would be to meet demand of the community. remember that the community is also a shareholder.

But people would only have a say and could only vote in the context of a company where they work at, and they wouldn't have a say in every company, and thats why the same rivalrous dynamic is there just in a different context. People would want to create more profit where they work because if collectively they  can make more money then they can distribute more money between them and they wouldn't give a fuck about people that are working at a different company. They have an incentive to be the best in market and to rule the whole market as a big business, so they still have an incentive to fuck other companies over and to be better than them. They still have the incentive to create addictive products.  - So the same dynamics would go down.

 

1 hour ago, spiritual memes said:

if you want to take it even further, a true socialist economy would just be comprised of state owned corporations with no competition.

That would have its own problems. There would be no drive to innovate or to work hard and it would produce poor quality goods and services

1 hour ago, spiritual memes said:

What you're criticizing is democracy. My response to that is why should we let people vote for a government instead of a just having a dictator make every decision?

I knew this question was coming, and I can make a distinction between this and political democracy. The distinction here is that its much easier to see and to measure who would be a good and effective person who can make really good decisions for a company and to do his work very effectively compared to trying to make a test for who would be a conscious leader of a country. Its also much easier to train someone to be a better financial guy compared to train someone to be a conscious leader.

For the first, you just have to be a good business man who can generate quality goods and or service and profit and not fuck up the company financially in the longrun vs in the second you have to have so many good qualities and have to have a developed cognition and it would be impossible to measure for those things the other disinction is that , the dictator wouldn't be hold accountable by anything  but this business person could still be hold accountable by political restrictions so if the businessman start to do shady shit, he/she can be caught and be hold accountable and thats an important distinction.

1 hour ago, spiritual memes said:

Second of all, a janitor contributes to the success of a company because they keep the buildings clean. Try running a business with shit all over the floor. Y'all take cleaners and janitors for granted.

I appreciate Janitors, but their contribution to the company is not the same as people who are educated and who are able to see how to maintain the company and how to make it more succesful. From a market lense, that janitor is easily replaceable and it would be easy to find a different person to his/her place, the same couldn't be said about a highly education person who has a lot of experience making hard financial decisions.

1 hour ago, spiritual memes said:

What I am arguing for is UBI in a capitalist economy. The rewards would be the same as they are now.

I think I could agree with this. I think the biggest problem is not necessarily inequality, but inequality where not all people having their basic needs met. I know 'basic needs' is a vague notion, but its a collection of things that you need to live a happy life in the current times. I think the current times part is important, because as time passes by things can change, and what would be considered 'basic needs' is also changing.

1 hour ago, spiritual memes said:

Again your argument against socialism is that in the worst case scenario, it might have elements of capitalism... Can you not see the problem?

I don't think that would be the worst case scenario. Given our culture and our collective level of consciousness it would be a granted dynamic that would eventually go down. My argument against socalism is not that it would have elements of capitalism, my argument is that it would have all the negative elements of capitalism + being ineffective + it would block innovation. 

1 hour ago, spiritual memes said:

Why would a socialist, company want to dominate the marker when it is owned collectively? 

The collectively owned part isn't relevant when your money isn't determined by the whole country, but by the people who are working at the same workplace as you do , and by the success of the company where you work at.

Edited October 7, 2022 by zurew

[spiritual memes]

2 hours ago, zurew said:

But people would only have a say and could only vote in the context of a company where they work at, and they wouldn't have a say in every company, and thats why the same rivalrous dynamic is there just in a different context.

Actually they could depending on the type of socialism.

2 hours ago, zurew said:

That would have its own problems. There would be no drive to innovate or to work hard and it would produce poor quality goods and services

Are you saying that state owned companies cannot make quality goods and services? NASA, a state owned organization landed a dude on the moon. 

If you want a better example of collective ownership look at open source software like wikipedia or python. These are extremely high quality yet collectively owned.

2 hours ago, zurew said:

The distinction here is that its much easier to see and to measure who would be a good and effective person who can make really good decisions for a company and to do his work very effectively compared to trying to make a test for who would be a conscious leader of a country.

If its much easier to see and measure a good and effective leader than a janitor should be able to see and realise it and therefore should be able to vote on it.

2 hours ago, zurew said:

the dictator wouldn't be hold accountable by anything  but this business person could still be hold accountable by political restrictions so if the businessman start to do shady shit, he/she can be caught and be hold accountable and thats an important distinction.

