On Socialism in the wake of AOC, Bernie etc.

[obidamnkenobi]

In ways that most people would not prefer. Are you trying to imply that those things would not exist, or that they would be less optimal if left to markets?

Some would not exist, I'd think for example product safety rules. "Less optimal" is subjective (for whom?) so I don't know.

I just disagree with your premise that stronger state is "more socialism". It's not a sliding scale from capitalism to socialism, where where any expansion of regulation is more to the left. Socialism is worker (or state) ownership of means of production, that's it. Yes socialism require a stronger state, but that doesn't mean the reverse is true. I don't think (you might) that building codes or air traffic safety rules is socialism. Public fire and police I would considered though.

edit; you could argue that the scale is from more to less free market, in which case I would agree. But my point was that socialism in misunderstood and misused by everyone.

 

[whm1974]

If those barriers to entry are created through things like the expense of regulation, that is the state. If the barriers to entry are things like capital and knowledge, then any entry needs to justify itself to be able to raise capital to enter.

Investment is part of capitalism, so any new entry that could compete could get funding as there are profits to be had. The only real way of excluding a firm at that point is through the state.

Now, the margins on profit could be small, but, that is not a bug its a feature. It means that any new entry has to do something better/more efficient to gain entry into the market. This helps reduce waste.

Do you read Ayn Rand a lot?

 

[woolfe9998]

No. I have discussed things like this before. The reason I ask is that often people do not see money as something that is owned by the individual, and is thus something that should be spread around. Not understanding what money is causes distorted arguments for why we should tax people. I agree that we should tax, but, I want to understand the other perspectives to see if maybe they have something I can use to either strengthen my argument or change to a better one.

Its not a semantics argument, as it could become something else. What I think you are seeing is that its likely just to be about how he choose to word his position. In that case, you will see me just move on. You have seen this very thing happen when I have questioned your position as well.

He was correct in his use of the word "elimination." He probably shouldn't have used the word "control." But unless you're a wingnut who thinks its "theft," everyone knows what taxation is and isn't.

 

[realibrad]

Some would not exist, I'd think for example product safety rules. "Less optimal" is subjective (for whom?) so I don't know.

I just disagree with your premise that stronger state is "more socialism". It's not a sliding scale from capitalism to socialism, where where any expansion of regulation is more to the left. Socialism is worker (or state) ownership of means of production, that's it. Yes socialism require a stronger state, but that doesn't mean the reverse is true. I don't think (you might) that building codes or air traffic safety rules is socialism. Public fire and police I would considered though.

edit; you could argue that the scale is from more to less free market, in which case I would agree. But my point was that socialism in misunderstood and misused by everyone.

What I said was that the more socialist things you want to do, the stronger state you need to have.

To expand the welfare state, you must expand its power and extract more from private interests.

So, when you add things like universal healthcare, you must expand the state to do that. That action moves the economy toward socialism as you are taking away the ability of the consumer to make market decisions.

 

[realibrad]

Do you read Ayn Rand a lot?

Never once, but, I have always felt like I should. I'm more into economics than most, and her philosophy is often associated to economics.

 

[realibrad]

He was correct in his use of the word "elimination." He probably shouldn't have used the word "control." But unless you're a wingnut who thinks its "theft," everyone knows what taxation is and isn't.

Its not theft, as that would imply a crime which I do not think it is. It is for sure taking something from people with the threat of force. If you do not pay taxes, you can expect the force of the state to try and punish you. It could be small, it could be large.

I think its valuable to remember that the state uses force to get its way, so we should take care when using that power.

As for using the word control, you see it as a mistake, and I see it as a possible mistake, but possibly not. I will likely not know unless I make a post asking him now will I?

 

[whm1974]

Never once, but, I have always felt like I should. I'm more into economics than most, and her philosophy is often associated to economics.

She also promoted outright Selfishness as a Virtue.

 

[obidamnkenobi]

What I said was that the more socialist things you want to do, the stronger state you need to have.



So, when you add things like universal healthcare, you must expand the state to do that. That action moves the economy toward socialism as you are taking away the ability of the consumer to make market decisions.

But that has nothing to do with socialism. The state can own all means of production, but the consumer has lots of choice, one does not preclude the other.

 

[realibrad]

She also promoted outright Selfishness as a Virtue.

It would depend on what she means. Greed can mean the desire to help only one's self beyond what is simply needed. The connotation today is a negative, but, I don't think it inherently needs to be. The desire to have a gaming computer is greed by definition, yet most would not say its so. So, if she means greed as the desire to have more than one currently has then greed can be good. It could cause someone to look for ways to improve his life.