But businessmen in capitalism already do a lot of shady shit and are not held accountable as they can buy their way out.

2 hours ago, zurew said:

I appreciate Janitors, but their contribution to the company is not the same as people who are educated and who are able to see how to maintain the company and how to make it more succesful. From a market lense, that janitor is easily replaceable and it would be easy to find a different person to his/her place, the same couldn't be said about a highly education person who has a lot of experience making hard financial decisions.

So should people in replaceable jobs not be allowed to vote then?

2 hours ago, zurew said:

I think I could agree with this. I think the biggest problem is not necessarily inequality, but inequality where not all people having their basic needs met. I know 'basic needs' is a vague notion, but its a collection of things that you need to live a happy life in the current times. I think the current times part is important, because as time passes by things can change, and what would be considered 'basic needs' is also changing.

I agree

2 hours ago, zurew said:

I don't think that would be the worst case scenario. Given our culture and our collective level of consciousness it would be a granted dynamic that would eventually go down. My argument against socalism is not that it would have elements of capitalism, my argument is that it would have all the negative elements of capitalism + being ineffective + it would block innovation. 

I have explained in my previous replies that socialism has much less incentive for the types of corruption that you are talking about. As for your argument about innovation, you're under the assumption that innovation is only possible with a profit incentive, however some of the biggest innovations of our time did not have a profit incentive. e.g Moon landing, internet etc..

 

2 hours ago, zurew said:

The collectively owned part isn't relevant when your money isn't determined by the whole country, but by the people who are working at the same workplace as you do , and by the success of the company where you work at.

see my first point.

[zurew]

13 minutes ago, spiritual memes said:

If its much easier to see and measure a good and effective leader than a janitor should be able to see and realise it and therefore should be able to vote on it.

If its easy to see and measure a good and effective leader, then human input is not releavant there. The other problem is that you need some level of intelligence to vote for the right person. That level of intelligence is not a given and giving this choice in this isn't smart, if the effective financial guy could be determined without human input. If a thing is very clear cut and we know that we want that thing, then human input is not just not relevant, but can be harmful.

I would also add, that corruption under socialism would be different but not in a good way. People there could still use their money for the purpose of corruption but the difference is that under a capitalist system when the shady shit comes to light, you can almost automatically see who should be hold accountable (and you know what patterns to search for), but on the other hand, how the fuck can you hold a group of people properly accountable and how could you properly trace back who did the corrupt funding? 

The other corruption problem that would be not appliable to capitalism is that people who are in charge of the government, they have all the power in their hands. They are basically ruling almost the whole market, and they can decide how much money people can earn, and how much profit they want to take, they can close any business any they want. If you say that nonono its not government owned its owned collectively, then my question would be, how would people get paid. Earlier you gave this answer "The rewards would be the same as they are now." but it wouldn't be, because earlier there was a market that determined the price of labour, but right now that part of the market is gone (because that part of the competition is gone), so when a collectively owned company earns x amount of money, based on what factors would it give a salary?

14 minutes ago, spiritual memes said:

But businessmen in capitalism already do a lot of shady shit and are not held accountable as they can buy their way out.

Some can get away with stuff but others can't. For example, there are laws that are protecting employees: you can't pay people under minimum wage, there are ethic laws about what you can and can't do to your employees etc.

The solution is not socalism (where the main corruption factors are still present), but probably more well thought out restriction(s) or a different system (which is neither socialism, nor capitalism)

18 minutes ago, spiritual memes said:

however some of the biggest innovations of our time did not have a profit incentive. e.g Moon landing, internet etc..

This is true, those are good examples, however, giving our current state of society and the fact that the current society is stage orange at best, it would undermine innovation greatly, but yeah thats true, that innovation is not exclusive to profit incentive. But, It would also slow down research, unless you compensate the research group properly, but you its not sustainable in the longrun to have a negative ROI.

20 minutes ago, spiritual memes said:

I have explained in my previous replies that socialism has much less incentive for the types of corruption that you are talking about.

I didn't agree with that, and I don't think you have properly established that point. I gave reasons why I think there wouldn't be less incentive for corruption, you can attack those points if you want to. 

Your points would be true, if people would have the same desires and goals, and those goals and desires wouldn't be opposite to each other. We always need to see what incentive people have in a certain system ,and then we can make relatively correct predictions about how it would go down or at the very least how it would not go down. 