What I think most people see when they read greed is the desire to help one's self at the expense of others. That is why they often frame Capitalism as exploitation and abuse of others.

Further, even if you assume greed is bad, then the most productive way of channeling that is Capitalism. That is because its the system that takes the greed and turns it into benefit for others. In Capitalism, if you can do something that someone else wants to pay for, you get wealth. In other systems, the centralized power can give wealth to whomever it wants, regardless of merit.

 

[realibrad]

But that has nothing to do with socialism. The state can own all means of production, but the consumer has lots of choice, one does not preclude the other.

So you believe Socialism could own all means of production, but, let the individual do whatever it wants with it?

The whole idea of having universal healthcare is to do away with the inefficiency of profit as profits are inefficient.

A socialist economy is a system of production where goods and services are produced directly for use, in contrast to a capitalist economic system, where goods and services are produced to generate profit (and therefore indirectly for use). "Production under socialism would be directly and solely for use. With the natural and technical resources of the world held in common and controlled democratically, the sole object of production would be to meet human needs."

 

[woolfe9998]

Its not theft, as that would imply a crime which I do not think it is. It is for sure taking something from people with the threat of force. If you do not pay taxes, you can expect the force of the state to try and punish you. It could be small, it could be large.

I think its valuable to remember that the state uses force to get its way, so we should take care when using that power.

As for using the word control, you see it as a mistake, and I see it as a possible mistake, but possibly not. I will likely not know unless I make a post asking him now will I?

In a democracy, we operate on a social contract which says there are obligations between the state and the citizen which run both ways. We need services provided by the state, and we understand that taxation is the only way to get those services. Hence, we authorize, at the ballot box, the state to use the threat of force to collect taxes. This threat of force is not something which just comes down on us like a lightning bolt from the skies. And it's similar to every other use of force that we authorize on behalf of the state, whether it's police, military, or regulatory.

Look, people can argue quite rationally about how much we should be taxed, about what form the taxation should take, or about what the state should and should not spend our money on. But your argument is foundational - it addresses the very concept of taxation. If you say you support taxation, then what is it that we're discussing here?

 

[realibrad]

In a democracy, we operate on a social contract which says there are obligations between the state and the citizen which run both ways. We need services provided by the state, and we understand that taxation is the only way to get those services. Hence, we authorize, at the ballot box, the state to use the threat of force to collect taxes. This threat of force is not something which just comes down on us like a lightning bolt from the skies. And it's similar to every other use of force that we authorize on behalf of the state, whether it's police, military, or regulatory.

So, in that context, was it right to put people into internment camps? Sometimes when you make the state powerful, it uses that power in immoral ways. So, when the state exercises its power, I think people should examine the implications. This is why I'm in favor of collecting some taxes, but, not taxes for anything and everything. To me, having inspections of the authority helps prevents waste and corruption.

Look, people can argue quite rationally about how much we should be taxed, about what form the taxation should take, or about what the state should and should not spend our money on. But your argument is foundational - it addresses the very concept of taxation. If you say you support taxation, then what is it that we're discussing here?

"how is it not taking of private property"

"To me, wealth and money are property, and taking it is taking property. I think its worth doing, but, I cannot understand how its not taking property."

Every other comment you see is a response by others to those two points.

What you and I are talking about was about how you thought I was arguing semantics to which I disagreed with. I explained why I felt it was a worthy topic to discuss.

 

[Bitek]

I believe it is also strategy. Just today Fox News is railing against Macron and France, and preaching the ills of European Socialism, how the Europeans are rioting over evil Socialism. And that's the crux of it being a smear campaign, Republicans are afraid of European policy and they want it demonized.

That, and we have a long history of shitting on France whenever possible.

Remember the Freedum Fries debacle with GWB?

Plus Trump gets pwnd by Macron in person, so he needs momma Fox to stand up for him.

 

[Bitek]

So, in that context, was it right to put people into internment camps? Sometimes when you make the state powerful, it uses that power in immoral ways. So, when the state exercises its power, I think people should examine the implications. This is why I'm in favor of collecting some taxes, but, not taxes for anything and everything. To me, having inspections of the authority helps prevents waste and corruption.



"how is it not taking of private property"

"To me, wealth and money are property, and taking it is taking property. I think its worth doing, but, I cannot understand how its not taking property."

Every other comment you see is a response by others to those two points.

What you and I are talking about was about how you thought I was arguing semantics to which I disagreed with. I explained why I felt it was a worthy topic to discuss.

How is it all yours?