21 minutes ago, spiritual memes said:

Actually they could depending on the type of socialism

Lets say you choose a socialist system where everyone can vote on every decision, now the problem is that , that system is super inefficient and I don't see how for example a hypothetical Joe should have a direct say in every companies decision making. Can you imagine how insane that would be? Every people would need to vote on a thousand different things every day. 

Above a certain number, the more decisions you give to people the poorer decision they will make, because to properly make decisions you need to have some factors in check (like knowing all or if not all , most information about the subject you want to make a decision about | being properly educated about that subject to have the necessary structre to put the relevant information in/through and that way you have a way to properly evaluate that information).

 

 

We disagree about the effectiveness of socalism and we are still in hypothetical land. We still haven't talked about many things like how would a socialist country would react to crisis or how it would coodinate itself with foreign countries, whether or not this socialist country would want to participate in the global market, how it would deal with outside pressure, how it would deal with other countries outsourcing it, whether or not investment would be possible or not, whether or not foreign investment would be allowed or not, how would an actual investment would even go down if a socialist country would want to invest some of its money in a foreign country 

The most important would be if you could show me a real world example of your hypothetical socialist system or an example that is very similar to it (because in that case you have much less explaning to do, because then I would have a tangible thing to evaluate and to grapple with).

 

[spiritual memes]

2 hours ago, zurew said:

If its easy to see and measure a good and effective leader, then human input is not releavant there.

why not? How do you get the good and effective leader in power in the first place as opposed to an inept ceo/dictator? If your boss was incompetent and there was someone better, how would replace them under capitalism?

2 hours ago, zurew said:

under a capitalist system when the shady shit comes to light, you can almost automatically see who should be hold accountable (and you know what patterns to search for),

can you elaborate on this? why would it be harder to find under socialism?

2 hours ago, zurew said:

then my question would be, how would people get paid. Earlier you gave this answer "The rewards would be the same as they are now." but it wouldn't be, because earlier there was a market that determined the price of labour, but right now that part of the market is gone (because that part of the competition is gone), so when a collectively owned company earns x amount of money, based on what factors would it give a salary?

My first answer would be market socialism which is a bit different to traditional socialism. In traditional socialism, there are no wages.  All hours of labor would entitle a person to an equal (in terms of labor hours) amount of goods and services required for the daily reproduction of their labor power.

2 hours ago, zurew said:

Some can get away with stuff but others can't. For example, there are laws that are protecting employees: you can't pay people under minimum wage, there are ethic laws about what you can and can't do to your employees etc.

Interestingly it was labour unions that campainged to bring about the first minimum wage in america. i.e collective actions by workers

2 hours ago, zurew said:

The solution is not socalism (where the main corruption factors are still present), but probably more well thought out restriction(s) or a different system (which is neither socialism, nor capitalism)

Lol I agree. Why are we even  debating in the first place? 

2 hours ago, zurew said:

This is true, those are good examples, however, giving our current state of society and the fact that the current society is stage orange at best, it would undermine innovation greatly, but yeah thats true, that innovation is not exclusive to profit incentive.

Yeah a socialist society would require a miniumum stage green center of mass.

2 hours ago, zurew said:

But, It would also slow down research, unless you compensate the research group properly, but you its not sustainable in the longrun to have a negative ROI.

Yes but keep in mind that most for profit research doesn't really benefit society as a whole. In fact, for profit research sucks up extremely talented people to work on pointless shit that only exists to generate profit. For example my friend who is a maths and computer science genius is working for a finance company to develop ai to help rich people cheat the stock market, He's not even allowed to publish his research as it would give competitors and edge.

2 hours ago, zurew said:

I didn't agree with that, and I don't think you have properly established that point. I gave reasons why I think there wouldn't be less incentive for corruption, you can attack those points if you want to. 

I agree with you on the fact that socialist societies would still have corruption, but the original topic I was talking about was overconsumption and artificial demand. Since, state owned companies exist to meet demand rather than create profit. There is less incentive to create artificial demand. Would there still be a bit of arfiticial demand? maybe but there would be much less than in a capitalist country.

2 hours ago, zurew said:

Lets say you choose a socialist system where everyone can vote on every decision, now the problem is that , that system is super inefficient and I don't see how for example a hypothetical Joe should have a direct say in every companies decision making. Can you imagine how insane that would be? Every people would need to vote on a thousand different things every day. 

Thats why they vote on people to make those decisions just like in a regular democracy.