How did you get to work? Did you drive on roads, or did you pay tolls to walk thru a farmer's land? How'd you deal with the road bandits? Paid bodyguards. What? There were none?

Oh, so the police and county jails work for free now? State buys land and builds roads with magic?

Or maybe it's not your money, it's just what's owed to others you're still holding onto until the bill comes due on April 15th.

If you don't, you're a freeloader, and as a voter, I fully authorize the state to collect it from the deadbeats.

 

[pmv]

If those barriers to entry are created through things like the expense of regulation, that is the state. If the barriers to entry are things like capital and knowledge, then any entry needs to justify itself to be able to raise capital to enter.

Investment is part of capitalism, so any new entry that could compete could get funding as there are profits to be had. The only real way of excluding a firm at that point is through the state.

Now, the margins on profit could be small, but, that is not a bug its a feature. It means that any new entry has to do something better/more efficient to gain entry into the market. This helps reduce waste.

I'm going to regret getting into this. Not least because I know full-well I don't have an ultimate answer.

But I do not get the strict division you make between 'private' and 'the state'. How do you justify that dichotomy? What makes a state a state, rather than just a very big private corporation that happens to own all the land and/or all the 'intellectual property'?

In Russia the two seem to have merged. Seems to me that post-Soviet history demonstrates the truth in the critcisms of anarcho-capitalism (ironically, a criticism that Ayn Rand herself, more a minarchist-capitalist, made of those like David Friedman who would outflank her on the right). That you end up with a private monolith that owns the police and justice system, and which becomes indistinguishable from a state.

And, related to that, how do you determine who owns what in the first place? Especially when it comes to land and ideas.

 

[whm1974]

I'm going to regret getting into this. Not least because I know full-well I don't have an ultimate answer.

But I do not get the strict division you make between 'private' and 'the state'. How do you justify that dichotomy? What makes a state a state, rather than just a very big private corporation that happens to own all the land and/or all the 'intellectual property'?

In Russia the two seem to have merged. Seems to me that post-Soviet history demonstrates the truth in the critcisms of anarcho-capitalism (ironically, a criticism that Ayn Rand herself, more a minarchist-capitalist, made of those like David Friedman who would outflank her on the right). That you end up with a private monolith that owns the police and justice system, and which becomes indistinguishable from a state.

And, related to that, how do you determine who owns what in the first place? Especially when it comes to land and ideas.

Come to think of it, property rights are pretty much granted by the State.

 

[pmv]

I still suspect that libertarian/Randite type ideas are more popular in the US because of the manner in which it was settled by European colonialists. In Europe it was never plausible to really believe in the 'self made man' because it was always obvious that people were born into a situation where the wealth, and most-of-all the land, had all been grabbed by the most successful at fighting and killing a long time ago, and that all acts of self-determination occurred in a context of constraints due to existing, and contested, and heavily-qualified, ownership claims.

Everything involved some measure of consent. Property rights were never seen as absolute.

In the US for white people it appeared the land was there for the taking and one could come to believe in a kind of autonomous self-creation and hence a kind of absolutist approach to private property (former slaves never got their 40 acres and a mule).

 

[Moonbeam]

@realibrad I thought this thread started out explaining a profound irony that the political system which creates the most rich people per capital is the very state most hated and feared by the wealthy. I thought this notion has profound relevance as something we as a society need to focus on and take in. Now the thread has become in far greater a degree than I like seeing, a discussion of some personal concerns you have about economics. Could you now shut the fuck up, because for the last few days I have had a bug up my ass on the economic catastrophe awaiting us down the road if we try to put lipstick on a pig. And I want to do this, of course, to test the validity of that most famous of utterances promulgated some few decades back by those two American sages named Laurel and Hardy and pithily expressed thusly: “It’s neither pig nor pork, it’s beef.

 

[Jaskalas]

Well, I think the problem there is that private interests have the ability to control the tool that is supposed to protect public interests. The stronger you make the tool, the more incentive to control it. Socialism only makes that tool stronger.

Yes, that is an issue. Which is why I favor a plan for Basic Income, no strings attached. There is purity in its simplicity, though many would disagree with its expense and share of the economy. Democrats are at least more favorable to such ideas, even if many are not ready to support them.

The Republican Party, OTOH, are delusional and won't even acknowledge the need for such programs. The mythos that each man is an island and can pull themselves up with a pair of mythical bootstraps is so painfully wrong. So long as money is exchanged, then our people are all connected in commerce, and our labor has been devalued across all fields over generations. It is not enough to simply tell people to "go it alone". They do not get paid enough to do that anymore.