 

I think this discussion has gotten off topic. Keep in mind that I'm not advocating for socialism here. I'm only saying that overconsumption is caused by capitalism primarily and that a socialist society would not overconsume as much.

As for real world examples, cuba is a good example. If you want an example of first world countries that have adopted socialist policies, the scandinavian countries are a golden example.

[zurew]

9 hours ago, spiritual memes said:

Keep in mind that I'm not advocating for socialism here.

Yeah, I understand that, but I think its still worth to explore our disagreement(s) about certain parts of socialism.

9 hours ago, spiritual memes said:

can you elaborate on this? why would it be harder to find under socialism?

Basically, because it is decentralized and its hard to find the corrupt center.

I will give a concrete example and the reason afterwards. So the example would be an instance, where a wealthy person would pay money to the workers in order to make the voting system in his favour. Lets say 'in his favour' in this case would mean firing certain people from the company. So he offers some money to some people, that he assumes, he can trust, and then they make the voting system corrupt, and fire those people. In that case, it would be hard to detect corruption, because those people weren't fired randomly by one person or a small number of people, but they were fired because the majority of the workers agreed to it. Even if some people would recognize that there is some corruption going on, they wouldn't know where to search for it, because at least 51% of the people who are working at that company voted to fire those people, so you need to do a really big investigation to find out who paid who.

Opposite to that, generally speaking, under a system where there is no voting involved, almost every corruption investigation would start from the top of the hierarchy, because everyone knows where the power is centered at, but in a decentralized system, its much harder to try to find the corrupt piece. 

Other example for corruption would be ideologically driven votes. Of course, under a capitalist system this is also possible, however generally, because the boss is success and profit driven that boss will most likely overlook the ideological differences. Also, under a capitalist system with laws its easier to reduce bigoted thinking and biased ideological decision in the context of a company, because only the boss has to be targeted, but opposite to this, under a system ,where there is a democratized workplace, in that case people could collectively fire people just because they don't agree with their ideology, and the key part here, is that it would be almost impossible to write laws to prevent that.

That being said, I will concede, that in a decentralized system, its harder to make it corrupt for one person (because you have to make 51% of the people to play your game), however, once you manage to make it corrupt, it requires much more time and a big investigation to trace back the crime.

 

10 hours ago, spiritual memes said:

For example my friend who is a maths and computer science genius is working for a finance company to develop ai to help rich people cheat the stock market, He's not even allowed to publish his research as it would give competitors and edge.

Thats sad, but your friend could choose to use his skills more wisely at a different company, where they would work towards a more conscious goal.

10 hours ago, spiritual memes said:

Yes but keep in mind that most for profit research doesn't really benefit society as a whole. In fact, for profit research sucks up extremely talented people to work on pointless shit that only exists to generate profit.

I don't think this is necessarily true. I could bring up medicine in general, like big pharma (although I know it has many problems, but its still hugely beneficial), I could also bring up vaccines.I don't think that research that is done for profit will be generally bad. I would say, that positive ROI says almost nothing about the quality of the research , but says more about what the current market values.

10 hours ago, spiritual memes said:

Since, state owned companies exist to meet demand rather than create profit. There is less incentive to create artificial demand. Would there still be a bit of arfiticial demand? maybe but there would be much less than in a capitalist country.

The government owning the companies doesn't necessarily indicates less orientation towards profit. The reason why is because those companies  under your system would be run by workers, and workers generally want to earn as much money as possible. So how can they earn more money under a socialist system? I assume it would either be determined by the success of the company (so they can distribute more money between the workers, if the company generates more profit) or it would be determined by the government.

If its solely determined by the government, in that case, I still wouldn't necessarily agree that the government wouldn't have an incentive to generate as much profit as possible, because all the power would be in the government's hand, so why would they suddenly not care about earning more money? The government would have almost all the leverage and they could do whatever they want , because they would own all the companies, so people wouldn't even have a chance to break from that system.

Or if the workers money only determined by the market, in that case, they would still have the incentive to create artifical demand.

 

Also, I would be very curious how new businesses would be created under the system you are talking about, like how the process would go down exactly, because that can be a key part to the demand discussion. 

 

 

[spiritual memes]

5 hours ago, zurew said:

I will give a concrete example and the reason afterwards. So the example would be an instance, where a wealthy person would pay money to the workers in order to make the voting system in his favour. Lets say 'in his favour' in this case would mean firing certain people from the company. So he offers some money to some people, that he assumes, he can trust, and then they make the voting system corrupt, and fire those people. In that case, it would be hard to detect corruption, because those people weren't fired randomly by one person or a small number of people, but they were fired because the majority of the workers agreed to it. Even if some people would recognize that there is some corruption going on, they wouldn't know where to search for it, because at least 51% of the people who are working at that company voted to fire those people, so you need to do a really big investigation to find out who paid who.

Since socialist organizations are collectively owned, decision making would be far more transparent and any unfair or corrupt decisions would be more easily exposed. For an example, look at open source software or websites like wikipedia. How exactly could someone corrupt these? On the contrary, capitalist organizations have no incentive for transparency. How would you even know if corruption was going on?

5 hours ago, zurew said:

Other example for corruption would be ideologically driven votes. Of course, under a capitalist system this is also possible, however generally, because the boss is success and profit driven that boss will most likely overlook the ideological differences. Also, under a capitalist system with laws its easier to reduce bigoted thinking and biased ideological decision in the context of a company, because only the boss has to be targeted, but opposite to this, under a system ,where there is a democratized workplace, in that case people could collectively fire people just because they don't agree with their ideology, and the key part here, is that it would be almost impossible to write laws to prevent that.

 Bruh, capitalist organizations can and do fire people for whatever reason they want. What is more likely, that a more than half your workplace are ideological assholes, or one person is? Who would target the boss if he is bigoted and ideological? The boss police? In capitalism, the owner has almost no accountability. Plenty of CEO's have been accused of a toxic workplace and harassment but no one can do anything about it.

5 hours ago, zurew said:

is necessarily true. I could bring up medicine in general, like big pharma (although I know it has many problems, but its still hugely beneficial), I could also bring up vaccines. I don't think that research that is done for profit will be generally bad. I would say, that positive ROI says almost nothing about the quality of the research , but says more about what the current market values.

Big pharma perhaps the worst example you could have used.  They are to blame for the opioid crisis, increasing drug costs, a lack of transparency in clinical trials. For example, the price of insulin is extortionately high in the US compared to other countries. This is what happens when companies prioritize profits over human wellbeing. As for research, for profit research is much more likely to be biased.

6 hours ago, zurew said:

The government owning the companies doesn't necessarily indicates less orientation towards profit. The reason why is because those companies  under your system would be run by workers, and workers generally want to earn as much money as possible. So how can they earn more money under a socialist system? I assume it would either be determined by the success of the company (so they can distribute more money between the workers, if the company generates more profit) or it would be determined by the government.

This is not necessarily the case, workers would prioritize better working conditions. Creating artificial demand just makes workers lives harder.

6 hours ago, zurew said:

If its solely determined by the government, in that case, I still wouldn't necessarily agree that the government wouldn't have an incentive to generate as much profit as possible, because all the power would be in the government's hand, so why would they suddenly not care about earning more money? The government would have almost all the leverage and they could do whatever they want , because they would own all the companies, so people wouldn't even have a chance to break from that system.

There is no profit in a socialist society. Goods and services are produced for use.

6 hours ago, zurew said:

Also, I would be very curious how new businesses would be created under the system you are talking about, like how the process would go down exactly, because that can be a key part to the demand discussion. 

In socialism, if you want to start a business , you pitch your idea to the community which then decides whether to start it.

[zurew]

57 minutes ago, spiritual memes said:

How exactly could someone corrupt these?

Some parts of wikipedia are indeed corrupt and you don't necessarily have to be a highly influencial people to achieve it. People can pay money to people to edit some parts of the wikipedia for their benefit or for their bias.

57 minutes ago, spiritual memes said:

Since socialist organizations are collectively owned, decision making would be far more transparent and any unfair or corrupt decisions would be more easily exposed

How would you know if the people who are participating in the voting process are not heavily influenced by any party at all?

57 minutes ago, spiritual memes said:

 Bruh, capitalist organizations can and do fire people for whatever reason they want. What is more likely, that a more than half your workplace are ideological assholes, or one person is?

Capitalist organization are generally for profit and give less fuck about ideology. But again, if you really want to protect people from an injustice like that you could make some laws or rules that would prevent them from doing firing on unnecessarily reasons. Now, what do you think would be easier? To make a law that restricts a boss from doing this or to make a law that restricts a large group of people from doing this?

57 minutes ago, spiritual memes said:

Big pharma perhaps the worst example you could have used.  They are to blame for the opioid crisis, increasing drug costs, a lack of transparency in clinical trials. For example, the price of insulin is extortionately high in the US compared to other countries.