And what becomes of those who lose jobs, become ill, or simply need to relocate? They are tied down and weighted by the need for underpaying jobs. Without the true freedom and flexibility to do what is best for them. With the correct programs, we can change all that. I know that you, Conservative leaning, fear the risk of action. But I have seen the risk of inaction, and I believe it is more than we can bear.

 

[woolfe9998]

So, in that context, was it right to put people into internment camps? Sometimes when you make the state powerful, it uses that power in immoral ways. So, when the state exercises its power, I think people should examine the implications. This is why I'm in favor of collecting some taxes, but, not taxes for anything and everything. To me, having inspections of the authority helps prevents waste and corruption.

Certainly we all have a desire for good government. But there is one necessary precondition for any government at all: the putative state must be able to collect some form of taxes.

Questioning whether a particular manner in which the government spends money is an entirely different thing than questioning the idea of taxation. You're seemingly questioning the idea of it, although oddly you say you support it.

"how is it not taking of private property"

"To me, wealth and money are property, and taking it is taking property. I think its worth doing, but, I cannot understand how its not taking property."

Every other comment you see is a response by others to those two points.

What you and I are talking about was about how you thought I was arguing semantics to which I disagreed with. I explained why I felt it was a worthy topic to discuss.

Questioning the very notion of taxation is for "sovereign citizens" who think all taxation is theft and there shouldn't be any of it. We can question how much we're taxed and how the government spends our money, but that's not what you were doing here.

If what you're trying to do is remind us that "taxation is a serious matter" or some such thing and because of that, we should carefully look at what the state is doing with our money, well guess what, everyone argues about how the state should spend or not spend our money, and whether we should be taxed less or more. On a daily basis. Even even right here on P&N.

Still not sure where you're going with this, but that's what happens when you ask questions and critique phrases without stating what you believe in.

 

[woolfe9998]

Anyway, on to the thread topic, which is "socialism." I'm tired of that word being attached to an emotion, specifically fear, and the word then somehow becoming what is important. If the word itself triggers an emotion, then everyone must somehow debate whether a given individual or set of policies qualifies for that word.

Hogwash. Socialism, much like other "isms," is just a label some people came up with to describe what they saw as a certain set of policies. The policies do matter. The word itself doesn't matter at all, intrinsically. It only matters because we choose to suffuse it with emotions.

How about we discard the semantics, which is simply playing into the hands of demagogues making irrational appeals to fear, and examine the policies of other nations to determine if they're doing anything which works better than our equivalent policy here? Then, if we decide it does, we can debate whether to adopt a perhaps modified version of it for our purposes. I would also think that other nations would want to do the same thing in relation to us.

That is why I wish AOC and Sanders had never identified themselves as "socialists." They should simply have stated what policies they want to pursue and why.

 

[greatnoob]

Never once, but, I have always felt like I should. I'm more into economics than most, and her philosophy is often associated to economics.

Her “philosophy” (read: conjecture at best) and her book of fiction don’t touch anywhere close to the field of economics. Since you’re “more into economics than most” I suggest you actually read and learn from actual experts in their field - like Krugman - rather than who you personally consider experts.

 

[whm1974]

Her “philosophy” (read: conjecture at best) and her book of fiction don’t touch anywhere close to the field of economics. Since you’re “more into economics than most” I suggest you actually read and learn from actual experts in their field - like Krugman - rather than who you personally consider experts.

Fun fact. She ended up both on Social Security and Medicare in her final years.

 

[Jhhnn]

What I said was that the more socialist things you want to do, the stronger state you need to have.



So, when you add things like universal healthcare, you must expand the state to do that. That action moves the economy toward socialism as you are taking away the ability of the consumer to make market decisions.

All this market stuff sounds great, based on the assumption that everybody has the money to participate. Which isn't true, of course, so there's no point in pretending.

We can keep it that way or we can do it some other way. Many of our first world brethren don't even consider the idea that they might not be able to afford the care they need. It's unthinkable. Of course everybody gets taken care of. They pay taxes & the govt takes care of the details.

 

[realibrad]

How is it all yours?

How did you get to work? Did you drive on roads, or did you pay tolls to walk thru a farmer's land? How'd you deal with the road bandits? Paid bodyguards. What? There were none?

Oh, so the police and county jails work for free now? State buys land and builds roads with magic?

Or maybe it's not your money, it's just what's owed to others you're still holding onto until the bill comes due on April 15th.

If you don't, you're a freeloader, and as a voter, I fully authorize the state to collect it from the deadbeats.

Those are all useful things that we used socialism for.

That said, are you questioning if things earned are 100% owned because other people contributed?