It seems that you only focus on the negative effects and ignore all the positive effects.

Quote

The pharmaceutical industry has greatly contributed to the increase in life expectancy for men and women across the world. It has been reported that pharmaceutical advancements accounted for 73% of the total increase in life expectancy between 2000 and 2009, across 30 developing and high-income countries. In 1900, global life expectancy was just 32 years; thanks to advancements in medicines, this has more than doubled and today the average life expectancy stands at 72 years.

Japan and Hong Kong have the highest average life expectancy, with people living to 85 years old on average. Pharmaceutical innovation has not just benefited richer nations, developing countries have also been positively impacted and global inequality in life expectancy is starting to decrease. 

Quote

Disease eradication is the ultimate goal when developing treatments, as this benefits ecosystems on a global level. To date, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared smallpox as the first – and so far only – human disease to be eradicated globally.

There are 7 diseases that are almost eradicated, including: measles, rubella, polio, guinea worm and lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis). Eradication is extremely hard to achieve as it requires a vaccination and a true global effort.

 

Quote

By preventing disease, vaccines not only help to save millions of lives, they save money too. Vaccines are widely accepted as a cost-effective public health intervention, reducing healthcare spending and prevent productivity loss, curbing the wider impact on the economy. According to the WHO for every $1 the US spends on childhood vaccinations, over $10 in disease treatment costs is saved.

Quote

In the US, 50 years ago, the average hospital stay was 8 days. With innovation and greater access to medicine, patients have the potential to recover more quickly. Many conditions that would have previously required invasive treatments and operations can now be treated with medicines. Today, the average hospital stay in the US stands at just 4-5 days. With patients being able to be discharged quicker, this has reduced pressure on the healthcare system and healthcare workers.

 

57 minutes ago, spiritual memes said:

for profit research is much more likely to be biased.

Bias and profit orientation doesn't exclude the fact that it can have a positive impact on the world.

57 minutes ago, spiritual memes said:

This is not necessarily the case, workers would prioritize better working conditions

Perfect working condition part has no effect on the point I made. You can have perfect working conditions people would still aim to earn as much profit as possible even if that would make other peoples life worse. Most people don't give a fuck about other people. Socialism doesn't mitigate this part. People working at a company and making its service or goods more addicting would have no direct effect on their salary, so why would they care? 

Your reasoning was that if the government owns all the companies, then thats necessarily indicates, that there will be less artifical demand, but you haven't provided a reason why that  would be the case.

57 minutes ago, spiritual memes said:

There is no profit in a socialist society.

So you are telling me, that the government would sell everything at the price of production cost? If thats the case, then that system will have many problems. For example, what would the government do with the increase of population, or with the increase in demand if it doesn't have any profit at all? It wouldn't be able to create more business(es), it wouldn't be able to provide more jobs, It wouldn't be able to maintain any business or service(because if things crash or if things break down that requires unexpected costs), It wouldn't have any power to change things even if people vote to change things etc, It wouldn't be able to deal with any catashropes or any crisis at all, it would have no power over things and that government would necessarily fail.

 

57 minutes ago, spiritual memes said:

In socialism, if you want to start a business , you pitch your idea to the community which then decides whether to start it.

And how many people would have the right to vote on it? All the people in the whole country, or just local people or something else?

 

Edited October 8, 2022 by zurew

[spiritual memes]

38 minutes ago, zurew said:

Some parts of wikipedia are indeed corrupt and you don't necessarily have to be a highly influencial people to achieve it. People can pay money to people to edit some parts of the wikipedia for their benefit or for their bias.

Yes but any biased edits would be noticed and reported to the community.

38 minutes ago, zurew said:

How would you know if the people who are participating in the voting process are not heavily influenced by any party at all?

I don't but its much harder to corrupt 500 people than it is to corrupt 1.

38 minutes ago, zurew said:

Capitalist organization are generally for profit and give less fuck about ideology. But again, if you really want to protect people from an injustice like that you could make some laws or rules that would prevent them from doing firing on unnecessarily reasons. Now, what do you think would be easier? To make a law that restricts a boss from doing this or to make a law that restricts a large group of people from doing this?

Any law that restricts the owner of a company from making company decisions for the good of its workers sounds very socialist to me... Also, how would this law be enforced? What's stopping the boss from making up a reason?

38 minutes ago, zurew said:

Bias and profit orientation doesn't exclude the fact that it can have a positive impact on the world.

Yes but you cannot ignore the negative effects of bias and profit incentives either.

38 minutes ago, zurew said:

Your reasoning was that if the government owns all the companies, then thats necessarily indicates, that there will be less artifical demand, but you haven't provided a reason why that  would be the case.

I provided the case in my previous argument. Production is collectively owned and exists to meet demand. Why would the collective waste manpower and resources on shit they don't need? For example: lets say a factory worker thinks 'hey we should make some essential oils and sell them to increase profit' He pitches this to his fellow workers and they would probably be like 'Why the fuck would anyone need essential oils'. But lets assume they actually liked the idea. They would then need more workers to produce the essential oils so they would pitch to the community their idea and the community would be like 'lol no, no one wants essential oils'. And so the idea would end there.(Unless people actually wanted essential oils)

40 minutes ago, zurew said:

So you are telling me, that the government would sell everything at the price of production cost? If thats the case, then that system will have many problems.

In a fully socialist society, money is replaced with labour vouchers that expire after use. You're under the impression that profit incentive is the reason people do anything. 

48 minutes ago, zurew said:

For example, what would the government do with the increase of population, or with the increase in demand if it doesn't have any profit at all?

If there is increase in demand, the community will decide to create new means of producing goods and services. Because they demand it...  

49 minutes ago, zurew said:

It wouldn't be able to create more business(es), it wouldn't be able to provide more jobs, It wouldn't be able to maintain any business or service(because if things crash or if things break down that requires unexpected costs), It wouldn't have any power to change things even if people vote to change things etc, It wouldn't be able to deal with any catashropes or any crisis at all, it would have no power over things and that government would necessarily fail.

Why not? This is a baseless assumption. If you were hungry, would you make yourself a sandwich even it there was no profit incentive or starve to death?

54 minutes ago, zurew said:

And how many people would have the right to vote on it? All the people in the whole country, or just local people or something else?

Depends on the type of socialism, but most likely, it would be local, but with government approval as well. In market socialism you can start a business whenever, but it must be democratically run.

[zurew]

2 minutes ago, spiritual memes said:

I don't but its much harder to corrupt 500 people than it is to corrupt 1.

I agree with that, my point was that it would be much harder to detect and trace back in a decentralised system.

2 minutes ago, spiritual memes said:

Any law that restricts the owner of a company from making company decisions for the good of its workers sounds very socialist to me... Also, how would this law be enforced? What's stopping the boss from making up a reason?

And any system that involves markets and provides the ability to individuals to engage in a market and the right to own some things sounds very capitalistic to me, but labels doesn't matter here, what matter here is to see whether or not certain socalist changes would provide the necessary solutions to the problems it wants to solve in the firstplace.

Depending on how serious of a legal case we are talking about,,making up a random reason isn't necessarily sufficient if evidence is not provided.

8 minutes ago, spiritual memes said:

I provided the case in my previous argument. Production is collectively owned and exists to meet demand. Why would the collective waste manpower and resources on shit they don't need? For example: lets say a factory worker thinks 'hey we should make some essential oils and sell them to increase profit' He pitches this to his fellow workers and they would probably be like 'Why the fuck would anyone need essential oils'. But lets assume they actually liked the idea. They would then need more workers to produce the essential oils so they would pitch to the community their idea and the community would be like 'lol no, no one wants essential oils'. And so the idea would end there.(Unless people actually wanted essential oils)

Thats not the argument, the argument was artificial demand, which would mean, that you make stuff addictive and by the result of that, you take away peoples agency from being able to properly participate in the market. They wouldn't waste any manpower because if they make stuff addictive, then they can sell more shit. The exact same dynamic goes down in a capitalist system. The Boss doesn't ask himself (why the fuck would I waste my manpower and resources and money on shit people don't need and don't demand in the moment?) he rather ask himself this: "how could I make my service or item more addictive?" 

9 minutes ago, spiritual memes said:

If there is increase in demand, the community will decide to create new means of producing goods and services. Because they demand it...

But they can't, because they are living on the edge, because they are earning exactly as much money as much the production cost is. You can't build something from nothing.

9 minutes ago, spiritual memes said:

This is a baseless assumption. If you were hungry, would you make yourself a sandwich even it there was no profit incentive or starve to death?

Its not a baseless assumption. You can't build new shit from nothing. If you have a constant income and no profit you can only go so far, so this is actually an argument you have to provide a solution for if you have that type of socialist system. 

You can't grow the economy if there is no profit.

So again in that system, that government couldn't do these things:

Quote

it wouldn't be able to provide more jobs, It wouldn't be able to maintain any business or service(because if things crash or if things break down that requires unexpected costs), It wouldn't have any power to change things even if people vote to change things etc, It wouldn't be able to deal with any catashropes or any crisis at all.

Ultimately it wouldn't be able to create more businesses and wouldn't be able to grow the economy at all.

 

11 minutes ago, spiritual memes said:

Depends on the type of socialism, but most likely, it would be local, but with government approval as well. In market socialism you can start a business whenever, but it must be democratically run.

What does that mean "you can start a business whenever", you wouldn't own the business, at the very best you would give an idea for a business. So you say the government would be involved as well, so ultimately the government would be the gatekeeper to decide how the market would go and transform and what new demand it would want to create.

 

27 minutes ago, spiritual memes said:

Yes but any biased edits would be noticed and reported to the community.

Not necessarily, there are things that can go unnoticed for a long time, and because of the decentralized structure, people wouldn't even be suspect that there would be people changing and editing stuff with a corrupt incentive, because they would just assume that in a decentralized system its impossible to make it corrupt. But again I concede that from the bottom-up it would be harder to do corrupt things, however that wouldn't necessarily be the case from the top-down.

[spiritual memes]

9 minutes ago, zurew said:

And any system that involves markets and provides the ability to individuals to engage in a market and the right to own some things sounds very capitalistic to me, but labels doesn't matter here, what matter here is to see whether or not certain socalist changes would provide the necessary solutions to the problems it wants to solve in the firstplace.

Fair enough, what changes are you advocating for?

10 minutes ago, zurew said:

Thats not the argument, the argument was artificial demand, which would mean, that you make stuff addictive and by the result of that, you take away peoples agency from being able to properly participate in the market. They wouldn't waste any manpower because if they make stuff addictive, then they can sell more shit.

In this case, the community would quickly intervene.

12 minutes ago, zurew said:

But they can't, because they are living on the edge, because they are earning exactly as much money as much the production cost is. You can't build something from nothing.

But, you're not building something from nothing, the community can provide existing resources in exchange for production that meets demand. In socalism, its not about money. Its about meeting demand. If the community has lemons and the want lemonade, they will give someone the lemons so they can make lemonade in exchange for labour vouchers.

16 minutes ago, zurew said:

You can't grow the economy if there is no profit.

Why not?

16 minutes ago, zurew said:

What does that mean "you can start a business whenever", you wouldn't own the business, at the very best you would give an idea for a business. So you say the government would be involved as well, so ultimately the government would be the gatekeeper to decide how the market would go and transform and what new demand it would want to create.

Yes, that is the point of socialism.

17 minutes ago, zurew said:

Not necessarily, there are things that can go unnoticed for a long time, and because of the decentralized structure, people wouldn't even be suspect that there would be people changing and editing stuff with a corrupt incentive, because they would just assume that in a decentralized system its impossible to make it corrupt. But again I concede that from the bottom-up it would be harder to do corrupt things, however that wouldn't necessarily be the case from the top-down.

Fair, play but if a corrupt edit went unnoticed, it probably wasn't very important. Try editing a political wikipedia article and see how long it takes to correct.

 

I don't think this discussion is going anywhere productive. instead of arguing over capitalism vs socialism neither of which we advocate for, what actual societal and political changes do you want to see to address these problems with capitalism? What would your ideal society look like?

[Leo Gura]

On 10/5/2022 at 1:41 PM, Ulax said:

I'd say our ancestors are privileged compared to a guy who died from excessive doughnut eating.

Tell that to the 40% of the Roman population who where slaves.

You have no idea how brutally hard life used to be.

Edited October 9, 2022 by Leo Gura

[Hardkill]

12 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Tell that to the 40% of the Roman population who where slaves.

You have no idea how brutally hard life used to be.

After watching the show, Rome, I realized how scary it was to live in Ancient Rome.

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Hardkill said:

After watching the show, Rome, I realized how scary it was to live in Ancient Rome.

Great show.

[Ulax]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Tell that to the 40% of the Roman population who where slaves.

You have no idea how brutally hard life used to be.

I said 'in that aspect' at the beginning of the quoted sentence. I think you've understood my comment differently than I intended it to be understood.

Also, I'd say I do have an idea.